Mass Effect 3.5B: Taste the Rainbow (Story and Ending Discussion; Spoilers!)

[Aotrs Commander]

The more surpising thing to me is that the rest of ME3 was a quite dark game involving ridiculous amounts of sacrifice, but the writer of the ending decided to be "deep" it required a totally fake cheesy sacrifice to round it all up. That's what flabbergasts me the most I think - that Bioware known for its generally good writing let that happen.

Exactly. Wasn't what was already sacrificed enough? No, we have to kill half of the galaxy by starvation due to destruction of the mass relays on top of everything else, destroy most of the game's mythos to boot.

From what I've read on other threads, the original writer who left after ME2 to work on SWToR was going to make the ultimate threat "Dark Energy", a side-effect of the Mass Effect relays that makes all the stars go boom. The Reapers were trying to stop it and found that a human-based Reaper was ideal. The final decision was to either stop the Reapers and let the galaxy take their chances coming up with another solution, or sacrifice humanity to stop the threat.

There's also another rumour about a post by a ME3 writer about some disagreements over the ending of the game. While it's denied I have to say it rings true; if it's a fake or troll it's a darn good one.

I'm inclinded to believe that the ending is the fault of only one or two writers, because it's so jarringly wrong and different compared to the rest of the game; it just smacks of one or two guys getting pretentiously up their own arses. Which is why I say that for once, it could have used some editorial mandate. I bet EA are rather regretting not having a proper look, because of the frak-storm that they and Bioware have suffered.

The sad part is, having now fracked it up, I suspect EA will clamp down harder on the writers to make sure this doesn't happen again, potentially causing problems the other end down the line, when other writers try to do something creative and get slapped down. The ME3 ending writers have probably screwed it up for everyone.

I hope for their sake this DLC ending expansion is something pretty impressive, because if it's just a few lines of dialogue spliced in the final sequence or something (or just watching all but the Normandy 2-3 die in horrible ways (aside from the bad destruction ending), there will be hell to pay.

I'm expecting at the very least a couple of squad members looking up at a big statue of Shepard, or an explanation about how the entire Quarian race and all the Turians in the fleet aren't going to starve to death, given they are likely cut-off months away from getting and appropriate food.



That said, I think that original idea for the ending is pretty lame as well, though not as bad - hey, look, once again we're dragging another dull, over-used and uninspired cliche out, this time another variation of "technology is teh evils..." And once again, trying to absolve the Reapers of blame, and making them supposedly grey characters, or well-intenioned extremists - which does NOT gel with anything we've seen of them.



Is it so hard to put the major bad guy of a big action-orientated space-opera as something, y'know genuinely and completely evil without having to try (and fail) and make it sympathetic, Bioware?

[LordShotGun]

Its because end bosses are too "video gamey". Their words not mine.

This is stupid (directed at them, not you Derthric). So ME1 and ME2 were too video gamey? What? Was ME3 not supposed to be a video game?

The some of the best combat parts of Mass Effect have been the bosses. Saren was a decent fight (unless you had given everyone specter weapons), the proto-reaper was amazing what with the destruction of platforms and sense of scale. The shadow broker was an amazingly well thought out fight, the thesher maw was SCARY (at least the first time).

[Psyren]

I am BEYOND.TIRED. of the whole "what constitues a life-form" tropes, of the "technological verses biological" tropes, of shades of grey EVERYWHERE in EVERY SINGLE THING. It is no longer clever. It is no longer interesting. It is no less bigoted, offensive and humanocentric now than it was when the idea was first thought up; and YES, I do find the whole debate on what constitutes life based on physical structure to be bigoted specism by even asking the question in the first place. I find it now as stupid, cliched and insipid as the EXTREME of the ninties, and it needs to STOP.

One could argue that one of the key points of art is to reflect on, examine and provoke thought around the human condition. Perhaps the only key point.

And it's been around for quite a long time. Flowers for Algnernon. Pygmalion. The subject of philosophy in general. Works and disciplines that ask "what does it mean to be human?" Questions like this do still need to be raised, not only because we're only slightly closer to understanding our purpose as a species than we were in the days of Socrates, but because this relatively new concept of an "interactive medium" provides fertile ground in which to cultivate the literary seeds of yesteryear. It's only "humanocentric" in the sense that this game is made for a mostly human audience () and so a human perspective is by necessity the lens through which we experience all others.

I know it may seem trite to you, but there's still plenty of people who have not considered these themes in depth - especially considering the not-insignificant "shooter crowd" attracted to Bioware's writing by ME2 and ME3. Perhaps the more obvious dilemmas were directed more to them, than to you. Reading the comments on the forums about how people "killed the talking toasters without a second thought" I don't fault Bioware for invoking a well-used trope now and then.

Computer games are not art. That doesn't say they cannot be; but frankly, especially when geared for a mainstream audience, they shouldn't be, because that's not what the vast majority of people actually WANT.

Reading a statement like your first sentence makes me highly doubt we'll ever see eye to eye, but I'll try anyway. And my mental alarms start blaring whenever one person declares what it is the "vast majority" wants.

Don't misinterpret the backlash against ME as a backlash against art. Nobody was hateful to these same themes when they were raised in ME1 and ME2. Even past games, like Jade Empire, Bioshock and Portal, raised many of these issues and were lauded for their storytelling.

ME3's problem was execution, not concept; falling short, not aiming high. If the ME games weren't art, they wouldn't have nearly the following they do now. It could have easily been a cookie-cutter, humans-good/monsters-bad Excuse Plot like in Gears of War, but they went well beyond that.

Art may be many things, but a service is not one of them. If you offer a service, you then have to do what the customer wants, or you don't get customers. I wouldn't tolerate a claim of artistic integrity from my broadband company, I'm damned well not tolerating it from a computer games company either. You want my money, you WILL give me what I want, not what you think I want.

It's impossible for any company (except maybe a broadband company, natch ) to give everyone what they want with the same product. Certainly not with a story, even a customizable one.

You of course have the inalienable right to let your wallet do the talking, but you shouldn't assume that just because you were this dissatisfied, that everyone else is too.

[Luzahn]

This is stupid (directed at them, not you Derthric). So ME1 and ME2 were too video gamey? What? Was ME3 not supposed to be a video game?

The some of the best combat parts of Mass Effect have been the bosses. Saren was a decent fight (unless you had given everyone specter weapons), the proto-reaper was amazing what with the destruction of platforms and sense of scale. The shadow broker was an amazingly well thought out fight, the thesher maw was SCARY (at least the first time).

...Why would I not give everyone specter weapons?

[Chen]

This is stupid (directed at them, not you Derthric). So ME1 and ME2 were too video gamey? What? Was ME3 not supposed to be a video game?

The some of the best combat parts of Mass Effect have been the bosses. Saren was a decent fight (unless you had given everyone specter weapons), the proto-reaper was amazing what with the destruction of platforms and sense of scale. The shadow broker was an amazingly well thought out fight, the thesher maw was SCARY (at least the first time).

A boss fight at the end of ME3 though would feel pretty forced or pretty pointless. There was no big bad to be shooting at unless TIM husked it up (which would have felt out of place and re-run of Saren). Harbinger was around but any fight with him would have been just as convoluted if not worse than anything else they put into the ending. Or it would have just been him assuming direct control of something which again is pointless.

The Kai-Leng fight was already WAY too video gamey as is. Him breaking the floor was pointless except to give you cover. If he hadn't done it and just run around the room shooting you and your team you'd all be dead.

[Psyren]

A boss fight at the end of ME3 though would feel pretty forced or pretty pointless. There was no big bad to be shooting at unless TIM husked it up (which would have felt out of place and re-run of Saren). Harbinger was around but any fight with him would have been just as convoluted if not worse than anything else they put into the ending. Or it would have just been him assuming direct control of something which again is pointless.

The Kai-Leng fight was already WAY too video gamey as is. Him breaking the floor was pointless except to give you cover. If he hadn't done it and just run around the room shooting you and your team you'd all be dead.

That's why he killed Thane - no chest-high walls for him to crouch behind

[Luzahn]

That's why he killed Thane - no chest-high walls for him to crouch behind

Wait, people actually hid behind those? I just charge-meleed him until he stopped moving.

[Androgeus]

Wait, people actually hid behind those? I just charge-meleed him until he stopped moving.

Not all of us are vanguards

[Dienekes]

Not all of us are vanguards

I'll be honest my soldier didn't really use the cover either. I just had Garrus overload+concussion shot+marksman+entire clip of Revvy'd him whenever he got up and that more or less made him go back to refuel right away.

[Anarion]

The Kai-Leng fight was already WAY too video gamey as is. Him breaking the floor was pointless except to give you cover. If he hadn't done it and just run around the room shooting you and your team you'd all be dead.

Could have been fun if he put up a barrier, blocked out your squad and then you just went 1 on 1 against him using that console as the only piece of terrain. I would have enjoyed beating the snot out of him.

Computer games are not art. That doesn't say they cannot be; but frankly, especially when geared for a mainstream audience, they shouldn't be, because that's not what the vast majority of people actually WANT. And EA and all the big industry is moving away from a product, and towards a service (indeed, things like World of warcraft already ARE.)

Art may be many things, but a service is not one of them. If you offer a service, you then have to do what the customer wants, or you don't get customers. I wouldn't tolerate a claim of artistic integrity from my broadband company, I'm damned well not tolerating it from a computer games company either. You want my money, you WILL give me what I want, not what you think I want.

I must vociferously disagree here. Even if you think that a service can't be art, those games are filled with beautiful things and they contain art within them. Nor is providing what your customers want mutually exclusive with being art. Just look at pulp fiction novels or summer blockbuster movies. They're for a very specific audience and extremely formulaic, but they're still creative works and they make statements about various aspects of the human condition. Mass Effect as a series had a legitimate shot at being the Star Wars of video games, until they blew it by executing the ending so poorly. But even with the terrible ending, it has done an incredible job at making people think about what it means to have choice, about agency and humanity's place in the universe, and about what it means to have closure in a story.

Exactly. Wasn't what was already sacrificed enough? No, we have to kill half of the galaxy by starvation due to destruction of the mass relays on top of everything else, destroy most of the game's mythos to boot.

This apparently doesn't happen. Surprise.

The sad part is, having now fracked it up, I suspect EA will clamp down harder on the writers to make sure this doesn't happen again, potentially causing problems the other end down the line, when other writers try to do something creative and get slapped down. The ME3 ending writers have probably screwed it up for everyone.

I'm surprised that you made the "games are not art" statement and then followed it up with this point. Mainly because in the previous thread I made the "games are definitely art" side of the argument and also followed it up with this point. This worries me in the sense that we're probably right.

[Psyren]

Wait, people actually hid behind those? I just charge-meleed him until he stopped moving.

I spend most combats yelling into my omnitool - my combat drone does the charging for me

[LordShotGun]

A boss fight at the end of ME3 though would feel pretty forced or pretty pointless. There was no big bad to be shooting at unless TIM husked it up (which would have felt out of place and re-run of Saren). Harbinger was around but any fight with him would have been just as convoluted if not worse than anything else they put into the ending. Or it would have just been him assuming direct control of something which again is pointless.

The Kai-Leng fight was already WAY too video gamey as is. Him breaking the floor was pointless except to give you cover. If he hadn't done it and just run around the room shooting you and your team you'd all be dead.

I disagree. Kai-Leng was pretty awful but we have seen in previous games that boss fights can be done, and done well. Heck, just repeat the legion recruitment mission where you shoot the reaper core till it explodes except this time you are doing it on harbinger.

[Luzahn]

I always find it odd that I play a Paragon Vanguard. It's all bloodthirsty rage until combat ends, at which point I begin making peaceful and diplomatic speeches.

[Calemyr]

Boss fights should not be obligatory. Then you run into mindset that creates things like the finale of DA2, where otherwise decent people just suddenly turn into depraved lunatics willing to trade their last brain cell for ultimate power.

That said, the time for a climactic boss fight was the Dead Run. All the ground forces converge, forcing a Reaper (Harbinger?) to divide its attention while Shep and co struggle to find some way to kill it. Or you are forced to fight the single most frightening husk in existence: the yahg from Sur'kesh.

I always find it odd that I play a Paragon Vanguard. It's all bloodthirsty rage until combat ends, at which point I begin making peaceful and diplomatic speeches.

I usually go Infiltrator, myself, but Vanguard's my second choice. I always envisioned a diplomatic vanguard's fighting style as being frustrated: "If you won't listen to reason, I'm going to kick your butt so hard it'll dislodge your head!"

[LordShotGun]

That said, the time for a climactic boss fight was the Dead Run. All the ground forces converge, forcing a Reaper (Harbinger?) to divide its attention while Shep and co struggle to find some way to kill it. Or you are forced to fight the single most frightening husk in existence: the yahg from Sur'kesh.

OOO I like that one! Even though vanguards would still just charge and melee it to death.

[Morty]

I agree that boss fights are not obligatory and few things annoy me more than when game designers try to squeeze them wherever they can, even if it would make perfect sense for there not to be a boss fight. Thus, I'm perfectly fine with no boss fight in ME3, even if it's the only thing I like about th ending.

[Calemyr]

OOO I like that one! Even though vanguards would still just charge and melee it to death.

You think so? Could you do that with the Shadow Broker? 'Cuz I'm thinking a yahg would see a charging vanguard and think "baseball".

Besides, husks have rather distinct upgrades from their original bodies (unless batarians always could eat their wounded and use humans as artillery). The augmentations would make him even more complicated a fight than the Shadow Broker.

[Toastkart]

I am way past fed-up with these writers assuming that everything must have a dark/grim/artsy/philosophical ending involving ridiculous amounts of sacrifice, of the idea that nothing means anything unless lots of people die at the very end¹. If they want to write that stuff, they can bog off to the indy games, or better yet, write fanfiction or something, because it's not something I want to hear about anymore.

I am BEYOND.TIRED. of the whole "what constitues a life-form" tropes, of the "technological verses biological" tropes, of shades of grey EVERYWHERE in EVERY SINGLE THING. It is no longer clever. It is no longer interesting. It is no less bigoted, offensive and humanocentric now than it was when the idea was first thought up; and YES, I do find the whole debate on what constitutes life based on physical structure to be bigoted specism by even asking the question in the first place. I find it now as stupid, cliched and insipid as the EXTREME of the ninties, and it needs to STOP.

I'm a bit tired of it too, but that is the trend these days. If you're not a summer blockbuster, you're dark and edgy. My biggest complaint about the reaper motivation is that it's been done before so darn many times, and me3 doesn't really add anything new to that conversation.

Computer games are not art. That doesn't say they cannot be; but frankly, especially when geared for a mainstream audience, they shouldn't be, because that's not what the vast majority of people actually WANT. And EA and all the big industry is moving away from a product, and towards a service (indeed, things like World of warcraft already ARE.)

Here I disagree. Any creative endeavor can be considered art, and that means that art is not some special unassailable category that can't be criticized.

Art may be many things, but a service is not one of them. If you offer a service, you then have to do what the customer wants, or you don't get customers. I wouldn't tolerate a claim of artistic integrity from my broadband company, I'm damned well not tolerating it from a computer games company either. You want my money, you WILL give me what I want, not what you think I want.

Here's where I agree. Hiding behind a claim of artistic integrity is an appeal to artistic elitism, and doesn't get Bioware anywhere with me. If Bioware were actually interested in artistic integrity, then they would have continued and expanded on the themes of the series, done a better job of foreshadowing the ending, and come up with an interesting motivation for the reapers, and actually had a conclusion for their game/series.

I did exactly that, and I intend to do the same. ME 3 was their last chance. To be fair, until the last ten minutes, they redeemed themselves, but that was just so utterly insulting, so utterly incompetant on the part of the writers who came up with the idea, the quality control people that let them do it, so risable that they burned that bridge totally.

Same here. Well, mostly the same here. I think there was a lot more wrong with me3 than just the ending.

I'm inclinded to believe that the ending is the fault of only one or two writers, because it's so jarringly wrong and different compared to the rest of the game; it just smacks of one or two guys getting pretentiously up their own arses. Which is why I say that for once, it could have used some editorial mandate. I bet EA are rather regretting not having a proper look, because of the frak-storm that they and Bioware have suffered.

What little evidence we have points to this being the case, combined with oddly limited budget and development cycle.

The sad part is, having now fracked it up, I suspect EA will clamp down harder on the writers to make sure this doesn't happen again, potentially causing problems the other end down the line, when other writers try to do something creative and get slapped down. The ME3 ending writers have probably screwed it up for everyone.

This is my worry as well. Mass Effect and Bioware in general did something that hadn't been seen before. While I wouldn't go so far as to say that Bioware is going to fold because of this, I don't think they have a reputation as great game makers anymore.

Its because end bosses are too "video gamey". Their words not mine.

So apparently the human reaper wasn't too "video gamey" for them? In the last thread I argued that we should have been able to fight a reaperfied TIM, but the more I think about it, the more I'm ok with us not. That being said, there definitely should have been an ending final boss fight. Harbinger would have been a perfect opportunity to do so. Instead of rushing to a beam of light and getting blown away, I think it would have been cooler to board Harbinger and take him out from the inside.

This would have allowed us to see what species Harbinger was made from, actually resolve some of the conflict we had with him, and could possibly have done a better job incorporating some of the interactive choices for the ending mission similar to me2 where you choose which squadmate (and which elements of your invasion fleet) are best suited for which job.

It could have been awesome.

I know it may seem trite to you, but there's still plenty of people who have not considered these themes in depth - especially considering the not-insignificant "shooter crowd" attracted to Bioware's writing by ME2 and ME3. Perhaps the more obvious dilemmas were directed more to them, than to you. Reading the comments on the forums about how people "killed the talking toasters without a second thought" I don't fault Bioware for invoking a well-used trope now and then.

I'm ok with them trotting out well-used tropes (done well, of course) for specific missions or character arcs, but for the grand conclusion to the game and series? Call me entitled, but I want something that befits the whole game and series, one that brings all of its themes together. What we got was old, overused, uninteresting, and full of various problems that have been gone over repeatedly in both of these threads.

But even with the terrible ending, it has done an incredible job at making people think about what it means to have choice, about agency and humanity's place in the universe, and about what it means to have closure in a story.

So, basically, that you really have only the illusion of choice and everyone is screwed regardless of how hard you try or how much you get people to work together?

[Psyren]

Or you are forced to fight the single most frightening husk in existence: the yahg from Sur'kesh.

Aren't Brutes already huskified Yahg?

Though the Yahg aren't being harvested, so that doesn't make quite as much sense.

[Anarion]

This would have allowed us to see what species Harbinger was made from, actually resolve some of the conflict we had with him, and could possibly have done a better job incorporating some of the interactive choices for the ending mission similar to me2 where you choose which squadmate (and which elements of your invasion fleet) are best suited for which job.

It could have been awesome.

This would have been really cool, I agree. It probably would have cost them a ton of extra cash though, since it wouldn't be just one fight, but rather a whole level (like with the Geth dreadnaught) culminating in Harbinger's core or something like that. It would have been worth it though.

So, basically, that you really have only the illusion of choice and everyone is screwed regardless of how hard you try or how much you get people to work together?

And that we're all not okay with that and believe the universe should work differently. Doesn't have to be all pessimistic.

[Calemyr]

Aren't Brutes already huskified Yahg?

Though the Yahg aren't being harvested, so that doesn't make quite as much sense.

The description I've always heard of for Brutes was krogan bodies with turian heads.

[Androgeus]

Harbinger would have been a perfect opportunity to do so. Instead of rushing to a beam of light and getting blown away, I think it would have been cooler to board Harbinger and take him out from the inside.

Board a living reaper? That sounds like a great plan to get indoctrinated.

[kamikasei]

3. Synthesis: ...Yet it's also an incredibly attractive option.

Honestly, viewing this option as attractive suggests a very alien mode of thought to me. You're forcing a change on the entire galaxy, even uncontacted or undeveloped races, to homogenize everyone at "the final evolution of life" (a meaningless concept), to avert a crisis I didn't believe in as I was being told about it. It's horrible. It may have been attractive to you, and it was certainly presented as though it were supposed to be attractive, but to me it was more abhorrent than Destroy.

It's also the only meaingful solution if you do believe Starkid. And there's no particular reason to believe him, but if you do, synthesis is presented as the "right" option.

But if you don't believe him, the fact that it's being sold by him and - or such was my strong impression - by the writers as clearly the "right" option despite how abhorrent it was to me makes it doubly unattractive.

[Psyren]

Honestly, viewing this option as attractive suggests a very alien mode of thought to me. You're forcing a change on the entire galaxy, even uncontacted or undeveloped races, to homogenize everyone at "the final evolution of life" (a meaningless concept), to avert a crisis I didn't believe in as I was being told about it. It's horrible. It may have been attractive to you, and it was certainly presented as though it were supposed to be attractive, but to me it was more abhorrent than Destroy.

There are indeed flaws in the way Starkid presents the idea of Synthesis. But between this thread and the way Synthesis is presented in the unofficial epilogues, I still think the idea has lots of potential.

I can see potential ethical problems with "forcing change" but it isn't the first time Shepard has acted unilaterally on the Galaxy's behalf. Not to this scale before, certainly, but s/he wasn't faced with this level of desperation before either.

But if you don't believe him, the fact that it's being sold by him and - or such was my strong impression - by the writers as clearly the "right" option despite how abhorrent it was to me makes it doubly unattractive.

How so? Between the vision of your mentor Anderson choosing it, and the fact that it's the only ending where Shepard can live, Destroy seemed like it was presented as the "right" option to me.

The description I've always heard of for Brutes was krogan bodies with turian heads.

Ah, you're right. Good, that makes a lot more sense (though they are considerably larger than Krogan, though that could be due to adding in the Turian's mass as well.)

[Calemyr]

How so? Between the vision of your mentor Anderson choosing it, and the fact that it's the only ending where Shepard can live, Destroy seemed like it was presented as the "right" option to me.

Anderson had already been painted as a "kill or be killed" war horse at that point, granted it was by TIM, but the point is pretty valid all the same: Anderson never questioned whether killing all of them, regardless of the cost, was the right thing to do. He questioned if it was possible, never the legitimacy of the objective.

But every path required at least two sacrifices to accomplish:
1) Control requires two: Shep and the future (pattern holds).
2) Destroy requires three: The relays and genocide and the future (pattern holds).
3) Synthesis requires two: The relays and Shep.

So you end up with a circumstance where all three paths can be considered the "ultimate" path, depending on mindset, depending on what you're willing to sacrifice and what it is you really want. That's actually a pretty good way to do it. If the ending had been managed by someone with some integrity of any sort, it could have been quite awesome. It wasn't and it isn't.

[thugthrasher]

I see were you are going. I still cannot feel comfortable with a word that is not synthetic. Synthetised is good, it describes the fact that they are being transformed into synthetics as a opposed that they are created as synthetics from scratch but I still don't see the result as something not synthetic (in the plant example the plant doesn't stop being a plant for synthetizing nutrients). If the geth were to become part geth part organic (Shepard) would they cease to be synthetic? I don't see how. If Asari are to become part Asari part organic? synthetic? (doesn't synthesis fuse people with Shepard's DNA?) would they be more organic? I still don't see how. Being part X part Y and becoming that by outside influence fits my definition of synthetic (I had searched for a definition of synthetic in ME wiki but haven't found one).

You're right and you're wrong here. 'Synthetic' would probably be the best word to use here, in general, EXCEPT for the fact that synthetic is already used to describe something somewhat different. The word 'synthetic' has multiple meanings, the two at issue here are "of, pertaining to, proceeding by, or involving synthesis" and "artificial."
In the ME universe, 'synthetic' when applied to a type of life uses the second definition. Ideally, it would be better to call that type of life 'artificial' and this new thing 'synthetic.'

Unless you, of course, consider all of those with implants synthetics (in the ME use of the term) already. They (like Shepard) already ARE a mixture of artificiality and biological life. They just aren't a COMPLETE mixture. My assumption is that whatever the heck the "synthesis"ending (another word choice for that ending would have eliminated some of this, actually) does, it makes everything about 50/50 synthetic/organic. Somehow.

[Psyren]

Anderson never questioned whether killing all of them, regardless of the cost, was the right thing to do. He questioned if it was possible, never the legitimacy of the objective.

But neither did Shepard, not until the very end when the other possibilities are presented to him/her. Shepard doesn't even consider Control as viable until the Catalyst mentions it - "so the Illusive Man was right after all" - and also didn't know what Synthesis was. So it's not as though Shepard, even Paragon Shepard, was any different in this regard.

[Luzahn]

The big upside to Destroy is that we now have a whole bunch of Reaper corpses to play with.

On Paragon Vanguards, I always tend to think of Berserker from 8-Bit Theater

[Calemyr]

But neither did Shepard, not until the very end when the other possibilities are presented to him/her. Shepard doesn't even consider Control as viable until the Catalyst mentions it - "so the Illusive Man was right after all" - and also didn't know what Synthesis was. So it's not as though Shepard, even Paragon Shepard, was any different in this regard.

This is true, though Shep is supposed to be at least partly derived from the player. I always got the vague feeling that Shep was obsessed with stopping the Reapers, while Anderson (and Hackett) were only interested in destroying them.

Given the option, Anderson wouldn't have questioned his choice, neither would TIM. Neither could see past their own agendas. Shep has the chance to rearrange his priorities, and then make his own choice - by doing exactly what the kid so graciously tells him he can do.

[Calemyr]

But neither did Shepard, not until the very end when the other possibilities are presented to him/her. Shepard doesn't even consider Control as viable until the Catalyst mentions it - "so the Illusive Man was right after all" - and also didn't know what Synthesis was. So it's not as though Shepard, even Paragon Shepard, was any different in this regard.

This is true, though Shep is supposed to be at least partly derived from the player. I always got the vague feeling that Shep was obsessed with stopping the Reapers, while Anderson (and Hackett) were only interested in destroying them. "That isn't how we win this. Dead Reapers is how we win this."

Given the option, Anderson wouldn't have questioned his choice, neither would TIM. Neither could see past their own agendas. Shep has the chance to rearrange his priorities, and then make his own choice - by doing exactly what the kid so graciously tells him he can do.