What we get is a red wave that apparently targets "synthetic life" (which in game is largely machines...) but may kill Shepard because he is "part synthetic." It does not seem to affect electronics or complicated machines to a significant degree (except for the relays, which are damaged from creating the pulse) or computers that do not have sentience. Personally I don't feel like this makes a whole lot of sense.... how does it discriminate between EDI and Avina? Are we going to handwave this away with the assumption that it targets only "reaper tech," even though Geth hardware is largely Geth, but the reaper upgrades are simply software?
I think it may have been a more interesting choice if destroy instead targeted organic synthetic hybrids, biomechanical constructs, cybernetic lifeforms, or whatever you want to call them. I think this would have made more sense for a number of reasons. As we learned, Reapers aren't simple machines, so why design a weapon that could potentially target your tools of war? Were all previous cycles unaware of what the Crucible was supposed to do? Were the original creators supposed know how it would work? You would imagine so. Do we have to believe that it was always organics vs AIs so the surviving organics in a cycle would never have friendly AI's to worry about damaging?
Setting aside that line of questioning for a moment, the other consideration is that perhaps it would make the sacrifice more "personal." Shepard always has cybernetics by the time of ME3 regardless of the class. But consider that basically all human biotics have cybernetic implants, many other humans do for whatever reasons, and the quarians were all "rumored" to be cybernetic. Would it have made Destroy a more "difficult" choice if potentially you were going to end up sacrificing Miranda, Jack, Kaidan, and potentially Tali and the Quarians (assuming they had survived up until that point) as well as the human biotics?
Of course I imagine that some are thinking this seems crazy to make the sacrifice even more "personal" as compared to one AI squadmember who recently started to feel "alive" and a machine intelligence race that only recently were given the ability to think independently on their own as advanced AIs. But that isn't precisely what I would envision. Instead you could pull the old war asset trick and be able to save more of the disparate groups depending on EMS. Perhaps Quarians, then human biotics, then Shepard. Or whatever.
Granted, now I have opened the door to the other extreme where people might claim I wanted a "happy ending." To some extent that is true, but there should actually be some sort of "reward" for completionist games afterall. And it isn't like the billions who died shouldn't count for that.
Plus it isn't as if they didn't give us the writer's super happy peace and love green ending already in which basically everyone but Shepard lives happily ever after, including the Reapers and the Catalyst.
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