Well, I beat the game last week and have been thinking about it a ton, and just last night after watching a friend play the Ranaoch mission (with significantly different results than my Shepard)and the Thessia mission. I have come to the conclusion that I actually like the ending, but do not like the execution.
I like everything up until you choose your option and there is an underwhelming cutscene. IE I dont like the fact that Joker and crew are running for no apparent reason, and I think there should have been a small cut scene showing what happened to Harbinger specifically.
I like the fact that the Reapers were not in fact the ultimate beings in the universe, and that they were in fact an intelligent process by another more advanced race. I don't think this diminishes the Reapers as an enemy, as they are still an almost incomprehensibly powerful species, and without the Crucible surley would have completed the cycle.
I like the idea of the Catalyst, perhaps more than most because it reminds me of an article I had read about a week before finishing the game...
"When you look at the current level at which our own technology is advancing, quantum computing, cloaking technology, robotics, nanotech, communications. It's not really such a far stretch to think that somewhere out there among the trillions of possible life harboring planets, that another intelligent civilization has done the same things. If they had even a 100 year head start on us they would already be so far advanced, now give them a 1000 year head start or even a 1 million year head start. Their technology would be so far in advance of our own. They could literally be here right now. Existing inside and outside of our known reality. Hidden only by a technological barrier. If they were a billion years older than our civilization i doubt we could even comprehend there technology. A type 3 civilization as Michio Kaku says would have the technology to harness the power of an entire galaxy. Who knows what a type 4 civilization would resemble. When you consider how short 1 million years is on a cosmic scale, its not out of the realm of possibilities."-posted on the dailygalaxy.
along with many other theory's and guesses at advanced life in the universe.
I think that the Catalyst being behind the Reapers motivations lives up to Sovereigns promise that their purpose was incomprehensible to us. Sure we can get the gist of it, they are here to harvest all advanced organic life to preserve it as the ultimate end of evolution every 50,000 years. To save it from otherwise being simpley destroyed by synthetics eventually. But their ultimate motivations and the thought process behind them are still not clear.(Give that ME is a story created and written by humans, the Catalyst and its ambiguity was necessary to keep the concept of motivations we can't understand)
Then I started thinking of the motivations of the race that is whatever the catalyst beings are, what are their motivations for wanting to save us? What if it is because ultimately they know (from experience) that evolution will allow another species to "catch up" to them, to be their equal, or otherwise, a competitor. What better way to stop that from happening than the Reaper cycle? Preventing both synthetics and organics from achieving this. Of course in order for this to be the motivation of the catalyst that assumes that there is some lying going on on its end, (Synergy would likely in the end entail some sort of control by the Catalyst, as would the Control option, which is why they are presented as Paragon by the Catalyst) but would that really be suprising?
Or it could be that a species that far advanced had really come to appreciate life, and thought that preserving it via the Reapers was better than all remnants and history of the species being erased from the Universe inevitably by some other force, likely synthetics of their own creation .
This is where the Rannoch mission comes into play, people that got the best outcome for this mission,(as I did) may think that this disproves what the Catalyst says. However after seeing my friend play the same mission, something became clear. From the point of view of the Catalyst war with the synthetics is inevitable. They are right, or at least right enough to be skeptical of any peace that Shepard may have secured for now. The simple fact that all it took was for Shepard to make a couple wrong decisions and the Geth wiped out the Quarians (or visa versa) shows that peace would likely not last forever. The only way they could EVER fully get along is if they were one in the same. (The synergy/singularity ending). Which further indicates that the Catalyst wanted you to select either control, or synergy, not destroy. Yet still gave you the choice, because in the end the Catalyst is likely powerful enough to rectify it if need be.
Are the Catalysts from the Milky way? Or are they capable of traveling with ease between the vastness of dark space, placing Reapers on the rim of every galaxy, and relays throughout each? Harvesting or "preserving" life on a scale that humans cannot begin to comprehend?
I could go on with many theory's, but that is what I enjoyed about the ending of ME3. It had something the rest of ME3 lacked, and something ME2 and especially ME1 had in spades. Mystery. The Catalyst's very existence, something greater than the Reapers, means things are not as simple as Shepard, and galactic civilization as a whole thought. There is always a bigger fish.
Where Bioware went wrong, is execution of these grand ideas. The cutscene with the Normandy did not make any sense, but it could of if they had just filled that little plothole with a small cutscene or line of dialogue, just given Joker and crew a reason to be leaving through the relays. Like being chased by Harbinger for instance, who has a personal vendetta against Shepherd and crew.
A cutscene showing him chasing after one of your squadmates, and then the Normandy doing a pickup, a few ominous lines from Harbinger about how he is going to end this Resistance once and for all by destroying the normandy, and you could easily have them running from him (with every intention of returning) and have the "space magic" from the crucible come from behind as it did, but this time "saving" the Normandy from Harbinger.
2 birds, one stone, Normandy cutscene makes sense, and you get more visual closure on the Reapers and specifically Harbinger, while still keeping the essence of the original ending intact.
That would be more satisfying to me and many others I think, and I made it up as I type this....
There are a couple other smaller plotholes or issues that could be easily patched with a couple cutscenes or lines of dialouge. I would go into them but I feel at this point I am ranting, and I am on my iPad..
All in all, great and brave move for the ending Bioware, half assed execution though.
