User blog comment:Legionwrex/Why Destroy is the worst ending (besides refusal)./@comment-5503561-20120713130737

I see it like this - if you choose destroy because "Oh, it's what Shepard set out to do from the beginning", you're really no better than certain thick-headed Prothean. Shep set out to stop the Reapers. Keyword - Stop. Sure, destroying them is a permanent way of stopping the threat. But even looking at real life, you don't necessarily stop things by destroying them. Diplomacy, negotiation, leverage are great too.

So picking destroy without thinking about the lives it'll affect besides the Reapers, such as Geth genocide (If you've made peace, they're even helping Quarians regain their immune systems, which otherwise would take centuries of natural re-adaptation), EDI (Way to screw over Joker after you've gotten them together), and every person with synthetic augments - because by Starkid's logic, Shepard's own implants are aparently alive and constitute as 'synthetic life' that would be targeted by the blast. So everyone with implants is boned, with Quarians being a good example. I totally can see a random person just keeling over because their synthetic heart went out.

Also, a paragon Shepard says it to Prothy when he first came aboard - "Nothing in our fight with the Reapers has been that clear cut.", when referring to Javik's "You're with me or against me" mentality. So no, that sort of Shep wouldn't pick destroy just to destroy the Reapers and wave off the consequences it'd have on everyone else.