Evolution cannot be given. It has to be achieved...

[Apollo45]

They throw out all of the themes and options you were given throughout the series in order to have you walk through one of three doors.

Why must the choices be resolved at the end in some dénouement? They came full circle during ME3 - the genophage, the geth, the rachni. And they still influenced the ending slightly via the EMS value for their completion.

The choices don't all need to be resolved at the same point, and I don't think I said that (although it might have come across that way, so forgive me if it did), but they need to affect the ending. EMS value influences the cutscene at the end, sure, and to an extent the choices (although unless you speedran the game you'll get up to 2800 EMS without breaking a sweat), but that doesn't really affect what you're given. Whether you saved or cured the Krogans, except by showing an arbitrary number that can be overcome with ease, doesn't affect what choices you get at the end. If you killed the Rachni Queen or saved her, again except through an arbitrary number, it doesn't affect that there are only three doors you can go through. That was my point; in the other choices, if you earned a character's loyalty, if you did enough Paragon or Renegade options, if you chose correctly in the games/scenes beforehand, you would get a different option than you would otherwise. In the end, however, you don't really get that.

From very close to the beginning of the game, you're told that the Crucible has to be combined with the Catalyst in order to be used. The Catalyst is just as much a MacGuffin as the Crucible is, and ignoring the foreshadowing for something doesn't make the foreshadowing magically cease to exist.

While yes, they mentioned The Catalyst vaguely without any idea what it really is, except for after they thought it was the Citadel. That doesn't constitute a reference to the God-Child that is really the Catalyst. The mention of a random name that really doesn't mean anything doesn't constitute foreshadowing. Harbinger mentioning that he wasn't the leader of the Reapers, as was previously thought, would be foreshadowing. The research team finding references to another enemy, or how the Reapers seem to follow something that knows more about them than they should, or anything like that would be foreshadowing. Saying "The Catalyst!" isn't foreshadowing. Likewise, a MacGuffin is a plot device, something that drives the narrative forward. The God-Child isn't a MacGuffin because he doesn't drive the narrative forward, he ends the narrative with god-like powers that "solve" the problems of the protagonist. That is exactly the definition of a Deus Ex Machina.

Tell me this, then. If your options were completely up to the Catalyst and the Catalyst alone, why would it let you choose Destroy? Destroy not only undoes everything that the Catalyst achieved in preserving organic life in Reaper form (by destroying them), it also leaves the galaxy without any means to prevent galatic civilization from creating more synthetics which it believes would inevitably rebel against and wipe out their organic creators. Destroy isn't a solution to its problem. Control isn't much of a solution to its problem either, since it would be based entirely on Shepard's perspectives. The only option that actually resolves its problem is Synthesis.

The Catalyst does not say "I am the Catalyst! Here are my three options for you!" The Catalyst says "I am the Catalyst! I know you heard about destroying and controlling the Reapers, and that is indeed possible; not too big on Destroy myself, though. But I have a different idea: Synthesis!"

That's exactly the thing though; it doesn't have to let you choose it. It never had to bring you up to the platform in the first place, it never had to tell you anything. The thing is, quite frankly, an idiot. especially for an omnipotent AI. The ending paints the Catalyst in a much different light for me, which, again, is reinforced by it telling you to go screw yourself when you shoot it in the Extended Cut. He doesn't have to do anything, and while he is letting you choose, he's letting you choose his options. Why else would, when you decide to essentially not play half the game and get below 2800 EMS, you not get the option for Synthesis? With few exceptions, whether or not you have more ships or whatever doesn't affect that the Crucible does the same thing that it would do otherwise, does it?

If he chose to he could stop the Reapers from attacking without you blowing up a glowing-red glass tube. He could hand over control of them to you without you being electrocuted. The only one he can't do without you is Synthesis, so really that's the only one that is partially your choice.

And how do you know that? How do you know that the Catalyst has direct control over the Reapers? From the ending, nothing gives me that idea; rather, my impressions were that the Catalyst created the Reaper cycles to be fully autonomous, so the Catalyst itself has no power over it - it needs an outside force, Shepard, to put an end to the cycle.

The Catalyst references itself as the "collective intelligence of all Reapers". Now, that might at first sound like it just has the knowledge that the Reapers do, but knowledge and intelligence are two vastly different things. What the Catalyst is saying is that it is the brains behind the entire Reaper operation. It consistently refers to the Reapers and itself as "We", meaning that he is an active part of the cycles that he created.

And how does it "throw out all of the themes"? You are aware that there are options presented?

Of course. Destruction, which is what they were going for in the first place, albeit with more precision than a massive wiping-out of all synthetics and part-synthetics in the galaxy. But the entire series continually reiterates how controlling them doesn't work, much like controlling other species/races rarely works for the long run. The Catalyst's solution runs counter to that huge part of the series. Likewise, the Synthesis choice feels like it runs counter to the rest of the freedom presented in the game. It's a game about choices, and that solution deliberately takes away all the choice that the rest of the galaxy has. I find that rather disturbing, frankly.

Regardless of what happens after you choose Red, Blue or Green, during the scene you're only given three choices that don't change no matter what you did in any of the previous games.

And I'm guessing you have no clue that if you don't manage to unite the galaxy sufficiently, you don't get the "Green" option? And potentially neither the "Red" or "Blue" option?

Yes, your Effective Military Strength impacts the final outcome. It influences how much damage the galaxy takes from the activation of the Crucible, if any. It influences the fate of the Normandy's crew. It determines whether the squadmates you take with you on the run to the beam survive or are killed by Harbinger. It determines how many options are available to you in the end. And it even determines if Shepard can survive one of the options.

And what determines your Effective Military Strength? All of the choices you've made in the series. Past choices influence which War Assets you can obtain in ME3, can grant you additional War Assets, or even have a negative impact on your Effective Military Strength. The ending sums up how well you managed to unite the galaxy and gather an army to fight for the Crucible based on the choices you've made throughout the series.

That's true, but I was referring to the three choices in themselves. As I said before, getting 2800 EMS involves playing through the game and doing a couple of extra missions, nothing difficult at all, and in that it's about as much of a choice as deciding whether you're going to move around over the course of a day. If you're exceedingly lazy you can probably go without getting out of bed for a day or two, yes, but unless you're writing this from bed you've moved around today, and it's the same way with getting up to that much EMS. You'd have to actively try to get as little as possible to eliminate the blue ending, and even eliminating the green one is a chore. So as far as "choices" go, getting to relatively low arbitrary number isn't as much a choice as playing the game, and in my mind that doesn't change my argument.

In the third game it comes during Mordin's sacrifice, where you're given more and more options based on what you've done in all the previous games. You can stop him or you can let him go. Or you can inform him of the danger, or you can hide what you did, and so on.

[quote[Other than dialogue differences (which don't have any impact on the outcome), there's three ways that Mordin's scene at the end of Priority: Tuchanka can go. Two of those options - letting him cure the genophage and shooting him - are invariably available to you. Only one outcome requires you to have made specific choices in the previous games.[/quote]

Those dialogue options make much of the difference though, especially since they center around a storyline and a group of characters that I actually care about. We get to see the resolution of three games of work in that moment. We see how Mordin reacts depending on your choices, we get to see the aftermath in the Krogan's reaction depending on what you did. That those dialogue changes, along with the third option, are extremely well written and meaningful to someone who's gone through all three games with the Genophage at the back of their mind only adds to that. That's an example of good writing and good choice direction. Having your choices based off of, again, an arbitrary number system isn't good writing or choice direction.

I'm going to finish off on this quote, because it demonstrates the two main reasons that people complain about the ending:

1. ignorance (as I've already explained how your EMS affects the ending); and
2. the fact that none of the options are perfect, sunshine-and-flowers outcomes.

Here's where I get annoyed with people who are defending the ending. Discussing this with you isn't bad, but it's when people simply jump to conclusions.

The EMS isn't a meaningful choice that leads you to the ending. There are thousands of combinations of things that you can do to get to 2800 EMS, and, as I said, it's almost more difficult to get below that number than it is to get above it, and it's not something that's meaningful to the series as a whole. It's just a number that you're shooting for as you play along, and over the course of the game you get more numbers to add to it. Contrast that with the choices at the end of ME2, where over the course of the game you're going through your crew's loyalty quests, learning more about them, and at the end that all resolves into choices you make as far as who you're taking along with you, who's going to go lead the second team, who's going to take the crew back to the ship (assuming you rushed straight through the relay after the Collector's boarded your ship), who's going to defend while you take out Reaper Jr, and so on. Those are meaningful choices that change based on whose loyalty missions you did, whether or not you rushed to save the crew or did other side missions, and so on. Earning "points" towards a nebulous goal isn't meaningful, it's busywork, and it's not much of a "choice".

As far as the sunshine-and-flowers, there is not a single place where I mentioned that I wanted everything to turn out all nice and dandy like nothing happened. I never even remotely mentioned how I would liked the ending to have gone, in fact. That's a conclusion you're jumping to because I don't like the ending, and it's another reason why the BSN forums are so toxic. I was fully expecting Shepard to die at the end, and I would have been happy with that outcome if it had been done right. If the relays ended up being destroyed, Shepard and the crew died, and everything is essentially going to hell I would have been more than happy with it if it was well written. The fact of the matter, no matter how much people may blubber on about "opinions!" (and I'm not saying you are, it's just something that I ran into a lot on the BSN forums), is that the endings were poorly written by any standards used in the modern world.

Hopefully all that makes sense. I'm a bit tired, so I might have gone on a tangent or two here and there, but I think the overall message is coherent.

 

[Ultrajoe]

Proving there are no holes in a plot is far from providing evidence that the plot was any good.

Just wanted that said.

 

[sanquin]

Proving there are no holes in a plot is far from providing evidence that the plot was any good.

Just wanted that said.

And even proving that there are no holes in the plot is impossible. As really, especially the ending, but all of ME3 is full with plot holes...

 

[sanquin]

To this day I like to cling to Indoctrination Theory. I know it's not canon and it never will be, but it makes the story and ending so much more interesting to me. That and its grimness seems appropriate.

Not that I had a huge problem with the endings besides that it felt really rushed.

Ever read the comic "Marauder shields" on Deviant Art? It basically partially goes on the indoctrination theory, and gives what I consider would be a far better ending for the game so far. It's still ongoing though so I don't know how the comic will end.

 

[sanquin]

Don't you just enjoy intelligent and meaningful contributions to a conversation?

The links to the very in-depth and well thought out series on why ME3 in general and the ending is so full of plotholes has been linked countless times on this website already. I'm a bit tired of searching for it time and again on youtube. >_>

 

[mr141177]

Just have to say, i'd hoped all the way through the game that the crucible would be the ultimate trap, one that sucks in all your resources and does nothing, nothing at all. Simply crushes your hope. I thought it would be an elegant way to lose.
But that's really not an ending that producers will ever likely approve for a large scale commercial release

 

[sanquin]

The links to the very in-depth and well thought out series on why ME3 in general and the ending is so full of plotholes has been linked countless times on this website already.

I've had numerous ending-bashers throw anti-ending videos and rants at me.

And every single one was full of inaccuracies and ignorance in the first five minutes/paragraphs.

Okay, watch smudboy and his 'bookends of destruction' series. Or at least 'the first five minutes' as you say it of a video or two. I've played through the game plenty of times and did research outside of the game as well, but I've not really found that many inaccuracies in his video's.

Or not, of course, if you don't feel like it. >.>

 

[romxxii]

rushed Deus Ex Machina

Beginning of game: "Shepard, you need this in order to resolve the conflict." End of game: "Shepard, you can use this to resolve the conflict."

I think he meant the star-child being a literal 'God from the Machine.' At least, I hope he did. That's what pissed me off about the ending, really. When Shepard was about to die next to Anderson, I thought, "damn, what a depressing but great ending to the series."

Imagine my disappointment when the credits didn't exactly roll after that point. Felt like a goddamned band that played one too many encore performances.

 

[Olas]

I feel bad for you JamesStone, because it's obvious you spent quite some time and thought process on this little essay of yours and it's at best receiving a lukewarm reception. And, while you're idea makes sense and is at least arguable, I disagree.

It seems pretty clear that the main theme of Mass Effect 3 is unification, working together. Your entire job throughout the game is recruiting various species and factions to join forces and help you, mainly by resolving conflicts between them established in prior games. The idea is that by working together each species can offer its unique set of gifts and talents to help out in the final conflict.

If you play the From Ashes DLC Javic explains that the Protheans' main pitfall was that they had completely conquered the galaxy by themselves and never bothered trying to share power with any other races. Ultimately this homogenization made them easy to defeat because they all fought the same way and had the same weaknesses.
Thus one of the keys to defeating the reapers is to

and work together.

As further evidence of this look at ME3's secondary antagonist TIM, he doesn't want to share the galaxy, he wants humanity to rule it single-handed like the Protheans did. And of course he has to side with the devil to achieve this goal. So his evilness clearly demonstrates that elitism is wrong.

Anyway, I think this is the main overarching theme. That doesn't mean however that it's the only theme. Mass Effect is a big encompassing story with lots of different ideas littered throughout. The fact that the ending is about something else shouldn't be seen as a failure on the writers' part. Plus you could argue that the 'inevitable' conflict between organics and synthetics that the catalyst describes at least reflects the need to unify and coexist, which I guess is what the synthesis ending does.

 

[Apollo45]

Depending on your choices in the previous games and your choices in ME3 that are impacted by previous choices. If you can't get peace between the geth and the quarians or if you sabotage the genophage cure while Wrex is leading the krogan, for example, that causes you to miss out on a significant chunk of War Assets.

I've done calculations, and the minimum amount of Effective Military Strength (at 50% Galatic Readiness) you can obtain from the main missions alone is about three-fifths of the EMS you need to get a second option in the end.

True, but it's still difficult to get that low. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I am saying that you reach a point where you actually have to try to do more poorly than normal to get such a low score. I've found that that number rests somewhere between about 2000-2800 EMS, so while it's possible to get less than 2800 EMS it's right at that border where it becomes easier to just go through the missions and make logical choices than to actively try and sabotage yourself.

Right from Priority: Mars, you learn that the Catalyst has to be combined with the Crucible in order for it to be used. You're told from very early in the game what role the Catalyst will play in stopping the Reapers, and ultimately it plays the exact role you were told it would. Simply because there's more to it than what you may have initially expected does not make it a deus ex machina when you were told exactly what role it would play in the plot.

The concept of a Deus Ex Machina first appeared in Greek theater, where the Gods would literally come down and fix things for characters. From the very beginning these Gods may be referenced, and the Greeks knew very well that the Gods existed in the worlds that the plays were set in, but having one of the Gods come down at the end of the play and fix all the problems was still considered poor writing/performance at best. In the case of ME3 the Deus Ex Machina is that much worse because the references to it are so vague as to be meaningless. If I'm writing a piece I can mention a word all I want, but if that word turns out to be a major, plot-influencing (or in this case plot-ending) character it needs more foreshadowing, referencing, and so on than simply "Combine part A and B and we have no idea what'll happen but it might be our solution to destroying the Reapers!", which is essentially what we got repeatedly over the course of the game. We were told in the most nebulous of terms what role it would play in the plot, and while that may work in some cases - specifically those where you're trying to play up a great-yet-foreshadowed-reveal - in this one it most certainly didn't. A good reveal would involve multiple references, foreshadowing, and the ability to look back at the narrative and go "holy crap, how did I not see this coming?" or at the very least "Yup, I can see where this, this, and this related to the reveal." A simple mention that the Crucible might solve our problems, and that the Catalyst, whatever that is, needs to be there too is not enough to constitute that, thereby making the God-Child specifically a Deus Ex Machina. He's literally God from the Machine, and in terms of the story device he shows up at the end and solves all our problems for us. There was a bit of work to get there, but nothing is really solved by the character, all the work is done by the Catalyst and his neon lights.

Yes, it doesn't have to. As the Catalyst tells you in the ending, Shepard's presence and the Crucible caused it to reconsider the Reapers as solutions to its problem, and it ultimately decided that they were no longer an acceptable option. The Catalyst chooses to bring Shepard before it, chooses to let Shepard decide on whatever option they desire, whether or not the Catalyst sees their choice as a good option.

Exactly! The Catalyst lets Shepard do whatever he wants, but he doesn't have to. And based on his ability to control the Reapers anyway he didn't have any reason to let Shepard kill himself for any of the options except Synthesis. He could just as easily have said "Alright, I'll stop the Reapers. There we go, they're flying back into space now." It makes Shep's sacrifice nearly meaningless.

EMS = More resources to ensure the Crucible's proper construction and more soldiers to ensure that the Crucible is protected from damage that would hinder its functionality. If you don't have at least 2800 EMS, then the Crucible simply isn't in a good enough shape to be used for Synthesis - the same reasoning explains why lower EMS values result in more damage to the galaxy.

Eh, fair enough, but if I remember correctly the cutscene where the Crucible jumps in and then flies towards the Citadel doesn't change much whether you have all of the ship-resources or only half of them. That's mostly what I was basing that off of.

And the Catalyst explicitly explains why Shepard would be able to control the Reapers - because they are not controlled by the Reapers themselves. It's not as if the concept of using the Crucible to take control of the Reapers comes out of nowhere...

No one knows what the Crucible is going to do until Shep gets brought up to the Catalyst, so yes, using the Crucible to control the Reapers does kindof come out of nowhere. The concept of controlling them isn't anything new, but again, it's been shown time and time again that trying to control Reapers, or even the derelicts of Reaper technology, with few exceptions leads to catastrophe. It's a departure from that specific theme, as well as the themes of the "synthetics always rebel blah blah blah" rhetoric that the Catalyst spits at you, that controlling both the Reapers and Synthetics as a whole simply will not work. There's a more interesting implication to be read into here, if we look at that second part, that says the Reapers are not true AIs, and are in fact just remote-controlled machines not unlike a Predator drone. But we can get into that, and the implications of it, later if you want to.

ME2's ending is based on the choices you've made in ME2. As the ending of the series, ME3 bases the final choice on the choices you've made throughout the entire series, whether or not you've made good choices or bad choices. All throughout ME3, numerous plot threads are resolved based on the specific choices you've made throughout the series.

Let me put it this way: how should your choice for the genophage cure affect the functionality of the Crucible? How should the resolution of the Rannoch arc affect the functionality of the Crucible? How should any specific choice determine how an ancient, unknown superweapon functions?

ME2 is about gathering an elite team and earning their trust for a suicide mission; your success is based on how well you built your team and earned their trust. ME3 is about uniting the galaxy to overcome the Reapers; your success is based on how well you unite the forces of the galaxy.

That's the thing though; those choices should be visible in how it functions, and except as text and "points" on a screen they're not. They could have done something very similar to the ME2 ending where you assign different squads and teams to do different things as you're assaulting the Reapers, or they could have made the choices more accurately reflect who you saved and how you saved them, but instead all of those factors are compiled into an arbitrary system of points that tells you if your machine worked or not. The writers, up until that point, were very good at determining how specific choices affected things you might not think they would affect, and when everything in all three games is building up to this one point that should be where they put the most focus on how your choices will affect not only the outcome but how you get to the outcome. Instead they spent almost no time on it and you end up getting, as I said, points. Yes, your success is based on what you did, but it doesn't really matter how well you united the galaxy. The 2800 required points to get all of the endings can come from literally thousands of different combinations of points. It doesn't matter if you destroyed the Krogan and the Geth or if you made peace between everyone as long as you get those 2800 points.

In that sense it's not dissimilar from the mining mini-game in ME2. In both cases, you're going towards a specific number of "points", and it doesn't really matter if you get those "points" through strip mining a planet or through doing side-quests, the end result is the same; you get to upgrade your armor. In this case the stakes are slightly higher, but it doesn't matter if you get your points through the random fetch-quests or if you get them through uniting the galaxy, in both cases the end result is the same; you get to pick the green ending (or the blue ending, as it may be).

 

[JamesStone]

I feel bad for you JamesStone, because it's obvious you spent quite some time and thought process on this little essay of yours and it's at best receiving a lukewarm reception. And, while you're idea makes sense and is at least arguable, I disagree.

It seems pretty clear that the main theme of Mass Effect 3 is unification, working together. Your entire job throughout the game is recruiting various species and factions to join forces and help you, mainly by resolving conflicts between them established in prior games. The idea is that by working together each species can offer its unique set of gifts and talents to help out in the final conflict.

If you play the From Ashes DLC Javic explains that the Protheans' main pitfall was that they had completely conquered the galaxy by themselves and never bothered trying to share power with any other races. Ultimately this homogenization made them easy to defeat because they all fought the same way and had the same weaknesses.
Thus one of the keys to defeating the reapers is to

and work together.

As further evidence of this look at ME3's secondary antagonist TIM, he doesn't want to share the galaxy, he wants humanity to rule it single-handed like the Protheans did. And of course he has to side with the devil to achieve this goal. So his evilness clearly demonstrates that elitism is wrong.

Anyway, I think this is the main overarching theme. That doesn't mean however that it's the only theme. Mass Effect is a big encompassing story with lots of different ideas littered throughout. The fact that the ending is about something else shouldn't be seen as a failure on the writers' part. Plus you could argue that the 'inevitable' conflict between organics and synthetics that the catalyst describes at least reflects the need to unify and coexist, which I guess is what the synthesis ending does.

Never saw it this way. But now that I think of it, I believe you are right. So let me correct my initial argument:
"Unification is the main theme of the series, but evolution is the hidden theme". But I still think synthesis is not about unification, because I refuse to believe the only way to be united is if everyone is the same. I think it's a deeply racist statement and I refuse to take part of it. When asked about Synthesis I like to make this analogy:

A black man and a white man are fighting over terrain. They both need the resources and they will starve a little without it (imagine this is a crop field for example). Now, a magical god-like entity arrives and mixes their genes, making them the same skin tone. Does this solve anything? No, because the necessity still exists, the terrain is still there, and the risk of starving is still the same. The only thing it does is taking away all racist implications, and that makes war and conflit all fine I guess.

It's a very rushed, sort of offensive when you think about it, excuse of an ending, at least in my opinion.

 

[Eddie the head]

Still ignoring what deus ex machina means, still insisting that the Catalyst has abilities that there is no indication that it has, still not acknowledging what the Illusive Man's plans for the Crucible were, still more ignorance when it comes to EMS.

It's a crying shame that all of the people who've actually played the game seem to have been driven off the internet by people obsessed with complaining about an ending they've obviously never played.

A black man and a white man are fighting over terrain. They both need the resources and they will starve a little without it (imagine this is a crop field for example). Now, a magical god-like entity arrives and mixes their genes, making them the same skin tone. Does this solve anything? No, because the necessity still exists, the terrain is still there, and the risk of starving is still the same. The only thing it does is taking away all racist implications, and that makes war and conflit all fine I guess.

It's a very rushed, sort of offensive when you think about it, excuse of an ending, at least in my opinion.

Oh wait, Synthesis is nothing like that! Congratulations, you've completely ignored everything in the ending so you can complain about the ending.

Any point you might have is really lost on me, and I have to imagine others, in that condescending and hostile tone. You appear to be saying that if someone disagrees with you they are stupid or ignorant. Now I hope that's wrong and you're not that unwilling to see others opinions. But your tone isn't helping you to get your point across. It's just hostile and unpleasant. Your not helping me see your point, your not helping the other guy see you point, and with that your not helping yourself. So now I have to ask; why are you using a tone that is to the detriment of this argument? I don't get it? Do you just want to be confrontational?

 

[JamesStone]

Still ignoring what deus ex machina means, still insisting that the Catalyst has abilities that there is no indication that it has, still not acknowledging what the Illusive Man's plans for the Crucible were, still more ignorance when it comes to EMS.

It's a crying shame that all of the people who've actually played the game seem to have been driven off the internet by people obsessed with complaining about an ending they've obviously never played.

A black man and a white man are fighting over terrain. They both need the resources and they will starve a little without it (imagine this is a crop field for example). Now, a magical god-like entity arrives and mixes their genes, making them the same skin tone. Does this solve anything? No, because the necessity still exists, the terrain is still there, and the risk of starving is still the same. The only thing it does is taking away all racist implications, and that makes war and conflit all fine I guess.

It's a very rushed, sort of offensive when you think about it, excuse of an ending, at least in my opinion.

Oh wait, Synthesis is nothing like that! Congratulations, you've completely ignored everything in the ending so you can complain about the ending.

Ok, then enlightn me. I'm sick of hearing you rant and rant without any satisfying reply or racional thought. WHAT is synthesis all about? Please, tell me. Share your infinite knowledge with us poor scrubs who apparently haven't played the game.

Captcha: jerk store. Quite ironic.

 

[Apollo45]

Still ignoring what deus ex machina means, still insisting that the Catalyst has abilities that there is no indication that it has, still not acknowledging what the Illusive Man's plans for the Crucible were, still more ignorance when it comes to EMS.

It's a crying shame that all of the people who've actually played the game seem to have been driven off the internet by people obsessed with complaining about an ending they've obviously never played.

I'm sorry, but I've explained exactly what a Deus Ex Machina is to you multiple times. I don't know what your definition of it is, but either it's not the actual definition or you're completely ignoring the entirety of the ending in order to justify your own misguided idea of what happened during the ending. The Catalyst straight out tells you it's the brain behind the Reapers, that it made them, and that it controls them. The Leviathans tell you the same thing. The Illusive Man had no idea what the Crucible did - no one knew - so he couldn't have planned for it. As far as the EMS goes, please explain how I'm ignorant of that. I don't believe I missed anything when explaining my thoughts to you, but if I did I would love for you to actually point out what I missed instead of throwing baseless and obviously false accusations out at people.

To quote something you said in the first place,

Can I just say that I love it when the other side can't be bothered to try to provide a counterargument and instead squeals "GTFO troll"?

 

[sanquin]

I've already seen the one whining about the ending. "Why do the lasers that the Reapers fire create 'explosions'? Lasers don't create 'explosions' and the Reapers' weapons are lasers, right?" "Why does an AI that exists solely to address a problem care about said problem? PLOT HOLE!!!!!!1"

Okay, I agree that some of his points don't entirely make sense. The lasers one was a bit...weird. If you heat something enough in a short enough time it does 'explode'. (As in, rapidly turn to super heated gas.) That is, if those things were lasers of course. The other one you pointed out though is a straw man on your end.

Also great how you conveniently seem to ignore all the very good and thought out points he made in those vids.