LetsGoToMyHouse wrote...
It is a bit unfair to color every person who picks Destroy with the same brush. Red...(sorry, bad pun).
Even if the majority of what you have seen and heard suggests that all Destroy-pickers are only interested in their own happiness, that is still an unfair view.
I remained completely spoiler free during my first run of ME3. I was aware of the the negative opinion on it, but I did not know any details on what happens.
When the time came to make my choice, I had no idea that Shepard could live in the Destroy ending. The Starkid even implied that Shepard would die because of being "partly synthetic." I made a choice based on the knowledge I had. Control and Synthesis were unknowns to me, and seemed like wild cards.
Only ten minutes earlier, My Shepard argued against Control to the Illusive Man. He didn't believe it was his right to take command of that kind of power. My Shepard didn't believe anyone was in the right to, especially not himself.
Synthesis was even more of an unknown, and something he's been fighting against since he saw how it affected Saren and David Archer. He believed in the unity through diversity. He had no idea to what extent the Synthesis would affect everyone. It wasn't his call to make a decision that would affect the very basis of our being.
Destroy was something Shepard could understand. It was a decision he felt was what he, and everyone in the entire galaxy, has been fighting for since the very beginning: To destroy the Reapers and create our own future.
And it still took me forever on my first play through to make that choice. I loved EDI's character arc from ME2 to ME3, and she was a squadmate and character I loved interacting with. Legion is one of my top favorite characters in the ME universe. And his death was one of the top truly emotional scenes for me in ME3. When I think of the Geth, I see Legion, and that is one of th reasons I loved the Geth. So it was a horrible choice to make. A sincerely difficult one.
As far as I knew during my playthrough, Shepard would die in each ending. So, I made a decision with what I knew, and what I felt was right. My Shepard felt like he owed it to everyone who gave their lives to stop the Reapers. It was what they gave their lives for, it is what they fought for, it was what my Shepard was willing to die for, and he felt by doing anything else was a diservice to their sacrifice.
There is no way to sugarcoat that decision. An entire race has been extinguished, and the life of a dear friend and crewmate. I am not trying to say it was the best call. It was a heavy sacrifice, but one that must be made to truly end the Reaper threat.
I can't justify the decision. It's genocide. But I would like you to understand that it is not a choice that all Destroy-enders made happily, or selfishly.
I want to clarify that I don't have any problem with the idea of picking Destroy. I don't even think it's wrong to think that Destroy is the least bad choice. I have a problem with the idea of picking destroy and then thinking that you did nothing wrong.
A minority of Destroy people have talked about how their Shepard still considers it genocide, and feels that it was a bad, horrible decision to have to make. I have no problem with their decision, I respect it and I don't disagree with it in any way.
What troubles me is that people who still think all three endings are morally questionable (and perhaps thematically revolting, depending on your perception of theme) are a tiny minority. The vast majority of people on this board are posting pages and pages about how happy and perfect destroy is. Post after post that boil down to "Lol, and nothing of value was lost." They liken it to sacrificing a single platoon in a battle, or leaving a single soldier behind on a battlefield - something you regret for a second but then immediately discard. Heck, dozens of people mention destroy and reunion without even acknowledging that anyone died at all. They mention nothing but the ending's perfection and their own happiness.
I'm not bothered by the idea of destroy, and I respect those who consider it a truly horrible thing that just happened to be less horrible to them than anything else.
I'm bothered by the way that destroy seems to be leading a huge number of people to dismiss or minimize the act of wiping out an entire race of sentients and declare themselves completely satisfied and happy with the endings in every way.
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