I'm just going to elaborate a bit, and respond to your individual points. We've already spoken at length about this, so you know most of my feelings on this matter. This is probably going to sound harsher than I intend it to, so all apologies in advance. To abstain from downloading a DLC that should never have happened in the first place which significantly alters a story that I was supposedly crafting myself on how I decide it to be.:-) Though I expected something different (or better?) out of the original endings, I liked the "open to interpretation" (or, "artistic") approach of the original endings which is what I still go by, EDI's alive at the end of my playthroughs and I'm still going Out the human legacy "no matter the cost", and as far as 'The Extended Cut' debunking this possibility by putting her name "on the memorial board"? That DLC was designed to please a certain group of players which I was quite happy not to be a part of, all While talking to her in ME2 she makes reference to certain "protocols" that would kick in if a certain situation were to arise, The Illusive Man likely also saw to it that EDI carry Herself is a Lazurus Prodigy from "Synthesis" who also survives 'Destroy'). Yet another prodigy by The Illusive Man (she was designed by Cerberus NOT The Reapers) to further advance humanity, hard for me to see her as nothing more than synthetic, if anyone was capable of engineering "Synthesis" to ensure her survival, it was EDI (Shepard Her computing powers are second to none and was no doubt (like she always does) by taking steps to follow through on her instincts to survive (a human characteristic that she could not possibly have overlooked in her "quest" to better understand humans). It's perfectly feasible to me that she saw the probable outcome of purging all synthetics as one of the only effective strategies of exterminating them and therefore prepared accordingly Besides from seeing her survive 'Destroy' with my own eyes, EDI has always been very adept at foreseeing every possibility well beforehand and applying the best course of action, she wasn'tĪble to solve The Reaper problem on her own due to lack of insufficient data. To how things end in ME3 which makes her survival very possible. For one, I still DO subscribe to the 'Indoctrination Theory' as being the best explanation While any "evidence" that I've been able to unearth does indeed point towards a "design oversight", the possibility of her surviving isn't so unbelievable to me. You can assign meaning to them if you want, but you're assigning meaning to a mistake. Or, in Mass Effect 3, the scene where Donnelly & Daniels finally get together never appears because it is incorrectly linked to Ashley's approval ofĪll of these things were never intended. Or Conrad Verner in Mass Effect 2 says you stuckĪ gun in his face, even though if you took the Paragon route in Mass Effect and did not do any such thing. Or to put it another way - there's a scene in Mass Effect where Corporal Toombs reacts to Shepard as though Shepard has the "sole survivor" background even if you have the "war hero" or "ruthless" background. If she somehow walks out of the Normandy in the pre-Extended Cut Destroy ending, that's more of a glitch than something that was intended. You can believe and "head canon" anything you want, but EDI dies in Destroy. If the Crucible is targeting only synthetic life or only Reaper-based life, EDI fits the bill for both categories.
She is an entirely synthetic lifeform, based largely off of Reaper (Sovereign) technology. There is no reason for EDI to survive Destroy, regardless how much you encourage her to rework her programming or purse a relationship with Joker.