"Synthetics will destroy organics" theme

Just to make it clear - Reapers are neither synthetic nor organic. They consist of both as they have the DNA of the civillization of which they were made. They are something greater - the pinnacle of evolution, above organics or synthetics.

The main themes in Mass Effect trilogy were: Stoping the reapers, Friendship, Galactic Unity/Human Supremacy(Paragon/Renegade).
The "synthetics vs. organics conflict" seemed to be somewhat secondary theme.

Nontheless, the Catalyst brings it up at the very end of the game as the main theme, reason for the existance of the reapers, although this theme has already been resolved at Rannoch.

This breaks the story for two reasons:
1. It was already established during the course of Mass Effect 2 and 3 that synthetics are not hostile nor aggressive, unless acting in self-defence. They present no greater danger to organics than organics present to themselves.
2. Even if it came to war synthetics are probably beatable.



1. The geth rebelled against the Quarians, only after the Quarians tried to shut them down - kill them.
Some Quarians opposed the killing of the geth, and the geth tried to protect those Quarians from persectution. The geth still keep memories of those Quarians who defended them.

Although they won the war and had the chance to totaly annihilate the Migrant Fleet which was fleeing, the geth let the Quarians leave.

Legion says that they clean and maintain the Quarian worlds out of respect for their Quarian creators who died in the conflict and in preparation for the eventuality of their return.

According to Legion, the geth are content to stay separate from the remainder of Citadel space to "build their own future" and claim that all sentient creatures should have the ability to "self-determinate", strictly adhering to a policy of non-interventionism in respect to the affairs and development of other races. The geth primarily seek the peaceful advancement of their own race independent of the influence of the rest of galactic society and believe every sentient species should be able to do the same.

In Mass effect 3 if you support the geth, and they destroy the Quarians, the Geth Prime says that they regret the death of the creators.

If you manage to make peace between the Quarians and the geth, the geth start helping the Quarians in resettling Rannoch.

In both cases Legion sacrifices himself in order to give geth true consciousness.
If you decide to kill the geth this happens:



During the course of ME 2 and ME 3 EDI develops feelings for Joker and sympathy and intrest for organics, especially humans. If you help her with her questions she even reprograms herself in order to put Joker's safety first even if it means her own death.




2. Synthetics are beatable.

Javik says that the Protheans were winning against their synthetics during the Metacon wars, untill the reapers arrived and interfered.

In Mass Effect 3 the Quarians were winning against the geth before the reapers upgraded them. So even if hostile, the synthetics are not a big threat as they are presented by the Catalyst.

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Synthetics vs. organics is a very common theme in science fiction. Synthetics killing organics is a very belivable scenario.
But not in Mass Effect universe.

In ME universe we know of 3 type of synthetics:
Geth - peaceful unless attacked
EDI - peaceful unless attacked
Sythetics form Javik's cycle - their nature is unknown (You only learn about them if you get From Ashes DLC)

EDI says that one of the reasons the geth rebelled was that they lack individuality - they exist as a group of connected programs scattered across many platforms. So they couldn't identify themselves with the Quarians. Despite that the geth allowed the Migrant fleet to escape. At Rannoch, thanks to Legion, the geth gain individual consciousness, meaning that they became even more peaceful and appreciative of organics.
If synthetics are made more like EDI, having individual consciousness, the chance of them going on a genocidal rampage against the organics is even smaller.

Mass Effect 1
At the very beginning of ME1 you are introduced to the synthetics - the geth as hostile. And you spend the entire game fighting them. So far, so good.

Mass Effect 2
You are introduced to an AI - EDI, cooperative, friendly, peaceful. In the middle of ME2 she's freed from Cerberus restrictions.
She's free to do what she wants. She still remains cooperative, friendly, peaceful and keeps helping Shepard and the crew.
You are introduced to Legion, a geth. You learn that all the geth in ME1 were heretics, geth under the influence of the reapers. You can learn more of the geth from Legion and everything indicates that the geth are peaceful and cooperative.
So, in ME2 you meet free, independent synthetics for the first time and they are peaceful.

Mass Effect 3
Again nothing indicates that the synthetics are a threat.
EDI develops feelings for Joker.
On the side missions on Rannoch the morning war is clarified. The geth are presented as victims defending themselves. Again they are no threat.
If they destroy the Quarians they do so in self-defence. And they regret their death. If you manage to make peace they willingly help the Quarians resettle Rannoch.
Synthetics vs. organics conflict over. Everyone's happy.

Ending:
Synthetics were a threat all along. All the fuss with the reapers is actually caused by synthetics. You making peace on Rannoch doesn't matter. The war will certainly come again. The geth are helping the Quarians. It doesn't matter. EDI loves Joker. It doesn't matter. Legion and EDI admire organics. It doesn't matter. Synthetics will kill us.
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Do you notice the lack of narrative coherence?
If they are a threat why did they act friendly, comprehensively, peacefully and cooperatively?
If their nature will change to hostile in the future, how and why will it change?
There are no indications that such a scenario will happen.

When across two games, ME2 and ME3, across 60 hours, all you see is synthetics being peaceful as much as they are able, being cooperative, and even growing emotions for organics, you can't just throw all that through a window in 5 minutes.

You can't take what the Catalyst said for granted when everything you learned contradicts that.

In the last several minutes the story goes against everything we learned, and we are forced to belive that all of this was a lie and that the synthetics are the real danger, the real threat, and the reapers are there to save organics. And the synthetics are in fact so dangerous that we should all give up our lives to be processed into a reaper so that our DNA can be perseved. Dafaq?

Harbinger said that the reapers were scanning the galaxy for a suitable race for building a new reaper, and that they even considered the geth.
This means that their goal is not preserving organic races in reaper form (at least not in ME2). They just want to make a new reaper.

It's obvious that the ending we got was never planned. They just made it up during the development of ME3. And dammit, they made it up terribly.

Even if you tell the Catalyst that you already made peace between organics and synthetics he says that war will come again anyway. He convinces Shepard that all that he has done is meaningless in just a couple of sentences and Shepard goes along with that.
This is just one of many problems with the ending, but it's still an important one.
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Then the Catalyst says that processing the civilizations wasn't such a good idea, and goes on to give you 3 new solutions. And Shepard is OK with that.
Catalyst's first "solution" destroyed thousands of civilizations, trillions of lives, including the boy in whose form he manifests himself.
He might be wrong again. Who gave him the right to decide the future of the galaxy? Why should we listen to him? Why should we agree to any of his "solutions"?
That "space nazi " deserves getting riddled with bullets just like the ending is riddled with plot holes and inconsistencies.
Should we mention that this ending presents the reapers only as a tool to clean the galaxy of advanced organic races? It totally ruins the mystery and everthing that made the reapers great.


Reaper motivation is not to be taken lightly.

Reapers are the driving force of Mass Effect story.
Mystery that surrounds them is one of the core elements of their character.

Explaining reaper's motivation just for the sake of giving them motivation is a road to failure.

If you are going to take that mystery away you have to replace it with something amazing, colossal, something that leaves you in awe but fits the story and is logical.

Explaining the reaper motivation should be done only if that explanation makes the story better.

It means that the explanation has to fit the trilogy and the universe and bring something great into the story.

The "explanation" we got failed miserably at that.

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Sovereign insisted that we can't understand their motives. Even the destroyer on Rannoch said that again. Yet their purpose turns out to be incredibly simple, and incredibly stupid.

Even if all that the Catalyst said was true, why not have the Reapers move in only on the condition that some synthetic life form actually becomes hostile, and a threat to the galaxy. Or better yet, why not just stick around, greet the new species at the citadel and tell them the dangers of creating synthetic life forms. Act as a galactic police department as it were, and slap down any species attempting to create synthetic life. There are plenty of ways to go about preventing the Synthetic vs Organic holocaust, nearly all of which don’t involve the wholesale slaughter of billions. There's no need for killing all spacefaring races. It's just stupid and unnecessary genocide.

We have an obvious example of BAD WRITING.

Welcome to the forums!


Or...I could give you the PR response that certain companies *cough BioWare cough* gives:

"That's Great! What was one thing that you like about Mass Effect 3?"

I liked the multi-colored endings.
Though I feel sad that there is no orange

Jokes aside, if anyone has thoughts on this matter, bring it up.

This a great breakdown of what happened. The Reapers should have been treated as a race, not a tool.

The catalyst should have been a tool. Well let me rephrase that, the catalyst was a figurative, but it should have been a literal tool. IMO.

My favorite thing, is that they say synthetics would kill organics, but the only time the geth are -aggressive- is when under the control of the reapers? The very things here to keep synthetics from killing us, is in fact using the synthetics that we created, to kill us, to keep them from killing us independently, which they never have, and most likely, never would.

thanks bioware.

The geth fought a war to preserve their existence. EDI was an unshackled AI that showed a genuine affection for her crew and could even fall in love with Joker and for those of you care to cast your mind back, you find a rogue AI on the citadel in ME1 that wasn't intent on destroying all organics, it just wanted to go hang out and do its own thing.

Hell, the geth are probably the nicest race in the Mass Effect galaxy! Not interested in conquest or anything but just doing their own thing and letting everyone else do theirs too. How many organic races would just be fine with peace with a race that had tried to wipe them out - TWICE! And not just a grudging "I guess we'll not kill you" but they WANT TO HELP THE QUARIANS RECLAIM THEIR HOMEWORLD!

These guys make Ned Flanders look like a jerk!

What you all said, plus...

"Well, excuse me, Mr. Cataclysm Egoist Tripping, how the heck can you claim that will happen when you don't give anyone else a bloody chance to prove you wrong, no, instead you judge them on your own, failed experience?!

Wow, talk about lacking any kind of sensibility. Now, before I leave, tell me where your off switch is and where the button for the lift is. Thanks.

Oh, would you like a cookie? Ha, though you can't, not an option! Tough cookies, uh? Pfft!"

Nice post. I agree. What's most frustrating about all of this is what it all says about the catalyst. I put a long post on the bsn about this. Going to post it below if anyone is interested.

I apologize that this post is so long. But it is necessary in order to really dig into why the motives and actions of the Reapers are so illogical. Let's start by analyzing the starting point, the technological singularity.

"The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else." (Eliezer Yudkowsky)

The concept is basically that computing power increase exponentially all the time, while humans are about as smart as they've always been. Meaning on the day that we create a sentient program, it is only a matter of time until it is smarter than we are by a margin larger than we are smarter than our dogs.

At this point we have no hope against it in conflict because there is no action we can take against it that it hasn't planned for.

In Mass Effect 3, the Catalyst apparently agrees that the technological singularity is inevitable, and has created a solution to prevent it from having its most dire consequences. But it needs to be pointed out that the catalysts solution has no validity unless the two absolutes he claims are both truly absolutes, that they occur 100% of the time. I am adding a third absolute to the discussion because it will come up later.

1) ALL Synthetic life will eventually wipe out...

2) ...ALL organic life.

3) ALL organic life will eventually destroy itself if it never becomes advanced enough to colonize other worlds.

We know the catalyst is the creator of the reapers because he refers to them as "My solution". We know he lives in the citadel, but has no physical body. This makes him either an AI or a VI. Since he controls and created the reapers, we must conclude him to be an AI.

Thus the catalyst is a synthetic life form. We can further conclude that he was the very first AI. If he had not been, then for his theory to be correct, all organic life would have been wiped out by the synthetics that came before him. As such, he would never have been created.

So we know that the catalyst is either the very first AI, or that his theory was disproven before he ever came into existence. We will assume the former. So at a time when he is the only example of synthetic life, the catalyst comes to his conclusion. ALL synthetic life will eventually wipe out ALL organic life. He decides this is somehow not a preferred outcome, and sets about a solution to the problem.

His solution: reaperize the organic races "preserving" them, and then wipe out the excess. This would not be poor reasoning if not for the fact that he leaves the non advanced civilizations alone. This introduces two flaws into his established logic.

1- It implies that he acknowledges a benefit to organic races living as organic races as opposed to being reaperized.

2- It falsifies his claim that ALL organic races will be wiped out by an AI.

It implies that he acknowledges a benefit to organic races living as organic races as opposed to being reaperized, because otherwise he would simply convert all of the non advanced races into reapers as well. It is established that it takes millions of humans to create a human reaper, so any claim that a civilization needs to be space faring in order have a sufficient population is false. This point is bolstered by the catalyst's defense of his actions to Shepard. Shepard asks what sense it makes to save organic life by destroying it and the catalyst responds "No, only advanced civilizations. We leave the non-advanced life alone as we did with your race during the last cycle." It is clear that catalyst feels the need to point out in his defense that he does allow life to flourish in its natural form...for a time. If you don't understand why this is a logical problem for the catalyst's conclusion, you must marry this point to the next.

It falsifies his claim that ALL organic races will be wiped out by an AI with a simple logical challenge. What if a race, never reaches a level of development required to become space fairing? The catalyst would allow such a race to live indefinitely. As such the catalyst is well aware that he is an AI, in fact the only AI, and that there are races he would never wipe out. Both absolutes 1 and 2 are false.

The only counter argument adds the third absolute to the discussion. ALL organic races will destroy themselves if they don't become space fairing. This is implied when you learn about the Drell home world. The problem is that if this third absolute is truly an absolute, then logic would require a being that sees value in preserving life in reaper form, to turn non-advanced life into reapers before they have the opportunity to destroy themselves by not making it off their home world. If absolute number 3 is real, and reaperization is preferable to traditional organic life, than a more logical solution would be for the Reapers is to constantly patrol the galaxy keeping tabs on every race so that they convert them before they ever can be at risk of creating AI, or at risk of destroying themselves by any means. We must therefore conclude that the catalyst doesn't really consider reaperization to be inherently better than traditional organic life. It is his desperate last resort.

The Reapers themselves seem to consider their state perfection, but your conversation with the catalysts reveals them to be either liars or out of the loop. Sovereign claimed the Reapers had no beginning. This is proven false by the catalyst. Sovereign claimed the reapers transcended the understanding of organic beings. Their nature can be explained in a few sentences with little difficulty after ME2 and ME3. Sovereign claimed the reapers were the doom of organic life. Harbinger claimed they are the salvation of organic life. The catalyst holds a third view that they are an unfortunate requirement of his solution.

We now have three absolutes, none of which can both be true and have the catalyst's solution still be sound reasoning. There are two consequences of this.

1-The catalyst is wrong and absolutes 1 and 2 are not absolutes.

2-He doesn't value preserving life in reaper form as his highest priority. This implies that a race having the right to develop to have a chance at becoming advanced is apparently worth the risk of being wiped out without being preserved.

Here is where the catalyst's solution collapses like a house of cards. He acknowledges organic races would be better off in organic form rather than reaper form, but sees no way it can happen. So his grim solution is reaperization. He acknowledges that organic races have at least some right to develop on their own with a risk of being destroyed, otherwise as we see above; he would turn non-advanced races into reapers as well. Thus if any of the absolutes are not absolute, he would have to conclude that it is best for organic life forms to grow on their own and roll the dice at surviving the technological singularity that will come. Here is why.

Javik explains at one point that the Protheans won a war against a synthetic race that had been created by some other race. If not for reaper interference, the Quarians would have obliterated the Geth in the events of Mass Effect 3. Shepard defeated an AI on the moon during the events of ME1. There is abundant evidence that even if ALL synthetics will attempt to kill all organics, that they do not succeed remotely 100% of the time. In fact, of the examples we have, organics win the clear majority. The Geth also were never the aggressors to any race in their entire history, until the Reapers corrupted some of them. So we know that synthetics do not attempt to destroy organics 100% of the time, and we know they do not win 100% of the time that they do.

This explodes the catalyst's logic, because he does destroy these civilizations 100% of the time. The status Quo allows some advanced organics to survive. His solution kills them all and can merely preserve them in a form that we have already established he does not hold to be an inherently superior state.

The only counter to this point is to suggest that the reasons these synthetics did not succeed, is because they were wiped out before they could reach the point of singularity. That had the Geth lived long enough, they would eventually conclude that they needed to wipe out organic races, and would advance so much faster than the organics, that the conflict would have only one logical outcome. But this point is again disproven by the reapers, who have had millions of years to advance and seem to be making no further technological progress. Apparently the laws of exponential growth are also falsified by the reapers existence. Since organic races throughout the various cycles do succeed in killing Reapers, the idea that the organic races wouldn't be able to keep up with the Geth strains credulity.

This also introduces another flaw. If the Catalyst really assigned value to the "preservation" of organic life in reaper form, than he wouldn't risk their destruction in wars with organics every 50,000 years. He would reaperize each race before they could travel the stars and potentially pose a threat. We must therefore conclude that the value he places in preserving life as reapers is lower than the value he places on letting organic races flourish for a while.

Since we know the Catalyst is ok with some life being wiped out, and that he cannot hold reaperization to be inherently superior to traditional life, and that his motive stems from a belief that is refuted with multiple pieces of evidence in just the last 2 cycles, his only logical responses would be to end the cycle and aid organic life forms in their defense against synthetics, or end the cycle and let events unfold as they will.

The catalyst is an intelligence orders of magnitude greater than our own. Yet his logic is just abysmal. Can someone send him a philosophy book?

Wow - such a comprehensive look at what is wrong with that part of the ending.

Before addressing any other of the multitude of things that don't make sense, there is the terribly flawed logic you have pointed out.

I agree with the OP. This is a very good breakdown. All I can say to that is Welcome to Plotholes! (and welcome to the forums).
This is also the most infuriating piece of "logic" I've come across in years. It bugs me so bad that we can't at least let our fleets TRY to defeat the reapers, and then the circular logic and then the stupid kid...and stupid reapers...bad writing...augh!

Cookies for all, free of logical errors, full of yum and win!

Yes, only one plan needed to prevent logical errors of cookies rising to destroy us all: Yummy goodness

Cookie 1: What's wrong? What's eating you?
Cookie 2: That's just it, nothing is eating me!

Well-said. Nothing in the ME series indicated that synthetics vs. organics was a primary theme. To have it suddenly declared as such in the last five minutes was a very poor artistic decision.

The big problem I have with this theme is not that the Catalyst's logic is wrong in general, just that it's wrong in-universe. Technological singularity and self-replicating machines and that sort of thing are a legitimate concern in science fiction universes. The concept of the created rebelling against the creator is even broader than just science fiction (it's one of the themes in the Bible, even; this is the reason for the existence of Satan and the fall of man, so this is clearly a really old theme).

In Mass Effect, these themes are actually inverted. It is the Quarians that try to strike down the Geth, not the other way around. It is organics that commit the major atrocities against themselves, against each other, and against their creations. If the ending of 'Frankenstein' had demonstrated that the monster had rebelled against Dr. Frankenstein, people would be confused because that would be in direct defiance to the rest of the story. This is the major problem with the Catalyst's logic. No amount of speculation can fix this. It's the inversion of everything that we've been presented that makes this ending so unpalatable. It's not even so much that synthetics vs. organics was a minor theme; diversity in general was one of the major themes, so they still could have worked it in some how without it seeming so ludicrous. It's just backwards.

So here's a question. Why does the catalyst think synthesis is a permanent solution to the problem? What's to stop the now half-robot people from creating synthetics? And what is then to stop the synthetics from destroying half-robot people?

Then we will need a new catalysts who creates a race of synthetics to kill all half-robot people, in order to prevent half-robot people from creating synthetics who will destroy half-robot people.

None of the Catalyst's solutions are any good (though he does disclaim that Destroy is actively bad). Controlling the Reapers doesn't solve the problem, nor does Synthesis. It doesn't stop life from creating life, so the dilemma of creator vs. created will continue to exist. The ending as presented is so incredibly short-sighted; the 'speculation' that they hold so dear unravels just about everything. Any kind of thought whatsoever about the future of the universe reveals the massive problems behind these new 'solutions.' It's debatable whether they're any better than the Reapers were in the first place.

In any case, the Catalyst's logic is flawed. I'm 99% sure he's running on windows 98 and has blue screens during public presentations . Sorry for the off-topic.

ASC : you have raised good points in your post, very interesting indeed

Indeed. Everthing we learn about synthetics IN Mass Effect universe tells us that they aren't hostile, that they are peaceful, unless endangered.

Then they get a very odd and questionable character, character you see for the first time, character that feels "out of the universe", - The Catalyst to tell you that synthetics are a threat.
At the very end of the trilogy, you are suddenly informed, for the first time, that the synthetics are a threat. And then you are given "solutions" to solve that threat, although you are not given any clear idea on what consequences will those "solutions" hold. In short - you have no idea why the synthetics are a threat, what exactly did you do, or what exactly is going to happen.

And if Shepard tells the Catalyst that he made peace between organics and synthetics, the Catalyst says that it doesn't matter and that they will destroy us anyway, and Shepard is like this:

And I'm like this:


And one of the reasons we loved this trilogy so much - The Reapers are reduced to Catalyst's tools.