User blog comment:Spartan0700/Dark Energy: What Would You Do?/@comment-4950455-20120802040843

The way I see it, the Reapers have had almost a billion years to come up with a solution to this thing. If they haven't managed one by now, I'm really, really skeptical that melting down humanity is going to increase their odds by that much, no matter how "special" we are.

So yeah, I'd tell them where to stick it. Same reason I blew up the Collector base on both my Renegade and Paragon "main" playthroughs - all moral issues aside, I just don't think the Reapers' record suggests they'll have any better chance of solving the problem then we would on our own. And if the universe is doomed no matter what, then there's certainly no reason to sacrifice humanity in a futile attempt to save it.

I also agree that fans probably wouldn't have liked this ending much better then the one we've got, for the record, although I actually think the "happy ending" people could easily be satisfied with the rejection option. Nowhere in here does it say Shepard dies in destroying the Reapers (the whole universe might wind up dying a bit later, but blah blah bridge when we come to it).