User blog comment:Ygrain/Revisited: EDI and her purpose in the story/@comment-3581090-20121218160644

I like it. I think it would require a massive rewrite of the entire game (or a smaller--but still significant rewrite of the game PLUS an expansion of the Reaper story into a fourth game) for maximum efficacy, but I really, really like it.

The best part is that it puts some amount of agency back in Shepard's hands, in terms of defeating the Reapers, and it opens the potential for a bit of a dilemma--especially if EDI isn't the one who comes up with the plan: Shepard decides to try overwriting the Reaper code by forcing EDI's program into the Catalyst's hardware (or whatever). Does he order her to, potentially, commit suicide to save everyone else? And, if he does, will she agree to do it? She's ready to die for her crew, but how ready? And will not being particularly friendly with her throughout the game take this Control option off the table...or does it mean that you can still pick the Control option, but you'll just fail to execute it (thereby losing the game)?

The key to this, in my mind, would be introducing the Catalyst earlier in the story and making it clear that fighting the Reapers isn't the way to defeat the Reapers. That is, the focus of the game wouldn't be prepping for all-out war, it would be uncovering the secret to defeating the Reapers--while still raising an army to keep the bad guys busy while Shepard & Co. sneak through the back door to deploy the secret weapon...only to then find out that the secret weapon only kind of does what they want it to, forcing Shepard to have to make--"Quickly! Before time runs out!"--one of three now-available choices: Control (upload EDI so she becomes the Reaper-god of the Extended Cut), Destroy (kills all the Reapers forever but also burns Earth to a crisp), and Synthesis (allow the Reapers semi-Reaperize all organic life so that humans and robots can live together in "harmony"...or something).