Mass Effect 3's original ending had a Reaper Queen instead of Catalyst

Mass Effect 3’s original ending had a Reaper Queen instead of Catalyst.

It’s fair to say that the ending of Mass Effect 3, and therefore BioWare’s entire Mass Effect trilogy, remains divisive to this day, and that’s largely due to the child-like Catalyst.

The original Mass Effect 3 ending, however, featured a god-like Reaper Queen instead, and a possibly straight choice of Paragon or Renegade.

The current ending of Mass Effect 3 presents players who have to choose between three possibilities: Destroy, Synthesis and Control, orchestrated with the conscience of the architect Reaper, the Catalyst.

Destroy wipes out the Reapers, all synthetic life, and possibly Earth. Control sees Shepard merge and control the Reapers. Synthesis fuses organic and synthetic life throughout the galaxy.

According to former BioWare animation director Dave Wilkinson in an interview with the YouTube channel People make games (via Bible Games), this was not always the case.

Originally, Shepard, who was supposed to become a Deus Ex-type augmentation, logged into the Citadel and had a conversation in virtual space with “the god of the Reapers” or a Reaper Queen.

Apparently, this Queen wanted the Reapers to evolve but thought they were “unable to evolve due to the limitations of our AI”, which then “locked her inside the Citadel” because the Reapers didn’t like what she was proposing.

The Queen then offered Shepard the opportunity to let the Reapers evolve.

The options in this original ending became:

  • Renegade: Shepard refuses, attacks, “detonates the Citadel”, devastates Earth, but destroys the Reapers and allows the rest of the galaxy to survive.
  • Sampler: Shepard becomes the “great King Reaper” and takes control of the Reapers “to be a power for good”.
  • Synthesis: The Queen uses “space magic” to combine herself and Shepard and mix biological and synthetic beings. Wilkinson describes a mother and daughter on a hill – “Ascaris who are a little different” – where there is a bright green circuit around everything, and the mother is “telling the story of how Shepard made everything better and saved all of the Reapers.”

These endings are certainly similar to the endings in Mass Effect 3 but with more straightforward options from Paragon and Renegade, and Reaper Queen may have sounded louder to players than the Catalyst.

Anyway, it didn’t, and everyone from the mod creators to the creator of The Expanse seems to have strong opinions on the ending of Mass Effect 3.

Hopefully, BioWare will order the ending with Mass Effect 5 in place.