If true....wow.

[quote user="Flickamatuta"]Also, whos to say that the Destroy ending actually killed all AI in the universe?[/quote]I was thinking of this last night as it happens.

I was under the impression that destroy only killed EDI and the Geth because of the Reaper code (and hardware in EDI's case) they were using .

Surely not all Geth were in the system when the quarians attacked. So some could still be out there without the Reaper upgrades.

 

Who's to say that all Reapers came out of Dark Space? If not, maybe the blast radius from the Relays never reached them. That would be a cool side mission for the next ME game. Going to an unexplored system on the edge of the Galaxy and discovering Reapers
plotting a second invasion and them having to stop it.

 

[quote user="Flickamatuta"]

whos to say that the Destroy ending actually killed all AI in the universe? Maybe the Reapers just said that so Shepard wouldn't pick that option. Just a thought.

[/quote]

You're opening up an old can of worms here though, for the 'Indoctrination Theory' (which I support personally) is heavily based on the premise that the young boy isn't being straight with us, or more specifically, Shepard's mind is playing tricks on her...

 

RESEAL that can of worms.... It could just be that the blast only deactivated pure Reaper code units. EDI and Geth firewalls could of been advanced enough to withstand the Relay Blasts. Geth could of purged themselves of Reaper code when they allied with
the Alliance. EDI could of turned offline and black boxed herself before the blast. A number of hopeful possibilities. Some of these might be impossible if so please do enlighten me.

 

[quote user="Flickamatuta"]

EDI could of turned offline and black boxed herself before the blast.

[/quote]

Now you're talking...

 

[quote user="Flickamatuta"]

RESEAL that can of worms.... It could just be that the blast only deactivated pure Reaper code units. EDI and Geth firewalls could of been advanced enough to withstand the Relay Blasts. Geth could of purged themselves of Reaper code when they allied with
the Alliance. EDI could of turned offline and black boxed herself before the blast. A number of hopeful possibilities. Some of these might be impossible if so please do enlighten me.

[/quote]

They are all impossible by the events set up in Mass Effect 3.

1) The geth cannot be purged of Reaper Code. Once it is uploaded and dispersed, it alters the Geth on a fundamental level. It forces evolution on them. Each geth unit, which was once composed of hundred of geth runtimes (Legion had 1138, lesser units feasibly
between 400-800 depending on if they were troopers or primes, etc) that only
mimicked a true AI instead become a single sentient being. Aside from the complexity involved in this, you could not strip apart the new sentient personality back into its components and have it remain intact. Once the Reaper Code is uploaded, geth units
are no longer gestalt intelligences, they are singular intelligences with unique personalities.

2) No firewall is going to withstand the Crucible blast. If such as thing were possible, the Reapers themselves would already have firewalls capable of withstanding it. The geth and EDI do not have time to develop one between the completion of the Crucible
and the time it is deployed because thanks to writing no-one has any clue what it is going to do, other than "it's going to be big." They don't know what to protect against because no one knows how the Crucible is going to work.

3) Turning off EDI thinking that her hardware would be shielded operates under the premise that the Crucible blast is only going to target "conscious" synthetics. We could then theorize that
any synthetic currently hibernating or powered down could survive the blast, such as when the Reapers hibernate to conserve energy. The Crucible isn't much of a weapon if it can be defeated simply by powering a machine down.

The biggest problem is that the Crucible is meant to exactly what it needs to do to enforce the choices of the endings. For example, there is no rationale, no science, no logic, and no reasoning for Synthesis to work. It's either magic, or a science
so far advanced beyond anything the Council races, synthetics, and even the Reapers are capable of. But for the purposes of the story, Shepard turns the Crucible on and BAM! Every organic being in the galaxy, including trees and plants (as seen in the ending)
and possibly even things as small as single-cell organisms and viruses have some manner of synthetic upgrade. How? What is the effect of this? How extreme are the modifications? None of this is explained because the story doesn't require it to. It just
happens, for better or for worse.

It's the same thing with Destroy. How does it work? We don't know. But what does it do? It
kills all synthetic life. And it just happens. We can't shield it, we can't stop it, we can't save our allies, any more than we could prevent being synthesized if we didn't want it.

This isn't a problem that anyone currently existing at the time of the Crucible blast is going to be able to solve or prevent. It happens because the story demands that it happens exactly the way as described.

HOWEVER, SAYING ALL OF THAT...

Anything can be retconned in the next game. If BioWare decides that they want something different to happen, they can make it happen regardless of the logic of the decision or how much backpedaling must be done in order to accommodate it.

 

Well that's the end of that then. Haha. No point to continue theorizing as it sounds like Bioware wanted the blasts to be the be all and end all of the story. I was just trying to keep EDI alive somehow, because if the game was actually a sequel set maybe
a couple hundred years in the future, she would be the only living reference for Shepard. Oh and Liara if she's still going.

 

[quote user="Flickamatuta"]

Well that's the end of that then. Haha. No point to continue theorizing as it sounds like Bioware wanted the blasts to be the be all and end all of the story. I was just trying to keep EDI alive somehow, because if the game was actually a sequel set maybe
a couple hundred years in the future, she would be the only living reference for Shepard. Oh and Liara if she's still going.

[/quote]

Grunt, as well.

It possible for both of them to be dead, however. Grunt can side in the Suicide Mission, in the Rachni Mission if he was not loyal in
Mass Effect 2, or you could have chosen never to let him out of the tank, in which case even if he is alive and sane he would not know Shepard. Liara can die on the run to the beam if your EMS isn't high enough.

Wrex and Samara could feasibly be still alive but they would be very old by krogan and asari standards. And like Grunt and Liara, could also have died in the trilogy.

 

I totally forgot about Grunt.