Weird behavior of the child (yes, indoctrination theory)

I've debunked IT on my own time. It's interesting but, IMO, doesn't hold up. Too many flaws, including the idea that Shepard never made it to the beam because "no one did" according to someone in the background. Of course, Shepard was on the ground so it might seem that way but then Shepard gets up. Then Hackett say "Holy shit, he made it". Even an indoctrinated/hallucinating Shepard would question why he/she knew what Hackett was saying from near-Earth space.

The boy is peculiar but, ultimately, I see him as symptomatic of Shepard's guilt in his nightmares. It's one thing to know in the abstract sense that people are dying. It's another to have seen that person and watched him die. I know there's that duct thing but I have to assume the duct didn't end five feet from the opening. Otherwise, what good is it? On the Citadel, the "duct rats" used the ducts to travel in secret. The same thing could easily apply to the ducts on Earth.

As for the Catalyst hologram, I have no difficulty believing the thing is trying to manipulate Shepard. As far as Shepard being docile, note that he could barely function. He'd had the crap beat out of him on the beam run. He limped through the Citadel corridors. He was in his own puddle of blood while trying to reach the console when the Crucible failed to fire. Does that sound like someone in any shape to get into an argument?

Actually, by "action hero standards", absolutely. And Shepard is a stereotypical action hero. He survives impossible odds throughout the games.

I think I've never ever seen anything on film or in a video game that matches the Mass Effect 3 ending: The protagonist being wounded by his/her arch-nemesis in their last standoff, and being all calm and relaxed during it.

Compare that to Jack Bauer for example (24): In almost all final episodes of each season, Jack is severly beaten down and bleeding when he finally reaches the head-honcho terrorist. Sometimes the head honcho delivers some explanatory speech, which makes Jack all the more wild to deliver the bullet between the eyes.

Shepard follows exactly the same "action hero" script to the letter throughout the trilogy, EXCEPT for the last minutes. That's the disconnect. I mean even on the citadel, right after the beam run, when he is talking with Anderson over the com, he talks about kicking the reaper's asses. Yet when he finally meets their head-honcho just minutes later... doh.

The fact alone that the head-honcho takes the form of the boy should absolutely infuriate Shepard. "You dare to appear before me as the child your abominations nuked before my eyes!? DIE!!!!!"

Subverting expectations you followed meticulously only in the very last minutes is a really weird decision.

I've read some theories that appearing as the child actually calmed Shepard down.. but this is insane troll logic. That thing is actually like that deranged killer from Silence of the Lambs, who wears the skin of his victims. What would you feel if some murderous robot kills a child before your eyes (along with dozens of other people) and the builder of that robot would appear in form of the murdered child in front of you and gloat about the fact that he built the killer robots and is actually still controlling them. Would you feel... CALM AND AT PEACE?!?!?!?!?!

In similar vein, kiddo's remark that the reapers are inpersonal forces of nature, like fire, is insane troll logic times hundred. I mean that line is in a game, which features a reaper-made banshee reeling in sadistic glee (ardat yakshi mission). Yeah, just like fire or an earth quake!

Damn, I ranted again about the ending, but seriously, whoever greenlighted it was fucking high.

Why couldn't Leviathan junior prevent the prothean scientists from altering the signal? Because the thing never existed until the plot demanded it.

Personally I love IT and wish that would have been the reason behind it all.

Examine the plot too closely and there are a lot of holes. That final part of the game after the beam run still has me scratching my head. First time, without the extended cut, I was confused as hell. I had done my utmost to avoid the beam and yet got hit. Not realising that this is unavoidable, when it switched to the slow motion scene afterwards I was convinced this was just a lengthy "Game Over" sequence because I was effectively died and so did even realise I was meant to defend myself from the minions who then attacked me, so got killed properly.

Reloaded and tried again. Still got the same sequence and the penny dropped. This has been rigged. I had no idea at this point why, if I had taken a direct hit from Harbinger, I was still alive but polished off the minions and stepped into the beam. From then on the confusion only mounted. How had both Anderson and TIM got into the Citadel before me? Rolled with it, killed TIM, activated the Crucible and sat with Anderson as I waited to see the culmination of our efforts in destroying the Reapers. It didn't happen and then came the elevator sequence leading to the hologram.

My confusion only increased. I thought I had already activated the sequence on the Crucible but it would seem I had only achieved stage one and now I was required to do something more. Why am I talking to a hologram of the child? Do the writers think this will make me trust it? Are they trying to manipulate me yet again like they did with the dreams? Or is this demonstrating a last ditch attempt by the Reapers to manipulate me as they failed to indoctrinate me? That is the chief problem with the hologram. It does automatically make you suspicious by its very appearance and then it turns out you are conversing with the enemy boss.

Now for me this could have worked if the AI had told you that originally it controlled the Reapers but then they had escaped its control. So it had been waiting all this time for someone to make it that far so it could finally do something about them. Then appearing as the child would have made sense to me. Even its flawed logic might have been more understandable if it had once had control of these creatures but they had found a way to by-pass it.

However, appearing as the child and then being told that the only reason it was now willing to negotiate with you is that you had breached its defences, why would you then be willing to trust anything that it said? I have already given you an explanation of your other thread about this that an in-game explanation is that the AI knows nothing of human psychology so it thought the child was an appropriate way to appeal to Shepard. Why doesn't Shepard respond more aggressively? Well apart from the fact that they are out on their feet, you have to remember this isn't the first use of the child by the writers and we weren't allowed our own response to the dream sequences either. They decided that Shepard would react in a certain way to the memory of the child and it would seem the ending was no exception to this.

I don't think that indoctrination is the answer though. I think it was simply a case of the writers wanting to do something different instead of the normal boss fight ending and also to have different outcomes that would give you the feeling of player agency in being given the choice as "god" of the galaxy you would want going forward. It backfired spectacularly on them with many players but it has to be admitted that some players did not have a problem with the endings.

Yes, this would have worked perfectly. Instead of telling you this is the only way, we wanted to keep our regular form, whatever it says "No, you can't." Fuck you baby Reaper. If it had lost control, maybe to Harbinger (who actually did seem to be the boss in ME2) At this point, all presented options would have made sense because: 1) The Reapers are destroyed and it can start over, 2) It becomes possible to resume control of the Reapers again, but it needs help, or 3) You effectively remove the power of the Reapers to be a threat by essentially making you all the same.

This idea would bring it more in line with what Sovereign said in ME1: (paraphrasing) "We are each a nation unto ourselves". That would be why they could work independently from the Intelligence. That thing had intended to truly make peace between organics and synthetics. Harbinger grew impatient and decided that the only thing that would "save" organics was to convert them into new Reapers, like had been done with the Leviathan themselves. The Intelligence might then have used a mild form of indoctrination to get people in a few different cycles to start working on the Crucible. It took multiple cycles due to not being fully ready until now when the last piece fell into place.

I don't know if this is where you were going but it's just one idea that popped into my mind. It would make for consistency across all three games.

Or, the Catalyst opens the relay immediately before anyone has the chance to recover.  Who cares about safety?  500 Reapers come through the relay and decimates the fleets of the every species known.  The Alpha Relay doesn't really work with the existence of the Catalyst.  The Catalyst just doesn't work if we're to believe it had total control of the Citadel.  Either it does, and didn't act because...reasons...or, more likely, it was lying.

The thing that caused the deaths of 200 trillion organics cares about safety?

The crapalyst cares about safety? I'm sure someone will reply with a long-winded post about why it does.

My reply was short.  Not interested in the fruitless debate with him.  You know how it will turn out.  A friendly discussion that will turn nasty.  We'll find out how I'm evil for not choosing Synthesis and that's how I behave in the real world.  That's the typical outcome.