mass effect theory – Trekking with Dennis

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition – what’s the best ending?

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the Mass Effect trilogy – including Mass Effect: Legendary Edition – and its ending.

Like it or hate it (and my god do some people hate it) Mass Effect: Legendary Edition retains the three-and-a-half possible endings present in the Mass Effect 3 Extended Edition DLC from 2012. In this article I’m not going to spend too much time critiquing the ending of the games from a narrative perspective, but rather try to answer a question I haven’t really seen many fans asking: which is the “best” ending? And no, this isn’t a guide as to how to achieve a specific ending or outcome; it’s a consideration of the pros and cons of the various ending options.

Just to recap if it’s been a while since you played Mass Effect 3, Commander Shepard and their crew spend much of the game putting together fleets and forces to defeat the Reapers. The key to victory in the Reaper War seems to be the Crucible – an ancient superweapon that the races of the galaxy come together to build across the game. After an intense battle in space and on Earth, the Crucible docks at the Citadel, ready to be armed and fired, bringing the war to an end.

How should Commander Shepard bring about an end to the Reaper War?

After arriving at the control room for the Crucible, Shepard is able to interact with the Catalyst – an artificial intelligence in control of the Reapers. The Catalyst tells Shepard that the reason for all of this death and destruction is to “preserve” organic life by harvesting it; otherwise organic life would inevitably be exterminated by synthetic life. The Catalyst then presents Shepard with three very different ways to use the Crucible, and it’s these three options we’re going to look at in a bit more detail today.

I’m going to exclude the option to not use the Crucible. Continuing to fight a doomed conventional war when the superweapon was available seems like a bad option, and players who go down this route ultimately learn that the Reapers were successful in their harvest of humanity and everyone else – duh, right? So that option is clearly not a good one in terms of outcome, though I guess you could argue that there’s a certain satisfaction in saying “I choose not to choose” and continuing to fight.

It’s possible to “fight back” against the Catalyst – but doing so dooms every race in the galaxy.

Assuming players have accrued enough war assets and done as much as possible to get ready for the final confrontation, the Catalyst will present Shepard with three options for using the Crucible: destroy the Reapers, control the Reapers, or fuse all organic and synthetic life together by rewriting everyone’s DNA. These options are substantially different from one another, and while many players have a gut reaction as to which is the “right” decision, each has points in its favour as well as major drawbacks.

Let’s begin with the most popular choice by far: using the Crucible to destroy the Reapers. I can’t remember where or when I read this, I think it must’ve been circa 2012-13 when Mass Effect 3 was new, but a survey was conducted asking players which ending they chose, and “destroy” received almost 75% of the votes. That’s what I’m basing my claim that it’s the “most popular” ending on, at any rate!

The “destroy” ending may be the most popular with fans and players.

The biggest point in favour of this ending is that, if you have a high enough war score, it’s at least implied that Shepard might’ve survived. In a very brief scene lasting only a few seconds, amidst the ruins of what could be either the Citadel or London, a figure wearing burnt armour with an N7 dog tag sharply inhales right before the credits roll. Though Shepard’s survival has never been officially confirmed, many players – myself included! – subscribe to the notion that this figure simply must be Shepard. If there is to be a continuation of their story in Mass Effect 4, this is the only way it could happen based on what we see on screen.

Though on some level we all want our hero to survive, in many ways Shepard’s survival could be argued not to fit with the tone of the story. Both with the Citadel DLC (which is now incorporated into Legendary Edition) and with the sequence immediately prior to the assault on the Citadel beam, Shepard said their goodbyes to their friends and crewmates. There was a finality to Shepard’s story; the person who saved the galaxy. Having them survive might feel great, but it doesn’t necessarily make a fitting end to their story. Some narratives are destined to end with the death of the protagonist, and I’d argue that the Mass Effect trilogy probably fits that mould.

This moment appears to show Shepard surviving.

Setting aside their possible survival, the “destroy” ending best represents Shepard achieving what they set out to do. Destroying the Reapers has been Shepard’s mission since they first learned of their existence in the first game, and though there were hints at possibly being able to co-opt or control the Reapers, especially during later missions in Mass Effect 3, Shepard and their allies had argued against this at every opportunity. Destroying the Reapers, or defeating them militarily, appeared to be the only option; Shepard’s only goal.

But the “destroy” ending comes at a price, especially for players who’ve managed to navigate the tricky path across all three games to achieving peace between the geth and quarians or who have befriended EDI. Using the Crucible to destroy the Reapers also results in the destruction of other synthetic life forms, including EDI and the geth. This makes the price paid for destroying the Reapers very high indeed, as it’s possible to befriend the geth and EDI – and of course Legion was a big part of Mass Effect 2 in particular.

The “destroy” ending condemns Legion’s entire race to death.

I really like Legion, both as a squadmate and as a character. Doing the mission Rannoch: Geth Fighter Squadrons also lets Shepard find out a great deal about the geth’s initial war against the quarians, and to say that they were wronged would be an understatement! Destroying EDI could be argued to be a sacrifice worth making; she is, after all, a single individual. But destroying every geth, especially if peace has been achieved and the geth have begun to adopt individual personalities, is tantamount to genocide.

So is exterminating the Reapers. Though in that case it’s arguably “kill or be killed,” the Reapers are nevertheless a sentient race, one far older than any other in the galaxy and with motivations and goals that humanity simply does not understand. The Reapers’ ruthless and relentless war may condemn them to death, especially since diplomacy and negotiation are not options, but the decision to wipe out the entire race, even for the sake of survival, should not be taken lightly. The Catalyst doesn’t give Shepard an option of talking the Reapers down, though.

The Reapers need to be stopped or defeated, but eradicating all of them is ethically problematic!

So Shepard has the option to go ahead with their plan and destroy the Reapers, perhaps on the understanding that the loss of the geth and EDI is a price worth paying for the survival of humans, turians, asari, and all the other galactic races. This is an extreme example of the calculus of war – sacrificing some so that others can survive. But despite Shepard’s initial goal of destroying the Reapers being in sight, the Catalyst offers alternatives – alternatives that Shepard (and us as players) are right to consider.

Throughout Mass Effect 3, a frequently-heard line from many characters is that nobody is sure precisely what the Crucible will do when activated. It’s only Shepard who learns what options are available, and although their intention was to defeat the Reapers, if a better option is available then it makes sense for Shepard to take advantage of that – especially considering the drawbacks of using the Crucible to destroy the Reapers.

Liara is one of many characters who tells Shepard that she isn’t sure what the Crucible will do when activated.

The first of the two other options presented – assuming players have a high enough war score – is to control the Reapers. This was the Illusive Man’s goal, though he was indoctrinated and thus unable to take advantage of the Reapers as he hoped. By choosing the “control” ending, Shepard will replace the Catalyst as the force in command of the Reapers – sacrificing their own body in the process. Shepard is thus able to make the Reapers leave, ending the war without further loss of life.

On the surface that seems like a reasonable option – it would save the lives of EDI and the geth while ending the war. But I have concerns! The Reapers, despite being coordinated by the Catalyst, appear to be sentient beings. Seizing control of them may be possible, but how long would Shepard remain in control? Is their personality forceful enough to permanently overcome the likes of Harbinger? By taking control of the Reapers and directing them to leave the galaxy, the Reapers aren’t defeated or destroyed and will continue to exist – meaning the threat hasn’t gone away.

Shepard has the option to take control of the Reapers, but will that be a good long-term solution?

Even if Shepard were able to remain in control of the Reapers in the short term, we’re potentially talking about an indefinite amount of time, at which point all bets are off. Perhaps Harbinger or other Reapers are able to change Shepard’s mind, convincing them that a new harvest is necessary after all. Perhaps Shepard goes crazy after millennia of isolation from their own people, or loses control of the Reapers. There appear to be too many variables and unknowns to make this feel like a safe and permanent end to the Reaper threat.

So that brings us to option number 3: synthesis. Shepard is given the option to add their energy to the Crucible, forcibly changing all organic and synthetic DNA at a molecular level, creating a galaxy full of organic-synthetic hybrids. All races, whether krogan, salarian, human, or geth would be altered, presumably being augmented with a combination of synthetic and organic components.

Is the “synthesis” ending the right choice, or even a choice Shepard has the right to make?

The Catalyst seems to present this outcome as not only the best option, but as something inevitable; an end goal it has been trying to reach. By fusing organic and synthetic life together, it argues, both will benefit and come to fully understand and appreciate each other. This is obviously a monumental decision for Shepard, with a lot of information – and opinion – being thrown at them mere moments before the decision has to be made.

My issue with the “synthesis” ending is that it shouldn’t be Shepard’s decision alone. A decision of this magnitude, even if it’s “correct” according to some, can’t be made for every sentient being in the galaxy by one individual; doing so is a grotesque over-reach of power, something no leader should ever be able to do. Not only that, but Shepard only hears a single opinion on this subject – the opinion of the Catalyst. Even if the Catalyst has been studying the idea of organic-synthetic synthesis for millions of years, can Shepard really trust it?

Is “synthesis” really the best outcome? The Catalyst argues it is…

We’re dealing with the force behind the Reapers. All of the death and destruction that Shepard has seen, from Sovereign’s rise and the war against the Collectors through to the Reaper invasion itself is all caused by the Catalyst; an artificial intelligence which, according to its creators, the Leviathans, betrayed them and rebelled. Even if the Catalyst is 100% sincere in its belief that synthesis is the best possible outcome for everyone, can Shepard trust its judgement?

This is a being which decided that the best way to “save” organic civilisations is mass murder, co-opting and indoctrinating the few survivors into working for its purposes and goals. Its judgement has to be questionable at best; perhaps it’s simply a very sophisticated computer with a programming error! The fact that the quarian-geth conflict can be peacefully resolved, and that EDI is accepted by members of the Normandy’s crew suggest that peace between organics and synthetics is not as impossible as the Catalyst believes, and rather than simply accepting its judgement and view of the galaxy, surely it’s worth Shepard considering the possibility that the Catalyst is wrong. Machines, even very clever ones, can malfunction, and perhaps the Catalyst is experiencing something like that.

“Synthesis” comes along as an option right at the last moment, and hasn’t really been explained or built up across the trilogy.

If Shepard does accept the Catalyst’s version of events, and accepts that synthesis is the best – and perhaps only – way to prevent future conflict, it means fundamental change for every sentient being in the galaxy. The consequences of this decision are almost unfathomable; it’s very difficult to wrap one’s head around the scale of the change Shepard is being asked to make. The positives – assuming the Catalyst can be trusted – are monumental: an end to conflict and war, unlimited knowledge, and perhaps even immortality are all on the table.

The game seems like it wants to present “synthesis” as the best ending, the one with the most upsides. But even if we take the Catalyst at its word and trust EDI’s epilogue seeming to show the galaxy on course for a new golden age, the question remains: was this Shepard’s decision to make? By changing everyone at a fundamental level, is that not similar to the Reapers’ own goals of harvesting organics and forcing survivors to become synthetic? In the short epilogue scene, everyone involved seems to just go along with what’s happened, perhaps suggesting their ways of thinking and even personalities have been altered. Is this truly a win, then, or just a galaxy-wide case of indoctrination?

“Synthesis” would allow synthetics like EDI to fully understand organics – according to the Catalyst – and prevent future wars.

I’m not sure that there is a “best” ending to the game! Despite the justifiable criticisms of Mass Effect 3′s ending in 2012, the options on the table are varied and nuanced, with each presenting pros and cons. On my first playthrough of Mass Effect 3 I chose the “destroy” ending, because it seemed in keeping with what Shepard had been fighting for. But it comes at a high price, and the options to control the Reapers or go for synthesis both hold appeal, especially because it means saving the geth and EDI.

To answer the question I posed at the beginning: I don’t know. Each ending has points in its favour and each has drawbacks. “Control” seems to offer the greatest potential for something to go wrong, “destroy” means killing friends and allies, as well as condemning two races to extinction, and “synthesis” not only means Shepard deciding something monumental for everyone in the galaxy, but is also questionable at best because of who advocates for it, and the fact that it only appears as an option right at the very end of the game.

Which ending should you choose? I don’t know!

I don’t blame anyone who has a difficult time deciding which option to choose! The fact that there are three complex choices may not be to every player’s taste, especially considering the myriad choices and options available across the trilogy, but the fact that each ending represents a radically different vision of the future of the galaxy is, at the very least, interesting.

One of the great things about a series like Mass Effect is replayability. It’s possible, then, for different versions of Commander Shepard to make different choices, choices which best fit their personality and the way that individual would handle this moment. Shepards who weren’t able to make peace between the geth and quarians might have no qualms about destroying the Reapers and other synthetics, whereas those who were very attached to Legion and his people may desperately look for another option – and that’s just one example. So maybe the true answer to the question I asked at the beginning is: “whichever one you think is best.”

Was that a cop-out? Maybe! But I stand by it. I have a hard time making this choice – it’s by far the most difficult in the entire trio of games, even though the short epilogue that follows is anticlimactic at best. The fact that the writers of the Mass Effect series succeeded at getting players so invested in the world they created that the choices posed at the very end feel like they matter is testament to how amazing these stories are. Because of how different the endings are, though, it does raise an interesting question: which one will BioWare choose as “canon” when they come to make Mass Effect 4?

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is out now for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X. The Mass Effect series – including all titles and properties mentioned above – is the copyright of Electronic Arts and BioWare. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Mass Effect theory: unlucky humans

Tue 25.05.21Sun 13.11.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the Mass Effect trilogy – including Mass Effect: Legendary Edition.

I’ve recently been playing through Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, having picked it up on release day. It had been five or six years since I last played through this outstanding sci-fi trilogy, and it’s been great fun getting stuck into the Mass Effect galaxy all over again. The writers of the Mass Effect series put in a lot of effort to build a world that’s easy to get lost in, and having spent so much time over the last week playing through the games, I’ve come up with a theory based on some of the things that Commander Shepard and their crew have learned. This time I thought it could be fun to run through that theory!

Here’s the short version: humans in the Mass Effect trilogy were incredibly unlucky. Humanity discovered mass relay technology only about forty years prior to the events of Mass Effect, joining the galactic community a few years later. By the time of the Reapers’ arrival in the Milky Way galaxy, humanity had only been a major spacefaring race for a few years, whereas the salarians, asari, turians, and others had been established across the galaxy for millennia. If the Reapers had arrived a few decades sooner, or if humanity’s progress toward spaceflight and exploration had been slower, perhaps humans could have avoided the Reaper War altogether, and arrived to find the galaxy devoid of spacefaring races ripe for colonisation. If the Council had left behind detailed records of the Reaper War, perhaps humanity could have had literally millennia to prepare a defence for the next Reaper attack.

Though the Citadel Council were not exactly helpful when Shepard warned about the Reapers, perhaps the Council races would have left clues and information behind that could have helped humanity if they had been wiped out.

That’s a basic overview of the theory. So let’s start by looking at some of the evidence we have that could be argued to support it. We should start at the beginning: Sovereign’s attempt to open the Citadel mass relay and bring the Reapers back. We don’t know exactly when Sovereign awakened, or even whether the ancient machine ever slept; it may have been observing the galaxy for millennia. But we do know that its original plan to open the Citadel mass relay to the Reapers was thwarted by the Prothean survivors from Ilos. These Prothean scientists travelled to the Citadel and ensured that Sovereign’s signal would fail, and it’s for this reason alone that the Reapers did not invade earlier.

Across Mass Effect 1, several characters speculate that Sovereign may have been working to build alliances slowly over the course of several centuries – perhaps even as far back as the Rachni Wars 2,000 years before the events of the games. If we take a timeframe of “centuries” plural, we can make the case that Sovereign originally planned for this cycle’s harvest to begin in the 1700s or 1800s – but its attempts to start the cycle failed due to the actions of the Ilos Protheans millennia earlier.

It may have taken centuries for Sovereign to figure out what went wrong and find allies in Saren and the geth.

Given that the Reapers’ motivations appear to be to “save” organic life from what they consider to be the inevitable betrayal by synthetic life, one event that may have prompted Sovereign’s initial plan to open the Citadel mass relay is the creation of the geth. If Sovereign was alert and scanning the galaxy, it may have concluded that the geth were on a path to becoming sentient and enacted its plan to open the relay. This once again places Sovereign’s first attempt to bring back the Reapers in the 18th or 19th Centuries.

Next we’re going to jump ahead to Mass Effect 3 and latch onto something Liara told Shepard. Based on her calculations, the Reaper harvest would take somewhere in the region of 100 years. Assuming that would still be the case if the Reapers had arrived in the 1700s or 1800s as mentioned above, it seems reasonable to conclude that the Reapers could have arrived in the galaxy, harvested all advanced organic life, and departed back into dark space before humanity was even in a position to realise what had happened, or that there had ever been a galactic community and Citadel Council.

Would the Reapers have chosen to harvest humanity if they had arrived in the 19th Century? I doubt it!

But surely the Reapers would have gone for humanity as well? That would be the counter-argument to this theory in general. And while we can’t be sure, one point I would make against this counter-argument is that the Reapers, at least according to Admiral Hackett in Mass Effect 3, were ignoring the yahg. The only yahg we met in the Mass Effect series was the original Shadow Broker, but his species were a pre-spaceflight civilisation. Crucially, however, they were described as being an industrial civilisation with technology akin to 20th Century Earth.

If the Reapers were ignoring the yahg because their level of technology was not sufficiently advanced to “qualify” them for harvesting – and not because of some other reason, like their aggressive nature – then we can absolutely make the case that a Reaper invasion in the 1700s, 1800s, or even 1900s would have overlooked Earth entirely.

The Reapers did not target the pre-spaceflight yahg during their invasion – which could mean humanity would have been safe if the Reapers had arrived earlier.

In some ways we can argue that the number of humans in the galaxy – and how widespread humanity is – doesn’t seem to gel completely with the idea that Earth only joined the galactic community within the last few decades. But that’s just down to production-side reasons – human characters are easier for us as players to relate to, as well as probably being easier to create and animate! Dr Bryson in Mass Effect 3 tells us that first contact with aliens happened in his lifetime, so even if we disregard everything above regarding Sovereign and Ilos, I still can’t help but feel that if the Reapers had arrived only a few years earlier, humanity might still have been overlooked!

If humanity didn’t have faster-than-light travel, hadn’t discovered the Prothean ruins on Mars, and were unaware of the Charon mass relay, perhaps the Reapers would have focused their efforts on other races even if humans had already achieved limited spaceflight. This is much more speculative, but I would argue that nothing we see of the Reapers’ behaviour in the games rules it out.

The discovery of the Mars archive propelled humanity onto the galactic stage. If it had remained hidden, perhaps the Reapers would have overlooked humans – at least during this cycle.

Assuming that this theory is accurate, and that the Reapers arrived either centuries or decades before humanity would have encountered the galactic community, what happens next? If humans emerged as a spacefaring race within a few years of the Reapers concluding their harvest of the asari, turians, salarians, etc. what would happen? In all three games, the Reapers’ 50,000-year cycle of harvests appears to be a fairly rigid thing, with Liara and others noting that the cycle of extinctions appears to repeat on that basis. But is that set in stone?

I would suggest that the presence of Sovereign could be taken to mean that it isn’t. Sovereign’s purpose, as speculated by several characters in Mass Effect 1, was to scan the galaxy and wait for species to reach the appropriate level of development – perhaps beginning to work on their own AIs – before summoning the Reapers. It may just be coincidence that this happens roughly every 50,000 years – or it may not be!

Liara, an archaeologist, seemed to be sure that Reaper harvests occur roughly every 50,000 years – which might mean they happen on a set timeframe regardless of what’s happening in the galaxy.

But Sovereign wouldn’t summon the Reapers if there was no one to reap, right? If no species had developed to the point where the Reapers would harvest them, they would surely wait instead of just showing up to meet an arbitrary schedule; they seem cleverer and more adaptable than that! So presumably this works in reverse, too – if humanity had emerged in the years after a harvest, discovered the Citadel and began to expand, presumably the Reapers wouldn’t just ignore that for 50,000 years!

The Prothean Empire, though, could be taken as a counterpoint to this argument. The Protheans were more advanced than any of the Citadel Council races, and their Empire appears to have endured for millennia. Not only that, but Liara explained that because the Prothean Empire was so far-reaching – occupying more worlds and systems than the extant races – it took the Reapers several centuries to harvest them fully. The length of time that the Protheans were left alone to develop and build thus suggests that the Reapers don’t necessarily have a set criteria of expansion or size for determining when to strike. I would suggest, based on the possibility that Sovereign became active around the time of the geth rebellion, that the development of AI may be one of the Reapers’ criteria when deciding to begin an invasion.

The Protheans seem to have thrived in the galaxy for millennia before the Reapers came.

So we’re left with two possibilities: either the Reapers would wait out the next 50,000 years as humanity built its own galactic civilisation – perhaps contending with the likes of the yahg – or they’d pounce when they felt humanity was ready to be harvested regardless of how recent the prior harvest was. Both arguments are equally valid, I feel.

Either way, though, it seems clear to me that humanity drew the short straw! The asari, salarians, and turians all enjoyed millennia or centuries as spacefaring races, and in that time were able to expand and explore further than humanity could in a few short decades on the galactic stage. If humanity hadn’t encountered the Mars archive when they did, or if the Ilos scientists hadn’t prevented Sovereign from contacting the Reapers in dark space when it originally intended to, it seems plausible to think that humanity might have been overlooked by the Reapers – at least in this cycle!

Humans may have had very unfortunate timing in joining the galactic community only a few years before a Reaper invasion!

With a 50,000-year head-start to explore the galaxy, investigate the ruins, and so on, there’s no telling what humanity could have accomplished. With the Citadel and mass relays at their disposal, and no other spacefaring races to get in the way, human development could have been unlimited, and given the Mars archives held information about the Reapers and the Crucible, humans would have potentially had millennia to prepare for the next Reaper invasion.

That’s my theory, at any rate! Fans of the Mass Effect games have put together various theories since the first game was released in 2007, including the famous indoctrination theory which proposed that Commander Shepard had become indoctrinated by the Reapers. This is just my small contribution to the discussion! With the recent launch of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition I’ve been playing through the trilogy again, and it reignited this theory which I’d originally considered a few years ago. It was fun to write it up!

As I always say, no fan theory is worth getting upset or worked up over. At the end of the day, this was just an excuse to talk about the Mass Effect series and take a closer look at one aspect of these fun games. I have some further thoughts on Legendary Edition which I hope to write up in the coming days or weeks, but for now I hope you enjoyed this theory. I think it seems plausible!

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is out now for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X. The Mass Effect series – including Legendary Edition and all properties mentioned above – is the copyright of BioWare and Electronic Arts. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.