ThinkIntegral wrote...
What was shown up to and in that moment that made you conclusively believe that the Catalyst can't be trusted? All you have is that one moment.
Actually, all I have is the empircal evidence provided by playing the entire series of three games. The Reapers have managed to corrupt and coerce at least THREE major characters throughout the course of the series - Benezia, the Illusive Man and Sarean - plus countless other characters, who have all ended up unwittingly but willingly working against their own kind. So I was always going to be on guard going into the endgame.
But if you're asking me for a moment that sealed it, then it would be this:
Catalyst: "I control the Reapers. They are my solution".That was the very moment the Catalyst lost me. You see, by admitting that - by making that particular statement, the Catalyst is assuming responsibility for the Reapers actions. It is assuming responsibility for the billions dead on Earth, Thessia, Palaven and more. It is assuming responsibility for the cycle of extinction, a galactic horror which has claimed the lives of countless civilisations across millions of years.
The Catalyst tells us that it created, designed, and controls the Reapers. If the Catalyst approves of the Reapers, then it follows that it approves of or even designed their tactics - which includes traps, trickery, the use of sleeper agents, the corruption and control of organics to further their purpose.
And then there's the question of it's motives. The Catalyst is not indifferent, it is not neutral. It has a purpose. It gave the Reapers the same purpose, to combat a threat formed from it's own
calculations - the threat of a technological singularity - which may or may not ever even happen.
Bear in mind - I'm not saying that the Catalyst isn't telling us the truth. It could be being perfectly open and straight with us. But that doesn't mean we can trust it. The Catalyst has it's own agenda. It created the cycle of extinction to pursue that agenda. It sees the universe in an entirely different manner to organics, which is why it actively defends the cycle of extinction, and shows no regret or remorse for it's actions. Cyclical extinction of all organic life - the end we've been fighting against for the past three games - is perfectly acceptable to it.
Can we trust a being which has destroyed billions, that is responsible for our friends and allies dying as we talk to it, when it is so far removed from our own kind that it doesn't even acknowledge our existence as anything more than a regrettable nuisance?
No, of course we can't. The Reapers were the Catalyst's original solution. Synthesis is it's new proposed solution. And it's as clear as day that the implications of giving a being responsible for systematically annihilating all advanced forms of life the freedom to manipulate the genetic code of ALL organic and synthetic life in a manner that it personally deems to be acceptable is nothing short of abhorrent.
Sure the Catalyst admits failure but it's admitting failure because Shepard made it to that moment. It thought its solution was good enough to prevent civilization from not only being wiped out by their own creations but also that its solution would last the test of time.
So it's original solution was perfectly acceptable, up until the point it got caught out? "OK guys, you got me... here' let's try something else?"
Any "miscalculations" would be due in part to the Crucible. It says the Crucibile changed it and allowed new possibilities, suggesting that if it had its way it wouldn't even deviate from what it's been doing from eons.
Exactly. No regrets. No remorse. No sympathy or even consideration for organics. The Catalyst is an entirely different order of being, with it's own agenda, and all we are is a fly in it's soup. It cannot be trusted. Look around the Crucible as you speak to the Catalyst. Your friends and allies are in a desperate battle with the Reapers, fighting for their lives to give you a chance to save them. They're not fighting for you to give the Catalyst another chance - they're fighting for you to stop the Reapers, and end the war.
Butwait - what about the threat of a technological singularity?
What about it? That's not what they're fighting for. It's not what you're fighting for. You're fighting for organics - all organics, now, and in the future, to be free of the Reaper threat. Once and for all. What may happen in the future, may happen. Organics need to be accountable for their own mistakes.
At the end of the game, you have three options. Three choices, to determine the fate of everyone who's relying on you.
You can try and Control the Reapers, use them and their technology for their own ends - but the dangers of this have been seen not five minutes earlier. You tell the Illusive Man yourself - "we're not ready for that kind of power". A couple of assurances from the Catalyst, and that suddenly changes? Shepard can deal with the responsibility? Will be immune to the possibility of being corrupted? Of being influenced?
Or you can try to Destroy them. You can do what you set out to do, finish the fight - whatever the cost. There may well be collateral damage - if you trust the Catalyst. No-one said it would be an easy decision, or that the cost wouldn't be high. But the Reapers would be gone. For good. It would all be over, and the galaxy would finally be free to decide it's own fate... if you believe the Catalyst.
Or, if you lack the testicular fortitude to either accept the dangers of assuming Control or the implications of choosing Destroy, you can opt out altogether. Accept the Catalyst's new proposal. Put the control firmly back in the hands of a genocidal, ancient AI with zero empathy for the plight of organics. This would be the Synthesis option - entirely the Catalyst's own idea, backed by the same inscrutable logic which started the cycle of extinction and lead to you being in this mess in the first place.
Now, as we raced towards the beam on our first playthrough, dodging the blasts from Harbinger and watching Hammer getting vapourised around us, I imagine a hell of a lot of us would have been thinking about door number 2. Some of us may have even been contemplating the possibilities of door number one. But somehow I doubt anyone - ANYONE - would having been hoping they could take the mysterious door number three, where they get to be an intergalactic Dr. Frankenstein by proxy.
What's stopping it from going back to previous methods? I guess nothing, but that would be a new problem not the same problem.
Nope, it wouldn't be a new problem. It'd be the same old problem - the Reapers would start Reaping all over again. The only thing that would be different this time around is that organics would have had their basic genetic structure rewritten in an easier-to-manage form by the Catalyst, and would all come with handy synthetic structures which would make the huskification process so much easier, and cut down on all that unnecessary wasted caused by organics, y'know, fighting back. See? The Catalyst DOES know what it's doing, after all.
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