The Catalyst Doesn't Care If You Like His Ending

"I've got a bad feeling about this."

Catalyst: “Wake up.”

Shepard: “What? Where am I.”

Catalyst: “The Citadel.  It’s my home.”

Shepard: “Who are you?”

Catalyst: “I’m the Catalyst, bitch.”

Shepard: “Why do you look that dead kid from my nightmares?”

Catalyst: “I chose a form that would seem familiar to you.  It’s kind of like that movie ‘Contact.’ Have you seen it? It isn’t very good, but I love anything with Matthew McConnaughey.”

Shepard: “What?”

Catalyst: “My all-time fave is ‘How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.’ It’s just delightful.  I’d tell you to add it to your Netflix queue, but I kind of doubt the mail is getting delivered, since Earth got eaten by my giant robot space Cthulhus. Plus, you’re going to die in about three minutes.”

Shepard: “Wait. What?”

Catalyst: “I’m just fuckin’ with you, bro.”

Shepard: “Oh. Good. I was about to freak out.  So, how do I stop the reapers?”

Catalyst: “I control the reapers. They are my solution.”

Shepard: “Solution? To what?”

Catalyst: “Basically, people are smart enough to be dangerous, but you’re still too stupid to live.  You always invent killer robots that will exterminate all organic life.  The only way to stop that from happening is to invent killer robots that only exterminate most organic life.  It’s really obvious, once you think about it.”

Shepard: “That’s not true.  I made peace with the killer robots. I united everybody behind a common purpose.  It's super-inspiring, dude."

Catalyst: “Are you serious?  Have you not been paying attention? All you’ve managed to prove is that the disparate civilizations of the galaxy slightly prefer tolerating each other’s presence to dying in a fire.  If the reapers were out of the picture, how long do you think the galaxy would last? At best, you managed to bring about a temporary cease-fire.  And, in the process, you gave free will to an army of nine-foot tall killer androids.  You also cured the genophage, which was the only thing preventing the galaxy from being overrun by giant nuclear rage rhinos.  And you decided that a species of bugs the size of trucks should continue to exist.  Twice.  I don't see this ending well.”

Shepard: “The truck-bugs said they’d be nice.”

Catalyst: “God, you’re stupid.”

Shepard: “You’re taking away our future.  That’s all we’ve got.”

You thought there'd be a happy ending? Dumbass.

Catalyst: “I am the most powerful computer ever created.  I’ve done the math.  If I don’t harvest advanced civilizations, then they’ll inevitably destroy themselves and all other organic life.”

Shepard: “I don’t believe that.”

Catalyst: “It’s a fact, dipshit.  You don’t get to agree or disagree with a fact.  It just exists.”

Shepard: “But we built the Crucible.”

Catalyst: “Yeah, you did.  And if there’s one irrevocable law of the universe, it’s that world-destroying fleets of squid-bots must yield to vaguely-defined space-macguffins.  So I guess now we need to find a new solution.”

Shepard:  “Hellz yeah, we do.  In yo’ face.”

Catalyst:  “Okay, you want some choices? Here are some choices.  First, if you want to destroy the reapers, you can do that.  You can destroy all synthetic creatures, including the geth.  It will also blow up the mass relays and the Citadel.”

Shepard: “How about we just blow up the reapers, and we keep the mass relays and the Citadel?”

Catalyst: “How about you go fuck yourself?”

Shepard: “But we’ll have peace? The reapers will be gone forever?”

Catalyst: “Yeah.  But they only stop you from destroying yourselves.  How long do you think it will be before there’s another Rachni swarm or another Krogan invasion or somebody invents more killer-robots?”

Shepard: “You have to give us a chance.”

Catalyst: “You’re an idiot.”

Shepard: “What’s the second choice?”

Catalyst: “You can take control of the Reapers.”

Shepard: “So the Illusive Man was right>”

Catalyst: “Yep.  He’s made a lot of sense all along.  If you didn’t skip all the dialog, you might have noticed.”

Shepard: “I kind of wish I hadn’t shot him in the face.”

Catalyst: “You make a lot of really questionable decisions.”

Shepard: “So how do I control the reapers?”

Catalyst: “Grab onto those electrode things over there.”

Shepard: “The ones with all the blue lightning jumping off of them?”

"Don't say I didn't warn you."

Catalyst: “Yep.  Those.”

Shepard: “Looks like that will hurt.”

Catalyst:  “Oh, yeah.  It will melt your goddamn face right off.  I never said this was going to be easy.  Also, the mass relays will all blow up.”

Shepard:  “Yeah, I’ve got a question about that.  The full military strength of every advanced race in the galaxy has been deployed to Earth.”

Catalyst: “So?”

Shepard: “So, if the mass relays blow up, how will they get home?  They don’t have FTL drives, and they 

rely on the mass relays for interstellar travel.”

Catalyst: “What do I look like? A spaceship scientist?  Who gives a damn about FTL drives? You just have to give into the emotional significance of what’s going on right now.  This is major climactic shit that’s happening here.  Don’t be such a nerd.”

Shepard: “What’s the third option?”

Catalyst: “You jump into that big green beam of light, and die.  For some reason, that will create a new DNA that fuses all organic and synthetic life into an organic-synthetic combination.”

Shepard: “How does that fix anything?”

Catalyst: “I don’t know.  I’m pretty much just making shit up.  My plan was to kill all humans.  I still think we should go with that one.”

Shepard: “So no matter what I do, I’m going to die?”

Catalyst: “Yep.”

Shepard: “Wow.  That’s a bummer.”

Catalyst: “Sucks to be you.”