Indoctricnation Theory is Back!

It keeps floating around that they've denied it, but as far as I've gathered, they haven't. They've only had some laughs about it (which we can never have confirmed from them exactly why) and said it was a valid interpretation (though arguably in a way that was more dismissive than encouraging).

Any 'denials' I've actually seen, were lines like wanting the game to 'speak for itself' - which really can mean anything.

I believe I did see a Q&A a while ago with community managers (an obscure one that for all I remember could have been fake, and well, its community managers so they could be BSing) where they did seem to confirm or at least encourage ideas like meeting the Catalyst wasn't exactly 'real reality', and that partially explains things like Catalyst having both male and female Shepard voice (somehow?).
The Final Hours of Mass Effect app had the part where it seemed designed that Shepard was to lose control of his body due to indoctrination but this was scrapped due to the gameplay having problems. That doesn't spell it out to me that 'indoctrination' itself (or rather as I'd put it, 'machine mind control interfacing') never happened at all.

Frankly, I'll put it like this - ME3 was designed to be the end of a trilogy and possible end to a franchise, but I'm unconvinced it was made to be the definitive end of a the franchise and I would be actually very surprised if it was completely confirmed to me that nothing weird was intended. It looks more to me that there was an indoctrination plot intended, but it scaled back more and more (even potential directly addressing DLC scrapped post-launch) until it became more of a 'one day' sort of thing.

And playing MEA hasn't changed that for me. If anything, like the ME3 DLC, it keeps it in my mind instead of extinguishing it. Thanks SAM, you didn't need to put Ryder in brief mind memory realms but you just HAD TO, didn't you?

Of course, part of the negativity was Bioware's refusal to address the audience about the ending....

How many years was it before they finally stopped insisting that we simply "didn't get it"?  Or are they still holding to that story?

My (light) position I've been in for a while is that both ME3 DLC and MEA onward will build up a better case with a more receptive audience to understand whatever take Bioware might put on the ME3 ending.

MEA itself focuses more on connections (if you want to put it that way) to ME1-ME2 (especially ME1) time, DLC (especially if Quarian Ark leaving during Reaper Invasion idea happens) may go up to parts of ME3, but it'd be up to a 'MEA2'/'MEA3' or whatever for things to be comfortable enough to carry on.

But I do believe Bioware that they're done the Shepard and Reaper story. Its just that, well, I put it in the same way as Bioware saying they're done Revan's story but he appeared in that damnable MMORPG, or done Hawke's story but he's in DAI, or done the Warden's story but that never kept us from a Darkspawn themed DLC and a letter from the Warden.

I just think MEA was their safe choice (aside from a few intriguing elements), like DAI was DA's safe choice, but even further in that regard. But when you even look into the side elements of MEA, there's something there too (whether its a certain sidemission or SAM's capabilities or other stuff..).

I float around the idea of 'Shepard' being a gestalt entity reflected in different ways in all three games (ME1 - Alliance records in the future where they communicate through memory like all these aliens we keep meeting, ME2 - Some kinda cyber interface, ME3 - Reaperized mind world; whatever..) as long as the journey still generally applied (even if actually done by many more people; like Arrival 'really' being done by a team of Alliance soldiers) and there is still intriguing outcomes and storylines arising from the revelation.

It would, to me, be kinda a swipe at Christianity though (in the sense of an idea of an old revered story actually being basically false but believed by billions). "Tell me about The Shepard!" "Alright, well, it was actually a lot of different people doing a lot of different things, but here's the story that really matters, about an ubersoldier on their Hero's Journey, no matter how nonsensical it gets and no matter how weirdly tragic it got at the end, he's still one big hero and saved us all!" "Wow, can I have another story?" "Yes, here's the story where The Shepard returned and ruled us all under his Reaperized iron fist for a thousand years."

I still have fun playing with the idea that Elcor Hamlet meant this story of taking down the Reapers but Citadel DLC's reference to Elcor Macbeth is a hint that any 'Shepard' we get in the future is basically more on the tyrant end, that I dunno, Andromedans have to return to beat down.

I think a decade or so can change a lot.

Especially if Bioware tries inception on us to make us think its our idea to want Shepard back.


Andromeda is its own story, yes, but I think it might be treated like Star Trek in a way. While the other story is happening in another region of space, it can build up questions or even just a more avid curiosity and eagerness to see how the earlier region of space has been, especially with expansions of lore in the meantime..

Well, swipe at religious literalists at least.

Many religious would actually be fine with all this because their viewpoints on spiritual matters are rather more mutable than a particular sort of concretely presented preaching would insist.

Some people, including probably BW writers themselves, consider it more of a tribute to see other stories use 'the greatest story ever told' as a creative reference, even if in disagreeable ways (gun toting space marine).

I don't think renegade = soulless monster (although a pure renegade run has some crazy crap in it).  But in general, the renegade choices that I rolled with a were the ones where Shep didn't have patience for whiners, didn't back down, didn't take crap from anyone, and got the job done.  I could see that renegade being kinda screwed up, but not about the kid as much as his own frustrations about leaving earth (with the kid as sort of the...ummm...catalyst )

In regards to the indoctrination theory? Way I see it, I don't think the writers are that clever.  If they were, instead of rushing to give an extended cut to pacify a super pissed-off fanbase, they could have just said. "Wait...don't you get it?" *wink* *wink*, and let folks roll with it.  Would have cost them alot less grief.

The extended cut was never created to "fix" ME3's ending. It was created in order to provide closure as well as answers to what happened after the pivotal ending choice. Many were upset because we did not know what the fate of the Normandy was and we had no idea what the future of the Milky Way was going to be. Extended Cut resolved that issue, but it in no way changed the actual ending choice of ME3, besides adding an additional option (Refusal).

Never once has BioWare actually done anything to disprove the Indoctrination Theory. In fact, the Leviathan DLC actually gave more credibility to its legitimacy.

Well, in any case this theory is at least a lot more interesting than just taking the ME3 endings at face value.

So do I.

Though there are worse ones.

SO

MUCH


WORSE

I always considered that it was very likely that indoctrination theory was the ending (though not made very clear because that would give it away) because simply put, we were never going to beat the reapers. No amount of pretty space magic was going to save our collective asses against an army of sentient killer machines that laid waste to the Protheans who were far more advanced than we were. Never. Gonna. Happen. Yeah, I know everyone was counting on that hail mary device that nobody else before us could piece together. But we, the ones who still were trying to understand the prothean artifacts across all of our collective races, were somehow going to pull off what countless cycles before us could not. Never. Gonna. Happen.

Accept it. It sucks. I know. It really, really sucks.

So what's the point of it all? The point is that it was always about Shepard. A trilogy focused on one hero, our hero, but in the end, do you really think he went up in to beam of light and touched some device for a win after talking to some kind of apparition that coincidentally looked exactly like the kid he had seen way back at the start of this part of the story? Where did that image come from? Think about that. It was in his mind (his dreams too). How does it get from his mind to right in front of him where he is asking questions? He is seeing it. But is it really there? What does 'it' really look like, if it is really there at all? Because now you see that parts of this are in his mind. The starbrat at bare minimum is the one thing we know for sure is from his mind. So if he is seeing something from his mind and having a conversation with it, what does that tell you? Think about in any other situation if someone is talking to something that we know doesn't exist as they are seeing it because we know that it comes from their mind (that image) then we consider that a delusion, 'not real.' If it is 'not real' then what is it? It is his mind undergoing the process of indoctrination and everyone who refuses to accept this has been thoroughly indoctrinated.

BW pulled the wool over people's eyes so effectively that they had to rewrite the endings because people's indoctrinated delusional outcomes didn't look right or good enough, yet nobody is really troubled about the starbrat image from his mind that he is having an in depth conversation with right before his delusional outcomes (unless he chooses destroy). They got us. They laid it all out from minute one. ME1 goes into great detail about indoctrination at every turn it can. It goes so far with this that its puppet villain is indoctrinated. And BW does this again right before we make our choices by showing us one more instance of an indoctrinated person. He doesn't think he is indoctrinated. He thinks he is so mighty and powerful that he can control the reapers. Who does that sound like? We are about to try to stop the reapers, a mighty force that tears through the galaxy every 50k years and has yet to be stopped.

We cannot win that war.

We can, however, win by not succumbing to indoctrination.

I find that is only because we are missing the 2nd chapter of the trilogy.  IF ME2 had been all about finding the 'magic prothean sword of reaper killing' instead of it just being conveniently found on Mars right at the start of ME3 it could have made much more sense.  You spend a whole game tracking your way through Prothean history and their war with the reapers, finding their plans for a nearly completed device that had been worked on by a long line of civilizations to try and stop the reapers, and now us with the advance warning and time to finish it just maybe it gives us an edge when they arrive.

I dunno, things could have been so different if we had a full trilogy instead of a beginning, a spin-off, and an ending. Maybe the wouldn't even have had to take Deus Ex 1's ending and cram it into ME3.