What was The Illusive Man's Goal for Shepard in ME2?

I'm reading the three Karpyshyn novels again. In the Prologue of Ascension, the third novel, TIM thinks about how the relationship has been working. The Shepard relationship was always intended to be a partnership. TIM knew Shepard would never buy into Cerberus fully. He says exactly this to Shepard at the beginning of ME3, if you destroyed the Collector Base.

TIM also felt that Shepard's unique gifts were the galaxy's best chance. He trusted Shepard to get the job done, if anyone could. As he says in game, he didn't want Shepard compromised in any way. Shepard is more than his combat ability. His personality, morals, convictions and judgment all go into making him exceptional. If you compromise any of that, you ruin the whole package. It really is as simple as stated in ME2. TIM wanted Shepard fighting the Reapers, not Shepard's body under remote influence.

It makes me think of Saren's description of Indoctrination. Exert too much control, and the subject becomes a shell with no initiative. They lose value for complex tasks. TIM didn't want to be the one making every crucial decision in the fight, controlling Shepard from afar. He trusted Shepard's proven ability to get it done, including in ways TIM might not have tried or agreed with in the moment.

I like TIM as a character. He's without conscience, willing to do terrible things to achieve his goals. He willingly sold his soul (and those of others) because he thinks it's what humanity needs. For all his moral failings, he's not a fool. He gives capable people latitude in doing their jobs. He never behaves as if he knows better than they do, unless they force him to do so.

As terrible as he was, he was one of the key components in everyone's survival. If nothing else, he resurrected Shepard and gave him the resources to fight the Reapers. That alone saved everyone. That's just the obvious, though; he'd spent decades building up to that. He was terrible, but he was correct after a fashion. His decades of terrible deeds did end up culminating in humanity's salvation.

To put it simply, he's like Gollum in LotR. In the end, he saved everyone. They would've lost everything without him. For all his flaws, it worked out. Pretty cool character.

The notion of "control chips" is rather problematic overall. That form of tech (i.e. a device placed into someone's brain to control them) is only mentioned in one other place - when Talitha (a slave encountered by Colonist Shepard on the Citadel).  Talitha describes it as "wires" attached to her brain.  Unlike the effects of indoctrination, however, Talitha has maintained a certain sense of self despite being a Batarian slave for 13 years... and Shepard can tap into that during the quest in order to prevent her from committing suicide. She's messed up, for sure; but it's definitely different than indoctrination... and definitely different than the notion of a "control chip" as presented in ME2.

Basically, TIM wanted a leader for his mission, not a slave. A person who could convince a bunch of other people not under TIM's control to join up to the mission. TIM is also confident in his own abilities of persuasion to get Shepard to cooperate to complete the mission. Not going along with TIM's BS would only amount to enabling the collectors to continue harvesting colonies... and TIM could be absolutely certain Shepard would never allow that anyways. To top it all off, there is no opportunity for the player to fully reject TIM until the decision whether or not to blow up or irradiate the Collector Base. At that point, there would have been no point in TIM hitting a kill switch anyways... He still needed Shepard to complete the mission by doing one or the other regardless. If he killed off Shepard, he would only have to start again to try to get to the Collector Base... and he didn't have another ship with another IFF to do that.

I do believe though that the Shepard he brought back is a clone... and that is why the topic of "controlling" him/her almost like a "shackled AI" was even discussed between TIM and Miranda. That's why it's referred to as a "chip." Other forms of "mind control" of organics in the game are pain-based or involve long-term conditioning of the subject (e.g. The Thorian, Rachni children, and even the method the Reapers use to indoctrinate. Even Talitha is subjected to beatings and other forms of abuse to mold her into thinking of herself as an animal. The notion of someone putting in a mere chip that would allow them to control an organic individual, let alone the idea that they could hit a kill switch) just isn't really in the game (when talking about organic minds).

At the end of it all I felt that TIM just wanted Shepard to do the dirty work of gaining him even further access to reaper tech. He lured Shepard to the disabled collector ship with a lie and ultimately he tried to convince Shepard to save the collector base so they could utilise the technology.

But at the same time I do agree with what Michaeln7 says about TIM being a tragic villain. The part they got right about ME3's endings was just how indoctrinated and twisted he had become, even physiologically.

I thought this was just his Kusanagi moment like her musings about whether she was ever a real human in Ghost in the Shell. Shepard certainly has plenty of implants by then, you have all of the extra cybernetic upgrades on top of that.

I always thought the Geth consensus has more to do with a level of trust the Geth have with Shepard. That of course seems more likely if you recruited and helped Legion in ME2.

I'm not totally convinced that what he wanted was to "convert" Shepard to Cerberus.  That could have been easily accomplished with said "control chip."  TIM does acknowledge in ME3 that Shepard would always stick to his own (i.e. Shepard's) beliefs and TIM goes on to express respect for that as much as he believed Shepard's beliefs were "wrong."  I think it boils down to what Hackett said about leaders and about not being able to pay soldiers to "believe" in their leader.  Shepard had a talent for getting people to follow him/her... and that's what TIM needed to convince a bunch of aliens and other people who hated Cerberus to work towards accomplishing his goal (i.e. stopping the Collectors from abducting human colonists).  He didn't need a drone who would just parrot what Cerberus believed.  He needed a leader who people who didn't believe in Cerberus would follow anyways.

Except he said he wanted Shepard "as is". A control chip would hinder Shepard. It was far better to convince Shepard that Cerberus was the only real hope for humanity. That's why TIM disavowed everything in ME1, Overlord (what happens to David if you leave him?), and Teltin. That's why it was a "misunderstanding" when they decided to invade a quarian flotilla, rather then an intentional, illegal border crossing. That's why "we'll just question Veetor and return him unharmed" (what happens to him if turned over?). That's why TIM spent 4 billion credits to resurrect Shepard. That's why we got the oh-so-sweet Kelly Chambers over a VI.

If TIM wasn't invested in Shepard coming to his side, he wasted a lot of time, effort and money to make sure Shepard viewed Cerberus in a very positive light.

I'm not sure our opinions on the subject are all that different. TIM most definitely wanted Shepard to see his POV and find it palatable. In fact, a Renegade Shep could have sided with Cerberus until TIM went off the rails completely in ME3.

There has always been a lot of debate in my head exactly what was what when it came to those projects and how much was TIM or not.  How much control did he have really?  How much did he poke, prod, imply, and then when the projects go belly up he was all like 'well I didn't actually order them to do anything'?  Or did he just run things from the background owing to his terrorist organization ways and his subbordinates mess up and then what happened in 3 was owing to indoctrination?  

If the former if he kind of had a Tarkin thing going on then this is a hell of an argument against Control.

Funny you should bring up Control because that's exactly what TIM wanted. Could he micromanage everything going on? No. Could he throw out ideas or approve the ideas of others? Yes. So while he could claim to not have directly turned Jack insane as a way of making her more powerful, I'm sure it was a "do whatever you have to do to get it done". Same with David Archer. And the thresher maws. And the not-husks. He may not have known the details but I can't imagine that he wouldn't have a "succeed at all costs" mentality.