User blog comment:Raven Giordano/What would your ideal ending to Mass Effect 3 be?/@comment-24.154.0.21-20130312173300/@comment-24.154.0.21-20130312200530

Well correct me if I am wrong but isn't it stated at somepoint in the 3rd game that through conventional warfare and weapons alone the galaxy stands no chance?

And let's look at the options at hand.

Destroy: In my opinion again only really fits with a renegade or renegade leaning Shep. Yeah you want the reapers destroyed, they are a near incomprehensible seemingly evil race of abominations, but after working so hard (at least if you are paragon) to bring peace to the galatic stage...are you really okay with commiting genocide, again? It's not bad enough that the blood of several hundred thousand batarians are on your hands, potentially also the remnants of the rachni, krogan, quarians etc but after spending the series slowly learning and understanding that sythetic life is still life are you really willing to destroy it? Let's not look at the external conflict but just the internal one for a moment...how much life is Shepard okay with personally ending? I understand that if he/she chooses to do nothing he/she is still indirectly responsible for the death or terrible twisting/altering of all intelligent space faring life in the galaxy but doesn't there come a point where regardless of what it takes to win there is hesitation?

then there is Synthesis. I kind of despise this ending, a lot. I know science fiction is a broad genre and advanced technology can seem magical to those whole do not understand it but I mean really? There is just this crazy signal/frequency/energy/whatever that merges all living organic and sythetic life together? That is just lazy writing. Let's assume they made it sound somewhat plausable, it is still not a preferable conclusion, you have no idea what your actions are going to do, okay you stopped the reapers but that could just end up being the first page of a farward to a new nightmare. I think it is absurd to assume that there would be complete harmony at this point, every living thing just suddenly becomes enlightened? Well then Shepard is pretty evil because he just took away every shred of any and all living creatures free will in the galaxy...or even further depending on how far that crazy green signal travels.

and of course control. So I may have missed this information somewhere but if you choose control are you taking the place of the catalyst or are you just simply dominating the reapers? If it is the first option and you kind of replace the catalyst then how effective would you really be since it seems he has a rather "hands off" sort of control on them. If you dominate the reapers...how? Has commander Shepard somehow turned into space Jesus (and I mean no offense to any relgious people with this)? He has the freaking power to control the collective reaper forces, which are, as we all know, comprised of the collective conciousness of an entire species. So the reapers are a mix of organic and synthetic life the same as Shepard, they are just a million time more powerful etc than he is, why should we assume that everything would be okay with him choosing to control them?! I see two possible outcomes, he gets overpowered by the collective conciousness of the entrie reaper fleet and simply becomes a part of what he sacrificed himself to stop or the disembodied shepard eventually starts to change as would probably happen if you went from being a human soldier to essentially a demigod. I see it playing out as "Hey I am all powerful and I gave up everything so you all could continue to live, I am probably going through a severe existential crisis if I am still aware of actually being commander shephard and am probably going to eventually become very bitter for no longer having a body and probably will go insane after everyone I know is dead..."

So I just went on a rant, and that is my complete (mostly) reasoning for the "screw it" ending