Mass Effect 3: It's not the endings, its the final battle (And synthesis)
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The mind control stemmed from the misconception that the paragon and renegade button prompts were switched. When the indoctrination theory first gained ground. People misunderstood the reason why saving Anderson was considered a renegade option and not a paragon one. Also the fact that the destroy ending was a red color, and control was a blue color. People thought that that was all part of the indoctrination theory designed to trip up the player and by extension Shepard herself/himself.ThriKreen said:And the problem with that is motor control != mind control.DrunkenMonkey said:
What it really meant was to showcase that following a renegade or paragon was not simply a matter of one is good and one is evil.
My guess was that it was in sleep mode, much like the other Reapers in dark space were, waiting for the next cycle and to conserve energy. Face it, even for an AI, 50,000 years is a long time.Geo Da Sponge said:
Once it woke up from the invasion, and noticed the Crucible being constructed, realized "Oh wait, they might actually pull this off - I'd better move somewhere more defendable." and probably either used the Mass Relay next to it to move, or moved itself since it is a Mass Relay itself and made the technology.
As for the keepers, various mails and such in the game hinted that no one ever really knew how they work. The most the Protheans could do was disrupt the signal for activating the Citadel mass relay, not the basic functionality of the Keepers themselves. And done after they had harvested everyone, so they probably reverted back to their sleep cycle and thus unaware, until the monitor for the galaxy, Sovereign, tried to activate them for this cycle that they realized something was wrong.
Here's a question for you.ThriKreen said:
Why when having control of the Citadel again did the Reapers not disable the relay network. Had they done so the Crucible and any resistance would have been pretty much negated.
It doesn't particularly hold as it asserts the indoctrination only begins upon the citadel which actually undermines every piece of evidence pointed to in support of the theory. While the encounter with TiM is almost assuredly an indoctrination event in progress, one could point to fundamental differences in how the event plays out. Individuals indoctrinated via reaper methods do not know they are indoctrinated; TiM attempted to, more or less, "assume direct control". That a critically wounded Shepard and Anderson were largely able to resist the effects of this demonstrates it's relative lack of power. Given sufficient time, TiM's method, like that of the reapers themselves, could have been successful.DrunkenMonkey said:
If you instead assume the entire bit after TiM is the result of indoctrination, it becomes an eleventh hour finger to logic and reason (well beyond what you already see). It even more egregiously robs the player of the impact of choice, it violates all established themes, it undermines the allegoric purpose of the entire encounter, and it works in violation of all other observed examples of indoctrination.
So I guess we are in agreement that the indoctrination theory is grasping for straws regardless of how you frame it.Eclectic Dreck said:
Well they did explain why the Normandy was able to sneak by and still utilize the Mass Relays (forget the actual details). My guess would be that during the war, they spread the information to the other fleets for them to make their own "key" - then lie in wait til the go ahead to start the retaliation.votemarvel said:
Really, just some hand waving to allow the fleet for the final battle at Earth, wouldn't be much of an epic conclusion if the story didn't allow that to happen.
Correct. Destroying the Reapers qualifies as a renegade act as defined by the game - achieving an end goal without regard to cost. It satisfies this by wiping out what more or less amounts to the entire history of galactic civilization for more than 100,000,000 years, destroying the relay network, stranding untold thousands of aliens around a ruined earth and generally leading to a terrible situation all around. By contrast, control preserves the technology and history and leads to a better long term resolution in general with fewer immediate ramifications.DrunkenMonkey said:The mind control stemmed from the misconception that the paragon and renegade button prompts were switched. When the indoctrination theory first gained ground. People misunderstood the reason why saving Anderson was considered a renegade option and not a paragon one. Also the fact that the destroy ending was a red color, and control was a blue color. People thought that that was all part of the indoctrination theory designed to trip up the player and by extension Shepard herself/himself.ThriKreen said:And the problem with that is motor control != mind control.DrunkenMonkey said:
What it really meant was to showcase that following a renegade or paragon was not simply a matter of one is good and one is evil.
Indoctrination supposes your struggle is engineered to the benefit of the Reaper's. Ergo, your struggle is not against the unimaginable odds but rather in the service of making them all the worse for Organics of that cycle. The problem fundamentally is this: if you suggest the ending sequences was the result of Indoctrination, it calls into question every action you've taken and every decision you've made up until that point.Capitano Segnaposto said:
Huh, didn't notice it that way. My perception was that the Paragon act would be to try to save TIM instead, as hinted by all the previous conversation choices to make him realize the error of his ways and stop.DrunkenMonkey said:
And the Renegade option was less saving Anderson and more of Shepard going "Oh, to hell with this" and breaking the control to flat out just shooting The Illusive Man.
You're perfectly free to interpret as you will. My argument is simply that the Theory is readily dismissed on thematic, contextual, and intra-narrative grounds.Capitano Segnaposto said:
I dunno...ThriKreen said:
I mean, this is another case where I could probably buy all these things if anyone actually mentioned them in game. As it is it just feels like a mess. Your very post starts with "My guess", for instance. Nothing about it makes me feel like this was some master stroke twist at the ending, it just feels like a clumsy, incomplete ending to me that raises more questions than it answers. To be honest your point about the Protheans fiddling with the Keepers reminds me of this:
So the Prothean scientists understood the Keepers well enough to specifically disable one part of their 'programming', the part that lets them receive the Reaper's signal, without damaging any other part of their functions for maintaining the Citadel, or harming the Keepers themselves, but they didn't understand them well enough to actually figure out their wider purpose within the Citadel, or what created them, or what the thing they maintain even is.
That is a very specific level of understanding.
The Normandy didn't sneak through the relays, they were still activated and running as normal. The Reapers could have stopped all travel across the galaxy but for some reason did not.ThriKreen said:
Well yeah, in a nutshell. paragon is about control and restraint, while renegade is no restraint and passion. It's the equivalent of the dark side in Star Wars, but it still stands those button prompt switches threw a lot of people off because they they didn't grasp what truly being a paragon and renegade meant until that point. For three games we were given too many black and white situations where those two personality types played into their stereotypes.ThriKreen said:
