Alright, so I've been cruising through dozens of forums, reading up on all the criticism of ME3 and it's endings, the various plot holes, etc etc etc. A few of the more prevalent ones I've noticed are:
1. Why didn't the Reapers just go ahead and take the Citadel immediately, decapitating galactic civilization like they did in the previous cycles? Sure, they couldn't do it the easy way like before, but they managed it just fine later on, why not earlier?
2. Why did humans suddenly find the Crucible plans at just the right moment? You would have thought that if there were plans for a massively powerful weapon, plans that could be recognized as plans for a massively powerful weapon just by a quick glance from someone desperately looking through the archives, they would have found it in the decades since they first found the Mars Archives. Furthermore, why didn't Vigil mention it, or why didn't Javik know about it? You'd think that if the Protheans had discovered a way to kill the Reapers in one shot, they would have kept track of it in case they ever had the option of using it.
3. Why Earth? Why move the Citadel directly over earth, when they were doing just fine without it? Why provide an easy access port at all?
4. Mass Accelerators are easy to aim in space, even moreso if there's a giant, well-defended object that cant aim very well. Why didn't the reapers just blow up the Crucible the instant it dropped out of FTL?
I think that there is one clear answer that solves this problem; it wasn't the Protheans that designed the Crucible, or any other species that fought the Reapers. It was the Reapers themselves. They deliberately left behind archives like the one on Mars, to further the tech direction they wanted species to go towards. Then they inserted the plans for the Crucible with a protocol that reveals its presence at the same time as the impending reaper invasion.
Most species would see this as a godsend. A weapon, designed by the previous cycle that was barely defeated, that could destroy their enemy in a single move? Talk about tremendous tactical advantage! So of course every species would start to pour their resources into it, trying to build it before the war comes to a bloody end. In their haste to build it, nobody notices that, with all their resources turned towards this megaproject, their fleets are getting less resources, and their scientists are focusing less and less on the invasion and more and more on the complicated, yet "strangely simple" designs of the Crucible.
Now maybe in this time the Reapers will annihilate the species and the problem will be solved. But maybe not; maybe you have a species that just refuses to give up and die, a species that fights for each and every inch of territory lost, and makes the Reapers pay a bloody cost for it. That is the situation where...they 'Discover' the Crucible project. The immediately move the Crucible to a heavily defended world, but a world that they took from one of the other species some time ago, one that knows it better than anyone else. Then they set up a cursory defense, and watch as the Crucible plugs itself into the Citadel.
And behold; the species is presented with three options.
1.Destroy all synthetic-originated technology; the Mass Relay Network, sure, but also implants, technologies, AI's--Everything the species would need to survive in a world cut off from the rest of the galaxy. Sure, the reapers physical bodies are destroyed, but they're machines; they leave copies of their code on other platforms in Dark Space, and come back and build new ones over the course of a few hundred years. In the meantime, Galactic Civilization is trying to reform with every factory, ship, and omnitool useless scrap, and most of their scientists and warriors dead of rejection shock as their implants suddenly become useless hunks of metal.
2. Take control of the Reapers. Because they totally will let you control them, and your one mind can totally sublimate the uncounted trillions of reaper minds contained within them, and you totally wont get indoctrinated by direct contact with the soul of pure evil. "The Reapers are Friendly Now", you say, as you bring them in to repair the damaged mass relays. Everyone trusts you, so nobody even notices that every single scientist and soldier in the galaxy is being indoctrinated until it's too late.
3. Synthesis. The Reapers want everything in the galaxy to be made synthetic. In one stroke, you achieve this for them. With their unimaginably great power, they overwhelm the minds of every new synthetic being, merge it into a new reaper, and leave for dark space, letting the remaining synthesis plants and animals slowly fade back into normalcy.
Basically, in the original ending, the Reapers WON. You took their bait, you let the cycle repeat again, and you never even noticed. That's why many didn't like the original endings; none of them seemed like 'good' endings, because they WEREN'T.
And that's alright. You played the game well. You lost, but then again, you never really had a chance to win, did you? You really think the reapers would let a species get powerful enough to challenge them? You really think an army built over billions of years can be beaten by one thrown together in dozens?
No, no; the Reapers won, fair and square. The cycle continues. As it always will.
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