User blog comment:The Milkman/Mass Effect in Retrospect/@comment-3228423-20130419042401/@comment-4721065-20130420051401

Well, then I will enlighten you. The original plan didn't have the Catalyst, but instead the only way to avoid the complete apocaplypse of the entwould have been to harvest the ENTIRE HUMANITY or destroy the Reapers with a Crucible and hope that the efforts of all scientists would succeed where the Reapers and races of previous cycles failed over billions of years. It would have been entirely black-and-white, consist of nothing but "space magic" and be a much worse ending to the series overall.