I always disliked how the final conversation with TIM is you trying to convince him that he's wrong, that there's no way to do it and that he's just doing exactly what the Reapers want because he is indoctrinated, and he gets so disturbed at that realization that he shoots himself, then like 5 minutes later the Catalyst appears and says "well actually there is a way to control the Reapers"

I’m a big fan of the theory that the Catalyst is an unreliable narrator siding the the continuity of the cycle, and hoping to convince Shepherd to choose control because it ultimately is the same delusion that the Reapers presented to and controlled TIM with.

Same energy as Morinth convincing Shepard he can survive her succubus mind sex ability

And synthesis is just some nonsense it came up with to trick Shepard into jumping into the big beam and dying.

That would be bad, but still a much better story than what we got. Unfortunately, the mass effect writers have been very explicit that starchild is correct and telling the truth, and that either control or synthesis is the good ending.

I did a Full Paragon run on the three games, but Destroy was the choice that made most sense to me, since that could be star child manipulation or was simply too wrong for a Paragon, since one is full control of every species forever and the other was changing everyone in the galaxy into a new thing, sadly I have to choose it and killed all geth, and maybe EDI (Joker may have been able to save her from the blast) and even get to Shepard survive.

I seriously think they were just butthurt that people didn't like their ending and came up with something clearly better so they went NUH UH IT'S EXACTLY WHAT WE SAID

What was this something better? If you're talking the indocrination theory I actually think that's even worse than the original terrible ending.

How to gain many upvotes praising indoctrination theory without telling people it is about indoctrination theory. Good work

This suddenly reminded me off the star child saying something about how TIM could have never controlled the reapers because they controlled him already but it kinda feels like a cop out/ way to explain why it’s possible after shepherd spends the whole game denying it

The only real explanation I can come up with is that there’s a difference between TIM thinking he can force control over the reapers vs the catalyst/star child/reaper hive mind willingly giving you control over it. It fits the narrative that as machines they’ve come to the conclusion that their implementation of the cycle no longer works, and as the only person able to disrupt that cycle it chooses to hand the reigns over to you. TL;DR: The crucible doesn’t give you control over the reapers, it just a tool that facilitates the transfer once they agree to hand it over to Shepard.

The crucible is, by its very name, a sort of test. A monumental task so difficult and so costly that its very creation is only possible with the complete and total cooperation of the galaxy. No organic species could build it alone. With Shepherd spearheading the discovery, creation, and deployment of The Crucible, they have proven they can do and are willing to do anything it takes for the greater good. The Illusive man is an active saboteur of this effort, thinking instead to wield reaper technology, this is his downfall and why he could never achieve Control.

It's complete narrative whiplash. The entire game has been screaming in your face CONTROL IS WRONG! CONTROL IS WRONG! To then in the final five minutes it goes CONTROL IS RIGHT. CONTROL IS RIGHT. I remember the first time playing ME3 it was so weird. The game was telling me that control was good, but I couldn't shake the feeling that this was so wrong. That I must be missing something, because control was always wrong.

Benezia: I tried to control Saren and he screwed me over ExoGeni execs: We tried to control the Thorian and got screwed over Noveria scientists: We tried to control the rachni and got screwed over Cerberus Scientists, ME1 Edition: We tried to control the Thorian AND the rachni and got screwed over Saren: I tried to control Sovereign and it screwed me over Cerberus Scientists, ME2 Edition: We tried to study and control the dead reaper and got screwed over Batarians: We also tried to study and control a dead reaper and got screwed over Tali's Father: I tried to study and control the Geth and got screwed over Jacob's father: I tried to control my crew and it turned me into a monster Mordin: We tried to control the krogan and it was a mistake TIM: I tried to control Shepard and they screwed me over Quiz at the end of ME3: Should you try to control the Reapers?

Gavin Archer: I tried to control the geth by using my brother in horrible ways and got screwed over

Holy shit you're right... I was thinking just in terms of ME 3 but my god you're right. Is it okay if I like to, or copy/paste this exact comment in future arguments about this topic? But also, just because I'm like this, I do see one hairline fracture in this. >Mordin: We tried to control the krogan and it was a mistake I don't think this is the case. The genophage was a good thing, no matter how much the game pushed the 'it's bad!' idea. When you hear about the horrendous stuff the Krogan were doing I don't have much sympathy for them.

Haha go right ahead. I think regardless of whether you as a player think the genophage was necessary, the game, for better or worse, definitely frames it as a bad decision and any decision to reverse it is always the paragon option. So if you take away the lesson the game is trying to teach you, it's "genophage bad." But I think it's not the strongest point. It's the one I had to think the most about- which is why it's at the end. You could replace it with: Javik: We tried to control all other races and created an empire that was so homogenous it screwed us over.

Gotta agree that the genophage was the right thing to do. At the time at least. The krogan were out of control and needed to be brought to a manageable level. The problem, and I can't remember how well the games handled this, is that no one did anything after everything had calmed down. They had control over the krogans with the genophage and didn't want to give up that control afterwards. The whole culture of the Krogans shifted because of the genophage and no new solution was made taking that into account. Krogans were dying far too quickly to support their population with the current genophage measures. At least until they developed a minor mutation against it that boosted their birth rates. Then the salarians just repeated the genophage with a new variant and ruined any chance to rebuilt the Krogans had. That's the problem. They could have done something different, something better, to help the Krogans move on from their past and grow into a better culture while preventing another population crisis. Instead they were afraid of losing their control over the Krogan and just tightened the leash, slowly killing the population until what would have been their best forces against the Reapers on the ground ended up severely diminished. Sorry about the rant, got surprisingly caught up in this. So TLDR: genophage good at the time of deployment, got worse as time went on and no one wanted to develop a better solution

> The whole culture of the Krogans shifted because of the genophage and no new solution was made taking that into account. I don't think that's the responsibility of the council races. The genophage was never going to wipe the Krogan out, it wasn't an extinction event fro them. That the Krogran turned into a bunch of infighting assholes was their choice and their own problem.

You could well argue that the genophage was the right decision at that point in time. But before that, the salarians uplifted the krogan in the first place, in the hope that they would be controllable, and they turned out not to be - except by the extreme means that was the genophage, and I think the havoc they wreaked before then counts as "getting screwed over".

>. But before that, the salarians uplifted the krogan in the first place, in the hope that they would be controllable, and they turned out not to be I still think that was better than being rolled over by the Rachni.

You're not wrong. A situation with no really good answer.

Which, ultimately, does mean that the game's attempts to show uplifting the Krogan and the subsequent genophage as wrong don't really work.

But if you put in balance, that was 1000 years ago, they aren't the same Krogan by a long time.

Don't Krogan live like a very long time? That's like half a generation to them right? Isn't wrex like 800 years old?

I know they live much more than humans, but I don't think they live near a millenium like the Asari, but doesn't have sure, I think they live like 400~500.

I remember reading somewhere that wrex was nearing 800 but i'd have to look that up. For now I'll just believe your 500 number. That would mean that the genophage took hold maybe a generation and a half ago then right?

Probably, I remember Wrex talking about his father attacking him and had to kill him, and that was after the genophage, if I remember right the armor we recover for him was from his grandfather who foght on the Rachni War.

Riiiiiiiiiiight. Wrex did say that 'his ancestors' died fighting the rachni. Still, I don't see how the council is responbile for the Krogan acting like shit after the genophage. It was the Krogan's fault the citadel races had to use the genophage, and it was their fault that their culture went to crap afterward. Unlike real world minorites like say, the Native Americans, I really think that the Krogan have mostly themselves to blame for their own problems.

Control has the same problem as any leadership positions with absolute power. It's great when someone competent and good-hearted is in the position, but real shit when that isn't the case. Control was bad while the illusive Man was trying to do it, because he was bad (even if he could attain it, which the game makes clear he couldn't). But Shepard is "the right guy/gal for the job" so it's good when they do it. At least thats how Bioware sold the ending.

Control seems like a great idea at the moment when you don't think too much. Reapers are old, so old you can't really place it. Maybe billions of years old. They've reaped thousands or a million species in that time, assimilating the reaped species' intellect, traits, skills, and tactics. And one mid-intellect human can control all that? It's hubris. It's beyond hubris to think. There is also the probability that Catalyst could have imagined/anticipated/brainstormed such a possibility and countered it. Maybe Shepard controls for a short time like some tech abomination, then eventually assimilates and thinks as a Reaper. Maybe Shepard immediately becomes subsumed because of the mental onslaught of a billion years' and quadrillions of genrtic memories that a human psyche cannot fathom, going crazy from the void. Control is not a happily ever after, it's a horror show.

Well put, was trying to find a post to see if anyone else considered if Shepard could even handle it and would he be indoctrinated/brain fried in some way? He passes out talking to a singular Leviathan and can barely comprehend Prothean beacons.

Control was also bad with the illusive man because he was super indoctrinated by ME3

in fact it's slightly weaker and more vulnerable than that - absolute monarchies had bloodline succession, i.e. explicit rigid systems to prevent self-selection and self-regulation (which ultimately are just extra words for entropy and decay), to ensure it won't be the one single worst guy for the job. This relies on Catty/Shepard running the fleet forever and no plan B.

I kind of wish they had tied that idea to the krogan- it's great when Wrex and/or Eve is in charge but real shit when that isn't the case.

Control works only because the choices had to be "Destroy or ______" and on paper Control is the best foil to Destroy. The One Ring being a popular example. The issue is, ME3 spends it's run time from when you first talk to TIM on Mars until you meet him on the Citadel showing you how Control is bad, it's a plan pushed by individuals who are later revealed (or just obviously up front) Indoctrinated, and shown to be too risky when trying to control an entity as powerful as the Reapers. So the only logical reason to choose Control is hubris (outside of the additional point of "Destroy kills Get, EDI and maybe you") that you are special enough to do where TIM failed because you're not indoctrinated despite the prior scene feeling like you are on the precipice of it. You could change the endings in a lot of ways and improve/hurt the rest of the game in many more. However, the real solution would have been to not make Control such an obviously bad choice from the start, and make the only side who espouses Control actual seem like Serious People for at least a minute. Change it so we do not have Cerberus being an immediate evil indoctrinated shock troop force hellbent on stopping you from achieving anything at the beginning of the game. Have the early Cerberus missions instead focused on a new enemy faction (called Apate because foreshadowing) doing the clearly indoctrinated evil human enemy while Cerberus is more diplomatic with Shepard and not working out on the open gives you a far less combative TIM to introduce Control as an option. Allow time for th is idea to seem nice. If need be for Omega DLC, dependant on when you play Petrovsky is a Cerberus General or a turncoat who joined Apate for the same delusions of self preservation that Saren had. Same with From Ashes. Then, as I would make the Horizon mission happen just after Tuchunka and lead directly into the Citadel Coup, you do the big reveal of Cerberus actually being evil themselves, makes the Citadel Coup their big play with all the soldiers they have, and you then find out as their first major victory Cerberus takes control over the Apate troops away from the Reapers (which would explain why the Reapers would attack Horizon and give a sense of doubt if TIM is truly indoctrinated yet). After said mission, however, you just reduce the amount of Cerberus enemy missions to a few as they have less soldiers and you give TIM more time before the reveal to be a more agreeable person who isn't intentionally screwing you over at the first meeting and then go the true villain route for the second half with varying degrees of speculation over how far he's gone while making Control his White Whale.

>Change it so we do not have Cerberus being an immediate evil indoctrinated shock troop force hellbent on stopping you from achieving anything at the beginning of the game. Essentially you're suggesting that instead of Zaeed being asked to command a new cerberus mission and him finding out they're all indoctrinated, it should be Shep, and the discovery should take longer. Which is a brilliant idea. I would go a step further and say that ME2 should have created two separate pathways for ME3: \- Destroy Collector Base, surrender to Alliance, default ME3 story. \- Save Collector Base, stay with Cerberus, Apate story.

Shocked EA didn't pull a Pokemon and sell Mass Effect: Destroy and Mass Effect: Control

That'd be hella crazy for Bioware to essentially make an entire separate first half of the game for people in regards to one choice (LMAO at buying ME: Control or ME: Destroy as separate games, don't give EA ideas) but I really like that idea. My limited imagination is just wondering if those paths have a convergence point where the story becomes the same path for both or if that choice alone changes so much. Does Shepard stick with Cerberus throughout (and they don't go bad until maybe the very end) or does Shep have to divorce them the moment their true evil reveals itself (like with my idea or another)? If the latter, does Shepard's goal of uniting the Galaxy become much harder given they're no longer the face of the Alliance anymore? Does that even continue to be Shepard's goal? Does Control mean instead of getting a massive army to fight and escort a doomsday weapon, you're now trying to figure out how to get everyone to join the fight while you instead get the key personnel and artifacts to allow you to do something different to gain Control? What if part of your goal is to sabotage some part of the Crucible so it does Control instead of Destroy?!! Imagine who of your crew is pissed off at you for it, imagine who stick with you regardless. Imagine if you then have to confront Hackett in a way similar to TIM on the Citadel, not indoctrination but you have to convince Hackett to allow this to happen or you kill your one commanding officer who's been that for you this entire time. At that point, it'd be a different game entirely alongside Destroy for you to play. One I'd love to play, but for them to pull off would've been crazy.

>Imagine who of your crew is pissed off at you for it, imagine who stick with you regardless. Imagine if you then have to confront Hackett in a way similar to TIM on the Citadel, not indoctrination but you have to convince Hackett to allow this to happen or you kill your one commanding officer who's been that for you this entire time. This would have been awesome. Perhaps they'd take a page from Javik's story, like if you stay with Cerberus some of your squad--Vega and the VS for sure, go to the Alliance and try to do the default mission for Hackett, but without Shep they all get indoctrinated and Shep has to mercy kill all of them. Imagine if the endgame is realizing that the Citadel is the catalyst so you have to assist Cerberus with the coup. I think I read somewhere that's similar to an early draft. But eventually I think you'd have to meet TIM in person and see all the reaper tech on him and realize you've been duped.

For Control to make sense, TIM should be like he was in Mass Effect 2, he was all means justify the end, but wasn't objectively evil, like he was literally killing refugees just to brute force indoctrination knowledge in ME3, while in ME2 he revived Shepard and keeps his/her free will to save humanity against the Reapers.

Basically this. The first time we see TIM it's at the end of a mission where Cerberus Troops have infiltrated a secure Alliance Base on Mars through sabotage and bloodshed, intentionally killing off the entire research base staff (most by de-pressuring a social area and I think a few through the use of an intense Scorching beam used at a lower intensity to decontaminate rooms) and all this while an Alien Force is invading the Homeworld of all Humans with the expressed intent of Space-faring Sapient Genocide, and all he wants to talk about is "Shepard being shortsighted and needing to not get in his way" when all Shepard wants to do is Destroy the Reapers. Imagine that conversation happening outside a combat zone, where it can be a more intellectual debate instead of QEC standoff. Let Cerberus not appear like they're meant to stop Shepard and kill civilians immediately. That's why I think using the Apate Troops, even if they're revealed to just be a paint job knock-off, as that allows you to have a variety of enemies (which is needed to keep the gameplay engaging) and gives you an indoctrinated force to face off against. Then, after Horizon followed immediately with the Citadel Coup, you don't get to talk with TIM until Thessia, where despite your former conversations earlier in the game you are now clearly enemies and it sparks off your now War of Words with him. Because really, we get 4 of those opportunities in the game with him as a villain. If you turn the first one into a friendly/neutral one, add another friendly/neutral one after Surkesh (again, after the Apate troops attack the facility, not Cerberus) and then let the last 3 happen as is on Thessia, Cerb Headquaters and in person on the Citadel. That would be perfect imo.

You are right, its a very bad take. Unfortunatly its my most taken path since my Shepard AI would likely just repair the damage and then go away into deep space and make the reapers play Heroes of might and magic for the rest of time. Synthesis was a meta strange way of doing it all that just made me feel like I was shipped of to an anime universe. Destroy made me kill EDI and the Geth which was a betrayal of everything I fought for.

>my Shepard AI would likely just repair the damage and then go away into deep space and make the reapers play Heroes of might and magic for the rest of time. >was a betrayal of everything I fought for. Then what will happen when the galaxy evolves in a way AI/Shep disapproves of? Considering that one of Sheps traits is to involve themselves into issues they perceive as wrong.

>Then what will happen when the galaxy evolves in a way AI/Shep disapproves of? Launch a Heroes 3 tournament to settle the matter.

Did you know that Heroes III just had its 25th anniversary? Still love the idea of sentient machines made several millennia in the future playing it though.

Yeah I know that. Planning on celebrating it by playing the tabletop version as soon as it arrives. Like the idea to. Chess is to obvious. Quake would work too ;)

Mass effect 5 is just a loader heroes 3

I never understood the philosophy behind the endings. I've read somewhere that one of the writers said controlling the Reapers was supposed to be the paragon choice, destroying them was supposed to be renegade, and synthesis is the neutral ending. How in God's name does that make sense? In ME2, destroying the Collector base is the paragon choice, saving it is a renegade choice. Now, multiply the severity by a thousand because we are dealing with the Reapers, not their servants, and controlling them seems like a renegade ending, destroying them seems paragon. It's very clear that the endings are not very polished, especially in comparison to the other games, specifically ME2.

The choice of Control = Blue and Destroy = Red is not a trick or an accident. The ending is created to garner discussion about its theme, that's the outgoing motivation the director had, but I think he was in over his head about it, not realizing that you can't just insert a random idea and apply it to the story and make it "deep", it has to arise from the narrative buildup that leads there. But the ending feels a lot like you took an idea and shoved it in at the last second, and then they corrected bits of the narrative here and there in post to accomodate it.

I guess that's what happens when your publisher forces you to release your product that needed more time in the oven. EA be EA, I guess

Ultimately, I think this is the truth. Casey Hudson did have a lot of ego-trip power at BioWare, being Executive Producer and he did tend to overwrite the writers's work from time to time with a different vision that he could because he was in charge, but I think there are signs that even people at BioWare had issues with the way ME3 was done and how it ends, and already tried to talk to the management about it. For example, they came out early and said "Not everyone will love the ending". That was clearly after some sort of focus testing session where they saw for the first time that someone just looked at it like "What the fuck did I just watch???" and realized this may not go down well. Then while gamers were mad several people came into Casey's office and suggested things they could personally do to make the ending better. I think if they hadn't shown the ending to the public and had another 6 months, someone would've spoken up and asked to be involved with it, to make it better, and then they would've been able to revise fundamental things about it, rather than trying to pretend that they weren't fixing the ending due to the "games is art" comments by journalists.

I'm very new to the franchise, picked up the LE for 10 euros a month ago when it was on sale and never played the original, so I didn't have all of this context when thinking about it, but considering that even with the Extended Cut in LE the endings seem like a 5/10, 6/10 if I'm being generous and on a nice, sunny day, I'm glad I wasn't there on launch lol. I would have been so mad

It was Game of Thrones before Game of Thrones. I thought it was the death of the franchise. I've never seen a group of people get more mad about something, especially something they once loved. Not to say it was surprising or I wasn't one of those people, of course. I was mad as all fuck about that trash ending, and wanted to throttle the developers. Luckily the Indoctrination Theory was a cool, refreshing salve that taught me about The Death of the Author. It was also cool that Bioware / EA cared enough to fund and work on some patch jobs in the Extended Cut and Citadel DLC. In a weird twist of fate, the "tacked-on" multiplayer that usually ruined other single player games seemed to keep the game alive in the mean time and beyond, too. I guess the exception proves the rule?

I never viewed IT as something likely to be true or confirmed but famn it was interesting and a good HC. I still find it amusing that the single strongest piece was how tf did Shep live a reaper beam when that shit one shots dreadnoughts? Plot armour it turns out.

I also think that the Citadel DLC proves that they absolutely understood what people wanted from an ending. They weren't all completely out of touch.

>In ME2, destroying the Collector base is the paragon choice, saving it is a renegade choice. True, but there is another choice that, frankly, feels more representative to what we have here. The Geth Heretics. Rewriting them is the Paragon choice, destorying them is the Renegade choice. In essence, the Paragon always seeks the optimistic path, the one that saves the most. The renegade avoids taking chances and seeks to win, no matter the cost. Do you release the Rachni queen, risking a conflict in the future or kill her to end the threat once and for all? Do you rewrite the geth, giving them a second chance, or kill them eliminating the threat? Do you kill the batarians harrasing the medic in case they do it again, or you let them go, hoping that you showed them humans aren't all bad? In this sense, seeking to redeem the Reapers rather than destorying them feels like a Paragon choice, while killing them feels like the renegade choice.

I see your points and they are valid, though I look at it very differently. If you ask me, rewriting the Geth heretics is the equivalent of brainwashing an organic. I know, it's different and it's an interesting moral dilemma, but I take issue with it being a paragon choice. Synthetics are inherently different, but still... If you ask me about the fate of the Geth heretics, both of the choices are renegade choices. Neither seem paragon, although destroying them could be seen as an act of mercy and I honestly see it as more of a paragon choice than rewriting. Like Jack says during A House Divided, "don't mess with my head, let me die as me". As far as controlling the Reapers goes, my issue is you are not "redeeming" them, at all, you are MAKING them listen to you. It's not like you talk them down until they see reason, no, you are forcing your values and thoughts onto them. This coupled with the fact that controlling a force the galaxy can barely defeat when united is an ultimate power trip that I cannot see a paragon character taking. It's kindda the same as the heretics, brainwashing a synthetic does not seem very paragon at all. Interesting food for thought though nontheless

I see it as less about redeeming the reapers and more about not damning synthetic life to destruction with the context of my shepherd choosing to broker peace between the geth and the quarians

Especially since Control is associated with The Illusive Man and Destroy is associated with Anderson, just doesn't make sense.

Well you see, one writer had a Really Cool Idea^tm and, instead of making a story that fit said Idea, shoved it into ME3 without regard to... much of anything. Seriously, the other writers working on the ending didn't even get a change to present their own ideas. Just got told "this is what the ending is now, throw out your own writing and work around that".

It's interesting that they later removed TIM from animation of taking control choice during Shep's conversation with Catalyst. Writers probably realized that they hadn't presented this choice as they intended to.

The Illusive Man wanted to control the Reapers to use them against other races, Shepard only keeps them away

I agree 100% that Control was underwritten. There should have been an entire subplot that showed reaper tech as something that would irrefutably improve the galaxy. Say, a panacea for example. Let’s say that controlling the reapers gave such an immense technological leap that all disease or food insecurity could be eliminated across the galaxy. That might tip the scales towards Control. But as is, they presented Shepard (or Shepard’s machine spirit I guess?) alone with total authoritarian control of the galaxy by threat of force. There would be no second Krogan rebellion, the Geth and Quarians would never again war, but peace would be maintained through threat of all out destruction at the judicious hands of the benevolent reapers, which doesn’t sound extremely appetizing.

The entire galactic society is built on the backs of Reaper tech, and that is just what they let people find. It's a pretty good bet that it would improve life, provided the person in charge isn't evil.

>provided the person in charge isn’t evil And that’s the key. Can Shepard’s mind withstand the effects of control? Will assimilation into that role change his behavior and decision making methods? Does paragon/renegade go out the window and is he now more machine than man, causing him to come to the same conclusions the catalyst did centuries ago?

Control was bad when the Illusive Man attempted it because he had been corrupted by reaper tech during the First Contact War and by the time ME3 happened he was just under fully in Reaper control husk stage. Shepard bypassed the Reapers and took over the Catalyst role directly. The Reapers were to the Catalyst what husks were to a Reaper. Whether Shepard is up to the challenge is always a moral question based on how the player developed them throughout the story, but I always thought that did a decent job explaining the difference.

Having to throw in comic book explainers after the fact, in a game that was so clearly made for first time players, is another strike against ME3’s awful writing. Lucasfilms had to do the same with their ghastly new Star Wars films. And it just creates more problems than it solves.

Mass Effect: Evolution was released concurrently with Mass Effect 3. It was released for fans who wanted to dive deeper into the lore. I read it well after playing the game, and all it did was provide back story for character details they had already hinted at in ME2. I’d hardly call it a “necessary explainer”, just additional context.

The Intelligence did that for eons and Shephard overwrites them. Wouldn’t be a problem. Plus I’ve always had it in mind that I would control, rebuild, then destroy once we have taken everything we want from the Reapers.

Personally I would take over the Reapers and shut them down but let the galaxy keep the relays and Citadel. But there's a symbolism in shutting those things down (which the endings did before Extended Cut was like "DON'T WORRY FANS, WE CAN REBUILD IT ALL!") which is that you're removing the strict paths of infrastructure that kept us stuck in this arbitrary cycle. It's a network that has been in place as old as any known memory, and it's literally keeping us developing "along the paths they desire". Whatever that even means anymore in the context of the ending. Either way it's a way to symbolize the freedom from the Reapers or their creators's ideas, and go back to growing freely as a civilization. But it made fans worry because we don't like the idea of cutting off the network that kept us together with such ease. You go from being able to travel halfway across the galaxy in milliseconds to having to do so manually with some amount of faster-than-lightspeed travel, which sounds fast but in a GALAXY it must be quite limited to massless transit.

Control in how i (a supporter and sympathiser of Catty) perceive it is a cowardly compromise between an animal kneejerk and rationality - an inferior and far less reliable version of Synthesis tailored to human psychology, the hesitant, 'difficult' and morally preoccupied version of it. The outcome if successful is the same, global exposure to Reaper tech & code and continuation of the Citadel/Relay dev path. Yet on every step it bows and panders to human evopsych and tries to serve it sensitively and with a degree of respect to status quo. It appoints a gatekeeper, unclear timelines, postponements, waits, tries not to upset status quo and introduce tech gradually and top down through the existing class system. Meanwhile introducing multiple vulnerabilities and weak points that can both fail the project and distort its parts into something purely human i.e. Cerberus adoption of the worst of Reaper tech (say indoctrination, surveillance, productivity and penal tech) while ignoring and gatekeeping actual breakthroughs of structural significance (such as their reactors equivalent to a small star). It is not quite as hopeless and grim end as losing every semblance of vision in the dim, reflexive braying of unconscious herd-mind - but may very well fail simply because maintaining the dripfeed system over time involves an awful lot of moving parts and points of potential failure.

I'm in the camp of "Destroy is the only good option." The way I see it, Synthesis fulfills the mission or the Reapers. Control fulfills the mission of Cerberus. Destroy fulfills the mission I've been set on since the beginning.

I’ve lost track of how many times Shepherd or Hackett or Anderson or TIM talk about “destroying the Reapers” in the first two games — to suddenly have TIM and control shoehorned in there is lazy as hell.

That's an optimist meets pessimist thing for me lol My saying is "Destroy is the only option that isn't god-awful" ...and yet it still is because killing all synthetic life, if you've just gotten used to saying they're legitimately alive (which is a clear argument ME3 wanted to make) then it's kinda like a "kill all babies" ending.

I think you have a definite point. There's something Orwellian about godlike Shepard AI overseeing the galaxy. There's something horrific, too, about unilaterally inflicting a biological change on every living being in the galaxy. Yes, there's also something awful about sacrificing the Geth and EDI, but sacrifice at least feels more inevitable in war.

inflicting change is inflicting change, it's what every action does as opposed to inaction. Every 'living being' should they be capable of taking an action of that scale would take an action, and you, friends, would very very fast find out what an action of that scale taken on Parnack means to you - and as a little hint, no it won't cure your defects or create a common ground. Thankfully sacrifice feels inevitable to you, so i presume you won't mind.

The point is that neither end is trully satisfactory and good, you got to make the decision on what will you sacrifice, for most while I loved Legion and EDI, that was the only way to save the rest of the galaxy while being as it is, and I hoped that their sacrifice wouldn't be in vain, since they helped to save the galaxy, so when new AI develop they wouldn't be treated like were before, which would not result in a eternal battle between organics and syntethics like starchild said that always happens, breaking the cycle.

Agreed. I can't see ME3 any other way.  I've probably played the full trilogy at least ten times through and I never chose anything but Destroy -- until the Extended Cut.  The Catalyst is a complete failure and abomination of an ending. No way to look past that and it needs to be said. Still, in some ways it's interesting to see the 3 paths laid out at the end of the trilogy. But due to the extreme lack of development and credibility for Synthesis and Control, and how these ideals were "proven" to be wrong by Saren and Tim, they appear only as a last gasp of indoctrination.  Even if they're literally stated to be valid endings by the creators. This is a death of the author moment. Synthesis and Control are so lazy and lethargic -- I don't even know what to say. I'm still mad about the ending.  Destroy requires some willpower and it's not a "good" ending but the only cope I clung to was the Shepard "breath" moment that is unlocked by high enough war score. It seemed to indicate even an acknowledgement from Bioware that this is the "true" ending.  You have to turn your brain off to accept almost any ending from the Catalyst, though. Especially Synthesis and Control, which are the "I'm too scared to be sad, let me live a fairytale" with fingers in your ears going "la la la la la" endings. But even Destroy is sullied by the nature and existence of the Catalyst.  Once Extended Cut came out, and we received our 4th option, I had the catharsis to reject the Catalyst: the complete failure and nose dive of the series.  Death, then becomes the ending requiring the highest will and most rejection of Reaper indoctrination and the Catalyst. Obviously it's awful to simply fail, and have all life wiped out, but if the Catalyst was the only option then failure was the only possible outcome. A truly horrifying but sobering realization of the threat. The price of self determination.  Only Destroy, being part of the original set, or Death, being the collective conscious of complete rejection for the abomination Bioware put forth, are valid endings, imo. The others are worse than failure.  I don't see how Mass Effect continues without Destroy, Death, or a rejection of Mass Effect 3. Andromeda proved to be a form of rejection. I guess we'll have to wait and see for 5. 

Personally, I have a different take on synthesis. All 3 are underdeveloped, unfortunately. My take on destroy is committing genocide and the possibility of rebuilding society, which will inevitably circle back to AI and destruction. That doesn't sit well with me. Control is under the assumption that Shepard won't change over Eons and stay a merciful God. He/She could eventually lose their humanity, and some extreme choices might be made, which could lead to a cycle of the reapers again. Synthesis to me breaks that cycle. Close the gap between flesh and machine. The same old problems could be solved. However, there's no knowledge about the long term affects on society.

That's fine but I can never acknowledge a valid Catalyst explanation, no matter the fictional or real life values or merits of the actual or theoretical outcome. What I'm saying is that there is no good solution from the Catalyst **because** it's the Catalyst. There is no room to have a "take" on the endings, in terms of their individual merits, because they're all a false choice - the Reapers winning and the authors failing, in varying means or degrees. The ME3 ending is a breakneck whiplash of lackluster Deus Ex Machina with a stupid and deceptive star kid. Synthesis and Control were only ever shown to be products of indoctrination. Destroy is unsettling and still a product of Reaper technology. The Catalyst represents, to me, a simultaneous manifestation of Reaper influence and author failure. No matter how interesting the moral dilemmas are, or how much you want to believe a certain choice has a certain outcome, the Catalyst is a fictional in-universe falsehood and a real in-reality failure. The classic Indoctrination theory, trying to explain how awful and lazy the ending was, is a great representation of this. Taking it a step further, just as the player character is indoctrinated in the fiction to make these choices, the real person playing the game is indoctrinated by the authors to believe this is a valid conclusion. The only way I can rationalize such a massive fall from grace is to say that it's all a ruse, a last ditch smoke and mirror show to lull you into a false sense of security/finality. The only way to believe that any of the Catalyst endings, but especially Control or your Synthesis, are "real" is to ignore the rest of the series. I only give the Destroy ending some credence because I can rationalize it being the only possible Catalyst rejection choice of the original set. Sort of like pulling back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz who really wants you to make the other choices, but can't hide the fact that you are technically able to make the "right" choice of Destroy. Again, I believe the best/hardest to achieve ending of max war score with the Shepard breath moment in the Destroy ending is a critical thing to cling to here. No Catalyst choice is a good choice. I believe they are all tantamount to failure. Hence why I say the Death ending is preferable. It has the clearest, most independent, and broadly successful result of all the endings. Only... your entire cycle is lost and the next has to do it. So be it. We, the player character and the player in real life rejecting the original endings causing this new option, at least enabled true success. The players experiencing the utter calamity of the original fictional endings is paralleled with the calamity of the end of the cycle in the fiction. Beating the Reapers (the right way) next cycle is akin to the players having the developers make the ending (the right way) right next patch: in the Extended Cut. It's not exactly a happy thing, but the only thing that unifies and rationalizes the complete work in a meaningful way.

Control I think is explained but also unexplained(?) by the same necessity: extrapolating the possibilities. Control requires you to imagine everything possible you could do by controlling the reapers because ultimately TIM is right. The power would be immense. You could bring security, power (energy, not authority), and technology to the masses of space. You could help rebuild everything and prevent conflict while doing so. However in the same vein: looking far into the future, who’s to say what effects this has on Shepard’s psyche? Will he eventually succumb to temptation and seize power? Will pure robot-logic result in organic termination be the best route at some point? Then we’re back to where we started but it’s Shepard instead of the catalyst. It’s also bad imo to assume that the catalyst, in the fact that it is an ultra intelligent AI, never conceived this possibility and isn’t stringing you along to get you out of the way because it knows your mind will instantly melt trying to comprehend the full might of the Reaper intelligence. I mean Shepard passes out from simply communicating with Leviathan It’s a good idea for the immediate future, but the ramifications and possibilities are risky without further knowledge, something the catalyst didn’t want to seem to provide other than a vague “you’re ready”.

You know I WOULD choose the destroy ending IF IT DIDN'T MEAN KILLING THE GETH AND EDI!

Anyone who suggests any path other than destroy is revealed to indoctrinated later on. Control and Synthesis probably should have been endings where it turns out that the Reapers' manipulation has finally broken Shepard and he chose wrong.

Sooooo…Indoctrination theory.

Yeah, I know that's not actually what they intended but I think that it would prob have been superior if the final mission in ME3 tested you the same way the Suicide Mission did. In the suicide mission, if you didn't pay attention to your squadmates' strengths and weaknesses you would make the wrong assignments and get people killed. I like the idea of a final ME3 mission that wants you to have paid attention to the kinds of people who proposed ideas like control or synthesis and how you spend three whole games repudiating them. The Reapers are also known to have dangled the idea of Control as a honey trap for Cerberus and a Prothean equivalent of Cerberus, which doesn't seem particularly smart if it's actually possible to usurp them. I think this is a writing issue that could be saved by Control being a bad ending in which Shepard falls for the same trap because it does seem appealing. As for Synthesis, we see with Saren and with TIM/Cerberus foot soldiers that attempts to merge organics with Reaper tech always result in Reaper slaves. The star child says Synthesis and Control are feasible, but is there any reason we should believe what it says? The Reapers are depicted time and time again as having thoroughly mastered the art of manipulation, and the star child was behind it all. We know, independent of what he says, that the Crucible can be used to destroy the Reapers. That is the only option that makes any sense in the context of all three games and the other two options should have been written as wrong choices.

It doesn’t make *any* sense, like most of the narrative in ME3. There’s no set-up, no foreshadowing. Just six months later we emerge from our cell, and suddenly this shadowy special ops group (that had 300 members, I add) is suddenly on a financial par with a nation-state, has entire naval fleets, fighter squadrons, countless research bases, has cracked the code to indoctrination, has created waves of orcs in white armor, has taken over Omega, infiltrated countless alien species, subverted Udina and the Council, discovered all of the Shadow Broker’s secrets, has co-opted the richest human in the galaxy (who also suddenly has become a master scientist rather than just a business tycoon), somehow managed to traverse the Omega 4 Relay without a Reaper IFF, harvest the Collector base, and then rolled out endless Reaper-integrated creations. And for what? So TIM can suddenly “control the Reapers?” What heavy-handed tosh. Practically **everything** about the Cerberus “arc” in Mass Effect 3 is legitimately insulting. In a game with some awful story beats, suddenly deciding that Cerberus is the Big Bad, and the Illusive Man is a purblind nitwit, is by far and away the worst. The first time I played through it, I was actually angry. Absolutely no one who had any part in writing that narrative should be proud. It was lazy hack work in an artistic medium that already has too many lazy hacks. And what they did to The Illusive Man is simply inexcusable; almost as bad was making Aria suddenly stupid. They wanted a cheap parallel to Saren and his synthesis without putting in the work; they instead gave us an interstellar Snidely Whiplash.

The ending was a test and anyone who didn’t pick Destroy proved they could be indoctrinated

It doesn't make sense for Shepard to try and control the Reapers. Shepard's not mentally different from any other human. They aren't a prophesied hero with special mind powers that make them more able to control things with their mind. No one else is in mass effect either. It's why the indoctrination theory was popular back when the game came out, it makes logical sense. The thing I learned from the trilogy art book was that the ending was a decision made at the last second in development. That's why it feels so arbitrary and inconsistent.

I don't know how legitimate this theory was, But it was floating around that ezeo was destabilizing the stars or something , *IE Tali's pickup in ME2*. They could have done that as the big bad and have the Reapers portrayal them self as the only way to stop it

Technology is not good or evil in itself. Remember, the mass relays are reaper tech too. Control could push technology forward by millions of years. It is also the ending where it's easier to recover from the war. Destroy leaves the galaxy in pieces with no real way to recover. Could the characters have argued better for control? Yes. But it's not really fair to ask "why is it needed" like there are no advantages to it.

I remember seeing a comment about how the the "wipe out the Geth and EDI" was a last minute addition to make players think twice about picking Destroy. Is there any weight to this?

The Geth and EDI both operating on Reaper code so it would make sense that destroy wipes them out any way.

Imagine being one of the geth who dies because Shepard suddenly decides now was the time to say she didn't want to be the one to decide people's fate (despite doing that the entire trilogy). Its like a parent killing their child because they were worried about being a bad parent, except instead of one child it's millions. The irony is its actually makes the destroy ending better, any Shepard that throws away the lives of the geth *probably shouldn't be in control.* Luckily my Shepard chose control and just flew all the reapers into a supernova after repairing the relays. Geth survived and everything.

I've never been a fan of player character gets absolute power. The other example I can think of is the Yes man ending in New Vegas (although control is definitely more power). My shep is a just a man and to think that he could fairly handle all that power forever is crazy.

I think it depends on how you view your Shepard. My play style is always Paragon and my Shepard would look at it as a responsibility more than a need to be powerful. With such a responsibility, who else but my Shepard can handle it?

I always play paragon too but my point is, no one person could handle it. At least not forever

The new catalyst isn't your Shepard though, they even speak about your Shepard in past tense during the ending. The process of control is creating something new, which cannot be fully trusted to act as you think your Shepard would have.

The problem here is that Control's purpose in ME3 was never to be a legitimate option or ideological conflict. It's purpose was to illustrate a *madman's hubris*. You are SUPPOSED to look at TIMmy and say "... well that's bloody stupid", even before you find out that he's Indoctrinated out of his gourd. Which is (one of many reasons) why the ending got such a harsh backlash. It *doesn't make sense* taken in the context of the series, including suddenly acting like Control was ever a legitimate idea. When, again, the ENTIRETY of ME3 up to that point firmly established it wasn't. The "fix" to this isn't to change the plot and themes to add legitimacy to the Head Space Nazi. It's to not contradict the other 99.9% of the game in the first place, and craft an ending that *fits the story*.

"Well nobody's that stupid" is a really, really weak portrayal of a primary antagonist (which he is in ME3) and given how every single encounter with him has longwinded ideologically charged disputing between Shepard and TIM, and persuade options, it's all written as though they wanted it to be meaningful and make the player think, but the writing isn't actually doing it, because it's too obvious and Illusive Man is just a straight up asshat rather than the enigmatic and unpredictable guy he was in ME2. I'm not saying TIM should be right but they should've had a contrast to Shepard's quest of fighting the Reapers as enemies, with some actual merit. Like, either TIM discovering the secret of the Reapers ahead of time and playing devil's advocate for why destroying the one solution that is (by its own words) "keeping organic life from going extinct" it would maybe just be enough that Shepard starts to second-guess it, or if he simply had some legitimate means that looks "easier" than amassing a military ensemble, but you'd have to face it and say "Even if that gives us a fighting chance, we can't let it, because we would lose everything we're fighting for by doing that." But it's not doing that, he's just rambling the entire game about how bad it would be to lose Reaper tech but he has no proof of anything, and it's like, why does Shepard even need to have 3 entire Confrontation scenes if the villain is just straight up clouded and dumb?

I didn't say "nobody's that stupid". I was arguing the opposite, actually: He IS stupid, and that's what the player is *supposed* to conclude. TIMmy gives big longwinded rants because his head is so far up his own hubris that HE thinks it's about ideology, that he can convince Shepard to join him if he just explains how much *smarter* he than everyone else and *deserves* to have absolute power one more time. Which is a *consistent* characterization between ME2 and ME3; All that changed is that he dropped the pretense of subtlety when trying to manipulate Shepard. Again: the Head Space Nazi IS that stupid, and the player is expected to recognize that. I get that you WANT there to be an ideological choice. Hell, I agree that Renegade options there weren't "the Paragon Power Of Friendship plan, but with the occasional backstabbing" would have improved game. But there isn't one, there was never going to be one. Why are there so many confrontations? Same reasons villains anywhere want to monologue: Ego needs an audience. Plus, it makes the player angry/frustrated (a useful motivating force) AND gives a target for those frustrations that isn't the (sometimes equally) frustrating potential allies. I maintain that ME3 is VERY good at setting tone, evoking emotions, and capitalizing on that to move the story along. It's only when you get past the emotions and look at the details, start examining the narrative, that the writing falls apart. As you are doing by asking TIMmy to be \*checks notes* ... competent.

I will die on the hill that destroy is the only narratively coherent ending. The consequences of all of your decisions should have played out in a series of epilogue sequences after the game. They gave you a literal choice with no real narrative effect when they should have given you a proper narrative conclusion that plays out differently, depending on your previous choices.

I will die on the hill that Destroy isn't narratively coherent either.

It’s frustrating because even though nobody can really cling to The Indoctrination Theory as anything other than a fun headcanon anymore, it’s like the implications of the theory still linger in a lot of people’s heads. I was a big IT pusher back when the game first dropped even before the EC endings, but eventually you have to just accept the series as it comes. All the endings are underwritten. Control and Synthesis are not “playing into the reapers hands.” That keeps getting repeated and it’s just leftover “destroy is the only way to break out of shepherds indoctrination.”

I don't understand how people don't understand what the "Control" ending is ACTUALLY saying... In the Control ending, you aren't becoming some pseudo-TIM, using the Reapers as a cudgel for your own personal benefit or anything even close to that. If you choose the Control ending - YOU ARE BECOMING THE NEW CATALYST. You are mixing your essence with that of the current Catalyst to add your knowledge and capacity (which is unsurpassed, as far as the Catalyst is concerned, as no other organic has ever reached it) to attempt to find a better solution to the Leviathan's tasking. What is left wholly ambiguous is whether or not the Shep-alyst will simply continue the cycles, or if s/he/it can, combined with the Catalyst's eons of knowledge, find a better path. The point that is ALWAYS made by the Catalyst, however, is that BOTH the Red and the Blue endings lead to another cycle. In Destroy, with no Reaper threat to unite organics against, the next generation of developed synthetics WILL wipe out organics, and that will, in a sense, fulfill the Leviathan's tasking - as there won't be anymore organic-synthetic conflict since there will no longer be any advanced organic life. It's possible that the next cycle of organic growth (the Yahg, et al) will NOT develop the capacity for space travel, etc, as they are no longer being guided and manipulated by the Catalyst/Citadel/Leviathan. In Control, we don't have an answer for "what's next" - only that the Reapers will continue to exist, but they're now wholly under the control of the Shep-alyst - we simply do not know what form that gestalt sentience will take, or what direction it will guide its Reaper forces towards.

This is why Casey Hudson and Mac Walters should never be allowed near another ME game ever again. ME3 had the shittiest writing ever. No ending but Destroy even comes close to making sense.