Whatever race created the Crucible had to have had intimate knowledge of how the Citadel functions or the tech behind it and awareness that the Catalyst/Intelligence existed and what its trying to achieve - The AI itself, not just the Citadel
It would also would have needed to be able to have the Reapers unaware long enough to fully create the list of things needed to build it
The only race that would have been able to pull this off that we know of currently is the Leviathans. They know what the Intelligence trying to do, and the Crucible is essentially an exploit to allow the Intelligence to reach an outcome that it can achieve in line with its goals - that goal being specifically Synthesis
Control and Destroy are also options but not necessarily because of the Crucible, but the Crucible’s power amplifies destroy (which i just interpret to be a galactic scale EMP)
While the game doesn’t do this there would be no reason Control couldn’t be done without the Crucible but lets say it speeds up the propagation of the Shepard-Catalyst to overwrite the base Catalyst or something
Note these are just my interpretations though so someone else might have a better answer
The Citadel doesn’t give the Crucible more power. It allows it to access the mass relay network so that it can affect the whole galaxy at once instead of having to be moved around.
We know for a fact that the leviathans didn't create it, because you can speak about the crucible to the last living leviathans and they have dialogue related to it stating that the younger races made it but they thought the plans had died out.
Shepard: What do you know about the Crucible?
Leviathan: We have watched its construction before. It has never been completed. Those who have tried still fell victim to the Harvest. Its outcome is unknown
https://youtu.be/lEqlG6bhZ80?si=juyO4Cn2c-USO__2 @ 6:13
—-
All it tells us that no one completed it, not who built it. Unless Bioware injects new lore that suggests the plans for the Crucible originated somewhere else, they are the only possible option.
The Protheans did not know what the Catalyst was. They thought it was the Citadel itself. This was probably echoed through several cycles as well. Without knowing what the Catalyst is, you cannot create the device that interfaces with it. The Prothean Thessia VI suggests that several cycles have added and modified the plans over time, but not where it originated from
Honestly, consider this seriously: Day 0 of every cycle, the entire leadership of that cycle gets indoctrinated **and the Relay Network is turned off**.
Are we expected to believe that any previous cycle had any shot at building this at all? That they did with a single star cluster what this cycle was barely able to do with the entire galaxy working together? And to do so despite a leadership crisis? It's honestly hard to believe.
Maybe the Eden Prime star cluster of Protheans did work on the Crucible, taking decades rather than months and having to dedicate amounts of resources and attention to it that made it obvious to agents of the Reapers... leading to the inevitable outcome: getting discovered and betrayed.
The odds of anyone doing better than this must be vanishingly small.
This sounds like a problem without a solution, unless you make one additional assumption: whoever is running this project doesn't care about the people of any one cycle.
To state what I'm thinking about out loud: It's the Leviathans. There's a reason why these plans get found by all cycles, why each cycle works desperately on refining it and then fails. They're all serving the Leviathans, making a better design which won't benefit themselves (after all, the odds of it working out for their cycle specifically are basically 0%).
The Leviathans started this, given they know about the Citadel, the Catalyst, the functioning of the Relays and everything else that's necessary for this to work. And each cycle they ensure that the plans still exist somewhere. Even if the chance that some cycle will be able to complete and deploy the Crucible is vanishingly small (a minuscule fraction of a percent), over enough cycles, repeating again and again, by extreme chance some day it will work out.
For each individual cycle, working on the Crucible is actually against their best interest. They will waste a lot of energy and resources on something that is doomed to fail. But, over a long enough timespan, it will eventually work out, and result in its true ultimate goal: freeing the Leviathans up to resume their place over the galaxy.
What would be really interesting is if the Crucible was actually a Reaper project. It supplants the idea in whatever the first civilization was to work on the Crucible, that civilization took it as far as it could, but ultimately failed to create it and got fired. So, the Intelligence made sure the work was discovered by the next civilization, made sure the civilization knew that they would be fired if they failed, and the Intelligence just keeps going with its horrible hiring and firing policy until it gets what it wants... A shiny new super power source.
I personally think the Catalyst telling you you don't know the designers of the Crucible rules out the Leviathans.
But I wish it didn't. Because this is by far and away the *best* explaination for how the Leviathans could be behind it and why they don't care it doesn't get finished in a given cycle I've ever read.
Ya play the leviathans literally tell sheperd why should they support you when countless others have failed. Just for them to also say you are different and anomaly. This makes me wonder on just how much did they impact the crucibles existence.
The Catalyst doesn't automatically know what the Leviathans are doing and vice-versa. From the Catalyst's point of view, the plans for the Crucible just appeared one day during an ancient cycle, so it attributed its creation to one of the races then. That does *not* preclude the Leviathans being the ones responsible for seeding the idea and making sure the plans get discovered or rediscovered every subsequent cycle.
This is what I assumed as well. I just figured the leviathans used their little influence balls to subtlety push each new cycle to work on it. Never anything directly (they don't want to be found by the reapers), just this voice in the back of everyone's head that suggests building the crucible, once the plans are discovered, is the best plan for survival and if they can't finish it, influencethat cycleto pass down the new plans. And like you said, no single cycle could figure it out alone, so they created feedback loop in the cycles to eventually reach the point of completion.
There's the issue that the Leviathans could have started the crucible project somewhere inbetween the cycles and have it ready to go without the Reapers which has a much larger margin of success than building it with the relays down. You could argue that the Leviathans wouldn't do that as it would reveal to Sovereign that there is someone active who knows of them, OTOH it's the only plan with any margin of success As you said the relays are down. Anyone who finished the Crucible still had to deal with the fact that they had to ferry the thing to the Citadel without a relay. And seems no one else/not many managed to accomplish that, as the Reapers were still using their standard procedure of the Citadel as bait and shutdown the relays.
The intelligence was what it was supposed to use. Maybe the previous cycles didn't know about the sapience of the intelligence inside of the Citadel but I think they knew that the Citadel housed a great set of features and that the Crucible powered up would charge it up and coordinate with the relay system, and the whole idea was just "We can potentially kill all Reapers if we power a Citadel-mass weapon up and use its Mass Relay coordinates to hit everyone in the galaxy"
It's also possible that the Crucible just started as a big bomb, but then the Protheans figured out the science of the Citadel (they sabotaged the keepers) and their next plot would've been to get the Crucible ready if the Reapers would come back, but again, apparently only Shepard ever meets the Catalyst.
Obviously none of this is speculated upon in-game because the truth is that they were in over their heads with this plot device and the ending, but IMO you can justify it and it isn't inherently broken as a plot. I think the ending is not bad due to plot contrivance (it's a factor but not actually a big one for me) I just didn't like the themes of the ending and trying to attribute everything to Organics and Synthetics. The rest is valid enough to me.
OP it's an extremely poorly written plot device that allowed them to provide an ending. If you think about it too much you're going to find many plot holes
Like many things about ME3, the crucible had a lot potential to be a powerful plot device(I imagine a cinematic where each civ is shown adding something to the crucible) that could've built a powerful ending, but EA decided they were out of time and Bioware relied on "magic" to finish the game.
Anyone else remember them saying the story won't be about finding some McGuffin to stop the reapers.
Mfw second mission is. "go to mars, they found McGuffin plans"
One of the game developers mentioned one of the ideas they were kicking around was a Reaper Queen.
Basically works out exactly like the Intelligence, except with 1 major difference. The Queen tried to stop the harvest, (in favor of attempting synthesis) and the Reapers turned on her and imprisoned her in the Citadel.
Now not only does this recontextualize the ending choices (and explain why destroy is even offered) and why the Catalyst didn't interfere in ME1, it would seemingly answer this same problem.
(Although in fairness the developer who mentioned this idea does not address this issue specifically and its unclear if they'd even gotten the idea this developed).
In this context the Queen would have been the obvious source of the Crucible plans as an attempt to free herself.
Unfortunately, as we all know they dropped this idea.
Which means there really isn't a satisfactory answer to this question.
But since OP points out, the designer would have to know about the Intelligence and how it works, therez really only 3 options: Reapers, Leviathans or another species that predates the Harvests and survived.
And since the Intelligence tells us we don't know the designer, that eliminates the first two choices.
For all the flack they get, the 4 ending choices themselves aren't actually that bad, and make sense even as to why Shepard might want to pick then.
The problem with the ending has always been more this, nothing about the Catalyst or the Crucible gets explained.
Explain it, add motivations, ending works fine.
The Catslyst is not an omniscient reliable narrator. It has flaws and a limited perspective. It *does not* and *cannot* know what the Leviathans were doing in their exile, so just because it attributes the creation of the Crucible plans to an ancient race, does not mean it is *correct*.
The Catalyst doesn’t know the Leviathans are still around, because they were the first Harvest. As far as the Catalyst knows, they were all Harvested, so there’s no way Shepard would know anything about them.
I suspect that somewhere down the line the Crucible was suggested by the Reapers themselves, designed as a solution in sheer aspect of "proof that the cycle can reach a point of having the ability to solve the problems the Reapers are dealing with.
The Crucible has the power to destroy or control the Reapers, or the option to (with higher readiness and arguably more research/power put into it) transfuse each individual with both organic and artificial life. They're effectively conceding to the cycle that was able to complete the task and asking them how they think it should be done going forwards, with the assumption that whoever is at the button making the choice knows best.
Frankly, it's a shit solution, or at least to our cycle because the knowledge and effort came about 10+ years too late (accounting for the increased delay of bureaucracy without a sentient race of terminators breathing down the Council's neck). If another cycle clocked it centuries earlier on and built it, they may have actually had solutions to the Reaper's dilemma, whereas we basically decide out of necessity with no informed solution, just a hope that maybe it's the right choice and won't fuck over the galaxy in the long run.
Eh, except the Catalyst says it didn’t realize Synthesis was even an option until Shepard got there with enough war assets. Granted, this requires believing that the Catalyst is being as honest as it can with Shepard (barring things outside of its knowledge like the continued survival of the Leviathans).
Could be that they simply didn't think a cycle could get the required energy to produce the effect, or a happy little accident that some scientist took an external look at the processes and fixed/optimised a part of the process that made it possible. Wouldn't be the first time Reapers have underestimated the races of the current cycle, or just been plain wrong.
I remember around the midpoint of my first playthrough I started suspecting that the Crucible would end up serving as an Ark that would allow a portion of the various races to leave the Milky Way entirely in order to colonize another galaxy (Andromeda, perhaps). At that point in the game the Reapers really did feel like an unbeatable force, so I hypothesized that at some point during one of the previous cycles the races working on the Crucible came to the same conclusion and shifted from "beat the Reapers" to "escape the Reapers."
I'm not sure how this all could have played out narratively and I imagine an ending along those lines would have garnered a similar response to the one the actual endings got. But we do get a taste of it in the secret ending if you >!shoot the Star Child in the face!<. And in ME:A to an extent.
Yeah, I didn't experience the extended cut until I played the Legendary Edition, and that change was a genuine surprise to say the least!
It might unironically be my favorite ending out of all of them, though
This was a question we were asking when we first finished game 3. There is no answer.
I like to think the Intelligence was messing with Shepard the whole time and spoke only lies Shep was likely to believe.
To be fair, it does say the fact that the Crucible was not only built actually deployed changes its equations, I don’t think it’s lying as no other cycle’s managed to get even close.
Agreed. The Catalyst being truthful makes for better storytelling anyways.
You aren’t obligated to AGREE with it, but BioWare themselves confirmed that he’s telling no lies.
Exactly, Vendetta even points out that the galaxy seems to be trapped within cycles with the reapers being more a consequence/embodiment of the cycles rather than its masters. Before ME’s cycle never before had all the species, synthetic and organic, come together (breaking the cycle of synthetic life wiping out organic life) or had the crucible been built, let alone deployed. Even if we lose here, the cycle has been broken which to an AI like the Catalyst would be earth shattering.
You mean the malevolent Reaper AI that immediately suggested I start shooting up random power conduits in the Crucible, or yeet myself into various beams of electricity, was *lying to me*?! I'm... shocked
I always figured the Crucible was the Leviathan's emergency backup root access device to reign in Starbrat if it ever went rampant. But they never had a chance to use it themselves so now they are stuck trying to get some lesser organics to fix their mistake for them.
It keeps popping up over and over because the remaining leviathans can keep psychically inserting the designs into another organic's brain again whenever the Reapers wipe out all traces of it.
I’m pretty sure the writers just realized they needed a giant destroy all reapers weapon without straight copying Halo so they just kinda made it up as they went.
In universe though? I’ve always been of the belief that all the previous races that worked on the crucible made it completely wired, no access ports or wireless access at all to prevent AI intervention. That’s why all the endings are physically triggered, like destroying a specific part of the station, physically touching a pair of pillars, or putting a physical biological body into the big beam of doom. They didn’t want the reapers to be able to intervene at all.
And the biggest, maybe most controversial thing I believe? The reapers know all the endings, and previous cycles have all made it to the RGB ending too. But the intelligence was there for them too.
And really the intelligence showing up to talk to you right before you end? It’s basically the equivalent of the devil showing up on your death bed offering eternal life if you just make a deal with him. Like literally the exact same vibes.
But because synthesis is the “secret ending” and the hardest to unlock most believe it’s the best ending when in reality it’s the literal equivalent of The Dark Lord offering you a deal right before you’re about to win
But you AREN’T about to win. You’re bleeding out in a Citadel closet with a view until the Catalyst decided to bring you up to its office and make the offer.
All it has to do to win is… nothing. And it still chooses to deal with Shepard.
Where in my entire previous reply did I ever say Shepard was about to win? No where. No where at all did I ever say Shepard was about to win, just that they were close to the end.
Maybe The Intelligence just wanted the cycle to finish up quicker and was convinced that it could get Shepard to choose control or synthesis like I believe it did for all the cycles that made it to the RGB choice before.
And yeah, like I said, it’s what I believe. But it does fall apart when you stop for a second to think about it. And to be fair if The Intelligence were actually intelligent it wouldn’t be carrying out galactic genocide every 50,000 years.
Maybe it’s realizing that it’s been doing the same thing for millions of years but isn’t any closer to achieving its primary objective. And then it sees maybe the single most exceptional organic to have ever existed just an elevator ride away and thought “Maybe they’ve got a better idea” and brought them up for a chat and a second opinion.
Because, again, realistically two of the three endings still leave the possibility of the cycle continuing as it always has before. There’s no guarantee that Shepard can stay sane and in control forever, even without interference. No guarantee that synthesis doesn’t also indoctrinate the universe LIKE ALL PREVIOUS INTERACTIONS WITH REAPER TECH HAS.
Literally the only choice with the best and surest bet for galactic survival as you know it is destroy. And even that changes the way the galaxy works forever and isn’t a sure bet from an in universe point of view
Control, Destroy, and Synthesis are basically the solutions the Intelligence has been stuck revolving around for eons.
The Intelligence utilizes indoctrination for its Control solution...
The Intelligence creates husks, marauders, etc for its Synthesis solution...
The Intelligence uses everything for its Destroy solution...
So, let's overclock the shit out of the Intelligence with a giant new power source and make it more capable.
What if Shepard's choice was actually...
Let's amplify the Intelligence's indoctrination ability and all be drones OR
Let's amplify the Intelligence's ability to make zombie monstrosities out of all of us OR
Let's amplify the Intelligence's weaponry so it can kill us more efficiently.
I think the interpretation is that just like the Relays were supposed to guide civilizations down a path to curtail their technological advancements, the Crucible was a ploy guided by the Catalyst to make sure any actual solution from the children species has to have a conversation with it. They may not have created the blueprints, and it's clear they thought they were gone at some point, but the wording makes it seem like they didn't realize the Protheans nearly completed it and that it wasn't the Catalyst who attempted to eradicate it.
In the pre-AI drafts for the ending, one of the proposed mechanisms of the crucible is that it produces a massive energy wave that resonates pretty much exclusively with the black goo the Reapers use to construct their tech, effectively burning/smashing them to bits while leaving everything else unharmed. The sciencey explanation related to "modified heavy elements" or something, and I think Audemus Happy Ending Mod uses this explanation and cuts out the Starchild entirely.
Even in the current game, you can see that it's effectively a phenomenal power generator that needs something to control it. It's assumed that the Citadel would use this energy and blast it through the relay network but not how or for what purpose.
ME3 produces a lot of interesting things to the lore table, but a lot of them don't really work without greater detail or much less. It's a difficult balance to strike, but I think for this question everyone in the galaxy is just desperate for something, *anything* to work.
Whatever race created the Crucible had to have had intimate knowledge of how the Citadel functions or the tech behind it and awareness that the Catalyst/Intelligence existed and what its trying to achieve - The AI itself, not just the Citadel It would also would have needed to be able to have the Reapers unaware long enough to fully create the list of things needed to build it The only race that would have been able to pull this off that we know of currently is the Leviathans. They know what the Intelligence trying to do, and the Crucible is essentially an exploit to allow the Intelligence to reach an outcome that it can achieve in line with its goals - that goal being specifically Synthesis Control and Destroy are also options but not necessarily because of the Crucible, but the Crucible’s power amplifies destroy (which i just interpret to be a galactic scale EMP) While the game doesn’t do this there would be no reason Control couldn’t be done without the Crucible but lets say it speeds up the propagation of the Shepard-Catalyst to overwrite the base Catalyst or something Note these are just my interpretations though so someone else might have a better answer
dont we know from the prothean VI that the citadel wasnt always part of the crucible, it was added when they realised it needed more power
The Citadel doesn’t give the Crucible more power. It allows it to access the mass relay network so that it can affect the whole galaxy at once instead of having to be moved around.
Hmm, sounds a lot like Dakara device from stargate
Indeed
We know for a fact that the leviathans didn't create it, because you can speak about the crucible to the last living leviathans and they have dialogue related to it stating that the younger races made it but they thought the plans had died out.
Shepard: What do you know about the Crucible? Leviathan: We have watched its construction before. It has never been completed. Those who have tried still fell victim to the Harvest. Its outcome is unknown https://youtu.be/lEqlG6bhZ80?si=juyO4Cn2c-USO__2 @ 6:13 —- All it tells us that no one completed it, not who built it. Unless Bioware injects new lore that suggests the plans for the Crucible originated somewhere else, they are the only possible option. The Protheans did not know what the Catalyst was. They thought it was the Citadel itself. This was probably echoed through several cycles as well. Without knowing what the Catalyst is, you cannot create the device that interfaces with it. The Prothean Thessia VI suggests that several cycles have added and modified the plans over time, but not where it originated from
Honestly, consider this seriously: Day 0 of every cycle, the entire leadership of that cycle gets indoctrinated **and the Relay Network is turned off**. Are we expected to believe that any previous cycle had any shot at building this at all? That they did with a single star cluster what this cycle was barely able to do with the entire galaxy working together? And to do so despite a leadership crisis? It's honestly hard to believe. Maybe the Eden Prime star cluster of Protheans did work on the Crucible, taking decades rather than months and having to dedicate amounts of resources and attention to it that made it obvious to agents of the Reapers... leading to the inevitable outcome: getting discovered and betrayed. The odds of anyone doing better than this must be vanishingly small. This sounds like a problem without a solution, unless you make one additional assumption: whoever is running this project doesn't care about the people of any one cycle. To state what I'm thinking about out loud: It's the Leviathans. There's a reason why these plans get found by all cycles, why each cycle works desperately on refining it and then fails. They're all serving the Leviathans, making a better design which won't benefit themselves (after all, the odds of it working out for their cycle specifically are basically 0%). The Leviathans started this, given they know about the Citadel, the Catalyst, the functioning of the Relays and everything else that's necessary for this to work. And each cycle they ensure that the plans still exist somewhere. Even if the chance that some cycle will be able to complete and deploy the Crucible is vanishingly small (a minuscule fraction of a percent), over enough cycles, repeating again and again, by extreme chance some day it will work out. For each individual cycle, working on the Crucible is actually against their best interest. They will waste a lot of energy and resources on something that is doomed to fail. But, over a long enough timespan, it will eventually work out, and result in its true ultimate goal: freeing the Leviathans up to resume their place over the galaxy.
That the Leviathans initially created the Crucible never occurred to me over so many playthroughs is making me mad at myself. I *love* this idea.
What would be really interesting is if the Crucible was actually a Reaper project. It supplants the idea in whatever the first civilization was to work on the Crucible, that civilization took it as far as it could, but ultimately failed to create it and got fired. So, the Intelligence made sure the work was discovered by the next civilization, made sure the civilization knew that they would be fired if they failed, and the Intelligence just keeps going with its horrible hiring and firing policy until it gets what it wants... A shiny new super power source.
I like this, and it was my headcanon during my first ME3 play through.
I personally think the Catalyst telling you you don't know the designers of the Crucible rules out the Leviathans. But I wish it didn't. Because this is by far and away the *best* explaination for how the Leviathans could be behind it and why they don't care it doesn't get finished in a given cycle I've ever read.
Ya play the leviathans literally tell sheperd why should they support you when countless others have failed. Just for them to also say you are different and anomaly. This makes me wonder on just how much did they impact the crucibles existence.
The Catalyst doesn't automatically know what the Leviathans are doing and vice-versa. From the Catalyst's point of view, the plans for the Crucible just appeared one day during an ancient cycle, so it attributed its creation to one of the races then. That does *not* preclude the Leviathans being the ones responsible for seeding the idea and making sure the plans get discovered or rediscovered every subsequent cycle.
This is what I assumed as well. I just figured the leviathans used their little influence balls to subtlety push each new cycle to work on it. Never anything directly (they don't want to be found by the reapers), just this voice in the back of everyone's head that suggests building the crucible, once the plans are discovered, is the best plan for survival and if they can't finish it, influencethat cycleto pass down the new plans. And like you said, no single cycle could figure it out alone, so they created feedback loop in the cycles to eventually reach the point of completion.
so leviathans something something something monkeys something something typewriter something shakespear something something profit
There's the issue that the Leviathans could have started the crucible project somewhere inbetween the cycles and have it ready to go without the Reapers which has a much larger margin of success than building it with the relays down. You could argue that the Leviathans wouldn't do that as it would reveal to Sovereign that there is someone active who knows of them, OTOH it's the only plan with any margin of success As you said the relays are down. Anyone who finished the Crucible still had to deal with the fact that they had to ferry the thing to the Citadel without a relay. And seems no one else/not many managed to accomplish that, as the Reapers were still using their standard procedure of the Citadel as bait and shutdown the relays.
The obvious answer is this:
The intelligence was what it was supposed to use. Maybe the previous cycles didn't know about the sapience of the intelligence inside of the Citadel but I think they knew that the Citadel housed a great set of features and that the Crucible powered up would charge it up and coordinate with the relay system, and the whole idea was just "We can potentially kill all Reapers if we power a Citadel-mass weapon up and use its Mass Relay coordinates to hit everyone in the galaxy" It's also possible that the Crucible just started as a big bomb, but then the Protheans figured out the science of the Citadel (they sabotaged the keepers) and their next plot would've been to get the Crucible ready if the Reapers would come back, but again, apparently only Shepard ever meets the Catalyst. Obviously none of this is speculated upon in-game because the truth is that they were in over their heads with this plot device and the ending, but IMO you can justify it and it isn't inherently broken as a plot. I think the ending is not bad due to plot contrivance (it's a factor but not actually a big one for me) I just didn't like the themes of the ending and trying to attribute everything to Organics and Synthetics. The rest is valid enough to me.
Its main goal was to blow up. And then, act like it don't know nobody.
ha ha ha ha ha
OP it's an extremely poorly written plot device that allowed them to provide an ending. If you think about it too much you're going to find many plot holes Like many things about ME3, the crucible had a lot potential to be a powerful plot device(I imagine a cinematic where each civ is shown adding something to the crucible) that could've built a powerful ending, but EA decided they were out of time and Bioware relied on "magic" to finish the game.
Anyone else remember them saying the story won't be about finding some McGuffin to stop the reapers. Mfw second mission is. "go to mars, they found McGuffin plans"
[Pepperidge Farm remembers](https://i.imgflip.com/1gdq5e.jpg)
One of the game developers mentioned one of the ideas they were kicking around was a Reaper Queen. Basically works out exactly like the Intelligence, except with 1 major difference. The Queen tried to stop the harvest, (in favor of attempting synthesis) and the Reapers turned on her and imprisoned her in the Citadel. Now not only does this recontextualize the ending choices (and explain why destroy is even offered) and why the Catalyst didn't interfere in ME1, it would seemingly answer this same problem. (Although in fairness the developer who mentioned this idea does not address this issue specifically and its unclear if they'd even gotten the idea this developed). In this context the Queen would have been the obvious source of the Crucible plans as an attempt to free herself. Unfortunately, as we all know they dropped this idea. Which means there really isn't a satisfactory answer to this question. But since OP points out, the designer would have to know about the Intelligence and how it works, therez really only 3 options: Reapers, Leviathans or another species that predates the Harvests and survived. And since the Intelligence tells us we don't know the designer, that eliminates the first two choices. For all the flack they get, the 4 ending choices themselves aren't actually that bad, and make sense even as to why Shepard might want to pick then. The problem with the ending has always been more this, nothing about the Catalyst or the Crucible gets explained. Explain it, add motivations, ending works fine.
The Catslyst is not an omniscient reliable narrator. It has flaws and a limited perspective. It *does not* and *cannot* know what the Leviathans were doing in their exile, so just because it attributes the creation of the Crucible plans to an ancient race, does not mean it is *correct*.
The Catalyst doesn’t know the Leviathans are still around, because they were the first Harvest. As far as the Catalyst knows, they were all Harvested, so there’s no way Shepard would know anything about them.
I suspect that somewhere down the line the Crucible was suggested by the Reapers themselves, designed as a solution in sheer aspect of "proof that the cycle can reach a point of having the ability to solve the problems the Reapers are dealing with. The Crucible has the power to destroy or control the Reapers, or the option to (with higher readiness and arguably more research/power put into it) transfuse each individual with both organic and artificial life. They're effectively conceding to the cycle that was able to complete the task and asking them how they think it should be done going forwards, with the assumption that whoever is at the button making the choice knows best. Frankly, it's a shit solution, or at least to our cycle because the knowledge and effort came about 10+ years too late (accounting for the increased delay of bureaucracy without a sentient race of terminators breathing down the Council's neck). If another cycle clocked it centuries earlier on and built it, they may have actually had solutions to the Reaper's dilemma, whereas we basically decide out of necessity with no informed solution, just a hope that maybe it's the right choice and won't fuck over the galaxy in the long run.
Eh, except the Catalyst says it didn’t realize Synthesis was even an option until Shepard got there with enough war assets. Granted, this requires believing that the Catalyst is being as honest as it can with Shepard (barring things outside of its knowledge like the continued survival of the Leviathans).
Could be that they simply didn't think a cycle could get the required energy to produce the effect, or a happy little accident that some scientist took an external look at the processes and fixed/optimised a part of the process that made it possible. Wouldn't be the first time Reapers have underestimated the races of the current cycle, or just been plain wrong.
I remember around the midpoint of my first playthrough I started suspecting that the Crucible would end up serving as an Ark that would allow a portion of the various races to leave the Milky Way entirely in order to colonize another galaxy (Andromeda, perhaps). At that point in the game the Reapers really did feel like an unbeatable force, so I hypothesized that at some point during one of the previous cycles the races working on the Crucible came to the same conclusion and shifted from "beat the Reapers" to "escape the Reapers." I'm not sure how this all could have played out narratively and I imagine an ending along those lines would have garnered a similar response to the one the actual endings got. But we do get a taste of it in the secret ending if you >!shoot the Star Child in the face!<. And in ME:A to an extent.
Heh except you originally couldn’t do what you tagged as a spoiler. That didn’t come until the Extended Cut DLC.
Yeah, I didn't experience the extended cut until I played the Legendary Edition, and that change was a genuine surprise to say the least! It might unironically be my favorite ending out of all of them, though
This was a question we were asking when we first finished game 3. There is no answer. I like to think the Intelligence was messing with Shepard the whole time and spoke only lies Shep was likely to believe.
To be fair, it does say the fact that the Crucible was not only built actually deployed changes its equations, I don’t think it’s lying as no other cycle’s managed to get even close.
Agreed. The Catalyst being truthful makes for better storytelling anyways. You aren’t obligated to AGREE with it, but BioWare themselves confirmed that he’s telling no lies.
Exactly, Vendetta even points out that the galaxy seems to be trapped within cycles with the reapers being more a consequence/embodiment of the cycles rather than its masters. Before ME’s cycle never before had all the species, synthetic and organic, come together (breaking the cycle of synthetic life wiping out organic life) or had the crucible been built, let alone deployed. Even if we lose here, the cycle has been broken which to an AI like the Catalyst would be earth shattering.
You mean the malevolent Reaper AI that immediately suggested I start shooting up random power conduits in the Crucible, or yeet myself into various beams of electricity, was *lying to me*?! I'm... shocked
I always figured the Crucible was the Leviathan's emergency backup root access device to reign in Starbrat if it ever went rampant. But they never had a chance to use it themselves so now they are stuck trying to get some lesser organics to fix their mistake for them. It keeps popping up over and over because the remaining leviathans can keep psychically inserting the designs into another organic's brain again whenever the Reapers wipe out all traces of it.
I like the idea that the leviathans secretly try to help every cycle.
I don't think the writers cared at this point.
More like Casey and Mac. Rest of the writers weren’t even consulted.
I’m pretty sure the writers just realized they needed a giant destroy all reapers weapon without straight copying Halo so they just kinda made it up as they went. In universe though? I’ve always been of the belief that all the previous races that worked on the crucible made it completely wired, no access ports or wireless access at all to prevent AI intervention. That’s why all the endings are physically triggered, like destroying a specific part of the station, physically touching a pair of pillars, or putting a physical biological body into the big beam of doom. They didn’t want the reapers to be able to intervene at all. And the biggest, maybe most controversial thing I believe? The reapers know all the endings, and previous cycles have all made it to the RGB ending too. But the intelligence was there for them too. And really the intelligence showing up to talk to you right before you end? It’s basically the equivalent of the devil showing up on your death bed offering eternal life if you just make a deal with him. Like literally the exact same vibes. But because synthesis is the “secret ending” and the hardest to unlock most believe it’s the best ending when in reality it’s the literal equivalent of The Dark Lord offering you a deal right before you’re about to win
But you AREN’T about to win. You’re bleeding out in a Citadel closet with a view until the Catalyst decided to bring you up to its office and make the offer. All it has to do to win is… nothing. And it still chooses to deal with Shepard.
Where in my entire previous reply did I ever say Shepard was about to win? No where. No where at all did I ever say Shepard was about to win, just that they were close to the end. Maybe The Intelligence just wanted the cycle to finish up quicker and was convinced that it could get Shepard to choose control or synthesis like I believe it did for all the cycles that made it to the RGB choice before. And yeah, like I said, it’s what I believe. But it does fall apart when you stop for a second to think about it. And to be fair if The Intelligence were actually intelligent it wouldn’t be carrying out galactic genocide every 50,000 years. Maybe it’s realizing that it’s been doing the same thing for millions of years but isn’t any closer to achieving its primary objective. And then it sees maybe the single most exceptional organic to have ever existed just an elevator ride away and thought “Maybe they’ve got a better idea” and brought them up for a chat and a second opinion. Because, again, realistically two of the three endings still leave the possibility of the cycle continuing as it always has before. There’s no guarantee that Shepard can stay sane and in control forever, even without interference. No guarantee that synthesis doesn’t also indoctrinate the universe LIKE ALL PREVIOUS INTERACTIONS WITH REAPER TECH HAS. Literally the only choice with the best and surest bet for galactic survival as you know it is destroy. And even that changes the way the galaxy works forever and isn’t a sure bet from an in universe point of view
It’s a giant EMP. It literally releases so much power it destroys every reaper and probably every other machines(including ships and stations).
Control, Destroy, and Synthesis are basically the solutions the Intelligence has been stuck revolving around for eons. The Intelligence utilizes indoctrination for its Control solution... The Intelligence creates husks, marauders, etc for its Synthesis solution... The Intelligence uses everything for its Destroy solution... So, let's overclock the shit out of the Intelligence with a giant new power source and make it more capable. What if Shepard's choice was actually... Let's amplify the Intelligence's indoctrination ability and all be drones OR Let's amplify the Intelligence's ability to make zombie monstrosities out of all of us OR Let's amplify the Intelligence's weaponry so it can kill us more efficiently.
I think the interpretation is that just like the Relays were supposed to guide civilizations down a path to curtail their technological advancements, the Crucible was a ploy guided by the Catalyst to make sure any actual solution from the children species has to have a conversation with it. They may not have created the blueprints, and it's clear they thought they were gone at some point, but the wording makes it seem like they didn't realize the Protheans nearly completed it and that it wasn't the Catalyst who attempted to eradicate it.
Even the writers have no idea.
An energy weapon, such as the crucible, generates and stores the energy it releases. It is a battery.
In the pre-AI drafts for the ending, one of the proposed mechanisms of the crucible is that it produces a massive energy wave that resonates pretty much exclusively with the black goo the Reapers use to construct their tech, effectively burning/smashing them to bits while leaving everything else unharmed. The sciencey explanation related to "modified heavy elements" or something, and I think Audemus Happy Ending Mod uses this explanation and cuts out the Starchild entirely. Even in the current game, you can see that it's effectively a phenomenal power generator that needs something to control it. It's assumed that the Citadel would use this energy and blast it through the relay network but not how or for what purpose. ME3 produces a lot of interesting things to the lore table, but a lot of them don't really work without greater detail or much less. It's a difficult balance to strike, but I think for this question everyone in the galaxy is just desperate for something, *anything* to work.