User blog comment:4Ferelden/A new interpretation of Starchild's motivation./@comment-31.185.148.167-20120706100510

actually when you say "response and harvested its creators into the Harbinger", you are wrong, the harbinger was actually prothean indoctrinated, *probably* similar with what they were intending to do with the illusive man and the giant human reaper they were building in ME2. ME3 hints that there were an unknown (but large number) of cycles before the protheans, "the catalyst is the result of many cycles, spanning millions of years" in the reasons for giving shepard choices, actually it was down to quite simple 'hacking' and what the crucible does is similar to how legion describes the factioning of the geth, basically it gives alternate solutions to the problems, allowing for different thinking. With the catalyst changed forever shepard was given the choice of destroying or controlling the reapers, which could lead to some very interesting plot developments in the future (or a RTS 'peace keeping' spinoff). As for the aftermath, the species in the galaxy would already know how to build mass effect drivers (this is proven with the various weapons descriptions) and would probably scale them upwards for the jump gates considering co-ordinates would be in countless ships across the galaxy.