You seem to think that the Catalyst being introduced at the offset seems to excuse its status as a deus-ex machina, which it clearly doesn't. Your interpretation seems to rest entirely on people labeling it a 'God' also, which is how you have earlier rebuffed that suggestion.
@Hailinel posted a perfect definition of it, yet you still refuse to accept thats in fact what the Catalyst ends up being. And on that note, how about this:
A deus-ex machina is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object.
This sounds familiar, no? The catalyst's function is so offset precisely because the ME universe often has a solid grounding in how its universe works, whereas this breaks all of them. If the above definition doesn't perfectly what the Catalyst is, than I don't know what does. Even if you are aware of it early on in the story, its ultimate function is left undefined until the closing minutes of the game, and the closing of a trilogy no less. To suddenly hang all your dangling plot elements on this one device is hugely contrived. The Catalyst looked to have been a means to an end (destroying the Reapers), but ultimately the writers saw fit to encompass everything into it. So by that logic, if you choose to argue the fact that the Catalyst has a perfectly acceptable relation in the story, and it isn't a convenient device simply to solve the plot, I don't know how to respond.
I'm not saying that your arguments have been entirely without merit, but too often in this thread someone has offered a perfectly viable reason for their gripes, only for you to simply skirt these issues by delving into semantics. I'll leave it at that.
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