Zen Toombs said:
Hey, can someone explain to me how the Mass Effect 3 synthesis ending works? If you even took what the God-child said to be true (and what [god]Kid said honestly didn't make much sense to me - look at EDI and the Geth), then why would turning everything into a blend of synthetic and organic help anything?
Also, while we are on this point, by what.... okay, never mind. I get why blowing up the Reapers ends with killing yourself, the Geth and EDI - in the third game, Legion incorporates Reaper code into the Geth in order to make them 'alive', Shepard was recreated with Reaper tech that is keeping him alive, and EDI is made with Reaper tech as well.
So yeah, I know that there's discussion along these lines buzzing around the Escapist, but I couldn't find anything that specifically dealt with the topic and I wanted to avoid the general rage about the ending.
Sure I'll explain my take on it.
So you reach the top and speak to the being that controls the reapers, the Catalyst. There is a lot we don't know about it but it seems likely that it was or is an AI that got majorly out of control. For what ever reason it wants to protect organic life from destroying itself by creating synthetic life. It thinks that organic life and synthetic life are always doomed to come into conflict, and it may or may not be right. We saw what happened with the quarians and the Geth even though they eventually made peace (for how long?) and there was all those rogue VI and AIs from Mass Effect 1. Still it could also be wrong EDI is a good example of this.
I thinks it's protecting organic life as a whole by 'harvesting' the ones that can create synthetic life and turning them into reapers in order to preserve them and keep them from destroying themselves and thus all organic life in the galaxy. It's a bit like the AI from I Robot, it thinks protecting organics as a whole is more important than protecting them as individuals or even individual races.
Still it might have a point, even if the method it goes about 'preventing' this is seriously messed up by any human logic. It says that by getting to the catalyst you've proven that these cycles cannot go on and that it was perhaps wrong and tells you the three functions that the crucible can do.
The Synthesis function is suppose to create a fusion or melding of organic and synthetic life, presumably organic life would lose a lot of their traditional weaknesses of their physical bodies and synthetics would gain self awareness and true free will (or something). We really don't know what the long term effects of the synthesis is. The Catalyst simply says that this might bring the possibility for lasting peace.
It then uses Shepherd as a basis for this synthesis consuming him in the process and then uses the mass relays to propagate this energy through out the entire galaxy. This has the side effect of draining their power sources and causing them to 'shatter' from the strain of it I think. It obviously isn't the same as when you crashed an asteroid into one and caused it to explode in a catastrophic manner.
The scene with Joker and EDI getting off, the Normandy is symbolic of Adam and Eve, and the garden of Eden. It's the dawn of a new era a new age one free of the demented control of the reapers and their flawed method of protecting organics from themselves by 'ascending' them into reaper forms.
Out of all the endings it is in my opinion the most happy ending with the most possibilities, with control being the second and destroy the least of these.
