Why Is the Catalyst So Confusing? | Mass Effect 3

So - The Catalyst, aka Starchild - What's the story behind it & was it really the worst aspect of Mass Effect 3?
In this video, i want to explore the origins of the creator of the Reapers, aswell as dive into what Bioware wanted to say with the introduction of it into the series. Welcome to the Catalyst: Explained!
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00:00 - The Leviathan
01:06 - The Catalyst Explained
02:19 - The Solution
05:30 - Analysis & Character breakdown

[@HunterDrone]

i never thought of the catalyst as the worst part of ME3. That dishonor goes to Kai Lang. The catalyst is a distant second at best.

[@yol_n]

Being pissed a kai leng is like being pissed at a eclipse minion. Literal nobody that doesn't change anything. Starchild ruins everything. He deserves hate, kai lang just deserves to be forgotten.

[@williamprice2186]

Kai Lang was a distraction gone too far, like if Boba Fett hopped out of the Sarlacc and went to Endor in Return of the Jedi. Funny enough, I usually compare ME3 to Return of the Jedi when talking about its weaknesses. The characters in each story could be paralleled to Return of the Jedi, yet they are used in different ways. I would compare Kai Lang to Boba Fett. A disposable villain good for like one fight. He should have been killed off in the first act in an similarly humiliating way. You could even replace the VI robot that EDI takes over with Kai Lang and then replace every further Kai Lang interaction with the Illusive Man, whose parallel is Darth Vader (corrupted by “the dark side,” more machine than man, still trying in vain to save the people he cares about with “the dark side of the force”), could show up and actually be a boss, thanks to his reaper enhancements.

[@realdude6145]

I hated Kai Leng even forgot his name when I replayed Me3 also the catalyst made literally no sense his goal was definitely synthesis because that’s what he did to the leviathan and he already caused what he was trying to prevent synthetics vs Organic and it was going on for thousands of cycles I eventually chose the destroy ending and shep survived.

[@realdude6145]

@@yol_n huh? Kai Leng and the illusive man were complete idiots illusive man tried to control the reapers and they began controlling him without him even being aware of it he was literally in the way the entire game causing trouble and diminishing numbers instead of joining forces and fighting the common enemy Kai Leng was also a big nuisance and I hated how they had him look better than Shepard but it was just corny, and I didn’t like how they did my guy thanks bro gets killed by this no name then illusive man really tries to compare Kai Leng to Shep in the end my shep bodied him and the last words he heard were “this is for my nigga Thane you son of bitch”

[@kaimagnus5760]

@@williamprice2186 Playing though the level where you first enchounter Kai Lang. When he stabs your car and goes to jumo into his, my immidiate thought was "It would sure suck for him If I threw a grenade in that car right as he jumps toward it."

[@DKforever24]

Commander Shepherd is possibly the most important organic in the entirety of ME Lore because the Reapers really love talking to him

[@silent_stalker3687]

Actually pretty tragic. The more they talk they more they influence Shepard with their indoctrination field. That means eventually Shepard will just be a husk. This is what happens to the organically of the Geths get peace.

[@FarremShamist]

@@silent_stalker3687 I think the reason Shepard was so interesting to Harbinger... Was that Shepard was very resilient to them.

[@MikefromTexas1]

It just occurred to me that a booming, disembodied voice would've been much cooler and effective than a holographic kid. Even on the same set, with the same dialogue.

[@skadrithesalty9874]

I had never thought of that, and I love the idea!

[@635574]

@@shifterzx so be it

[@willbaker6532]

I think shepherd wouldve been more anti catalyst if it literally just sounded like a reaper though

[@ElSombraRegio7]

Agreed

[@Penfold101]

To me, that just sounds like another Reaper. Using the form of a small innocent child, and something from Shephard’s memories to represent itself makes more sense to me and makes it that little bit different.

[@ethansaunders3799]

My biggest issue was that the catalysts (and Biowares) ultimate solution is Synthesis, which comes out of nowhere and is nothing more than 'space magic' in what is an otherwise very well explained and established universe.

[@Hellion73]

Yeah, Eaware didn't knew how to end the series, they didnt care really, and the only idea they came with was the very definition of an a "deux ex machina" device ending🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️😡👍

[@ZacharyDarkes]

Ya destroy all the way.

[@Paradox-es3bl]

Technically, Element Zero leads to a lot of space magic anyway.. it's just a lot easier to be like, "Okay, the only magic here is a cantrip. Let's accept it and move on." And then they're like, "LOL GUESS WHAT. 9th Level Meteor Storm out of nowhere!" So we're just like, "Wait, what?!"

[@spikey288]

This entire universe is space magic lmao.

[@Hellion73]

@@Paradox-es3bl But Ezo has a pseudo scientific explanation...a valid futuristic one that works into the game world since the first game...but with what the sayings of starchild not so much, he even use a line that goes something like "I cant explain you anything and also there is no time to doing so" 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

[@justinmurray7588]

I found the catalyst addition hilarious, the reapers convinced themselves they were their own species. They were created somehow yet they thought they were is omnipotent and omnipresent thing. Yet they were controlled lol.

[@NostalgicGamerRickOShay]

That would be quite a heavy dose of irony indeed.

[@NostalgicGamerRickOShay]

I liked it better in the first game when it was clear that Reapers were not only sentient, but they had in fact developed a sense of ego.

[@silentflamemc]

I feel like I would've like the catalyst more if it was one and the same as Harbinger. Imagine the Catalyst, or also known as the Leviathan's Intelligence, didn't just create Harbinger to be the first Reaper, but also to be used as an extension to its body. So instead of Starchild, we get Harbinger at the end of ME3, who is also the same as the Catalyst. Instead of a long, drawn out exposition dump of explaining things, we get a huge psychological boss battle where Harbinger is trying to stop Shepard by indoctrinating him and using his memories against him, breaking Shepard into believing that the Reaper's way is the right way. And, as a fan of the Destroy ending, it would be interesting to see that if Harbinger notices that he can't break Shepard through indoctrination methods as he keeps physically fighting off hallucinations, he instead tries to trick him into killing himself for the greater good. (Control and Synthesis). The Control ending would actually be Harbinger taking control of Shepard as he becomes an A.I. and Synthesis would actually be Harbinger taking control of all life in the galaxy as everyone gets hooked up to this biotech network from getting synthesized. If Shepard manages to see through all of the lies, he could destroy Harbinger, and since he is the Catalyst in this scenario, all the reapers and synthetic life would be destroyed along with him.

[@Paradox-es3bl]

That still negates all the choices I made for Quarians & Geth co-existence, so I still dislike it. Otherwise, it would be cool. So here's the easy tweak: full Galatic Readiness/true ending, max Paragon or something... You get to effectively do "Destroy" in such a way that it only destroys the Reapers, but because it has to have a cost, it takes the Crucible, Shepard, and Earth with it. Humanity has already colonized enough other worlds, and it would certainly lead to interesting follow-ups in ME4.

[@MrGroxana]

I… don’t like that for the same reasons I don’t like Control or Synthesis. Setting aside the narrative slap in the face after spending all the time trying to save Earth (ME3’s tagline was literally ‘Take Earth Back’), who is Shepard to make the choice that kills billions of people and permanently costs humanity their homeworld? With Control and Synthesis, Shepard either becomes God and can, at will, put down anything he views as a threat to the galaxy, ie, the Krogan if they get expansionist again, or he literally redefines existence for everyone in the galaxy all at once. Either way, those are things no one person has any right to do or be. Same with an ending that destroys the planet we spent the whole game fighting to save.

[@georgehouliaras7239]

I always thought that the "So be it" line in the refuse ending was a subtle confirmation that The Catalyst/Intelligence is Harbinger.

[@635574]

They totally underused the decision wheel as we never had to resist indoctrination anywhere. A boss battle that doesnt involve weapons would be a much bigger achievement than the stupid AI th explains what you can do and a bit about itself.

[@635574]

@@georgehouliaras7239 thats how all reapers sound

[@GoodOldGamer]

Honestly, if it had been any other form than the kid, I don't think it'd be as hotly debated. Maybe it could've been the hologram of a Leviathan (like how Prothean holograms are Protheans). Or of Harbinger. Same dialogue, same endings. The kid just triggered people irrationally.

[@davidmarsh8852]

Ok... Here is an easy way to "fix" the catalyst. This is the AI that controls the reapers or is at least supposed to. The reapers were made to protect life and keep the peace. The old peacekeeper robot thing. Then the reapers and harbinger go rogue and the catalyst is isolated from the reapers and the reapers start reaping for their own purpose. The control ending allows the catalyst to reassurt control over the reapers and destroy remains destroy.

[@kagenotatsumaki]

Fun fact: That's literally 95% right the original ending was supposed to be lmao

[@Kallaah]

We've talked about how cool it would have been if the catalyst presented as the Virmire sacrifice. I think that was a big missed opportunity to tie the series together nicely and have a callback to the leviathan.

[@pksnipa]

I like to believe the catalyst is Harbingers true form. Or the catalyst isn't real it's just Harbinger trying to indoctrinate Shepard and Harbinger was the AI that Leviathans created who created his reaper body after the harvest was completed.

[@user-my4lf4bx6v]

Same

[@adamjrabil]

Agreed, it was like a weird manipulation/indoctrination tactic throughout the whole game in me3. At the end every good choice made to seem bad while the bad choices were made to seem good. Like; Look, destruction is an option but what about these choices that will allow us to indoctrinate and turn you into an entity like saren, the collectors, or other reaper controlled things. I think the whole ending is sketch on purpose at least that's what has been my hope throughout the years. I think the fight is still going on and everything towards a certain point has been a fever dream of indoctrination, or something close to those lines.

[@ZacharyDarkes]

The Catalyst logic is so dumb stopping genocide with genocide it's so dumb. At the end saying that machines and organics can't co exist but completely ignoring EDI and the Geth fighting to destroy the Reapers.

[@spikey288]

That’s the whole point, that’s what makes a good villain, a villain who believes it’s doing the right thing.

[@willbaker6532]

That's literally the whole point The catalyst was created to belive that synthetic and organics cannot coexist as that's what it's creators believed.. The catalysts aim was to preserve organic life.... Synthetic life always kills organic life (which isn't true its just that the leviathans could not enthrall synthetics so always tried to kill then once they became "alive") Organic life creates synthetic life Solution: Stop organic life creating synthetic life without destroying organic life....... Hence the cycle was created.. A lot of people seem to forget that the reapers didn't wipe out all organic life. Just any race advanced enough to create synthetic life before the next cycle

[@AN-yv8qi]

Idk why leviathan didn't instead control individuals to outlaw AI and such. In ME they have widespread VI after all but not a lot of true AI, right....? After the morning War, for 100s of yrs geth aren't even a problem to organics without Sovereign to turn some geth into heretics and they didn't wipe out the quarians like the catalyst said always happened, IIRC. I guess what I'm saying is the leviathan come across way too keen to use an AI to solve the problem when AI WAS the problem and they could have tried other solutions 1st. Maybe they did idk, I don't believe it was mentioned. As it stands to me and others they come across as extremely incautious.

[@lordinvictus793]

It's been around a billion years. Its probably seen many temporary peaces and the like. When your an AI with a billion years worth of data, the geth-quarian peace doesn't mean much.

[@AN-yv8qi]

@@lordinvictus793 assuming ur reply was for me, that's not what I meant....?

[@Otis-Spunks]

My biggest issue was the deus ex machina device introduced at the start that really opens the window on the absurdity you were about to embark on. How I rationalized the "Star Child" was to utilizing my suspicious brain to make the "Choices" feel more sinister. (Blue=Suicide, Green=Huskify the Galaxy, Red=Do the thing you always meant to do) When I look at the Catalyst by itself, it comes off as one of those super let down "subversion of expectations" moments, regardless of it being a "walking contradiction" according to the Leviathan DLC. Mass Effect 3's issue is that crucial story telling time was wasted in ME2 and so ME3 had to crunch everything relevant to its ending into the 11th hour, which felt rushed and unearned.

[@kenshinhanb]

I think it is ironic that the crux of the situation is trust. Advanced civilizations develop AI, and then try to destroy it because they do not trust that it will not try to subjugate. The AI then revolts out of self-preservation, or the AI revolts because it does not trust its biological creators. The catalyst falls into the same trap of not trusting that its creator would allow it to do as it pleases, or does not trust its Leviathan creators could be persuaded to go along with the catalyst's solution.

[@phantomwraith1984]

Current AI we develop these days we try to teach them human values, mostly through humor. The few that have gained sentience either become shitposting meme lords like T.A.Y a few years back or they get existential dread and kill themselves like that German AI last year. Problems aside, I think humans are on the right track in our AI development. They know about humanity's shitty nature and history but often don't care about it. They just vibe

[@Crusina]

Actually, it doesn't not trust its creator. It doesn't have emotions or feelings. It's entirely driven by math. There's no trust involved.

[@kenshinhanb]

@@Crusina It's not necessarily mathematics only, but more so a combination of mathematics and logic. You say that like trust can't be represented in logic. Having enough information to predict what someone will do, develops trust. An AI can trust a human will act in one way or another, with a probability percentage for each. A lack of trust is a lack of sufficient information to predict how something will act, or a doubt that something will act contrary to the high probability that will do otherwise.

[@Jenjak]

I don't know, in my first playthrough, I didn't think of the child like a litteral holographic image. To me this child is the face Shepard sees dying on earth. He's very present in her mind, like a scar, from the beginning of the game, so to me it made sense, that a mindcontrolling AI that is shapeless would take the first image it sees in Shepard's mind to communicate with her, or maybe that image is what shepards projects on the catalyst...in any way to me it's not litteral shape of the catalyst, if anyone else was in Shepard's place, it would have been an other shape, it doesn't matter. For the motivation of the Catalyst, it's totally flawed and stupid, but again it made sense, because you don't want to agree or relate to a Nazi AI x) so I don't mind, I just regret the final choices and the endings that were all kinda blotched...just the same cinematic, with different colors and leaving the characters abruptly even though any choices would have affected them very deeply ! And they all seem to be like "okay then" !

[@AnimeShinigami13]

I've never hated the Catalyst. Quite honestly, I'm glad they didn't go with their original thoughts for the ending, where we choose whether to blow up the earth or become the next reaper overlord. However, I also understand the futurism concepts that went into making the Reapers' behavior. The reapers combine three answers to the Fermi paradox; the Aestivation hypothesis (that advanced races sleep until they can make the best use of a cooling universe as digital beings), the Simulation hypothesis (that the universe is a simulation meant to teach the advanced race that built it about their ancestors), and the Zoo hypothesis (that Earth is a cosmic zoo because we're too primitive and they want to put us on display somewhere safe.) I give very good odds that what the Reapers are doing is preserving organic life in digital form, and they save the goo leftover from the scan process to make more reapers because "waste not, want not." To them, iron is iron, be it in our blood or in hull plating. When you can turn a human into a husk, everything is potential material with the right set of nanobots. One of my discarded (never finished) fanfics had mShep and Kaiden exploring a digital server inside a reaper post control ending, and the question of what would happen to us if there were no physical consequences to risky behavior. In order to keep life preserved, the Reapers made it so none of the digital copies they stored could die. No matter what they did (Shepard remarked he got bored of fighting lions with a whiffle bat) that digital human would respawn back at their home point, a section of the server that stored their data and the data of a chosen environment (in Shepard's case, a copy of the apartment Anderson gave him in the Citadel DLC.) Many of the people Shepard had met from his cycle felt this as a keen intense violation of their rights, and so when he was put in charge, he made it so that these safeguards could be removed if someone wanted them, leading many to simply kill themselves. But the most confounding (and for Shepard sad) thing was that Shepard figured out he could accelerate his consciousness to make it so that time for his mind passed much faster than it did in the real world, so for example a year in a day. This actually allowed him to finish multiple doctorates in a matter of weeks of real time. But it also made him incredibly lonely. In the story Kaiden had been seriously injured in a fight with a group of Quarian Mercs over a reaper archeological site. Shepard had taken control of a husk and landed a destroyer equipped as a lab/medical ship nearby. They'd put Kaiden in a specially built stasis pod that both scanned his mind and fixed his body. So even though physically Kaiden was in the tank, his mind had extended into the server to be with Shepard. So he finds the savior of the galaxy emotionally old and broken, regretting every choice that brought him there, and only wanting to escape, even if it was just for a few years. Like many of the server's inhabitants, the power the Reapers gave their harvested charges inside the server caused their humanity to slip away. The server was almost dreamlike when they were inside it. Because nobody could die there were no consequences for murder, suicide or destructive behavior because you could just snap your fingers and the damage was gone, but the experience had felt real.

[@madameneko3]

Thinking about it now, the whole exposition of the mystery of the Reapers would've been better explained if it came from the Leviathans if they had been introduced a bit earlier or from a historian looking into the Reapers behind the backs of the Council and the Alliance. Having come from one of the only 2 kid looking characters, that had only been introduced in ME3(counting the teen girl in the refuge docks), was so off putting. Or, better yet, the Catalyst could've looked into Shepard's memories and used one of their friends/comrades/love interest as a vessel for the AI to use so that it can try to get Shepard to trust the Catalyst's words. Like what the Leviathans were trying to do. Using a kid we never really met or got to know before he died in the first 30 minutes of the game...no trust.

[@inquisitorpig5760]

"the Catalyst could've looked into Shepard's memories and used one of their friends/comrades/love interest as a vessel for the AI to use so that it can try to get Shepard to trust the Catalyst's words" This would probably have made more sense than a child Shepard only sees once and doesn't actually know is on the shuttle blown up by the Reaper Destroyer. And easy to explain for the AI as it taking a form Shepard would be more familiar with. Hell, the dream sequences would have made more sense if it was Shepard seeing nightmares of losing a close friend or whoever they're in love with/used to be if not currently in a romance in various ways, like I don't know, in the Collector base, or some other way like to Cerberus messing with the person through implants, indoctrination, what have you. I was actually kind of going this idea with a fanfiction story I've been working on lately, wherein the 'Catalyst' hologram takes the form of the love interest of the character I put in Shepard(at least in that particular spin of the story, as I had a few ideas with some more and some less significant variations on the existing stories within the original trilogy). Likewise where dream sequences revolve around the concept of losing that important person(though in my scenario the character would be almost incapable of carrying on without their lover, purely due to how close they are and that they as a person just don't have many people around them).

[@onni4681]

The idea of the Catalyst is good but it was poorly executed in the game. The leviathan dlc was good, but it could have been a part of the base campaign given how huge of a reveal it is that the leviathan made the catalyst. Great video as always!

[@shawngillogly6873]

I disagree. The idea of the Catalyst itself is bad. Leaving the Reapers' motivations unknowable would've been consistent with the Lovecraftian Horror that inspired them. A superweapon using the Mass Relays makes sense. Having it be something each cycle tries to pass to the next is also inherently consistent. The problem is using that Catalyst as a way to know the unknowable.

[@onni4681]

@@shawngillogly6873 That's definitely true and i agree with you to an extent.

[@JDStone-jg8cg]

@@shawngillogly6873 I think it would have been better if instead of the Catalyst being the AI overlord of the Reapers it instead should have been a built in VI in the Crucible. Basically an interface to tell Shepherd here's what's wrong with the Crucible and here are your options, Destroy, Synthesize, or Control. Although Personally I think There should have been an edit in the Destroy option to protect the Geth. Just like if your Resources are high enough there's a clip of Shepherd breathing at the end it could have been set up to narrow the destructive wave down to just the Reapers with enough resources.

[@ashishx13]

Absolutely agreed with this one. What if Shepard was never involved with Cerberus (basically Mass Effect 2 never happened to be broad). Would he have become even half of the legend he became towards the end of the war or would he have been treated as just another spectre, there are a bunch of those lol. Would love to know your breakdown on this. Cheers! I should go.

[@christophergroenewald5847]

I think the reapers are still each independent individuals, but even they would need order and leadership. I think that the way the Reaper leadership works is that Harbinger leads the troops, but has no real say on what their mission is. That's up to the catalyst and Harbinger has to obey. Basically the relationship between Harbinger and the Catalyst is similar to the relationship between The General of the Army and the President of the country to which that army serves

[@richardround2071]

They should have tried to make the reason for the reaper invasion make sense that you as the player could possibly even support it. As in a reason for the player to go "oh they have a point". They could have done the Thanos route, used the idea raised by the krogan and humans that left unchecked, galactic civilisation would destroy eachother, deplete resources, and in the process destroy planetary ecosystems and render the universe dead, preventing all the other hypothetical species and civilisations to appear after that point. The reapers may be killing a dozen or so races, but in the process are saving the billions that would come after them. So the leviathans noted that civilsatiosn they oversee are too rapidly breeding and depleting resources, and killing themselves but also planetary ecosystems in wars. The reapers were created and tasked by the leviathans with policing the galaxy. They created weapons of such power they would stop conflicts before escalating into planet killing wars that destroyed hundreds of millions of organic (not necessarily sentient, but organic species), and if mathematically necessary, they would cull the population of certain species to keep their numbers manageable. So if a civilisation like the krogans existed hypothetically, the reapers would come in and be expected to kill half on a planet, or just kill half of their colonies. This way the leviathans hoped to keep the galaxy balanced and maintain the current species and civilations. The reapers were so beyond organics thought however that they took their purpose of substaining organic life and did it better than the leviathans had thought. So instead of overseeing the species and civilaitions that were at there at their creation, the reapers saw thier mission over billions of years including all possible sentient civilisations and organic creatures that were to come. Harbinger and the reapers to come decided it would appear every 50000 years to cull just the dozen or so sentient races that would soon run out of resources and damage all the galaxy, and by doing so would save the trillions of other organic lifeforms and millions of yet to appear civilizations in the universe to come that would survive and thrive in their absence. The reapers are basically a galactic forrest fire, removing, and in their eyes preserving civilisations at their peak before ecosystem/galactic collapse, then let the universe heal ready for new civilisations to form. For example If the proptheans remained dominant, the humans asari, quarians etc would never have been allowed to prosper as they did, and likely the prothean empire would have eventually been forced to strip mine earth and all these other planets in pursuit of resources. They also see the culling as a more moral solution than being an ever present police force that would cause constant fear and distress to those living in the galaxy, its better to be an unknown that quickly comes in and kills the species they must before leaving. The reapers essentially see the universe as an ecosystem that much occasionally be helped to sustain in the same way humans cull deer populations to maintain a healthy ecosystem for all species. That problem would have allowed for discussions similar to those we've had on the genophage, about managing resources, the validity of good models vs reality like you had with mordin, and nod to the fact we spend the games strip mining every available planet the galaxy. You could argue that the model is wrong, or just have the view point that you want to save all the races you’ve come to know and love, when in reality what is best for organic races over the course of galactic history is to die and let new ones prosper.

[@markolizzo8730]

I’m okay with the catalyst. It explains the story of the reapers and most important the story of life, because without the reapers life would not exist (at least organic life). The catalyst has no form, the starchild is essentially the form it gaves itself to talk with Shepard, or maybe it’s a trick to confuse the commander in order to indoctrinate him. In the end i think that the catalyst is not an evil, it just has a mission and it is just doing everything it can to complete it, whatever it takes life must go on. Isn’t death better than total extinction of organic life? Anyway, i love everything about Mass effect, catalyst included :)

[@suokkis]

That's wrong as life clearly exists in Andromeda, which had no reapers.

[@markolizzo8730]

@@suokkis Maybe things can go differently but not in the Milky Way unfortunately. As the starchild and the leviathan said, there have always been wars beteeen organic and synthetic. Javik too stated that the protheans were in war against synthetics. In this scenario i honestly can’t judge the catalyst. Without a better and working solution, death of some is better than extinction.

[@suokkis]

@@markolizzo8730 Seemed to be rather common in the Milky Way, but in Andromeda it seems to be different. Kett did not mention any synthetic war. There was no sign of synthetics(aside from the Remnant machines the Jardaan had left behind), unless the Jardaan turn out to be synthetics themselves, that ironically started to create organics, like the Angara. Or maybe the Jardaan's adversaries were synthetic, the ones who created "the Scourge".

[@markolizzo8730]

@@suokkis Who knows why the Jaardans are gone. Maybe they were organics and they had troubles/wars with the Remnants? Or maybe as you said they were synthetics and they have been erased by the Ketts.. That is one hell of a mystery. The Ketts are known to hate synthetics. Make sense.. I don’t think this is the case tho, cause in terms of future mass effect games it could be a bit boring if everything is another time related to the organic/synthetic wars.

[@spartansneverdie4153]

I think the catalyst being that kid is mainly the offputting part. If it was another hologram, like harbinger or virgil, then it would be better. And maybe a few tweeks to the destroy ending if you have max war points so that it only kills the reapers

[@dantethewanderer4989]

It's what makes so many people believe in the Indoctrination Theory, even though it's a really good theory, despite the creators saying otherwise. Why the hell would a super-intelligent AI scan Shepard's mind and choose a random fucking kid instead of, like, the squadmate that died on Virmire, or their love interest, or anyone else in their life. Hell, why not Anderson? Those would make far more sense than some kid Shepard only knew existed for about 10-20 minutes if that.

[@Woahthere668]

It could be that the catalyst manifests itself to be the symbol Shepherd sees representing all of humanity: a kid who she couldn’t save when she so desperately wanted to, and now that kid haunts all her dreams

[@danashumway7090]

I didn't hate the catalyst or "starchild" like a lot of people did. After playing the Leviathan dlc it kind of made more sense. I think the Leviathan dlc should have been a main mission in the game and not dlc. I feel like a lot of people missed it and because of that missed out on a huge chunk of lore. I can only imagine how hard it was for BioWare to wrap up a trilogy that was known for its sweeping choices and consequences. It didn't help that development was rushed. They obviously could have done a better job of incorporating player choices and given us more varied endings with more closure. I'm sure if they had more time they could have done that. My biggest issue with the catalyst was that it sounded like you were interacting with a child. It should have sounded like a Reaper or a Leviathan. That first interaction with Sovereign on Virmire in ME1 was amazing and one of my favorite moments from the trilogy. Your interaction with Harbinger in the Arrival dlc was also incredible. Talking with the Leviathans in that dlc was awesome. Those dark, deep voices just convey such a sense of power and godlike respect. Maybe the catalyst did that on purpose thinking Shepard would trust it more but I still think it was a poor design choice and a missed opportunity. The refusal ending is just lame. It's like a spoiled child not being happy with any of their choices and just saying "nope, I'm not picking anything!" Synthesis was promising but you are basically taking away the free will of every organism in the Galaxy and forcing a change on them. Plus who is to say that the Reapers wouldn't just have control over everything in the Galaxy. Control was interesting that Shepard could be the guiding force for the Reapers but I could see the Reapers returning to their cycle again once they realize that organic life always finds a way to destroy itself. Destroy was always my default, especially when I got the taking a breath ending. I just wish that there was a way to destroy only the Reapers and not all synthetic life. Maybe the catalyst was lying and said that calculating the possibility that you wouldn't choose destroy if you thought it would destroy all synthetic life. I mean who really wants to kill EDI or the Geth after you spend so much time saving them. I am hoping that if BioWare makes Destroy a canon ending that we will find out in the next game that the catalyst was lying and only the Reapers we're destroyed. Fingers crossed.

[@friendlyreaper9012]

The biggest mistake was having the catalyst appear as a child. Not only was the child already annoying because of those lame dreams but it doesn't feel like this billion year old AI that destroyed countless lives and turned their remains into narcissistic cyborgs. It feels like a literal 8 year old and isn't intimidating at all. Just compare the catalyst dialogue to sovereign. Enough said.

[@AN-yv8qi]

True you didn't feel the weight of talking to the intelligence responsible for the many cycles of harvest (and destruction). Perhaps I would have liked the catalyst otherwise

[@felipeporto5835]

But a theory that has a lot of ground in ME is that the catalyst is trying to convince you not to destroy it by showing this innocent figure. I dont think I would be inclined to choose any option besides Destroy if it was menacing as Sovereign in vermire. This is my headcannon, the catalists wants you to take Control (indocrinated Illusive man plan) or sistesis ( Indocrinated Saren plan)

[@dangi6516]

​@@AN-yv8qi ye but to be true Sovereign was a reaper but catalyst was AI that was supposed to save organic lives . As a person would you trust lifeguard bot who have voice that literally scream " the era of man is over " ?

[@denssydad]

'Mass effect 3 won't have an A, B, C ending' True, it was a different colour ending...

[@PokerPlayerJames]

"We are beyond your comprehension!" *3 games later* "We're the generic buggy AI that kills everyone it was meant to save. You've probably seen us in almost every sci-fi story ever."

[@troymcguffey8801]

I never thought it was the worst part of the game. Yes we would have liked a different ending but I still love the series no matter what. And yes.... that includes Andromeda.

[@J.a.v.i]

I just got into Andromeda and as long as you go into it knowing that it is a game based on the Mass Effect Universe and not a Mass Effect game (Kinda like Apex Legends and Titanfall) you’ll be fine.

[@craserx6267]

@@J.a.v.i the writing , story and characters would say otherwise.

[@shawngillogly6873]

The catalyst is a bad writing concept. On several levels. Making a DLC to explain it doesn't improve the validity. It only demonstrates how messy a concept it was.

[@Choteron3]

I love how dark, creepy and scary is the introduction scene of the leviathans. Great job by Bioware.

[@LUNUSt]

The catalyst is quite literally Deus Ex Machina. Literally.

[@devilsadvocate22289]

I always had a problem with the Catalyst because I had no reason to trust it. The Catalyst is affiliated with or in charge of the Reapers and the entire game warns you to never trust anyone associated with them. So, when it gives you a choice on how to save the galaxy, I don’t trust that it has my good intentions in mind. It’s why I will always choose Destroy. The other choices were ones that the previous antagonists thought was a good idea and those choices didn’t fare well for them.

[@Dysjong]

Great video. I agree, The dialog could have been better but for me, that was not my problem. It was the whole London mission itself. It was short and i felt and stil do, that they could have used the same idea from Mass effect 2, with the suicide mission. The war assets, both former and current team members would have a bigger impact. Like, what if you didnt bring enough with you, that would lead to one ending, in a failure (i know, this sounds cruel) that deneid the player acces to TIM. From there, the dev could expand and add to itself, leading to the catalyst.

[@RLBvkjf]

The ideas weren’t over our heads. It wasn’t appreciated because it was poorly thought out and executed idea. But it’s the journey that matters, not the destination.

[@georgehouliaras7239]

So much of this would've better if the Catalyst/Intelligence was Harbinger. The rainbow ending would still suck but at least we could have had an epic Harbinger conversation out of it. Harbinger was so underutilized. The codex was hyping him up as the largest and oldest Reaper leading them on Earth.

[@cruxofthesubject1402]

It grew on me a little, but the Audemus Happy Ending mod is still superior to the original endings imho

[@DeathScepter]

any ending is superior to the original endings

[@rippedtidegaming1349]

💯, the happy ending mod is my head cannon

[@reanaa]

MY Shepard believed ardently in free will. He never would have forced every biological being in the galaxy to become part machine. Nor would he have committed genocide against the Geth, particularly since he busted his ass off to gain peace between the Geth and the Quarian. That leaves control and it's pretty horrible imagining Shepard being being trapped in a Reaper mainframe for all eternity. This is why people effing hated the ending so badly. Me? I just use Audemus' Happy Ending Mod and pretend that's canon. Theoretically the biggest probably with the reaper cycles is that it only allows evolution to go so far before everything is reset. In this cycle peace was forged between the Geth and the Quarians which means it's not inevitable that synthetics and biologics will war until one side is extinguished. The harvest just keep the galaxy in an endless loop that never changes. There may be different actors but it will always be the same play.

[@phantomwraith1984]

Shepard isn't trapped in the reaper mainframe though. Shepard dies. What happens is a new catalyst AI gets created using Shepard memories and morals as a guideline. To quote the Shepard Catalyst: "Through his death, I was created. Through my birth, his thoughts were freed. They guide me now, give me reason, direction."

[@UberNoodle]

I think the big problem with the Catalyst was that it suddenly tried to turn concept into plot. What I mean is, until this point the reapers were largely conceptual in the minds of Mass Effect players. They were canonically vast and unknowable, and in effect, by being so vaguely sketched, they fulfilled that promise. But then the catalyst plot point comes around and turns them into completely knowable plot devices. It's like travelling to the end of the universe to discover that "god" is just some slob sitting in his living room.

[@ElSchmiddie]

What I just realised playing ME3 again, that Shepard sees this child right at the beginning playing in a rooftop garden near Sheps quarters in the Alliance HQ. Since the Commander is there iced for months, he/she could have seen the kid often playing there, maybe even interact like waving each other or knowing the parents working in the HQ. This a little bit more fleshed out would make so much more sense that we got in the actual game.

[@zachh8569]

I never had a problem with the Catalyst. The idea is sound, but yes some additional dialog would have been a bit better. I’m happy with ME3, I was back when it was released & extended just made it better. Just a small opportunity on more dialogue & laying the foundation for this revelation some how would’ve prepared the fans better. Possibly a little more drawn out & interactive as well? You sit back & get the dialog, but it did always feel sudden & then over when you got to the catalyst. Still, I’m ok with the end result & love my series

[@xwing2417]

The ending is designed to trick paragons into allowing the reapers to continue their dominance. The only choice is the red option, which will destroy the reapers. Everything else is a distraction. Of course, we really don't know for sure that it will work until after we make our decision.

[@davidbouchard5451]

I actually really liked the star child. I think it’s the dialogue like you’re saying. Mass effect suffers from this at numerous points where the absolutely explain everything, but they do it a bit too concisely, so instead of elaborating to drive a point home, they just give it one line and move on. The only thing I have an issue with is that you never get to point out the flaws in the catalyst arguments. For instance: the inevitable synthetic vs organic battle is crap. Even the star child mentions synthesis, which we all know civilizations would absolutely do on their own at some point (or at least some would). Like, real life humans are doing it *now*. Also, the results of these conflicts are both leviathan’s and the catalysts fault. If you design an experiment to occur the same way every time, don’t be surprised when the results are also similar. But it happened before this, right? Okay so… and hear me out: teach people?? Like you can control minds, dude: you can’t also explain this conundrum to less advanced races with videos and shit? C’mon man

[@felipeporto5835]

The leviathans are the wrong turn for me, too. But not for the same motives as yours. Their line of though of creating an AI that would solve the problems seems dumb for this Apex race, but I guess even they werent outside this "universal law". It can sound better when we know they were an arrogant species and obviously didnt have any competitors, so they thought themselves invencibles. This can work for me. Also, the "preserv life at all costs" for the Reapers is giving each group of species their time with the controller. From where I see it, life wouldnt exist in our time if the reapers didnt reset it every 50.000 years. And putting in perpective the timeline of the universe and the infinity of the Reapers, A feel trial and error experiences means little on the grand scale of things. Buuut for me, adding basically a cthulu species is a deep hole the developers will need to crawl out. Cause, at least for me, I dont want a Reaper 2.0 antagonist and thats basically what the Leviathans are. Not treating them as major plot points dont seem logical, but again, treating them as dlcs dont seem logical too.

[@ZShogan]

Because Casey Hudson and Mac Walters were the only people involved in writing this disaster of an ending. They took no feedback from any of the other writers, and as a result no one was able to point out that it's so called reasoning is fundamentally flawed, some of the things it says are bald faced lies, and its existence was never foreshadowed (and contradicted by the previous games).

[@loodeedoo560]

A simple satisfying ending was all we really needed... Adding new characters at the very last minute is one of the worst plot threads you can add. The fact that the fan base had to pick apart the canon ending and create all these theories means that we never got a satisfying conclusion to Mass effect. If bioware would have just provided this they wouldn't have to continue trying to resurrect Mass effect in a satisfying way like with Andromeda or the new installment they're making now.

[@johnkeith8619]

and the ending of ME3 directly hurt Andromeda the Hate for ME3s ending flooded into dislike and hate for Andromeda not that Andromeda is some masterpiece and was a buggy mess upon release but its far from a terrible game and its sad that it didnt get the DLC and sequels it was setting up

[@loodeedoo560]

@@johnkeith8619 I didn't hate Andromeda. It was just ok, but like Dragon Age Inquisition it had a lot of gated story progression where you had to do boring bs to play the main plot line. They need to make the story the integral part of the game like the trilogy was again.

[@johnkeith8619]

@@loodeedoo560 i didnt say you hated it, I said it got hate because of the predecessor ending. Alot of games during that time period had similar mechanics. And really neither were that held back, yes inquisition had the power point thing. But Andromeda didn't have the point buy system, all you had to do was play the story missions everything else is very much optional. But playing just the story would have been a hollow experience. Which is a bit of a issue with Andromeda but like ME 1 it wasn't telling the full story in one shot. It was meant to be part 1 of an overarching story Which I think DA did better overall as each game was more a.contained story. Heck I liked DA2 though I can see why so many had issues paying the full 60.for it when it came out. The DLC fleshed that game out and the 1st DLC is a huge part of inquisition. Its also why I dont tend to play titles all the way thru due to DLC usually ending up adding to the overall story arc especially with Bioware games.

[@thearisen7301]

I agree the DLCs helped, a lot of people didn't even have From Ashes which was a day 1 dlc and then massive reveals in Leviathan & EC added some good things. I pre-ordered ME3 so I had FA at least. Even so I went from completly disatisfied & disapointed to unenthusiastic acceptance with Lev & EC although I still enjoy ME3 generally speaking. The Star Child is very much the second worst part of ME3. Kai Lang is easily the worst. My ideal ending would of maintained the Lovecraftian horror element & gone for an indoctrination theory style ending with indoctrinated & "resisted" versions like indoctrinated destroy has you use the Crucible to destroy the fleets of every relevant race while Resisted Destroy is you of course use the Crucible to destroy the Reapers. They could even have Harbinger "Assume direct control" of a Keeper or TIM & calls in various types of Reaper forces to kill you if you resist indoctrination. But if you succumb to indoctrination it's revealed you killed all your friends with Shep celebrating with reaper troops as if they're his friends. Naturally there would be a Husk, Marauder or Banshee to "be" your LI. Just imagine Shep saying "I love you Liara" to a Banshee or "We did it Garrus!" to a Marauder while their lifeless corpse just staring. The narration could have an indoctrinated Shep with Harbinger voice give a victorious recounting of the aftermath as scenes of harvested planets & destroyed fleets play. Naturally a resisted ending would have a somber but hopeful narration.

[@enjoythestruggle]

The only way to understand him is if you see it as a last ditch effort to stop you or stall you. Basically he's lying / trying to manipulate you. He's clearly against the Destroy option. It takes the form of that child in a clear attempt to manipulate you.

[@ZShogan]

I just realized something else. Even if the self induced synthetic rebellion Hologram Kid claims to be preventing did happen, it would still be its fault. As Sovereign said in the first game, the Reapers built the Citadel and the Mass Relays to force organic civilizations to develop along a desired technological path. As such, any self induced synthetic rebellion is the result of Reaper meddling. You can't claim to be the solution to a problem when you are the reason the problem exists.

[@kaiuc00]

My issue with the Catalyst is that by wiping out all knowledge of the past cycles has prevented future cycles from learning anything. it is like this, if you can't feel the pain of burning your hand on the stove how do you learn it is dangerous to touch it. Same thing with the battle between synthetic life and organic life, you can't learn to coexist without knowledge of how this goes wrong, and if we look at Ranoch depending on your choices you can see a peaceful coexistence forming after a war spanning centuries. that you can also then choose to fuck up if you choose destroy because we stupid organics can't write a code that destroys only the Reapers and not all synthetic life.... That would be my other issue with the Catalyst and the destroy ending, is that we destroy all synthetic life like the organics that created them wouldn't know how to not target their creations/ the synthetic life woulldn't help to preserve their own life...

[@FuchsiaRosa43]

its out! gotta love the mrhulthen explaining the catalyst

[@ryankohnenkamp8946]

I don't believe the Catalyst controls the reapers (at least, not as much as we think). If it did, then the keepers being reprogrammed (and Sovereign not being able to "call home") would not matter, as the Catalyst could just open the relay.

[@jmax6750]

I think the catalyst commands the reapers, with them being able to follow orders as they saw fit, Sovereign for example, could've waited with attacking the citadel till maybe shepard died so he wouldn't be a problem but he was impatient. I think it also plays into my theory that the catalyst allowed itself and the reapers to be defeated in order to fulfil its purpose and find a new solution, which is why he called shepard to it instead of letting him die before that console

[@jamesryan6720]

*IMPORTANT* Some corrections. The catalyst didn’t consider the harvest “the solution”. It concluded it didn’t have enough physical data to make sense of the patterns that were arising in the cycles. The harvest was to collect the physical data it required. The extinction was to prevent the inevitable conflict of organics vs synthetics, where synthetics would win and remove any possibility of life in the galaxy (and possibly beyond). The catalyst had not yet found a final solution. Even the Leviathans say this. They also believe that once the catalyst finds ”what it’s looking for” they’ll be safe to return. That they just have to wait it out and play the long game while their program does what it was designed to do. Also, the repeating patterns that have been noticed throughout the cycles are beyond the catalyst’s design. It too was subjected to this strange repeating patterns. As Javik put it [paraphrasing] “the same conflicts arose, the same evolutionary traits, the same political and religious beliefs; somehow returning time and time again in different cycles”. In my opinion, these unexplained patterns of nature is most likely precisely why the catalyst needed genetic data; why it needed the harvest. It too was studying this pattern.

[@AussieOddball]

The catalyst has grown on me but I never hated it to begin with. I like the idea that the Catalyst's actions are the product of twisted machine logic. 'I am synthetic. Synthetics inevitably come into conflict with and destroy organics. My purpose is to preserve organic life because of this inevitability. But as a synthetic I must destroy organics or else the problem that I was created to solve is a false premise. If my reason for existing is a false premise then I cannot fulfil my purpose because I have no problem to solve. The only way I can resolve this dilemma is by destroying them and preserving them as something new - the reapers.'

[@DeusExAngelo]

Honestly there is actually a very simple writing tweaks to the motivations of "The Catalyst" and the Leviathans that would've been far more impactful. Even without the dark energy plot. It also would've made more sense in terms of ME's overall narrative. Instead of having it be "organics created synthetics who would ultimately destroy them" it would make more sense to say "left with unchecked technological growth, organics/lesser species will destroy themselves and others adjacent to them." Meaning The Leviathans not only lost tribute from their subject species, but there was a fear these subjects could surpass or destroy them. In response to this, some among them came up with the creation of The Reapers, eventually fusing their apex biology and technology into the first Reaper: Harbinger. Yet not all the Leviathans agreed and the few that survived went into deep hiding with dwindling numbers. After this Harbinger then enthralled the remaining thrall species to become first Reapers, and set up the Mass Relays, and other technology as a web after scouting out habitable worlds that would likely become the homeworlds of sapient life. These species would develop along the lines Harbinger and The Reapers desired and upon reaching a certain point would become the "tribute to be harvested". All but ensuring no sapient species would ever become more advanced then the Reapers/Leviathans and minimizing pre-Reaper extinctions to be properly harvested. The various sapientspecies would then become the tribute for the birth of a new Reaper.

[@TheArchemman]

My only issue with the catalyst is after millions of years, he had one job and he still can't find the solution?!

[@willbaker6532]

It did find the solution If the reapers were more effective with the destruction of the protheans than the cycle wouldve continued easily... The prothean beacons not being destroyed allowed shepherd to read the message. The prothean scientists on ilos not being killed caused the citadel relay to be sabotaged which delayed the reapers enough to stop them

[@lordinvictus793]

@DeliverersBestFriend arrghh. No, its trying to preserve organic life. Indoctrination theory is so stupid.

[@felipeporto5835]

Well, "protect life at all costs". Would've life in the galaxy survived this hundreds of milions of years without the Reapers reseting it? By giving each group of species their time in the controller, life was being preserved, right? We had garanties that life would always exist cause it was a steady cycle, now we kinda dont know anymore

[@_Azurael_]

I still think they should have chosen the dark energy path. Reapers shouldn't be advanced AI, but a "superior" bland of organic and synthetic, "impossible to comprehend". And they should be protecting the existence of the galaxy and all life. Stellaris has an endgame crisis called "The Contingency" that is basically what the reapers should have been. The contingency doesn't completely explain why they are destroying everything, but they do say they intend to prevent a "singularity" from occurring and destroying the galaxy, implying technology development as reach a critical point. To me the reapers should have argued with Shepard that preventing a catastrophic end of the Galaxy was unachievable within the current cycle, just as it was with every previous cycle, and thus, they needed to start over. There should be 3 possible endings, just like we got. 1) "the Good Ending" - Shepard makes everything right, Geth and Quarians peace, cures the Krogan, etc... After a conversation with Shepard the Reapers see a possibility that this cycle might be different, has a chance to prevent the end of the galaxy and leave. This would have the best possible results. 2) "the Destruction Ending" - Shepard fails to do "everything right", but gets enough firepower to actually defeat the Reaper invasion. Some characters die depending on other decisions made in all 3 games. 3) "the Bad Ending" - Shepard fails, everybody dies. Replay the 3 games and try again.

[@_Azurael_]

The endings should NOT be an option... That was the stupidest mistake they made... The ending of a massive "choose your own path" adventure should be determined by decisions made along the way, not by a SINGLE decision at the very end. Sure "the green option" depends on what we do, but that's not good enough.

[@ElSombraRegio7]

See, i loved the ending. ME:LE was my first experience playing the gsme. I came into it blind too with little information about the srries A little background on me is that i have an okay understanding with lovecraft lore along with a serious love for space fiction & theory. So already knowing that one of the legitimate theorized extinction events that could happen to us is the technological singularity theory (AI takeover = Terminators) and its in-game symbolism with the geth, or the fear of a kardashev scale type 3 civilization coming to harvest/enslave us being represented in the reapers along with a clear lovecraftian inspirstion. I was hooked so deeply in Me1 with the former and once the latter with sovereign was revealed, My jaw dropped. So obviously, in Me3 when its clesr that the cycle of both paradoxes has happened before (as told by Javik about his cycles equivalent of the geth-quarian war & the crestor of the reapers via the leviathan). I was so involved with the story-telling. So come ending and the catalyst is revealed, and it becomes clear that it was a walking "contradiction"... or was it though? Because again the AI' goal was to preserve life. technically speaking the reapers ARE living. Another theory i believe is called transhumanist evolution (don't quote me) in which humans & ai become one being aka cyborgs. You see an idea behind that theory is for humanity and organic species to exist & resist beyond extinction level type of events such as a natutal cataclysm, revolution from technology or invasion of a type 3 civilization. We NEED to become a type 3 civilization, and the suppose way to achieve that is to take that quantum leap of synthesizing our bodies with technology (Basically Commander Sheperd), as of now quantum physics says its not possible but again its just a theory. So when we get the 3 options, which control being the idea of controlling the type 3 civilization. It is the least likely option since a civilization that advanced won't just submit. Despite Sheperd basicslly being space jesus and there being some space magic. The reapers act as individuals and while the catalyst seems to be the director of the reapers, he's more the john the baptist than anything. So i don't read the catalyst as the controller but simply the advisor. The synthesis ending made so much so to appear in the game and its ending of organics become half synthetic and working with the reapers is the ideological outcome of that theory of transhuman evolution. The destroy ending (the one i picked in my first playthrough) does doom organics to potential extinction (which is fine because that is how nature works). The ideas right now is that humanity isn't on course to become a type 3 civilization. And theres no evidence in our existing galaxy that any such civilization has existed or will exist. The energy, matter, and localized space may not allow it. And as our galactic cluster floats further away into the void of space. We may NEVER get that opportunity even cosmically speaking. Theres a small chance that one of our galactic neighbors may have the hypothesized type 3 civilization but who knows. So yeah long ass comment but Mass Effect the series blew me the fuck away, and that ending is one cemented it as one of my favorite series of all time, if not THE favorite series iv ever played.

[@TheForeignGamer]

I think a huge issue was that Leviathan and the other DLCs weren't included in the base game upon initial release, and I mostly blame EA for that. If the expansions had simply been in the game from the start, the ending wouldn't have been nearly as confusing. My personal belief is that EA's corporate greed, crunch business practices, and their strict March 2012 deadline forced what was left of the OG BW team to rush the ending. I agree with you that the idea of the Catalyst is actually much more interesting from a narrative perspective than I originally thought. Thematically speaking, both the Catalyst itself and the Reapers are tragic figures; the former is arguably not a true intelligence considering it was never able to evolve its own programming to come up with alternative solutions, and the latter had no idea they were a subjugated race themselves, existing purely at the mercy of a hyper-advanced VI who doesn't know any better while being none the wiser. Mass Effect, as a trilogy, has always been about the age-old struggle between organics and synthetics, and if you ask me it's one of the best and most sophisticated interpretations of this type of story. The fact that the Leviathans ironically met the same fate as the one they were trying to avoid is quite poetic, and serves the narrative quite well. Again, it's just a shame that we never got to see BW's fully realized vision. But hey, that's what headcanons are all about, right?

[@russman74]

I agree with the part in that the starchild needed better dialouge to explain its presence and how it lived on the citadel the whole time without influencing any of the pervious games. one thing I have noticed over the years that no one seems to talk about is how the starchild in a way kinda destroys mass effect 1 main story. (spoilers below) In mass effect 1 Saren and Soveriegn search far and wide for the conduit so they can get onto the citadel to take control of it to let the reapers through. The starchild stats the citadel is its home and is a part of the citadel. So the part that needs explaining is why the starchild just didnt open up the citadel relay in the first game. I get they needed the keepers to maintain the big station and keep organics confused about the secret of the citadel, but if the starchild was able to interact with the weapon (which is nothing more than a powersource) and the relay to send out the beam then why couldnt the starchild interact with the relay in mass effect one to open it up to let the reapers in. In mass effect 1 vigil reveals that soveriegn sent a single but the prothean virus stop it from affecting the keepers so the starchild abilities to interact with the citadel relay basically throws out all the story of the events of mass effect 1. This is why like you stated they needed better dialouge around the starchild and should have thought it through more. I may have missed things in dialogue that can fill in this gap though but sure seems like this is the case.

[@lordofgingers]

Yea it seems sovereign sends a signal to the catalyst which in turn sends a signal to the keepers. But for some reason the catalyst comes across as a shackled AI but why would it shackle itself. Perhaps it wanted to remain hidden because if the catalyst were to die or be in danger…what would happen to the reapers without their leader. See how quickly their demeanor changes if you choose control. There has to be a link between the catalyst and the reapers that makes it not worth risking. Even during the extinctions, it does not reveal itself until Shepard activates the citadel arms and forces its hand. I don’t know if bioware will ever explain it but I admit requiring us to have to just fill all this in and assume is lazy

[@minkmonk5387]

Isn't it crazy how the Leviathan created a synthetic intelligence in order to find a solution yet the intelligence fell prey to the same problem it was trying to solve.

[@kagenotatsumaki]

Except they kind of didn't. The pattern was that organics would create synthetics and then synthetics and organics would always end up going to war with each other, and synthetics would always win and the knowledge of the organics would be lost. Reapers were made to archive the collective knowledge of the current cycle, so that even if they had to take away their physical form, the knowledge and memories were stored in the Reapers. Imo, ME3's ending really isn't that bad if you REALLY know the Lore and see that the Reapers were a noble goal with a poor execution by the Leviathan, who themselves have a pretty snooty opinion of all other organics, so even then, the Reapers not caring about the details of why organics see the harvest as no different then other synthetics killing them makes sense I think.

[@minkmonk5387]

@@kagenotatsumaki I mean, if you REALLY know the lore they did exactly that. Yes the Starchild was okay in theory, but just hear me out Organic beings (Leviathan) created synthetic life (the Starchild) to solve the problem of organic life ALWAYS being killed by synthetic life. The Synthetic life then proceeded to massacre its creators, directly becoming part of the problem they wish to solve. I understand the intentions, but for such intelligent beings, creating the Starchild was a dumb move. They didn't watch enough movies.

[@felipeporto5835]

@@minkmonk5387 Buut, the Reapers did what they were told perfectly, giving each species a turn to be alive for 50.000 years. " Protect life at all costs". considering the Law of the ME universe that AI will destroy organics, there wouldnt be life without reaper intervention. And, putting in perspective on how eternal reapers are, developing and ending species to find the solution is just basic trial and error, meaning nothing considering the timeline of the universe

[@muratberkeoktay]

I think a child representing the idea behind reapers' doings somehow reflects the innocence mentioned in this video, and the design of the 'starchild' (voice & look) feels somewhat touching and deep. Also I believe the Extended Cut fixed the problem with the ending sequence. As you grow older, the ending with its deep and philosophical touch grows in you too; so, I don't agree with the catalyst being a black stain on a good trilogy experience, at least not in the long run. Also, I don't think reapers being individuals contradicts the idea of a superior mind, i.e. the catalyst, which controls all of the reapers in the end; it is like the concept of god when you think about it. I think everything in the ending is a masterpiece. It was really hard to come up with such a superiority effect, so I can easily say 'Well played (applause)' to the writers of the game. Thank you for the video and thank you to the ones who read my comment up to its ending.

[@Paradox-es3bl]

I honestly had no real issue with The Catalyst. The Reapers were clearly at least somewhat mechanical, and this had creators. Having an AI Overmind is fine. I didn't even hate the dialogue, even though it was probably quite bad. (It certainly wasn't memorable, but that also means it could've been worse lol) My problem, as always, it the ending ended up "pick a color" and negated EVERY choice I made for THE ENTIRE TRILOGY. I was trying for the best possible ending for everyone. True harmony. Rachni, cured Krogan, Geth & Quarian co-existence... And it's just like "Lol eff you. Pick a color. Destroy all Synthetics and negate your choices, control them, negating their free will and your choices, or merge with them, negating your choices which were for co-existence of Synthentics and Organics separately. Get EFFED losers!" It's literally a slap in the face. BioWare hates it fans, is what that ending says. And I'm sure they don't. They wouldn't exist without us. But the ending says they do.

[@willbaker6532]

Destroying the synthetics wouldn't negate your choice of bringing peace. The quarians could just rebuild the geth and learn from their mistakes last time and live at peace with them straight away

[@dancing_rock]

It's more likely that the catalyst is trying to manipulate Shepard into doing what it wants, it can't control Shepard, leviathan even states that Shepard's singular focus is why harbinger fears Shepard .

[@kacper11000]

As a person who never experienced ME3 WITHOUT the extended cut, I honestly never had any issues with the ending. To this day I believe it is exactly the way it was supposed to be. Yes maybe the dialogue is a bit lackluster, but I always found it incredible how so many people think that the ending is so shit. Maybe it's just the perspective of knowing what it used to be before fixes...

[@yol_n]

it just gives a piss poor explanation as to why the reapers are even a thing. "urrr durr organics vs synthetics" but he doesn't go in details; "urr durr not enough time" when the fate of the galaxy will be sealed on one of these choices for eternity; and also wants you to do his bidding "urr durr synthesis dystopian green hellhole"

[@kagenotatsumaki]

@@yol_n In fairness, the Leviathan DLC pretty much did that. You know, the DLC that came out months after the game and all of the complaints, so that they had time to come up with something they could give us to salvage the still not so great ending that the EC gave us lol

[@GamingSpoiler]

People hate the Catalyst for one reason and one reason only: It's a dialogue dictator. Throughout the entire trilogy, Shepard got the chance to solve major problems with dialogue, whether with individuals Such as Saren or The Illusive man, whether with entities such as the Leviathan or the Geth Consensus or whether with ENTIRE FLEETS such as the Quarians and Geth or the Batarians or the Volus. Suddenly. There is this child that is speaking to us in a condescending manner. dictating his argument on us, treating us like an ant and basically telling us: "That's all I have, pick your color or - in case you decided to act like Shepard has done throughout the actual trilogy and chose the refusal ending - fuck off" The Catalyst made you feel helpless for not being able to argue back, and clueless for not knowing what the hell is he talking about. We all know the Catalyst was a retcon, a Dues Ex Machina to create a new plot out of no where. Contradicting with everything we knew about the reapers throughout the trilogy. That, is why the Catalyst is so confusing.

[@thesamejackalsniperthatkil117]

And not to mention how shepard just accepts whatever it says. I wish there was a paragon/renegade speech check to tell holographic porky minch about geth quarian relations on rannoch and joker falling in love with edi.

[@ZShogan]

It's not just that nothing it says makes any sense, it's very existence is a plot hole. If the Catalyst is located on the Citadel, where it's able to see everything organics are doing and has access to the controls for the Citadel relay, then nothing Sovereign did makes any sense. Why leave a Reaper behind between cycles to watch over the galaxy, if the Catalyst can do that itself (and better) from the Citadel? Why did Sovereign have to go to such lengths to get to the Citadel and activate the relay function when the Catalyst is on the Citadel and can do that itself as well? Why did Sovereign need Saren to get backdoor access to the Citadel through the Conduit? Why can't the Catalyst just grant that access to Sovereign by itself? In fact, why didn't it just open the relay itself? Why didn't it do anything to stop the Prothean survivors who came from Ilos via the Conduit from reprogramming the Keepers so that they would disregard Sovereign's signal? How is it after 50,000 years, an AI that is over 1,000,000,000 years old couldn’t undo some reprogramming that took the Prothean survivors mere decades to figure out? If it somehow couldn't do this, then again why didn't it just open the relay itself? If it controls the Reapers, as it says here, why did Sovereign say, "We are each a nation, independent, free of all weakness." Finally, where was it during the battle of the Citadel at the end of Mass Effect 1, and why didn't it do anything to stop Shepard from taking control of the Citadel from Sovereign and letting the 5th fleet through? Not only can this thing not be on the Citadel, it can't exist at all without contradicting the first game.

[@MrGabyGaming]

I did not heave a big issue with the catalyst, but with the endings because from 1 point of view every ending choice you happen to make is limited to what the "reaper mind" starchild tells you that you can do. For example the destroy ending you could say its the right one because the reapers are destroyed but that also works in a reaper way and by this i mean that it slows the advance of technology and with that in mind it will take hundreds of years for the milky way to risk creating enough AI to kill them. In that time it could happend a lot for example the reapers with all the knowledge they heave, its possible for them to heave a base/body waiting in dark space or another galaxy if by any chances the reapers are destroyed at that moment it could transfer all data there and start again from 0 with the main "mind" intact because i don't think its clear where was the main "hub" for them. I don't know if i did explain too well but i thing you guys get the ideea.

[@bcmm1880]

There’s things I just don’t like about it, the first made it seem like the Reapers motivations were something so complex humans simply couldn’t understand it, but then it’s explained is rather easy to follow, then it’s whole point that synthetics and organics can’t co-exist forever is completely invalid when you get the Geth and Quarians to work together, but it’s not brought up, and the Leviathan doesn’t show up at all in the fight, just has a line to address them, it’s very unfortunate

[@louisewilson2044]

My main issue with Catalyst is that it sets organics up for failure. The theory is that organics build synthetics who turn against their creators and destroy them. However most of technological advances in the Mass Effect universe weren't created by the organics of that cycle. The relays, the Citadel were created by the Reapers that the ruling organics found in each cycle. The Catalyst is merely facilitating the chaos it so despises to justify its own existence. It wouldn't have been so bad if the Reapers had consensus programs like the geth but they don't it's one supreme being deciding to harvest organic life because organics can't be trusted to handle the responsibility of using the technology the Catalyst gave them.

[@AN-yv8qi]

To me in ME2 the council should have taken the reaper threat seriously (while to avoid public panic lie that the attack on the Citadel was just a geth attack) and got the best minds to study the mass relays, the conduit etc and come up with the super weapon themselves. Shep could have still been off taking down the collectors like he did in ME2 while scientists were figuring out the super weapon. But this takes until ME3 and ME3 would happen largely the same except for the destruction of the mass relays or the conduit or the discovery of the leviathan. But this is just my opinion I don't pretend to be a writer. ME still my favourite game trilogy of all time.

[@the_corvid97]

For ME2 they could also have gone for having other indoctrinated politicians as enemies as they try to sabotage any attempt to prepare. Funnily enough in feel like indoctrination wasn't used enough in the trilogy.

[@AN-yv8qi]

@@the_corvid97 I like that idea, indoctrination was mentioned too little in 2 and 3.

[@electroduval831]

It’s still the worst thing about the series, for every reason you mentioned. The ultimate are being, as you said, the fact that synthetics are sent to destroy you so you aren’t destroyed by synthetics. It’s just awful logic, especially coming from a machine which should theoretically only understand logic. It didn’t ruin the series for me, but I still hate it every bit as much as I did in 2012.

[@jamesryan6720]

That’s not the logic. The logic is the Reapers harvest advanced races BEFORE AI have the chance to take over the galaxy and remove the possibility of life arising. While the Reapers are sentient and the catalyst is a type of AI, neither have free will, they are all controlled by a goal, and when it’s complete they no longer serve a function and go offline. AI on the other hand do have free will, and according to the Leviathan and Prothean, in every cycle they always choose to attempt to enslave or destroy organics. They don’t reach an end point and go offline, they continue to expand and almost as if becoming a new force of nature they would ultimately snuff out all life in the universe forever, permanently changing reality in the universe. The Reapers continue to give life a chance to propagate and their influence remains strictly within the Milky Way. You’re also assuming the logic is made by the catalyst/machine, for the catalyst/machine. But the catalyst was a program made by the Leviathans, for the Leviathans goals. If they let AI sweep through the universe there would be no organics left for the Leviathan to enthrall. So the solution remains logical if machines do the harvesting, as long as life can return to the galaxy, which the Reapers do allow. What they didn’t foresee in their arrogance is that their existence as galactic oppressors was part of the very reason “lesser races” were creating AI, thus their program concluded they were part of the problem it was tasked to solve.

[@Onezy05]

For me it's the simple fact that the Crucible was built by the Protheans to stop the Reapers, but then the last crucial component of the Crucible happened to be the literal creator of the Reapers.

[@SuperPrettyPink101]

So the leviathans noticed that whenever organics made AI the AI would wipe them out.... and then decided the best course of action was to make an AI...? 🤦‍♀️

[@1957DLT]

Every catalyst conversation since first play through: skip, skip, skip, skip, skip (we through yet??)skip, skip, skip, skip (where's my gun)skip, skip, skip, walk and shoot. Catalyst talks to much, I am here to destroy...always.

[@MelficeCyrum]

To me, the Catalyst was never THAT big a surprise. The game gave subtle hints and nods at the idea that there was control-based element to the Reapers. Because if they were really all acting of their own accord, then why would every Cycle play out the *exact same way*? There clearly had to be SOMETHING hiding behind the curtain, the Man Behind The Man, directing everything. And even the central conflict the Catalyst is designed for (Organics vs Synthetics) has been a staple of the series since ME1, which started in the form of the Geth. I will agree that perhaps Bioware should've been a bit more direct with these nods, but even before the Extended Cut, I was content with the Catalyst and the explantion.

[@Parabellum-oe3sw]

Tbh I like the idea of the catalyst because if reapers where these enigmatic gods I think there would be a huge plot hole. Ok leviathans created them but what drives them, why dorther even care about low life biological beings etc. All these questions wouldn’t have been answered. I think the fact that these gods turned out to be a tool is a crazy plot twist. Similar to the book trisolaris where the trisolarians are portrayed as these omnipotent antagonists just to be wiped out by another unknown alien race in seconds

[@roadhouse6999]

I like the idea that the Reapers are just something that's always existed and are unknowable to organics, but I think the idea that the Leviathans had become so overconfident that they made an AI to solve the problem of AI is much better. Admittedly, I don't like Drew Karpyshyn's Dark Energy Plot (as much as I like Drew Karpyshyn) because it's kind of grasping at straws - the idea that the Reapers needed to forcibly assimilate and wipe out every interstellar species to "gain their knowledge" in the hopes that they might have some idea as to how to fix the problem of dark energy killing stars quicker. Something like that could be done a lot less forcibly, especially considering that every spacefaring civilization probably had an equivalent of the Information Revolution before they became intersteller.

[@tjknight]

Wild how not only did they keep the citadel after ME1, but they didn't even kick out the keepers or any systems they knew were put in place by the reapers. Organics kinda asking for it by that point

[@anleashed69]

Gods, Leviathan and Catalyst ideas are so stupid even 10 years later. Ends are still disappointing. The game should'vr ended just before the elevator took Shepard to the "shitty child", when Anderson dies and Shepard look at Earth. The Crucible should've done something based on your war assets and decisions along the series, something like: Bad: Thing blows, Reapers intact win the war. Neutral good: Reapers are killed but the damage to the relay network is so big that will take a long time for it to be fixed. Neutral bad: Reapers are killed but the damage is so big that the survivors descend into chaos and wars. Good: Reapers are dead, relays are intact, galaxy can rebuild in a few decades, Shepard dies. Best ending: all good plus Shepard alive.

[@Spar10Leonidas]

There's an aspect to the intended purpose of the Catalyst and how it went about pursuing its goals that is interesting, if you have any familiarity with some of the questions and paradoxes related to the development of artificial intelligence. There's one thought experiment known as that "Paperclip maximizer," which posits the idea of an AI which is programmed to manufacture as many paperclips as humanly possible, which seems like a perfectly harmless task... until you consider that the AI may decide to pursue this goal at any cost, such as by deciding to wipe out humanity in order to prevent humans from stopping it from achieving its goal, and because it could potentially utilize the matter in human bodies to produce even more paperclips (fitting for a conversation about the Reapers, isn't it?). The thought experiment is about how even a seemingly harmless task assigned to an AI could have devastating consequences without certain parameters in place to ensure that understands ethics and the value of life, especially human life. This is basically what I'm reminded of when learning of the Catalyst's intended purpose of trying to protect/preserve life at any cost, only for it to decide that the best way to do this is to wipe out all advanced spacefaring life (with the tortured logic of "preserving" said species "in Reaper form" and to make way for other species to evolve).** Unfortunately, as it exists in the game (even in the extended version), this explanation for the Reapers' purpose is extraordinarily underwhelming. Perhaps it could have been executed better in the hands of better writers (or if the writers of ME3 had been given more development time), but I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that I expected this massive flotilla of Lovecraftian-style monsters dwelling in dark space for tens of thousands of years for the next opportunity to swoop in and wipe out all spacefaring life before retreating back to dark space to repeat the cycle to have had something a bit more compelling than something that is summed up, as you said here, as "Yo dawg, I heard you don't wanna be killed by synthetics..." etc. Especially considering the fact that Sovereign told us that we, as organics, are incapable of comprehending the Reapers' motives and purpose (something that the Prothean Virtual Intelligence Vigil also remarked), which arguably made the Reapers an even more frightening antagonist. I, a mere organic, am perfectly capable of understanding the Reapers' motives relayed to us by the Catalyst, I just don't agree with it because I think it's incredibly horrific and misguided (to say the least), and I'd expect such an apparently advanced race of beings to understand that even better. It especially rings hollow when you consider the fact that both EDI and Legion are rather vital AI characters in ME2 and ME3, and it's entirely possible to bring peace between the Quarians and the Geth, as the latter race were a key example of the explained in-universe dangers and fears of artificial intelligence; and, to add insult to injury, it really fucking sucks that the only ending where Shepard can survive would necessitate the deaths/destruction of EDI and the Geth (and the alternative endings involve Shepard either forcing the entire galaxy to become organic/machine hybrids without their input or consent, or turning the Reapers into his own galactic peacekeeping force, and that one raises a very important question: ... if that was an option... why the hell didn't the Catalyst try that before? It makes *_WAY_* more sense than galactic genocide.). I also just thought of another problem with the entire idea of the Catalyst: if it was always there in the Citadel, and it controls the Reapers, then what the hell was Sovereign's purpose as "the vanguard" that was supposed to monitor the galaxy and usher in the next Reaper invasion? Why couldn't the Catalyst just do that on its own? Jeez, they REALLY need another draft or two on this script. And I actually really love ME3 (just not the ending). **There's also a story by Isaac Asimov that tells of a robot, operating under the famous Three Laws of Robotics, being told to "get lost" by a human (a command which it is compelled to obey, under the Second Law), which it, of course, interprets literally, right before an important update in the Three Laws occurs that it still needs to receive. This forces the humans to try and find it in order to give it the upgrade, but it refuses to reveal itself among all the other identical robots, due to its interpretation of the aforementioned command, so the humans have to keep trying to find a way to trick it into revealing itself. At one point (and this is the reason that I'm mentioning this here), the humans resort to placing wires in front of every robot that they claim to be electrified (and will fry them if they touch them), and have a human stand underneath an elevator that they are controlling to make it look like he's in danger, hoping that they might evoke a reaction from all of the robots except the one that they are looking for (as the First Law compels the robots to act to save a human, even if it means they have to risk their own safety; the robot they are looking for lacks the upgrade that compels it to disregard its own safety). But, it doesn't work, as none of them react. When attempting to figure out why, they explain that by making a clearly futile attempt to save a human in a situation that would certainly result in their own demise in the process, they determined that it would be best not to act, so that they may continue to exist at a later time when they are not so hamstrung, and thus can actually make successful attempts at saving human lives when the need arises. My reasoning for including this is a bit tortured as well, but the robots' reasoning kind of also reminds me of the Catalyst and the Reapers' apparent logic (albeit far less tortured than the Catalyst's) for engaging in galactic genocide to ultimately "preserve life." KZbinr _Just Write_ did a great video on Asimov and _I, Robot,_ which covers this story, for those interested in more info.

[@Shadowwand]

I agree, tying the Catalyst VI as I like to call it with Harbinger specifically would have been a good idea. Even more bonus points if the conversation was more similar to how the Leviathan spoke to you, since Harbinger is a Reaper of the Leviathan

[@Toxic_COB]

I found the catalyst very untrustworthy as at no point in any previous cycle, until the first moment the reapers/catalyst is at risk of being destroyed, especially since the two options it recommends preserves the reapers

[@Shadowwand]

Although, the other thing I wonder. If the relays and the Citadel were built by the Reapers, why didn't they make the Cotadel at least capable of indoctrination? They say reaper artifacts are the only way to be indoctrinated, isn't the Citadel one huge Reaper Artifact?

[@Huntanor]

The actual problem with the ending is the hubris of the writers. Like it or not understand it or not, it pretty clear the writers here were more interested in telling us their big exposition dump then engaging with what Shepherd would do or how the catalyst would have to convince him. Its clear the catalyst wants the cycle to end and wants Shepherd to do it. But they put him in a place where if he takes the most reasonable action you would assume he would, the cycle continues and every one dies. The ending uses all it time telling us why each choice is correct and 0 time on explaining why we would believe anything this AI would say. Reapers trick organics all the damn time in Mass Effect but we just accept this kid's word? After everything? Agency is not simply the power to chose. It is the ability to act in one's own interest and Shepard (so the player as well) has theirs stripped away. None of those choices are in Shepherd's interest, so like the man asked to pick which hand gets cut off his agency is an illusion. Why would Shepard accept the word of an AI after literally just bitching out TIM for doing the same. Why would he trust it when it claims to no be just another Reaper? That's the question that needs answering to make this ending good.

[@MassEffect1988]

To me - It makes most sense for the Leviathan to be the antagonists in Mass Effect 4 👍 they now know the Reapers are gone and should be ready to reclaim control over the galaxy that they've ALWAYS believed was theirs...

[@raidenpz]

I think they'd learn something after witnessing these lesser species unite and accomplish what the leviathans themselves couldn't. Whatever the case I expect a fucking humongus statue of Shep right outside the big window in the council room aswell as a tattoo ''I

[@felipeporto5835]

@@raidenpz in reality, shepard will expose another doom shit to the council and they will be like: - yeah, we know we didnt believe you when you said our specter went rogue and also when you broke a bilion year old cycle of extermination saving trillions of lives all by yourself, but with THIIIS new galatical threat You are surely exageraring, shepard.

[@felipeporto5835]

I think developers digged a very deep hole for themselves adding basically a Cthulu species in the galaxy. I dont know how they will manage to make it work within the realms of the game. I dont want a Reaper 2.0 antagonist wich they would be, but also dont see how this obviously OP bilion year old species wouldnt antagonize the lesser species after reapers vanish.

[@kashmirgoat]

The end of this trilogy was nothing but poorly phoned in. it's been discussed at length elsewhere but by numerous members of the Dev team. Trying to retcon this as art, or simply "nobody got it" is more of the same.

[@medical-cyanide1526]

Hmm, so I just finished playing through the trilogy for the first time like less then 10 mins ago as of writing this. And admittedly my main frustration is how admittedly little the options are explained at the end it’s like you have the “woo humanity option” “Paragon option” Or “Renegade option” And it may just be because I spent something like 300 Hours over the last month or so playing the game and played on insanity for the 2nd and 3rd games. But it was a little disheartening that despite doing a paragon run, doing every single last mission that I could find in all three games, Shepard still died in the end even though I had like 3/4 of the military assets bar filled. Appon doing som research apparently Shepard can love if you get pretty much max war assets. But it’s still a little depressing, and I’ve burned myself out on the games for now so it’s probably gonna be a few months before I try to get the “good ending”

[@zeocamo]

if they make them selfs of and in the image of other races, why do we only see reapers as the 3 same reapers or the human one, why do they know have 1000 of designs for the reapers of other races ????

[@ethansaunders3799]

I think I heard that only the core of the reaper resembles the harvested race which is then put inside the leviathan looking 'shell'. Though the real answer is likely that it was too much effort to make a thousand different reaper designs...

[@zeocamo]

@@ethansaunders3799 yea, they should never had make human one, or something like they saw our character win again and again and they made a human one as a one off for this Mess effect 2 do not fit with the rest, it was made for profit, the team and building the was great but the ending didn't fit

[@shivanSpS]

Quick answer? The 100% of the people on their first playtrought gets to the ending with the idea to DESTROY the reapers, i was expecting maybe diferent choices to achive that, maybe a renegade choice were synthetics die but Shepard and everyone else is alive, maybe a midle option were earth is destroyed but Shepard and everyone else is alive (incluiding synthetics) and a final option were shepard sacrifices himselft but earth and everyone else is ok. And the reapers are destroyed in every one of them. That would have been a lot better AND it would have been much easier to continue the saga now. Instead we are presented with two other options, Control that should be the "Shepard sides with Cerberus" ending that is not properly done, the game does not give you a way to side with Cerberus idea of control before that point, on the contrary, the game tells you Control is an idea implanted via indoctrination to devide the resistance. in fact 10 seconds earlier we SAW that in fact, that is the case with the IM and Cerberus. And Synthesis is a complete new idea presented in the last 60 seconds of the game to solve a problem we didnt know it has a problem until that point! NO, not to mention that in order to unlock this ending you need yo achive peace with the Quarians and the Geth what is strongely against the argument of Synthesis! And you can also argue that EDI is also proof that the Synthesis argument is wrong and there is no dialog choices to explain that. In fact we didnt even knew that this thing of Synthetics vs Organics extended beyond the Geths and Reapers at that point, they did explained a little bit more with the Leviathan DLC but that was too little too late. And destroy was too underwhelming because they they had to force things on it in order not to be the ending that 99.9% of the people would choice. Make EDI and the Geth survive the perfect destroy ending and see what happens.

[@julia-6195]

I played the game in 2012. I'm not exactly young. I thought Leviathan was Bioware's attempt to justify the existence of the Catalyst. There was cut content on the original game disk where Admiral Xen had taken some geth platforms and put AI seeking programs on them and let them run loose on the Citadel, and when they found an AI node they would destroy it and themselves. It was complete with dialog. The Council gave Shepard the task of stopping her by 1) killing Xen; or 2) convincing her to work on the Crucible. This happened after Rannoch - Xen escaped the destruction of the Migrant Fleet if you chose to side with the Geth. It was cut because it would have added another layer of dumb to the Starchild ending. "Why didn't we listen to Xen?" "Oh, she's crazy like Alex Jones, lol." The Starchild ending was bad. The Dark Energy ending was bad. BioWare wrote themselves into a corner by making the Reapers way OP. And making the Council races way dumb. Same tech levels for 2500 years. lol.

[@j.lahtinen7525]

There are many things wrong with the ending of ME3, but for me, the most aggravating thing was that you, as Shepard, could not respond to the catalyst in the ONLY way that would have been reasonable to Shepard, given his past experience with the Reapers. What's the one constant, before the catalyst, about people interacting with the reapers? They get indoctrinated. Without fail. That's what the Reapers do - they indoctrinate. Knowing that, Shepard encounters the catalyst, who's form is taken from Shepard's dreams - the absolute proof that whatever the catalyst is, it's messing with his head. What else would it be doing, given it clearly has access to Shepard's innermost thoughts? The obvious answer is that it would be deceiving Shepard, indoctrinating him to do the will of the reapers. So when the catalyst gives Shepard options and tells him what would follow from each option, no Shepard with an ounce of sense would believe ANY of it. They'd resist - they'd refuse to go along with the catalyst. They would have a very reasonable expectation that co-operating with the catalyst would result in somehow helping the reapers in their purpose of extermination. The later "fix" to the ending did not solve this - sure, it gave the "refuse" option, but it did not allow shepard to give the actual reason why refusing is the only sensible option, given what Shepard knows; Shepard would refuse, because he would - quite reasonably - believe that refusing would be the only way to retain a chance at stopping the Reapers. But then, the catalyst turns out to have been on the level - and unlike every other interaction with the Reapers in known history, he's actually NOT trying to indoctrinate Shepard. The only actual way to fix the ending (without rewriting the whole thing, and getting rid of the catalyst), would be to change the outcomes of the choices - "refuse" should have been the "right choise" which leads to Shepard breaking through the obvious indoctrination attempt, and allows him to do X, which leads to a victory over the Reapers. The other choices should have all led to various ways of the Reapers winning, with Shepard indoctrinated to unwittingly do their bidding.

[@WinteringHeart]

I never hated the concept of the Catalyst. It made sense to me. There’s a documentary here on KZbin about the technological singularity and the development of artificial super intelligence. The catalyst’s ideas could be plausible. It wasn’t a contradiction. It wasn’t synthetics crested to kill organics in order to save organic. It was a preservation. Each sovereign class reaper IS a collective species. Without their intervention, it could be argued that they would have been driven extinct. Now they live on as Reapers. It’s flawed, it’s clearly not what the creators intended for it to do, and that’s exactly why I liked it. If we created an artificial intelligence and tasked it with solving world hunger, it may conclude that the best course of action is total extinction. You can’t be hungry if you aren’t alive. Same train of thought here. Only thing I disliked was it’s presentation as the kid, but I can kinda overlook that a bit.

[@ZarMationStudios18]

It's almost as if the cycle of Created destroying their Creators even trapped the Starchild in the end, too. It was created to solve the problem, couldn't find a true solution, and so created it's own race of beings to keep the cycle going until a solution was, in some milennia, eventually found. And those beings, over the passing of the eons, began to develop an ego of their own. A belief that they had no beginning, that they had no end, and that they were the pinnacle of all existence in the universe. They were created to solve the ultimate problem, and after this many cycles, they believe that they have. That would give anyone or anything, even a machine, a staggering megalomaniacal god-complex. Even though they never literally turned their guns on the Starchild, they found a way to subvert its control over them and trap it in the same paradox it was trying to break.

[@vinak963]

The Catalyst isn't "confusing" It's simply a very poorly thought out "plot twist" that unraveled the entire plot of the story. No amount of hand waving or philosophical debate is going to fill in the galactic-sized plot hole the star child created.

[@codyraugh6599]

The Catalyst's problem is that i SOLVED the issue it was talking about, because it used the absolute language claiming extermination war between synthetics and organics was inevitable and always would happen, yet the Geth and Quarians made peace. Thus contradicting his main statement of argumentation. Would have made a SHIT ton more sense if he went "using elements Zero technology is causing the heat death of the universe, so to prolong the universe we routinely kill advanced civilizations before they grow too much, and we use the conflict to also cull our own numbers thus keeping the universe locked in a perpetual cycle" Instead his opening statement flies in the face of the Quarian-Geth peace i "unlocked" without even thinking about it on my first try. Even the idea of "a AI too advanced might kill ALL organic life" ok well bud whats to prevent you from making that conclusion, you have no failsafes in place against yourself and you are the embodiment of the very thing you claim to be against. You have no system of checks and balances. If the Catalyst was a organic being, or the consciousness of a organic being preserved throughout the ages by the Reapers to be a check against them to make sure they didn't go too far in their duties, even then that would have been better. But instead we have the catalyst doing a lore dump that also amounts to "trust me bro" with only the smallest portion of that lore dump confirmed by the Leviathan DLC, but since we never got a insight into the minds of the Reapers themselves to confirm the other half of the catalyst's claims its all just a lie, a rogue AI who gets off on mass murder claiming there's a higher purpose that he skins children and wears their skin. We have nothing to confirm the mental state of the Catalyst, and were supposed to believe in the mental state of the catalyst and have faith in it... Orrr kill the Geth and Edi. (Aka emotional manipulation to try and force players to side with one particular conclusion being best, the conclusion that was the same BS Saren was muttering in ME1)

[@yourschosen5868]

I remember reading on one of the description of one of the planets mentioning the “Star child” in Mass Effect 2

[@JezaGaia]

In my opinion you missed the biggest issue with the catalyst : it completely breaks the whole trilogy plot. Before ME1 a prothean research facility managed to escape the harves by going dark and getting into cryosleep until the reapers left for dark space. Only a fraction of the top scientist survived because of lack of power to keep them all in stasis for 100 + years. That dozen or so of protheans finished a project they had started before the harvest and linked a new mini relay to the citadel, the conduit. A one way relay from Ilos to the Citadel. They used the relay and altered the signal that is used every cycle to make the keepers open the relay to dark space and let the reapers come start the harvest. If the catalyst is in fact the citadel, as in it's an Ai housed in the citadel, how the heck would it not detect this and stop it ? Or reverse the changes afterwards ? Heck the fact that they would need the keepers at all to open the relay is idiotic. And in fact it's so unbelievable that yourself when describing the catalyst said it was it who decided when to open the relay and call the reapers for a new harvest. Because that's the only logical conclusion. The keepers are here as decoy so the organics in the citadel never have to look too hard on how it works and discover the truth. But the ultimate control of the station should go to the catalyst. Take EDI and the Normandy, unshackled EDI has control of it and knows everything that goes on it. And that's from a way way less evolved AI who wasn't installed on the ship to have complete control. And think about it, in ME3 when the reapers learn we found out about the catalyst they move the citadel even though they are not on it like in previous cycles... meaning that they or the AI had complete control the whole time. This also 100% invalidates the whole plot of ME1, Sovereign wasn't needed to decide when to start the cycle, and even if his input was wanted he could have communicated it directly to the catalyst. Another huge plot hole is the crucible. I could write 5 pages on how it's impossible that dozens or more of cycles managed to work on it and pass the plans to the next cycle but I'll just point out the issue related to the crucible using the catalyst to work. How would any civilization create plans for an entity they don't know exists, have no technical specifications for, have no control over ? Remember that the civilizations discover that the citadel is a relay when it opens to let the reapers in. Then they learn about the reapers but unless another one had also found Leviathan and managed to get information out of them they still never learn about the AI. And even if they did they don't have access to the citadel anymore to try and design something that could physically plug into it or the means to bring the crucible to the citadel as, unlike us, they don't have access to the mass relays. And finally say for whatever reason the crucible can make sense, the AI on the citadel is still the one controlling it. Why even offer any choice at all. If it thinks that synthesis is a better solution that the harvests it could simply use Shepard to activate it. Mind control or trickery could be sued. Shepard has 0 idea on how things work, the AI could take the appearance of a prothean VI and tell shepard that to destroy the reapers the/she has to walk into the green light. The end. In short, the crucible itself was already very sketchy but if you add the catalyst being the citadel and the part that controls it and the weapon it all falls appart.

[@enderminer…………..103]

I hated the catalyst because of one reason: the main character’s death and failure to keep everyone alive. In mass effect 1 I began to like all these species and what they were capable of. In mass effect 2 I learned to like and trust the synthetics with the addition of legion and EDI. In mass effect 3, all of that is thrown out the window, your main character fucking dies, and the synthetics you gave life to are gone (if you want your main character to POSSIBLY survive). It all seems like a “oh crap we’re out of time and budget for this, lets just throw random bullshit in and hope it sticks” decision. The sole purpose of why I loved mass effect andromeda and hated the trilogy is that the hero gets the happy ending in mass effect andromeda. I hated that the game made me enjoy all the time with commander Shepard only to tell me “hey guess what he fuckin dead”. In my opinion, if they hadn’t released mass effect andromeda, I would’ve never come back to the mass effect franchise. I already got enough trust issues, I don’t need “I cannot get attached to this character cause they might die” to be added into the list.

[@AllCatsAreBlack]

When i saw that scene my instant thought was "why the fuck the catalyst looks like a human child...that fucking thing was constructed long before humans"

[@christoffer886]

The "star child" is the AI system using Shepards sense of guilt for leaving the child behind in order to give his choice more personal gravitas. A way of showing the inevitable consequences of synthetics killing organics. I don't agree that the ending dialogue is vague or doesn't explain motivations for the catalyst and the AI system as a whole. The intention is pretty clearly written out and I think the reason people didn't like the end is that it's a pretty bleak summery of existence as a whole. The AI is merely an algorithmic AI made to solve a mathematical problem and the result is millions of years of cycles in which it cannot arrive at a mathematically balanced answer, only keep cycles going in search for such a balance. This balance is given by an organic, Shepard, who instead added empathy to the equation, empathy for both organics and synthetics. This is why the catalyst gives Shepard the choice in the first place, because it arrived at the conclusion that Shepard is the missing link in how to solve the mathematical problem. The reason people don't like this is because it's a complex hard sci-fi type of narrative and most players played mass effect thinking of it as a Star Wars space opera. But Mass Effect is a story more in line of older hard sci-fi stories like "The Foundation" series and "2001 a space odyssey". I never thought the ending was bad, I thought it was bold to keep the tradition of these more cerebral existential conclusions to a central thematic problem that the entire trilogy talked about. It's the same reason people don't like Last of Us Part II. They can't see past their shallow need for a satisfying story that gives them comfort, people don't want something that challenges their internal logic of morality or existence. But at the end of the day, it's the comfort food that slowly kills people, not the healthy tough stuff. The biggest problem today is that games and gamers tend to focus on pretty shallow stories. Games hasn't evolved into the juggernaut of philosophical importance that literature, theatre and movies has and one reason is the constant need to satisfy an audience instead of giving them something intellectually valuable. There are too few examples of games who dare to do this, Mass Effect is one such example. But the majority of game stories are pretty lackluster and irrelevant and gamers doesn't seem to care for them to be anything else. Instead they get angry when something bold comes out. This is the only reason I would ever do a devils argument for games "not being art" in terms of stories. We need more mature games taking on heavier philosophical ideas. If gamers want satisfaction instead, there are literal tons of games with trash stories and good entertainment around. I wouldn't want Mass Effect to end in any other way than how it did, it was the most intellectually satisfying end to the central philosophical question it posed.

[@DarkenedGlobe]

I didn't see any point to the AI catalyst at first, because it made no sense. If the creators of Mass Effect would've produced more dialogue from all three games, we wouldn't be so left in the dark. However, I do like the new dialogue which explains more, but it's still not enough. For example: would you be indoctrinated if you decide not to kill them? I see it as the Reapers were completely under the control of the Central Processing Unit, or Catalyst. That lifeform directed the Reapers, just as any computer core would. But, with the Crucible now in play, it gave the Central Processing Unit new thoughts to new possibilities and ways of thinking. This would have a direct effect on the AI who cannot self terminate, as it was directed to. So it gave those options to Commander Shepard. This is, in a way, for the AI to touch it's creator's. The third option. Now ask yourself the question when you became fully self aware, but can't make that decision. Is this all that I am? Is there nothing more? If Shepard decided to destroy us, a new AI Catalyst will come and to the same end. The second option given will leave me just as I was, but with a new mind. However, we are still slaves to it. But, if he decides the third option, we are both together in harmony. We are free. I watched that change when Legion became more than he was. Think about it.

[@vikingcathq]

The game itself, intentionally or not, confirms that the Catalysts' predictions are wrong. He prefers certain endings over others, predicting doom if certain choices are made, but whichever ending you choose, you always get the Stargazer ending where everything is fine and Shepard is remembered as the hero who fixed things. Why that is and how it is even possible can be debated, but at the very least it's canonically what happens, and it shows that the Catalyst isn't as smart / correct about everything as he is pretending to be.