ME3 Indoctrination theory analysis

[BloatedGuppy]

Of course, one thing I've learned in my time is to 'never say never', in the sense that i could in fact see BioWare running along with this idea in future DLC now that players have thrown it out there (and some seem to like it more than the BioWare ending). But if they do that, I'm not in doubt for a single minute that it wasn't their original intention. At best, it would be a poor attempt of damage control. Like i said, the theory is full of holes from top to bottom.

And i can't wait to be proven right.

I think it's pretty unlikely, but it's amusingly less full of holes than the current "canonical" ending. Which is sad, because you're right, it's not exactly rock solid, which says a lot about the current end sequence.

A lot of the "evidence" is pretty sketchy. There's only a few things which actually make you pause and wonder.

1. Shepard waking up in the concrete/stone rubble, as if he/she was still on earth.
2. The fact StarChild appears as "A ghostly presence".
3. The growl when Shepard's attention is snapped away from the kid in the vent at the very beginning. (Apparently in one of the Mass Effect novels an audible growl can be heard when Grayson "snaps out" of indoctrination)
4. The fact that Shepard's first few sightings of the kid, there's a multitude of signs right beside the kid that say "danger" or "caution" in all the frames. Wild speculation, sure, but they're always conveniently placed right beside his head, in every bloody frame, with at least 3 different signs. Danger, caution, danger...hovering right above his head.
5. That when directly asked about one of the weirdest plot holes in the ending, this was Bioware's reply:

User 7: "Its not that the ending was taken in the wrong direction its that it makes NO SENSE. Ashley was on the Normandy? she [was] with me."
@masseffect: "Probably a good thing to be cautious of."

Cautious of? That's pretty strange language. Why would you be "cautious" of some weird thing you saw?


Anyway. It's pretty pie in the sky, and as I'm cynical/skeptical by nature, I'd say it's a super long shot, but it's not as flimsy as you're implying.

 

[Burst6]

The indoctrination theory is ridiculous.

It's people simply trying to make sense of things that... well, doesn't make sense. You might as well argue that god come down to earth and held the BioWare development team at gunpoint until they created the ending he wanted for the game. People like to see connections where there is none, and because they can't make sense of the ending, they start making up their own ridiculous theories.

But the truth is that the indoctrination theory is as full of plotholes as the actual ending BioWare gave us and it doesn't hold up. First of all, it goes against how BioWare established Indoctrination works (time-consuming process that has several physical and mental symptoms before the process is complete, not something you do in the blink of an eye, not to mention that there is never any mention of Indoctrination being able to create dream-world hallucinations), and second of all because there is no motive for it. The Reapers have no motive for inducing Shephard into a hallucination when Harbinger could have just finished him (or her) off with his big fat red laser instead of leaving while you were getting your pieces together.

Shepherd doesn't get indoctrinated at the last second, she's been indoctrinated from the start of the game. Ever notice how nobody sees the little boy and how he just dissapears from the vent? And the weird dreams shep goes through (indoctrinations does include dreams. I think the scientists from the derelict reaper from ME2 talked about bad dreams). And i'm pretty sure the same scientists talked about seeing hallucinations.

Also perhaps harbinger doesn't know if shep is dead or alive. Harbinger flies away only when the hallucination is said to start. Maybe in real life he thinks shep i dead and just keeps shooting lasers at anyone else who comes. Maybe that explains why you need the 5000 EMS to get the secret ending thing. If you have enough military strength, your allies distract harbinger while you wake up.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Certainly an interesting theory, but I really don't think it is true. The signs pointing to this would have been more overt if this was intended by Bioware. No reason to give them this much credit.

Meh. Everyone gave them tons of credit in the post KOTOR era for pulling off a twist. It's not IMPOSSIBLE. Just EXTREMELY UNLIKELY.

 

[Scabadus]

I'm really hoping that this, or something like this, is true. Not saying that I expect it to happen, but I certainly want it to.

That said, two points:

1. I don't know how this works on the consoles, but on PC ME3 is Origin exclusive. You can't return it to the store. You MUST keep it, and have it avaliable for any upcomming DLC.

2. There's no final boss fight. Yes, you take down the Destroyer class Reaper on Earth, but you've already taken down two of them (and that other one AA gun thing with the Cain). It's an awsome fight, but it's not a final boss, not by any stretch. In ME1 you had Saren (even persuading him to shoot himself leaves you to take out the implant-zombie-reaper-husk-thing, which was fun) and Mass Effect 2 stepped up the game by ending with me blowing a human reaper's head off with a Cain round, which was a little wierd considering how different the human reaper looked to its cuttlefish friends (I'm now fully aware of the theories why it was human shaped, thanks anyway though) but at the same time, it was TOTALLY AWSOME. In Mass Effect 3... I persuaded TIM to shoot himself then wandered off to have a chat with today's God-anologue. A massive fight with Harbinger utilising orbital bombardments, old nuke missiles, Cain shots and (as a finishing blow) firing my Space Hamster out of a catapult would have been the logical final fight to the series.

OK that second point went on longer than I'd planned... well, either way these points arn't definitive proof for a deviously clever staggered ending, they could just be EA's blatent greed and spectacularly lazy writing respectivly, but they do also fit the indoctrination theory. Take them on board.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Just... what exactly are you talking about, may I ask?

What are YOU talking about? How was that not clear?

 

[ms_sunlight]

The more I think about it the more plausible it seems.
Plus, remember guys. "Even you are partly synthetic". By all accounts, if this was real, Shepard should be dead. Dead dead. But I'unno.

Didn't you get the conversation with EDI about this in the Normandy cockpit? She discusses the possibility with you that Cerberus made you a hybrid, but then goes on to say that Cerberus did not alter your brain for fear of changing your personality; it remains 100% organic. You're a cyborg, but then so is someone with a pacemaker or cochlear implant.

Doesn't the synthesis ending only pop up if you (ignoring multiplayer) do like EVERY sidequest?

It'd be a GIANT F YOU to those who invested the time and hard work trying to get the 'best ending' to have that ending be "Ha-ha we fooled you, now he's totally controlled by the reapers!"

Ah, but if you choose the "destroy" option with too few war assets, you fail and Earth is destroyed. Some of the assets you obtain (e.g. the Cerberus scientists, Kasumi) go to work on the Crucible, so if your score is low, you can even extrapolate that the Crucible will be less ready or more imperfect.

The higher your readiness score, the more work has been done on the Crucible and the more fighting assets you have. Just speculation, but perhaps the Catalyst / "Tiny Tim" has to work harder to trick you into indoctrination - or has had longer to implant ideas in your head - the higher your score, hence the other options? A low score means you can't win. Catalyst lets you go ahead, because you're gonna fail.

Also when you get the "real" ending for having a high galactic readiness, shepard wakes up in the rubble. Now what does this mean? does it mean that everything was destroyed or is he simply waking up from the blast he took on earth and the reapers actually won?

Throughout the series, you are told that you can't beat the reapers. No-one has ever managed it. If you listen to Javik, though, he tells you that it took hundreds of years for the reapers to finally wipe out the protheans. Did the reapers win? Probably.

I think the only way to finally beat the reapers is to stop playing by their rules. Destroy the Citadel, destroy the mass relays. You can't dismantle the master's house with the master's tools. That's why the protheans built their own mass relay on Ilos, which you used to stop Sovereign. The indoctrination dream is Shepard's mind rebelling against the reapers, telling her the solution, showing her the way out.

Why did the reapers strike in force so suddenly and in so many places, after playing the long game? After all, they can take centuries to wipe out organic civillisation, they live forever, they don't nead to rush. You were the catalyst. You blew up the relay at Aratoht. That's the one thing they can't allow organics to do.

 

[hazabaza1]

The more I think about it the more plausible it seems.
Plus, remember guys. "Even you are partly synthetic". By all accounts, if this was real, Shepard should be dead. Dead dead. But I'unno.

Didn't you get the conversation with EDI about this in the Normandy cockpit? She discusses the possibility with you that Cerberus made you a hybrid, but then goes on to say that Cerberus did not alter your brain for fear of changing your personality; it remains 100% organic. You're a cyborg, but then so is someone with a pacemaker or cochlear implant.

I guess. But still, if it just destroys all synthetic/electronic stuff, surely a lot of Shepard's insides {veins, heart, etc) had some sort of augmentation to keep him ticking?

 

[Zen Toombs]

We are not trying to make it better. Nothing will make it better. We are trying to understand it. If your only goal is to be angry, you can do it somewhere else.

This exchange is over.

Come on, you had the opportunity to have like seven different Mass Effect references in that sentence!

Something akin to

Zeel, you have become an annoyance. We only wish to understand, not incite.

This exchange is over.

 

[Scabadus]

Thinking about this theory, I've realised it wouldn't be an unprecedented step in storytelling that risked total financial and cultural failure for Bioware. It's not the biggest gamble in all of gaming history, a gamble that EA would never have made. It's actually be done before, with the exact same mechanics stearing you down a pre-determined path, pulling you in and making you question the writing before ripping back the curtain and revealing that as you were screaming at your character to do the smart choice that is SO OBVIOUS, you, personally, would have done exactly the same thing. Because you, actualy you, would also have been forced to do the bidding of those controling you, forced to choose between the paths they set out for you instead of choosing with total free will.

So yeah, maybe Bioware did just fuck up. Maybe it's just poor writing. Maybe trying to read a decent ending out of this is grasping at straws. But would you kindly stop using the argument that it's too much of a step and would never have been allowed by the money-holders?

 

[weirdee]

I'm not sure if the moneyholders themselves would actually understand the entire concept.

of course, they probably didn't care at that point either, it's like "bioware is printing money, we shouldn't screw with their processes too much"

 

[DarkhoIlow]

I've ready a lot of posts and I am inclined to believe the indoctrination variant over any other theories.

This particular link to an alternative ending is really what something that I fully support and would like to see this kind of resolution: http://arkis.deviantart.com/art/Mass-Effect-3-Alternate-Endings-SPOILERS-289902125?offset=20#comments

Would like to find out what you guys/girls think bout that ending.

 

[ozium]

Shepard is definitely indoctrinated. I noticed this at the start o my second play through. Notice how that little kid is only shown when Shepard is looking at him. When he was in the ventilation shaft and Shepard was talking to him the kid suddenly disappears when Anderson calls Shepard Implying that Shepard was dreaming. Most importantly, during the end of the first mission when Shepard gets on the Normandy and Anderson says he's not coming, Shepard sees the kid getting onto a space shuttle. Notice how nobody even sees the kid or helps him get up. The soldier in the shuttle just stands there looking straight ahead.

The Kid Isn't real.

 

[RJ 17]

Snip

Technically the "final boss fight" is the like, 16 Brutes followed by never ending waves of Banshees and Marauders that come when you're making your stand by the mobile missile launchers. While not necessarily as epic and climactic as fighting against Saren or the Human Reaper, it certainly was a LOT more challenging than either of those fights.

But I do understand what you're getting at, there's no "central villain" to confront at the end.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

Shepard is definitely indoctrinated. I noticed this at the start o my second play through. Notice how that little kid is only shown when Shepard is looking at him. When he was in the ventilation shaft and Shepard was talking to him the kid suddenly disappears when Anderson calls Shepard Implying that Shepard was dreaming. Most importantly, during the end of the first mission when Shepard gets on the Normandy and Anderson says he's not coming, Shepard sees the kid getting onto a space shuttle. Notice how nobody even sees the kid or helps him get up. The soldier in the shuttle just stands there looking straight ahead.

The Kid Isn't real.

QFT..also you can't hear the kid moving in the ventilation shaft(his steps) + the nightmare scenes you hear Reaper growls,which comes to show that hes in the first stages of indoctrination(check the codex if you don't believe me).

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

We are not trying to make it better. Nothing will make it better. We are trying to understand it. If your only goal is to be angry, you can do it somewhere else.

This exchange is over.

Come on, you had the opportunity to have like seven different Mass Effect references in that sentence!

Something akin to

Zeel, you have become an annoyance. We only wish to understand, not incite.

This exchange is over.

Need to save some for later though.

Just... what exactly are you talking about, may I ask?

Bioware is known for making THE best twist in a story in gaming history. If you played KoTOR you should know that.

This theory we have is just a theory. Nothing more. But I would very much like to think that Bioware didn't lose it's touch and that they can still pull of big story twists. If not, well, may they rest in peace because they're dead to me if this ending doesn't change.

I would actually like this theory to be wrong as well as the actual ending they gave us. I want them to surprise us with something we didn't think of.

 

[weirdee]

Snip

Technically the "final boss fight" is the like, 16 Brutes followed by never ending waves of Banshees and Marauders that come when you're making your stand by the mobile missile launchers. While not necessarily as epic and climactic as fighting against Saren or the Human Reaper, it certainly was a LOT more challenging than either of those fights.

But I do understand what you're getting at, there's no "central villain" to confront at the end.

Heh.

The "final villain" is yourself.

You literally have to fight every impulse in your mind to make peace the Reapers or what they do in order to break free.

Everything leading up to this point was attempting to lead you to believe that the Reapers could have been accepted into your life in one way or another, but not in the game, but with you. This is why the choices get more complex with greater EMS, and change depending on whether or not you left the Collector base intact. If you stopped caring about the fate of the universe or are simply incapable of doing anything to save it, you've already made your choice, and there is nothing you can do to change the future.

But more importantly, all of the game up to this point is marked by what you did. Yes, it's not accounted for in the endings directly. Those actions are imprinted on YOU, instead. It's how your see yourself, or perhaps just how you see your character ingame, but that character is also an extension of you. Shepard does not have much more command over his mind at this point. He/She is relying on your judgement. This is how indoctrination works. It poses itself as an idea in your head that doesn't seem entirely unreasonable. Perfectly rational, normal people, even people with strong mental control or ridiculous willpower fell victim to it, and that's how it worked. If you let any shred of doubt linger in your mind that there is a valid reason to accept the viewpoint or presence of the Reapers, either by your own logic or justification of being incharacter, then you and/or your Shepard proxy have lost.

Mass Effect is ultimately about the choices you make. The "climactic" battle being the culmination of those decisions on YOUR REAL LIFE MIND is perhaps a most fitting ending.

Or rather, it is the ending, if they succeeded.

It feels like Bioware is just waiting for people to come to grips with it to reveal what's behind the last curtain.

 

[RJ 17]

Snip

Technically the "final boss fight" is the like, 16 Brutes followed by never ending waves of Banshees and Marauders that come when you're making your stand by the mobile missile launchers. While not necessarily as epic and climactic as fighting against Saren or the Human Reaper, it certainly was a LOT more challenging than either of those fights.

But I do understand what you're getting at, there's no "central villain" to confront at the end.

Heh.

The "final villain" is yourself.

You literally have to fight every impulse in your mind to make peace the Reapers or what they do in order to break free.

Everything leading up to this point was attempting to lead you to believe that the Reapers could have been accepted into your life in one way or another, but not in the game, but with you. This is why the choices get more complex with greater EMS, and change depending on whether or not you left the Collector base intact. If you stopped caring about the fate of the universe or are simply incapable of doing anything to save it, you've already made your choice, and there is nothing you can do to change the future.

But more importantly, all of the game up to this point is marked by what you did. Yes, it's not accounted for in the endings directly. Those actions are imprinted on YOU, instead. It's how your see yourself, or perhaps just how you see your character ingame, but that character is also an extension of you. Shepard does not have much more command over his mind at this point. He/She is relying on your judgement. This is how indoctrination works. It poses itself as an idea in your head that doesn't seem entirely unreasonable. Perfectly rational, normal people, even people with strong mental control or ridiculous willpower fell victim to it, and that's how it worked. If you let any shred of doubt linger in your mind that there is a valid reason to accept the viewpoint or presence of the Reapers, either by your own logic or justification of being incharacter, then you and/or your Shepard proxy have lost.

Mass Effect is ultimately about the choices you make. The "climactic" battle being the culmination of those decisions on YOUR REAL LIFE MIND is perhaps a most fitting ending.

Or rather, it is the ending, if they succeeded.

It feels like Bioware is just waiting for people to come to grips with it to reveal what's behind the last curtain.

Soooooooo Shepard has been Indoctrinated by the player? o.o

 

[weirdee]

No, the PLAYER is being indoctrinated. Some people play as if the character and themselves are separate, but unless they truly understand the situation for what it's worth, then that divide is rendered meaningless. It is like economists attempting to understand a system that they themselves are a part of, but thinking they are objective observers when they are not.

 

[boag]

Go read this Thread, Indoctrination is pretty much confirmed now.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.354425-Bioware-allows-the-release-of-The-Final-Hours-of-Mass-Effect-3-a-tell-all-app-for-2-99-WTF#14074722

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Go read this Thread, Indoctrination is pretty much confirmed now.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.354425-Bioware-allows-the-release-of-The-Final-Hours-of-Mass-Effect-3-a-tell-all-app-for-2-99-WTF#14074722

It looks like they're teasing us. But in a good way. Like they're preparing us. I doubt EA was able to indoctrinate them so much that they would resort to fucking with us and hurting our feelings without any reason. Something is coming.