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[themikefest]

Shepard: Who designed it?

Leviathan turd: You do not know them and there's not enough time to explain it.

[Applepie_Svk]

this is hilarious, came here after... dunno 2 years ? and some people still beat that dead horse...

[n7stormreaver]

this is hilarious, came here after... dunno 2 years ? and some people still beat that dead horse...

 

Why wouldn't we do that? 

[Vazgen]

 

That, I get and it's fine (as far as the catalyst's motives are concerned)
No it doesn't. It is passive, not active. Shepard is the one who makes the decision and the catalyst presents them. If it were active, it would prevent Shepard from choosing the other two, which - as we previously established - it could.
I think we are going in circles here. This is somewhat contrary to the idea in your previous post, that the catalyst is realizing that it and it's reapers are part of the problem. Remember, the catalyst came up with the harvest and reaper idea itself. There is no shackle on it that makes it harvest.
So what distinguishes destroy from the catalyst just stopping on his own?
 
But they can't destroy the reapers. They can only destroy them because they let themselves be destroyed. The catalyst even says that it believes so himself "your children will create synthetics and the conflict will begin again."
So it does abandon it's task after all with destroy? (see my other question above)
Ok, so if I understand this correctly, you are saying that it's ok for the catalyst to stop the cycle now if Shepard chooses destroy because after that, the organics have the crucible and therefore destroy any future synthetic life all over again as often as they like. Therefore it is ensured that organics will always be "on top" so to speak. Please correct me if I am wrong, 'cause I am really not sure if I interpret you correctly there.
Problem is: the crucible requires the catalyst to work. We actually have no idea how it works (as Shepard even tells the catalyst), why it needs the catalyst or how it destroys the synthetics. All we do is shoot a tube. The catalyst (i.e. the synthetic) actually works the magic. So now we can build a super-weapon against synthetics that can only be operated with the help of synthetics.

We could continue extrapolating scenarios here but I guess the crux is, that destroy doesn't change the galaxy a lot. It doesn't suddenly give us some new tech, we couldn't have anyway and it doesn't give us some greater understanding and it doesn't protect us from the synthetics in the future (as the catalyst states itself). The only thing it does is that the catalyst and the reapers basically commit suicide with Shepard's help. So I still don't see the motive for it to offer the choice.

{Sorry for taking your post apart. I usually hate doing it but there were a lot of different notions in this post and addressing them in just one answer was a bit too much of a wall of text.)

It's my fault, I tried to present too many ideas in one post - not a good thing to do.

The main idea is that the Catalyst realizes that the Reapers can be a part of the problem, not that they are the integral part of that problem. There are three ways  to circumvent that issue. One way is to let Shepard overwrite its files with his own memories and experience, allowing to adjust the programming and continue to monitor organic-synthetic relationships without (or with only a minor) interference. Another way is the destruction of all synthetic life. As crude as it is, it's still a solution since there will be peace for a short time. After that time "your children will create synthetics" but by that time organics already know a lot about mass relay and Citadel technology, Crucible technology and implications of creating AI. Creation of geth had already imposed harsh penalties on developing AIs, I highly doubt there will ever be something like that. But even if so, in the worst case organics can figure out how to rebuild the Crucible and destroy all synthetic life again though it most likely won't be needed ever. And the final solution is Synthesis - the ideal solution that the Catalyst tried to force before, to no avail.

There is also another choice, the reason the Catalyst continues harvest all the way before you make the choice - Refuse. You can refuse to use the Crucible and the Catalyst does the most logical thing - finishes the harvest and tries to figure out a new solution. Maybe the next cycle finds the capsule before the Reapers arrive and someone else is presented with the same choices as Shepard. We have no idea what happens next. 

As for abandoning its task with Destroy, no, it actually completes its task. It creates a situation when organic life will always prevail over synthetics and thus will not be wiped out. It does result in the loss of synthetic life, but it's a solution.

[SofaJockey]

There is no good ending?

 

I am now very comfortable and satisfied with the Control ending.

It has sacrifice, a good dose of irony and replaces the dictatorship of the Catayst with the benign dictatorship of the Shepard without Galaxy-wide death.

 

Destroy, destroys all the work of saving the Geth - it's genocide.

Synthesis is unwarranted genetic re-engineering.

The 'so be it' choice wastes an opportunity to end the cycle perhaps for many cycles.

 

I've found peace in Control.

 

It presents an acceptable ending to an otherwise outstanding trilogy.

[von uber]

Woah, how I forgot about Sovereign is beyond me

But yeah, that's quite a casualty list. It's still far away from conventional victory though, considering the casualties on the side of the organics and the Geth.

(and it makes the comment of one of the developpers that the Reapers normally have zero casuaulties per cycle very odd)

 

Yeah. The strength of the Reapers is markedly inconsistent.

[dreamgazer]

Surviving the purging every single cycle isn't at all plausible. Having them thought to be eradicated makes it even more far-fetched, because if they're known to exist then you'd expect them to be extra-careful about making sure they're gone. If they'd just been Prothean plans it would've been somewhat better (surviving one purge, perhaps even two I could swallow).

We have evidence that bits of information get left behind, emphasized all throughout the series. Hidden, even. The Reapers noted its existence "several cycles ago", and they acknowledge that organics are more "resourceful" than they realized. It's plenty plausible.

More importantly, we have evidence that cycles have been failing at military tactics for at least 37 million years.
 

Studying a recently working Reaper when the rest of them aren't breathing down your neck on the other hand is probably pretty unique.

Why's that?

[MrFob]

this is hilarious, came here after... dunno 2 years ? and some people still beat that dead horse...

Haha, very true. I did say long ago that I will not be pulled into these ending discussions again. But then, as I am doing another playthrough right nowI am reading the forums a little and just one short comment seems to be enough to draw me back in. It's definitely not healthy.

[n7stormreaver]

There is no good ending?

 

I am now very comfortable and satisfied with the Control ending.

It has sacrifice, a good dose of irony and replaces the dictatorship of the Catayst with the benign dictatorship of the Shepard without Galaxy-wide death.

 

Destroy, destroys all the work of saving the Geth - it's genocide.

Synthesis is unwarranted genetic re-engineering.

The 'so be it' choice wastes an opportunity to end the cycle perhaps for many cycles.

 

I've found peace in Control.

 

It presents an acceptable ending to an otherwise outstanding trilogy.

 

That's what many people here are arguing about. Some believe there is a lot of bad stuff in Control. 

[n7stormreaver]

Why's that?

 

Because Protheans' help delayed Reaper invasion for 2 years after Sovereign's awakening. 

[ImaginaryMatter]

If there's one Derelict reaper, then there had to be others. Had to be other civilizations/cycles that discovered the key to the keepers and relays, too, given that they're all wiped out at a comparable level of advancement. Why is this cycle so special? Hint: they're not, and the Reapers purged evidence of everything happening similarly to this before. The only fact we know is that all previous civilizations across millions (billions) of years were equally advanced, often more so, and all of them failed.

Allowing some kind of "military" victory to happen in this cycle would crack open the widest of plot holes in the entire trilogy.

 

Well this cycle is special, the Reaper decapitation strike didn't work.

 

Either way there are large plot holes and contrivances, I don't see how the set created by a conventional victory scenario is somehow worse than the Crucible set.

[Applepie_Svk]

Haha, very true. I did say long ago that I will not be pulled into these ending discussions again. But then, as I am doing another playthrough right nowI am reading the forums a little and just one short comment seems to be enough to draw me back in. It's definitely not healthy.

 

Well, I came back only for Inquisition, but as I said it´s funny, that some people still want discuss few years rotting corpse. Back to OP, yeah ending sucks, arty farty integrity and space magic - whatever, Hudson and Walters job to kill franchise done well... cya around guys

[dreamgazer]

Because Protheans' help delayed Reaper invasion for 2 years after Sovereign's awakening.

Sure, but why is that "pretty unique"? You're accounting for billions nearly a billion years here.

[n7stormreaver]

Sure, but why is that "pretty unique"? You're accounting for billions of years here.

Because there is absolutely nothing that states or implies otherwise, and based off what we know - we're the first cycle to have this opportunity. 

 

Also "nearly billion" not a "billions" 

[dreamgazer]

Because there is absolutely nothing that states or implies otherwise, and based off what we know - we're the first cycle to have this opportunity.

If this cycle was capable of doing it at its advanced state and under these parameters, at the "apex of their glory", then it had to have also happened somewhere up the line of history.

I doubt it's all that unique, given that were working with ...
 

Also "nearly billion" not a "billions"

... nearly a billion years.

[n7stormreaver]

If this cycle was capable of doing it at its advanced state and under these parameters, at the "apex of their glory", then it had to have also happened somewhere up the line of history.

I doubt it's all that unique, given that were working with ...
 

... nearly a billion years.

It's just an assumption without any backing. Unless there is something that states otherwise, i'll continue to believe this is off the table. 

 

It is unique because the game is set in this cycle, therefore it can be unique as much as it wants to. It was our cycle where we have defeated the Reapers, after all. 

[dreamgazer]

It's just an assumption without any backing. Unless there is something that states otherwise, i'll continue to believe this is off the table.

Go for it. I'll continue to believe that nearly a billion years of advanced civilizations "at the apex of their glory" are going to reach similar conclusions at least a portion of the time, since that's the system the Reapers follow in their cycle of extinction.

The assumption otherwise is, as I've stated, that the previous cycles were incompetent. When they clearly weren't.
 

It is unique because the game is set in this cycle, therefore it can be unique as much as it wants to. It was our cycle where we have defeated the Reapers, after all.

Very true ... after we've fired the Crucible, which acknowledges previous civilizations.

[Reorte]

We have evidence that bits of information get left behind, emphasized all throughout the series. Hidden, even. The Reapers noted its existence "several cycles ago", and they acknowledge that organics are more "resourceful" than they realized. It's plenty plausible.

More importantly, we have evidence that cycles have been failing at military tactics for at least 37 million years.

That sort of ineptitude on the part of the Reapers would mean they would likely have been defeated a long time ago.
 

Why's that?

Who else would've done? Sovereign ony had to show himself at all thanks to the Prothean interference, previous cycles the Reapers would all have been around in force, hardly conductive to poking through the remains of one even if one had been destroyed. That could have happened before but the implication seems to be that it hasn't. It'll certainly be a fairly uncommon thing to happen.

[dreamgazer]

But then, as I am doing another playthrough right now

There we go.  

[Vazgen]

I recall one race poking through Reaper remains... Didn't end well

[dreamgazer]

That sort of ineptitude on the part of the Reapers would mean they would likely have been defeated a long time ago.

Yet we have evidence of that "ineptitude" in the data scattered about in ME1. It happens. 
 

Who else would've done?

Mostly-advanced Civilization Y, after Advanced Civilization X laid the groundwork. Nearly a billion years.
 

Sovereign ony had to show himself at all thanks to the Prothean interference, previous cycles the Reapers would all have been around in force, hardly conductive to poking through the remains of one even if one had been destroyed. That could have happened before but the implication seems to be that it hasn't. It'll certainly be a fairly uncommon thing to happen.

Fairly uncommon? Sure, why not. Fairly uncommon across countless cycles is still enough of a chunk for it to happen.

[MrFob]

@ Vazgen: What is the difference between being a part of the problem and being an integral part of the problem?
And as I stated in my last post, the catalyst apparently does not think that Destroy results in the loss of synthetics or that we can easily prevail because "the peace will not last". There will be the same conflict again. Destroy does not solve the problem, according to the catalyst. Therefore, it does abandon it's task.
It also doesn't make much sense to me to rely on rebuilding the crucible for the reasons I have stated above and even if that's what the catalyst thinks, why is it even worth firing it now if synthetics will be back within one generation? To destroy EDI or the geth (if they are even there)? From the conversation with it, it seems to me that the catalyst thinks their destruction is more an inconvenient side effect, rather than the main goal ("the crucible will not discriminate").

[Vazgen]

@ Vazgen: What is the difference between being a part of the problem and being an integral part of the problem?
And as I stated in my last post, the catalyst apparently does not think that Destroy results in the loss of synthetics or that we can easily prevail because "the peace will not last". There will be the same conflict again. Destroy does not solve the problem, according to the catalyst. Therefore, it does abandon it's task.
It also doesn't make much sense to me to rely on rebuilding the crucible for the reasons I have stated above and even if that's what the catalyst thinks, why is it even worth firing it now if synthetics will be back within one generation? To destroy EDI or the geth (if they are even there)? From the conversation with it, it seems to me that the catalyst thinks their destruction is more an inconvenient side effect, rather than the main goal ("the crucible will not discriminate").

The difference is, if the Catalyst realizes that the Reapers are an integral part of the problem, the war will stop. They will either leave or destroy themselves. However, they view themselves just as side observers, only there to preserve life. Thus the lines about fire being at war. They simply are. As an analogy, imagine a room where some tests are conducted. The Reapers view themselves as the room's wall, so to speak. In time they'll realize that their intervention skews the results of the experiment. The organics uniting and even joining forces with synthetics (at least one) and docking Crucible to the Citadel, show them that the Reapers are not as objective as they thought to be.

The peace will not last. I did not claim that it will. There will be war. But the organics will prevail in every such war due to the existence of a huge kill switch.

Why fire now? Because the organics haven't fully figured out the technology yet. After they rebuild, repair mass relays and Citadel, only then will they have the advantage over newly created synthetics. Crucible fires to give the organics a head start.

 

Edit: I don't take "your children will create synthetics" line that literally. I think it means, "future generations will face the same problem" not "after one generation there will be the same problem"

[voteDC]

Well eh, they look outside and see the Reapers tearing everything apart? That's how they know they'll die for sure if they don't build it.
 

How do they know it'll do anything. Indeed how do they know it isn't a Reaper plant?

Humanity puts every resource into building a device they don't know how to use. That isn't a long shot, it's blind idiocy.

 

 

Collectors aren't nigh indestructible space Cthulhu's though. I don't really see the point in bringing this up. At best, the Collectors were a stronger version of Husks.

In two years a weapon was developed that could be mounted on a frigate that could destroy a Collector vessel in two hits.
 

What could have been achieved if research had instead been plowed into improving the Thanix Cannon.

I can see the point in building the Crucible, even if it wasn't something I would do, but to do it to the exclusion of everything else?

 

unconventional means: a Tresher Maw ( ) and a lucky shot at a weak spot of one type of Reaper (definetly not Harbinger/Sovereign class), using an entire fleet (!) to do so. Which, before this makes you think conventional victory was possible, is not a sustainable way to conduct war. While you use your entire fleet to kill one Reaper, the other couple of hundred Reapers will tear through your fleet. End of fleet.

The protheans knew they were fighting a losing battle, tried to build the Crucible but also did other things. The Turians took down Reapers without sacrificing a full fleet to do so. Imagine what those ships could have done with improved Thanix Cannons installed.

Are you sure you aren't indoctrinated? You seem to dismiss every possibility other than the Crucible?   

 

 

Not the first time this cycle blindly trusted Prothean technology, by a long shot. 

When did anyone blindly trust prothean tech to anything near this level?

Edit: I suppose trusting the Conduit was a bit of a stretch as well 

 

ME3's Crucible is essentially the plot of Carl Sagan's Contact, only Shepard's cycle knows and trusts those who bequeathed the plans to them and are desperate for a solution to a problem that they knew it'd solve.

My point is that they didn't know it could solve it.

They didn't even know how to fire the thing. If you don't know that then it can't solve a thing.

[voteDC]

If there's one Derelict reaper, then there had to be others. Had to be other civilizations/cycles that discovered the key to the keepers and relays, too, given that they're all wiped out at a comparable level of advancement. Why is this cycle so special? Hint: they're not, and the Reapers purged evidence of everything happening similarly to this before. The only fact we know is that all previous civilizations across millions (billions) of years were equally advanced, often more so, and all of them failed.

Allowing some kind of "military" victory to happen in this cycle would crack open the widest of plot holes in the entire trilogy.

Of course there is but those cycles never had access to the Mass Relays when the Reapers invaded.

That alone changed the landscape for this cycle.

 

 "A missing component, referred to only as the catalyst," said by Liara on Mars, right at the beginning of the game. We didn't know what the catalyst was yet, but we knew there was a catalyst. I don't remember the exact quote from Hackett, but he says (basically) "everything we're doing is a delaying action for you, shep, so you can find what we need to finish this thing." 

 

Yeah, we put a lot of faith in (what we thought was) a prothean weapon, but ...well... what choice was there? Saren's choice? I'll take my chances on the red herring. 

But what if Shepard couldn't find it, or took a bullet to the head during a mission.

Yes I know what wasn't going to happen with Shepard being the star of the series but at the same time in universe it makes no sense to risk everything on one person finding what you need when that one person could take a bullet to the head in any mission.

To be honest I doubt this would bother me if we'd heard even a throw away line that the Alliance was pursuing alternatives. Now I've said that I expect someone will find it for me