CronoDragoon wrote...
Whether or not it is evil, its actions are evil. Of course, that means nothing to its directive. I agree that he is not dead set on the Reaper cycle; it was just the best possible solution given what he could accomplish. Of course, this raises the question of why, once he learned of the Crucible, did he not utilize it for Synthesis? He claims that it cannot be forced...but I fail to see the difference between presenting Synthesis to a cycle up front as an alternate to destruction, and presenting it during the cycle as he ends up doing.
How are the actions "evil?" You're falling prey to over-simplified moralistic thinking. From an ethical standpoint, if you're able to save everyone from killing each other, then this is a beneficial action. It has been said that if the cycles hadn't happened, then humanity wouldn't have even existed due to the aggressive tendencies of organic life up until that point. Thus, humanity exists because of the original solution. It was not the best solution, but it wasn't an "evil" solution.
As for why the Catalyst didn't use the Crucible? That one is easy. The Catalyst has wiggle-room to think, but the design of the leviathans was put into place so that their solution could not be tampered with. See, it was the leviathans who got fed up with everyone killing each other, and they wanted to make sure that the Catalyst couldn't be tampered with. What they were too arrogant to see is that the Catalyst could calculcate them as being part of the problem (which it did). Thus, the Catalyst was not in a position to overturn its original position.
If we were to create an Intelligence to manage things for us, then we might be similarly as arrogant. Essentially, the leviathans didn't at all have the wrong idea, they just had the wrong execution. They took the approach of "Enact the solution yourself, we'll tell you if you're doing it wrong." which was a failure. The appraoach should have been "Run all of your solutions by us, we will choose the correct one." And I'm absolutely sure that eventually humanity will make a similar mistake and learn from it, we need to, we tend to be very arrogant as well.
So the Catalyst was able to think and reason, but it was not able to make further decisions. It didn't act on the Crucible because it was not able to according to its programming. Further more, other aspects of the creation the leviathans built, like the Harbinger intelligence, might have been fighting it. This is why I have the theory that there's a Harbinger/Catalyst power struggle involved. Where the Catalyst is doing what little things it can to try to change the solution, but Harbinger is more designed to slavishly follow the original solution.
It's also my opinion that, because of this, the Catalyst was actually the one who created the Crucible. The Crucible was then leaked to each cycle in order for them to try and provide the Catalyst with an override, so that a new choice could be enacted. Until that happened, thanks to the coding decisions of the leviathans, it had no choice but to continue harvesting. Again, this is where my Catalyst/Harbinger power struggle comes into play, because Cerberus was waiting for you on Mars. They were already there trying to destroy the Crucible plans.
How did they discover it just as you did? The Catalyst pretty much put it there, and was leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for them to find it. Subtle enough though so that Harbinger perhaps wouldn't notice.
The problem the Reapers have is that they are slaves to their own programming. This is why I think it's silly and representative of limited thinking to attribute moralistic labels like "good" or "evil" to them. The actions of the Catalyst were actually beneficial, but I still wouldn't call it good. I would say that the Catalyst was simply trying to fulfil the purpose it was created for: To bring peace to the galaxy. That was its directive, morality aside. This is why I trust the Catalyst at the end of the game, it wants the harvesting to end, it wants a better solution.
But it needs outside help for that to happen. I can't blame it for being pissed when some of the Shepards out there just turn around and say "Noap!" to be honest. I mean, here's the Catalyst putting all of this effort into trying to create galactic peace a
better way, and Shepard says "Noap!"
I see Destroy as a bit silly, too. But that's the Catalyst realising that statistically perhaps the Reapers are standing in the way of peace. This was, I think, the earliest realisation after the harvesting began. The Intelligence is intelligent, that's the thing. After that, it began to wonder whether perhaps the right organic mind could provide peace. And then finally, via its tools (the Collectors, until Harbinger took them away from it), it came to realise that statistically the best chance for galactic peace was Synthesis.
That's why, conversely, I like the Synthesis ending.
I'll leave it at that. I think that's answered the majority of your questions, and with aplomb, hopefully.
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