User blog comment:The Milkman/Mass Effect in Retrospect/@comment-24174486-20130418150425/@comment-4237253-20130418152936

1. If you put those species into a blender, what is being saved? They destroy their culture and civilisation. Not exactly preservation.

2. Over the course of billions of years, we don't know. We are only told anything about one species: the Protheans. Even then, we don't know how many Reapers they destroyed, if any.

3. And? How does that change anything?

4. The Catalyst is the Reapers. It's the architect and overseer of the Reapers.

5. Regardless, that's just speculation. The Catalyst tells Shepard that their essence is spread throughout the galaxy. That makes no sense. It's completely vague.

6. Those examples had nothing to do with what I just said. Shepard isn't perfect, and EDI has nothing to do with the "organics vs. synthetics" conflict. Giving them understanding won't change anything, as that was never the problem.

7. And yet they still facilitate them in wiping out life. Why? Why not just skip a step and destroy the synthetics. There. Problem solved. Conflict over.

8. So the Reapers are preventing something from happening with no evidence it will ever happen? Wow. That makes no sense. At some point, they would have have to see some evidence of conflict. This was not raised in the narrative.

9. It's actually the best time. The Catalyst needs to contemplate a new decision. They have all the time in the universe to think of something. Regardless, the narrative didn't need to do this here. The writers had three games to show us how this conflict was inevitable. They failed to do so.

10. Actually, understanding is pretty important, considering your survival is contingent upon complying with the Catalyst. We are given this new conflict out of nowhere and zero exposition is given. This is bad storytelling, Lily.

11. How have I ignored "preservation" in any way? The Catalyst never wiped out the Leviathans, and no evidence in the narrative suggests they did so.

12. Incidentally, Leviathan is DLC, and is thus irrelevant. If this was crucial to understanding the plot, it should never have been DLC.

13. It doesn't matter if it's guaranteed. The Catalyst claims it is impossible. Because achieving peace is possible, its point is disproven. This shows that the conflict is not inevitable. The entire motivation for the Reapers is a farce, and the narrative provides zero evidence that anything the Catalyst says is anything but nonsense.