All you said in that particular snippet was that peaceful AI are the exception, which would imply that fucknut batshit genocidal AI are the norm.
All I said was that I don't agree with that.

You are given EDI as an example of what the Geth may become once they achieve Independence. The counter weight being that the path to bring them closer to that is letting they become closer to reapers.

An independent Geth nation could be the best thing ever for the Galaxy, or you pretty much ends up enabling Space-Skynet to come by.

At least that's what the game tries to play out for you

I respect your stance, actually. It's up for interpretation, honestly. But I really do think peace would be pretty temporary. Even if "temporary" is 100 years, or 200. That's all a shadow to the billions that will pass.

Yeah this is a spoiler thread now, so: spoilers.
 

In Re: Big Choices, ME3 gives you two and if you import there's a strong chance that you've set yourself up for a Better Way, and if you have that setup and don't take the Better Way you're a chump. I think that's a fair way of respecting the effort of playing through all 3 games. (In my first play I didn't have living Wrex because I didn't have the ability to save him on Virmire, and I felt the bite of his loss. Curiously, loyal Mordin dying on the Collector Base still allowed things to work out for the better. Mordin's substitute is an interesting character in his own right and I wish I remembered his name, he deserves it.)

In Re: The Crucible choice, they have a similar thing where you have a choice and can unlock A Better Way (synthesis) via sufficient Effective Military Strength. But the thing is, if you've unlocked yourself the Better Way to solve Rannoch, the Catalyst's presentation of the problem has been proven false.

If you don't broker peace between Geth and organics, the Catalyst's Trilemma is almost credible. You'd have to make the argument that EDI can be sapient without being alive (because she doesn't reproduce and therefore her "species" doesn't develop) but it's colorable.

If you do broker that peace they ought to literally drop onto that balcony and say "Hey what's going on in this thread?" And then Catalyst gives them the spiel and they're like "Aw hell naw, we and the Creators be chillin' now that Shep sorted us out." "War between Organics and Synthetics is no more inevitable that war between differing groups of Organics." (oh hey that's actually consistent with their voice.) And like, there could be a fourth choice opened up: The Geth go to the control terminal and take control of the Reapers, in a dramatically appropriate reversal of their multiple efforts to control The Geth.

"But how will Shepard die her foreshadowed death?" She bleeds out, because that was happening. The Geth could mummify her corpse and set it next to Legion's inert platform in an unintentionally creepy display of respect.

Moving on, another thing that rubs me the wrong was is how the ending acts as an across-the-board reset for the entire setting - it turns out that the long term consequences of victory eclipse every other choice you can make. Many have pointed out that destroying the relays is stranding what's left of the allied fleets in the local cluster, dividing the galactic community for generations, and separates the Krogan and Turian leaders from their homeworlds (so Wreav will never have the opportunity to make a mess of things).

A friend of mine said the whole ending fiasco was the sort of thing Grant Morrison would do if he'd been brought in at the last minute to write the ending. Sounds right to me.

no, Grant Morrison would have written an ending where it turns out Shepard is the Enduring Omnidimensional Spirit of Human Perseverance or some shit while the Reapers are The Embodiment Of Societal Conformity, and the final battle is Giant Shepard vs. NegaReaper in infinite literature space, battling for the fate of all science fiction everywhere.

and you know what? I probably would like that better.

Oh, I completely agree that the Catalyst, having gone through these shenanigans for dozens upon dozens of prior iterations, would probably treat Shepard's arguments with disdain and easily respond to them. I'm just surprised that Shepard wouldn't bring it up.

...For that matter, I think it's a huge mistake for Bioware to have not included your squadmates in the final confrontation. More so than most other games, even most other RPGs, Mass Effect shines when the spotlight is on its stellar supporting cast. Shepard on his/her own, as an avatar, isn't terribly compelling; Shepard with his/her friends, interacting, is incredibly compelling.

To that end, every character -- even ME2 squadmates who weren't squadmates in ME3 -- should have been there in the end. That would have fortified the decisions you made along the way, as you'd either have tons of support or little of it. And I'd say characters like Garrus and Liara and Javik deserved to be there, just about as much as Shepard did. It would have been a much more powerful and more palatable scene if the Kid's philosophical ramblings were interrupted by input from your friends, whether they're physically present or even if the Catalyst just uses lol reaper magic to present them as holographs from afar or something.

...And, fuck, your love interest should have at least been there. You and your love interest are in love, right? You should totally have the choice to be like "I want you by your side," and your LI should totally be like "This is the most important moment of our lives; there's no way I won't have your back here and now."

...So much missed potential, Bioware. So much missed potential.
I'm not even sure if the endings themselves piss me off so much or if it's more that there were ways to write the buildup to the endings that would enable the endings to actually present definitive closure, and we got absolutely none of that. The endings were bad too, on their own objective merits, but I've suffered through lackluster endings with kooky twists before and felt okay so long as I've had some degree of closure. Even a scene between Anderson and Shepard, which was fully voiced and everything but cut down in the end by Bioware, would've been something. (I'd include a link but I'm in class.)

Or hey since these are characters that have influenced Shepard and have in turn been influenced by him maybe they could all just chip in as a vague memory. What would Garrus think? Would he choose differently if you'd encouraged him to apply for SPECTRE status?
Shit, something like that could have made a person change their minds about what they wanted to do at the last moment.

What I'm really concerned about is why didn't shepard at some point jump off a gaping hole in the Normandy's hull to slash at Harbinger with his omni-sword that EDI had hacked to deliver the full force of the Normandy Thanix Cannons?

Because if that had happened, this would be the Ending to mass effect 3

I fail to see the problem with that, Bells.