Mass Effect 3 Ending Conspiracy. If you love Mass Effect and hated the ending, READ THIS PLEASE

Richardplex

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Akarezik said:
Richardplex said:
I'm going with this theory, balls to what Bioware gave me. At the end of the day, this is MY story of MY Shepard, so what ever makes me happy.

Though I did subconsciously think it was indoctrination. It took me two minutes to decide, and I was limping towards the control/synthesis options. But then I thought "TIM decided control, because he was indoctrinated." And I've been around reapers a lot more than TIM - I've been in one more than once. So I turned around and limped to the least appealing one, destruction. And apparently, that's the only one in which you get to live.

Oh, and the gasping scene? Under rubble, concrete, earth materials. VERY different to that of the clinical citadel.
It's not just Shepard gasping for breath that lends weight to the indoctrinated/hallucination theory, but several other things about that scene. For example, if you listen closely in the background, there's a distict metallic/synthetic sound that sounds similiar to a Reaper or husk, but they should be all dead if you chose to destroy them.

And as you pointed out, the scene shows Shepard among rubble clearly not like the Citadel, and even if it was, could Shep really survive the power conduit's explosion, the breaking up of the Citadel, re-entry, and the subsequent impact with Earth, all without any armor or way to break a fall? It just seems so preposterous, considering Shepard died after falling out of orbit in ME 2, and had armor, a thinner atmosphere, and lower gravity working in their favor.

More likely that Shepard was grazed by the laser, his squadmates and some other soldiers made it to the beam, and the whole dream was Harbinger, or maybe his own subconscious, trying to snuff out their drive to go on, and by choosing the "Control" or "Synthesis" options, Shepard gives up and succumbs to their wounds, but by choosing "Destroy", and finishing what you started, you drag yourself back to the real world, possibly just in time to watch the Crucible do what it really does.

Note that my theory on the ending choices is simply trying the figure out why it only shows Shepard alive and still on Earth for "Destroy", and not the other two, assuming it's all just a nightmare.
Also, remember how the edges of the screen were pulsing black when the illusive man was talking to you? That screamed indoctrination to me. Less significantly, just before the battle, you have a dream where in the end, you watch yourself with the child burn. Possibly symbolising indoctrination?

Really, I'm convinced this is actually what's happened - Shepard waking up on Earth after taking the choice to destroy the reapers, which the child makes out to be utterly the worst choice on it's own is pretty strong (for me at least) let alone the rest. If it is, Bioware still fucked up. They could of added 5 minutes at the end of that to clear it up, just flashes of the indoctrinated bit up to lying back with Anderson, and this time the weapon destroying the reapers, and boom! Bioware has secured one of the best endings of a game. But no, the pointless thing with the Normandy was more important, when the best option was merely reusing old scenes.
 

Richardplex

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Akarezik said:
Oh... wow. It's the illusive man's chocie, sarren's choice, or your own choice. That's so... wow.
Professor M said:
Turtleboy1017 said:
I'm starting to agree with this theory more and more, and just had some thoughts of my own.

Also just re-doing the last part, but I swear the citadel is just littered with dead bodies as anyone would expect to find, and the Anderson says "..looks just like your description of the collector base", at which point the tell tale tubes and stuff start to appear on the walls - the power of suggestion affecting Shep? I could be wrong though, I'm tired

EDIT: Actually everything Anderson says to you influences what you see around you. He mentions the chasm, then you come to it, then he says he's found a control panel, then you find a control panel
You're in a linear corridor, yet you didn't see Anderson, who somehow made it to it before you. There's no other alternate path for him to go, it's completely linear.
 

Terminate421

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Akarezik said:
Richardplex said:
I'm going with this theory, balls to what Bioware gave me. At the end of the day, this is MY story of MY Shepard, so what ever makes me happy.

Though I did subconsciously think it was indoctrination. It took me two minutes to decide, and I was limping towards the control/synthesis options. But then I thought "TIM decided control, because he was indoctrinated." And I've been around reapers a lot more than TIM - I've been in one more than once. So I turned around and limped to the least appealing one, destruction. And apparently, that's the only one in which you get to live.

Oh, and the gasping scene? Under rubble, concrete, earth materials. VERY different to that of the clinical citadel.
It's not just Shepard gasping for breath that lends weight to the indoctrinated/hallucination theory, but several other things about that scene. For example, if you listen closely in the background, there's a distict metallic/synthetic sound that sounds similiar to a Reaper or husk, but they should be all dead if you chose to destroy them.

And as you pointed out, the scene shows Shepard among rubble clearly not like the Citadel, and even if it was, could Shep really survive the power conduit's explosion, the breaking up of the Citadel, re-entry, and the subsequent impact with Earth, all without any armor or way to break a fall? It just seems so preposterous, considering Shepard died after falling out of orbit in ME 2, and had armor, a thinner atmosphere, and lower gravity working in their favor.

More likely that Shepard was grazed by the laser, his squadmates and some other soldiers made it to the beam, and the whole dream was Harbinger, or maybe his own subconscious, trying to snuff out their drive to go on, and by choosing the "Control" or "Synthesis" options, Shepard gives up and succumbs to their wounds, but by choosing "Destroy", and finishing what you started, you drag yourself back to the real world, possibly just in time to watch the Crucible do what it really does.

Note that my theory on the ending choices is simply trying the figure out why it only shows Shepard alive and still on Earth for "Destroy", and not the other two, assuming it's all just a nightmare.
Thats the way I see it. Ironically enough, when you choose to destroy the Synthetics, EDI lives. This means that the geth must have lived. I chose that run because despite the paragon way I always followed, I had a goal and I stuck to it, the quarian and geth war proves that this generation of races can handle the tech.

And if it all was just a dream, that is good. That means that Tali and Garrus are sitting up in the citadel looking for me. Probobly getting intimate considering my playthrough.

But I do feel Bioware could have fixed it. If I chose that ending, I could get up and go do the final boss battle.

Speaking of which, I was really dissaopinted there was no final boss battle, there was Kai Leng but he was not a very good boss. I liked how Saren's was done.
 

mad825

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Honestly, I cannot care for all these "theories" or interpretations of the ending. The ending is shit and will always be shit, just because it may seem like they are doing something clever makes it idiotic.

The ending is a dick move. No matter how you put it, it's unsatisfying.
 

Richardplex

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Terminate421 said:
Thats the way I see it. Ironically enough, when you choose to destroy the Synthetics, EDI lives. This means that the geth must have lived. I chose that run because despite the paragon way I always followed, I had a goal and I stuck to it, the quarian and geth war proves that this generation of races can handle the tech.

And if it all was just a dream, that is good. That means that Tali and Garrus are sitting up in the citadel looking for me. Probobly getting intimate considering my playthrough.

But I do feel Bioware could have fixed it. If I chose that ending, I could get up and go do the final boss battle.

Speaking of which, I was really dissaopinted there was no final boss battle, there was Kai Leng but he was not a very good boss. I liked how Saren's was done.
As someone who read all but the latest book (But I read the rage comic version so it's 'kay) I was fangirling the hell out when Kahlee Sanders and Kai Leng showed up (and raging that Gillian wasn't) and thought Kai was well implemented, when he wasn't being a boss. Should of knocked out your party members and been a one on one fight. It was awesome right at the beginning when I had to spam f and knock his attack with my gun, and then.. not so much. And I was dreading a TIM boss fight when I saw that video, glad that didn't happen. Though him fighting with you injured would of been cool.
 

Turtleboy1017

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Just replayed the final section. It's interesting to note that when speaking to the little ghost child thing, he keeps changing how he refers to himself. At the start he states "I am the Catalyst." "I control the reapers" "They are MY solution."

But as he begins explaining, he starts saying "You can control US." "WE will leave." "WE harvest civilizations."

Don't know if it's just coincidental, but sort of interesting to note. Brings up the issue of what this little shit really is.
 
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I really don't think that's what Bioware intended but since my Shepard chose to destroy the Reapers I'll choose to believe that interpretation for that playthrough anyway.
 

Lithan

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Turtleboy1017 said:
Just replayed the final section. It's interesting to note that when speaking to the little ghost child thing, he keeps changing how he refers to himself. At the start he states "I am the Catalyst." "I control the reapers" "They are MY solution."

But as he begins explaining, he starts saying "You can control US." "WE will leave." "WE harvest civilizations."

Don't know if it's just coincidental, but sort of interesting to note. Brings up the issue of what this little shit really is.
No, seriously, they really just did not give enough of a shit about the ending to even spend ten damn minutes in the editing room glancing at the script to notice shit like this. It's that pathetic. I kinda think they went, "They wanna leak our ending? Well screw them and this amazingly complex ending system we built and freaking promised would be in game in those interviews we did, throw it all out. Give them a button that chooses between three endings and a kid you wanna strangle and blow out an airlock, and space magic that turns everything into cyborgs which somehow creates utopia."
 

Lithan

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Richardplex said:
Akarezik said:
Oh... wow. It's the illusive man's chocie, sarren's choice, or your own choice. That's so... wow.
Professor M said:
Turtleboy1017 said:
I'm starting to agree with this theory more and more, and just had some thoughts of my own.

Also just re-doing the last part, but I swear the citadel is just littered with dead bodies as anyone would expect to find, and the Anderson says "..looks just like your description of the collector base", at which point the tell tale tubes and stuff start to appear on the walls - the power of suggestion affecting Shep? I could be wrong though, I'm tired

EDIT: Actually everything Anderson says to you influences what you see around you. He mentions the chasm, then you come to it, then he says he's found a control panel, then you find a control panel
You're in a linear corridor, yet you didn't see Anderson, who somehow made it to it before you. There's no other alternate path for him to go, it's completely linear.
Anderson actually explains this. He talks about walls shifting and a bridge connecting his hallway to yours. Look to your sides, it's a circular layout with halls just like yours in series. The assumption is the central room (or the rest of the citadel) rotated to let his hallway in, then rotated again to let your hallway in. The timing if memory serves is that he enters the center room, the shift happens, then your door opens and you're on the path to the center room.
 

Richardplex

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Turtleboy1017 said:
Just replayed the final section. It's interesting to note that when speaking to the little ghost child thing, he keeps changing how he refers to himself. At the start he states "I am the Catalyst." "I control the reapers" "They are MY solution."

But as he begins explaining, he starts saying "You can control US." "WE will leave." "WE harvest civilizations."

Don't know if it's just coincidental, but sort of interesting to note. Brings up the issue of what this little shit really is.
I noticed that too, I think it's significant. The fact that it's consistent, ala, once he starts saying we, he sticks with it, speaks to me that it's not editing problems.
 

Lithan

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Not editing as in typos. Editing as they were making this shit up as they went along and forgot that he was a VI and started writing it as if he were a master Reaper and never caught it because they didn't care even slightly. That whole kid nonsense, Including the final scene outside the citadel I bet took a week to do in its entirety, and that's being hugely generous.
 

Nfritzappa

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From BSN


"Got this message from another user named timiriel:

hi
i can't post this on the forums,
i don't know why...
anyway...

i sent this to a user from this thread
it might be helpfull

1M1 - i think that's a more inconspicuous way of writing this 1*(M^(-1))


the formula is used in optics, it actually stands for inverse of focal length, or dioptry,
or convergence...

In Logic, convergence is also the notion that a sequence of transformations come to the same conclusion, no matter what order they are performed in...

maybe it's too far fetched, i don't know
sadly, it fits to well with the "multiple" endings"
 

RJ 17

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Turtleboy1017 said:
Just replayed the final section. It's interesting to note that when speaking to the little ghost child thing, he keeps changing how he refers to himself. At the start he states "I am the Catalyst." "I control the reapers" "They are MY solution."

But as he begins explaining, he starts saying "You can control US." "WE will leave." "WE harvest civilizations."

Don't know if it's just coincidental, but sort of interesting to note. Brings up the issue of what this little shit really is.
To me that just means that the Catalyst is the central "Will" of the Reapers. It is both its own entity (the Will) and, by extension, all the Reapers combined (since it is their collective will, their driving force, that which controls and motivates them).

Oh, and Turtle, I'm still waiting to see what you think of my argument posted on page 3 of this topic. I quoted your OP so I know you at least know that it's there. :p
 

Turtleboy1017

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RJ 17 said:
Turtleboy1017 said:
Just replayed the final section. It's interesting to note that when speaking to the little ghost child thing, he keeps changing how he refers to himself. At the start he states "I am the Catalyst." "I control the reapers" "They are MY solution."

But as he begins explaining, he starts saying "You can control US." "WE will leave." "WE harvest civilizations."

Don't know if it's just coincidental, but sort of interesting to note. Brings up the issue of what this little shit really is.
To me that just means that the Catalyst is the central "Will" of the Reapers. It is both its own entity (the Will) and, by extension, all the Reapers combined (since it is their collective will, their driving force, that which controls and motivates them).

Oh, and Turtle, I'm still waiting to see what you think of my argument posted on page 3 of this topic. I quoted your OP so I know you at least know that it's there. :p
Your argument is completely valid,and I won't try to convince you of your opinion otherwise due to the fact that like you said, there is no real concrete evidence. For now, these speculations and threads are just a way for deserving fans of mass effect to have some headcannon/hope in midst of all this crap.

And although there is a distinct lack of HARD evidence, so many points just support the claim. Unlimited ammo gun, weird, hazy setting, Anderson and TIL somehow managing to avoid being seen by Shepard the whole time. Mass Effect had its moments where you had to suspend your beliefs, but it has always been logical, and real. That entire ending sequence with the kid just felt off.

Also remember Shepards various dreams? Whispers become more and more apparent until the last one, before the mission, where he sees oily dark shadows, incoherent whispers, and himself burning up while embracing this kid, who is supposed to be salvation? Why does Shepard burn with the kid, while looking happy at the same time?

Finally the destroy ending with Shepard living. For those who can't get it, you need EMS of 5000 or higher, and need to have that number BEFORE you assault the Cerberous base. Won't work if you load the save afterward. Anyway I watched it during my last playthrough, and if you'll look at my post a couple up, you can see why I'm so conflicted right now.

It may or may not be right. I may be grasping at straws, I don't know. But I really hate the condescending fucks that just assume all fans like me are desperate, stupid, gullible, whatever, for wanting a REAL ending to the series we put so much time into. Not saying it's you, just saying there are a LOT of posts in this thread saying we're all idiots for looking into this.
 

Terminate421

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Turtleboy1017 said:
RJ 17 said:
Turtleboy1017 said:
Just replayed the final section. It's interesting to note that when speaking to the little ghost child thing, he keeps changing how he refers to himself. At the start he states "I am the Catalyst." "I control the reapers" "They are MY solution."

But as he begins explaining, he starts saying "You can control US." "WE will leave." "WE harvest civilizations."

Don't know if it's just coincidental, but sort of interesting to note. Brings up the issue of what this little shit really is.
To me that just means that the Catalyst is the central "Will" of the Reapers. It is both its own entity (the Will) and, by extension, all the Reapers combined (since it is their collective will, their driving force, that which controls and motivates them).

Oh, and Turtle, I'm still waiting to see what you think of my argument posted on page 3 of this topic. I quoted your OP so I know you at least know that it's there. :p
Your argument is completely valid,and I won't try to convince you of your opinion otherwise due to the fact that like you said, there is no real concrete evidence. For now, these speculations and threads are just a way for deserving fans of mass effect to have some headcannon/hope in midst of all this crap.

And although there is a distinct lack of HARD evidence, so many points just support the claim. Unlimited ammo gun, weird, hazy setting, Anderson and TIL somehow managing to avoid being seen by Shepard the whole time. Mass Effect had its moments where you had to suspend your beliefs, but it has always been logical, and real. That entire ending sequence with the kid just felt off.

Also remember Shepards various dreams? Whispers become more and more apparent until the last one, before the mission, where he sees oily dark shadows, incoherent whispers, and himself burning up while embracing this kid, who is supposed to be salvation? Why does Shepard burn with the kid, while looking happy at the same time?

Finally the destroy ending with Shepard living. For those who can't get it, you need EMS of 5000 or higher, and need to have that number BEFORE you assault the Cerberous base. Won't work if you load the save afterward. Anyway I watched it during my last playthrough, and if you'll look at my post a couple up, you can see why I'm so conflicted right now.

It may or may not be right. I may be grasping at straws, I don't know. But I really hate the condescending fucks that just assume all fans like me are desperate, stupid, gullible, whatever, for wanting a REAL ending to the series we put so much time into. Not saying it's you, just saying there are a LOT of posts in this thread saying we're all idiots for looking into this.
Actually I had it at like 4500 and a galactic readiness at 90%, I still got the ending where shepard gasps for breath on earth when I destroyed the reapers.
 

RJ 17

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Turtleboy1017 said:
I appreciate your response, and yeah, I've seen a number of people out there on both sides of the argument screaming either "YOU'RE STUPID IF YOU DON'T GET IT!!!" or "YOU'RE JUST A LOSER FANBOY IF YOU ACCEPT THIS CRAP!!"

But in the spirit of light-hearted debate, here are my answers to the points you just brought up:

Infinite Ammo Pistol: Really don't think this has anything to do with the story. They just didn't want you running out of ammo against the husks and marauder seeing as how there'd be no ammo to pick up. For that matter I've never gotten a straight answer on this: Ending of Metal Gear Solid 2, it is my belief that when your in Arsenal (think that's what that massive ship-thing was) you're actually in a simulation...but I've been told you're not. Alright...then how the fuck does Snake have an Infinite Ammo Bandana? :p Perhaps Shepard borrowed this for the end sequence.

Slow motion: being woozy and half-dead leaves you in a dream-like state.

The final dream, indeed all the dreams do align with one of Indoctrination's themes of "reoccuring nightmares". However these nightmares are often more than just Reaper taunts, they're often prophetic. My interpritation of the final dream: when you finally reach the catalyst, you will indeed find the salvation from the Reapers that you've been seeking (hence the smile), yet this salvation will cost you your life (hence the burning).

But there's still one small matter of the ending itself. If it is, as you say, an indoctrination induced hallucination designed to test Shepard and make him/her make the wrong choice...then what about the marines on the ground? And Buzz Aldren Star Gazer at the end? If Shepard was fooled by the Reapers and made the wrong choice due to being indoctrinated...why do the Reapers fly away at the end if you pick Control or Synthesis? Why is Joker running for his life in the Normandy only to eventually get caught, stranding the entire ship on some unknown world? Why if you pick Synthesis does Joker have glowing eyes that match EDI's? If it was all an Indoctrination test, shouldn't Control and Synthesis be met with bad "You lost!" endings? How is there a future time for Star Gazer to say "But that all happened a long, long time ago" if Shepard picks the wrong choice and fails to stop the Reapers because he/she was indoctrinated?

But you are 100% correct in that we're all just grasping at straws here, trying in our own ways to make sense of the ending. Since I do fully admit that Bioware left MUCH to interpretation in the ending, such conversations were inevitable. But allow me to pose one more point to you.
 

Turtleboy1017

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RJ 17 said:
Turtleboy1017 said:
snip
Yeah, ending cutscenes are the biggest problem. My best guess in sticking to the whole thing is that for whatever reason, Bioware somehow managed to get a green light to pull off this insidious scheme, included a bunch of stuff that would suggest we got screwed with the ending we have now, only to charge us 8 bucks for a "real" ending.

And as much as I hate the concept of that, I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't pay for it.
 

boag

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Since we dont get an Epilogue Detailing what the fuck happens after the Crucible shoots its rainbow color beam of Happy Joy, I am going to Imagine that everything after falling next to anderson was Shep getting indoctrinated and that if you stick to your guns, Destroying the reapers is the only way you take care of them, and the other choices are just lies Harbinger puts in Sheps Brain to appease the human.
 

SpaceBat

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This does sound interesting and I did find the renegade moments during the conversation with The Illusive man to be really odd, but there are a few things that sound kind of unlikely.

About the renegade options/colors, here's another theory. The color of the scene and the characters within those scenes mean two different things. Anderson and Tim are shown in those scenes, because that is exactly what they would do. The colors are linked to the results of the choices, rather than the characters within the scenes.

The point is that even though Anderson was a great guy and even though Tim was a horrible person, the choice they would make in the end don't represent their stance within the moral spectrum (Anderson being good and paragon, while Tim is evil and renegade), meaning that the good guys don't necessarily always make the right choices and vice versa.
choosing to destroy all synthetics would have been the more evil option, as it would mean that you believe the Geth life holds less value and do not believe that a lasting peace between synthetic and organic lifeforms could be achieved. Controlling the reapers on the other hand means a peaceful retreat and possible help in the future by building new relays or something. That's why destruction is red (renegade) and control is blue (paragon). Either that or they don't mean anything at all and they just needed three different colors.

I still doubt this was the idea Bioware had in mind.
 

Joccaren

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SajuukKhar said:
The game was about stopping the reapers and ending their stranglehold on galactic evolution. Which you did by destroying the Mass Relay/Citadel network and either
-Controlling
-Merging
-Destroying
them
.
.
The "choice" aspect of the game was ALWAYS simply a system that would determine "what are you going to get to fight the Reapers in ME3".

It was NEVER promised to be something that would give you hundreds of various pop-ups post game that told you what happened to people. It was never designed to be this thousands of different possible ending thing. That is something the fans made up their heads after the devs said "choice will affect how the game plays".

All it was touted as was that It would change the ending you got. Never was it stated how or to what extent it would, but the fans decided to take it to the extreme as they always do and are now blaming bioware for their own delusions.
.
.
Also the ending made sense

People try to bring up "BOTH SHEPARD MADE PEACE WITH THE GETHZZZ THUS TEH GOD CATALYST IS WRONG DUR HUR HUR HUR"

But what they purposefully ignore is that without The Reaper invasion the situation that led to synthetic understand would have never happened.

Shepard would have never fought saren and his geth, Shepard would have never stopped sovereign, the Geth would have never sent Legion to find Shepard, Shepard would have never met Legion, Shepard would have never been able to bring organics and synthetics together.

The hatred of synthetics that existed before the start of he game would have continued and would have ultimately resulted in war.

the catalyst was right, a galaxy without the reapers is a galaxy were synthetics are destined to destroy organics.
1. That was the end goal for Shepard, but not what the point of the series itself was in my eyes. It also seems that you are implying that by destroying the Relays and Citadels the races no longer use Reaper tech, and thus are 'freed' from it. This is wrong for two reasons:
a) They are not 'Freed' from it, they lose a valuable resource. Scorched Earth tactics: Is your enemy destroying their resources that they used to own, but you just captured, beneficial to you? Is it lessening their stranglehold on you? No. It is them taking away valuable resources you could use to your advantage.
b) Everyone still uses Reaper tech. If you read the Codex on Reaper Tactics, it hints at all Eezo drives being Reaper tech - like the Relays and the Citadel. I do not remember the exact words, but it was along the lines of 'It is theorised that a ship travelling at FTL would be enough to destroy a Reaper capital ship if it impacted, but the drives have a safety lockdown feature that makes them refuse to fire if there is a large object known to be in the planned path of the ship. This has always been a part of Eezo drive cores and was believed to have been designed by the Protheans, like the Mass Relays.'. Ergo, even if the Relays and Citadel are gone, everyone is still using Reaper tech to get about - albeit at a slower and more dangerous pace.
2. There is a specific Dev quote that I am looking for, but can't be bothered looking for ATM that references how this being the end of the series allowed them to make more varied endings, or something along those lines. Add to that things like "If you really build a lot of stuff and bring people to your side and rally the entire galaxy around you, and you come into the end game with that then you'll get an amazing, definitive ending" [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/110178-Casey-Hudson-Talks-Decisions-and-Consequences-in-Mass-Effect-3], and it is little wonder people were expecting more varied endings from Bioware, who basically gave them the same ending with a paint job. Yeah, you can extrapolate and say they are vastly different due to how the universe might turn out due to each, but what we know and are shown is very close to the same between all endings.
3. The problem is not necessarily a doubt that organics/synthetics would constantly kill each other (Which BTW I'll remind you the Quarians were in position to devastate the Geth had the Reapers not interfered), but more in the Reaper's solution. Seriously, a 3 year old child could have come up with a better plan of action.
"Machines are wiping out organic life, what should we do?"
Reapers:
"Harvest Organic life every time it pops up to save it from synthetics"
3 Year old child:
"Kill the bad things"
Not too hard to figure out. Why they chose to wipe out all life rather than defending it is a massive hole in their logic.
Also, take to note, that synthetics would seemingly never destroy organics.
In 'From Ashes', Jervik mentions the Protheans entering war with synthetics they made, and that being part of the reason they went around conquering everyone - to unite them against the synthetics. He then goes on to state that they were winning - until the Reapers showed up.
As cited higher up, the Quarian flotilla was in a position to devastate the geth. Until the Reaper took control, the Geth were basically screwed. They cut through the Geth lines to Rannoch without losing to many ships, and were only given pause by the Reaper assisted fleet with the Dreadnought. This is just the Quarians. This, backed by the other council races, would have easily removed the Geth from existence.
It seems the Reapers do not actually save organics from synthetics, but just wipe everything out for the hell of it. Another reason why I find their reasoning to make no sense.
Really, it would have been better for Bioware to have kept the Reaper's motives a secret.

People were expecting more out of these endings. They expected their decisions from all games would make a difference to how things turned out (Rather than it simply adding to some 'Readiness meter' resulting in an end based off that instead), there to be no plot holes (Why the hell did that kid hologram thing not open the Citadel relay for Sovereign, why did Sovereign need to dock with the Station, why was Sovereign needed at all?), there to be more varied endings with different affects to the galaxy (Currently there is only a 'Relays destroyed, everyone ok [Unless you decided otherwise in the missions {Didn't cure genophage, killed either Geth or Quarians}]' affect on the galaxy as a whole, with slight variances based on which decision you made at the end), it to not have 'WTF' moments of a bad kind (Why is the Normandy in Mass Relay Transit, why are the squadmates I left on Earth aboard?), not to be put down to a last minute button decision and numerous other things that Bioware did not satisfy them with. In the end, a lot of Shepards are forced to do something they never would do because Bioware wanted this sort of ending. The ending where Shepard refuses to do anything and lets the fleets engage the Reapers, and hopefully win, would make lot lot of people happy as it would give them an option they might actually follow, and I really hope Bioware implement it. There would still be a lot of problems with the endings then, but if handled correctly it could solve at least some (Scenes with things like the Destiny Ascension devastating a Reaper, Rachni engaging Reapers, the Zhu's Hope colonists fighting in London or somewhere - showing your armies doing everything they can to stop the Reapers, showing you your choices made a difference, rather than some 'readiness meter', the galaxy would be in a reasonably different state with the Relays till intact, and if they lose, everyone is pretty much f***ed - more varied endings, there would be no random wormhole, no Normandy randomly being in Mass Transit, ect.). Personally, I'd like a rewrite of pretty much everything involving the Crucible, and not have this stupid Deus Ex Machina in there in the first place, but its a bit late for that now. The endings are what really bug me - and many others - about the games plot though. A lot of people legitimately do not like them for numerous reasons, and simply because you do does not mean everyone is angry about not being able to ride of into the sunset with their space waifus.