You know, somehow this thread reminds me the Mind Game from Ender's Game.
This is a quote from the wikia:
In the game, there was a giant who asked the player to drink from one of the two cups in front of him. He said that if they won, he would take them to Fairyland. Normally, one could never get past this part, as both drinks would always kill the player, but Ender Wiggin, instead of choosing between the two drinks, killed the giant by having his character burrow into the giant's eye. As the giant's corpse fell to the ground, Ender's character found himself in the very same Fairyland that the giant had promised him.
That's the problem with the endings in me3, pre and post EC. The option to oppose the Giant (the catalyst in this case) leads to death too. We can take our own destiny, instead we had to accept one of the horrible drinks. Things are always ending under the starbrat terms, not Shepard's.
For me, the perfect ending should be:
Calibrate the Crucible to destroy the catalyst. After the destruction of the catalyst the reapers are free from its control, every reaper has the collective conscience from the species they were made off. This give us two options:
- Destroy the Reapers. Without the cordination of the Catalyst they are confuse, most of their systems depended in the catalyst to work properly.
- Pardon them. Give them a second chance. they are no longer following the Catalyst intentions. With this path they leave the galaxy after helping with the reconstruction. They travell to another galaxies, accompanied by organics who voluntered to go with the, hoping to stop the tech singularity that happened in the milky way.