SajuukKhar said:
What I never got is why are people treating the word of The catalyst, a machine with limited knowledge, as the literal word of god?
He only knows what he was programmed to know.
Because you are forced to take what he says at face value in the ending? The fact that there isn't any option to say "screw you, you're full of crap," to the Catalyst/AI/VI/Whatever-the-crap-he-is pretty much implies that you're meant to take what he says as truth.
Also, if he's lying, that makes the endings even stupider. So, you can control the Reapers, for some reason, and ominously keep them around, for...some reason. OR, you can merge synthetic life and organic life, completely against their will, for...reasons. Reasons that don't matter if synthetic life ISN'T destined to murder all organic life eventually.
And, considering that you have to work harder to get the "synthesize" ending than the other two, I think that's considered one of the "best" endings. And the ending where you can just outright destroy the Reapers is generally considered the "worst" ending, considering you have to kill all the synthetics to do that.
Both of those things, AND the fact that you can't even tell the Catalyst to screw himself is pretty damn indicative that what he says is supposed to be the truth. Considering you can't contradict him. At all. There is nothing that indicates we're not supposed to believe him. That's just fanwankery to try to cop Bioware out of their bad writing and logistic errors.
Also, having an Explainer character exist to info-dump you, and then go, "Whoops! He's lying!" is even worse writing, unless THAT WAS THE POINT ALL ALONG.
Like, if Bioware made an ending where it turned out "the Guardian" was really a Reaper trying to indoctrinate Shepard to do its evil bidding, or something, and you are SUPPOSED to not believe what he says, that would be one thing. That would make sense to have you assume that what the Catalyst says is a lie. But the fact that you HAVE to choose one of his options, and have to sacrifice Shepard to do so, means that you're supposed to believe him.
There is literally no reason to assume that WE'RE supposed to assume the Catalyst is lying, and if he WAS, then that makes the endings even more pointless and stupid and terrible. Because then, not only is the entire premise of the ending (synthetics kill everyone, go do some space-magic, Shepard!) faulty within the logic of the game, but it wouldn't even be supported by the darn thing you're supposed to believe! Shepard would just go sacrifice him/herself based on lies and faulty information! And that is even MORE out of character than what is in there now.
So, basically, no.