Mass Effect 3 - 13: Bet you could really go for a bottle of cool, refreshing Tupari!

[Jayngfet]

Seriously, man. I get and can accept all of your other complaints and gripes as legitimate even though I don't agree. But this? I really don't know what game you were playing that led you to that conclusion. No matter what visual representation you feel like going by at any given moment, there are THOUSANDS (if not tens of thousands) of Reapers and not even anything that resembles a close comparison of fleets in the galaxy. Believing that such a relatively tiny force could outgun the Reapers is nothing short of full blown cognitive dissonance (most directly comparable to conspiracy theorists).

Which doesn't really address the point.

That is to say, we outright see a group of fighters cripple a reaper with only partial casualties. The reaper design has structural weaknesses that get exploited over and over again for massive damage(the underbelly being blasted at it's thinnest point, which consistently kills reapers when in space). They're great for chasing down and blowing up running ships or smaller groups, but we can point out that they fail spectacularly at pitched battle.

Not to mention that, unless I'm forgetting dialogue, there aren't thousands of reapers. The end of ME2 shows a few hundred, and we never see thousands on earth(given the size of earth, that many would be super visible unless they were hiding on the other side around china for some reason). The combined might of your fleet easily has major ships outnumbering them ten to one. Which can't really be disputed, since reaper and allied forces use different colored projectiles and you're firing more shots than them by about ten to one. Granted you have a slapdash fleet since the Quarians just refurbished a bunch of old crap and everyone's taken a beating, but once you add in fighters(which outnumber drones even more significantly and are visibly much more maneuverable).

It doesn't really matter, since you instalose anyway and bioware ignores what you've built, but this is to make a point. The reapers are based on sneak attacks, shock and awe, and infiltration. They have literally none of those in play in this scenario and the stuff Bioware actually shows your eyes shows them to be vastly outnumbered and outmanouvered. Obviously you're supposed to be the scrappy underdog here.

It's just that, as with so many other cases, Bioware's ability to actually do things visually and keep consistency is incredibly inept.

Which is probably why so many people preferred "Shepard is secretly indoctrinated by the reapers" to what they wrote as the actual ending.