Mass Effect 3, Indoctrination theory (new and extended)

[Vault101]

IT's a ridiculous conspiracy theory. Trying to bend the facts to fit some sort of truth that only you can see. Yes, it's a nice theory in that it explains why the ending sucked, but it's not the real ending and never will be. Why on earth would Bioware make such a cryptic story anyway? They couldn't even concieve of something this fucking complex.

The fact that someone has made an hour and a half documentary about this is incredibly sad, may I add. Whoever the creator of that video is needs to get a life, and a different hobby. MAybe a job. What a waste of human endeavour.

In summary - Indoctrination theory IS NOT THE REAL STORY. And if Bioware add it in the DLC, which I highly doubt and if they do I'll eat my Xbox, it's purely because of the people saying it's true and how it explains stuff. And then the people who first said it will think it's evidence that they were right.

STOP HAVING FUN GUYS!! SERIOUSLY!!

in all seriousness calling it "sad" is pretty arrogant...if thats sad then why are you on forums? why are any of us here? why do any of us do anything?

it doesnt actually matter if the theory is true or not, hell pretty much EVERYONE is saying "hey bioware! do this! seriously we don't care if you intended this or not just do it! are you listening bioware?!"

we arnt saying its true for sure, hell have you seen the amount of times I have said myself that its probably not true? it doesnt matter if its true or not..its facinating, so on behalf of the fans I sincerely apologise for us looking into thease things..really, because we shoudl all just curse bioware/EA and talk about how much they suck...as opoase to this I supose

 

[razer17]

STOP HAVING FUN GUYS!! SERIOUSLY!!

in all seriousness calling it "sad" is pretty arrogant...if thats sad then why are you on forums? why are any of us here? why do any of us do anything?

it doesnt actually matter if the theory is true or not, hell pretty much EVERYONE is saying "hey bioware! do this! seriously we don't care if you intended this or not just do it! are you listening bioware?!"

we arnt saying its true for sure, hell have you seen the amount of times I have said myself that its probably not true? it doesnt matter if its true or not..its facinating, so on behalf of the fans I sincerely apologise for us looking into thease things..really, because we shoudl all just curse bioware/EA and talk about how much they suck...as opoase to this I supose

It's not about not having fun, it's about the ridiculous lengths this guy has gone to. I'd say the same thing about other conspiracy theorists who make similar videos and writings, but about real life.

I don't have an issue with doing videogame things. Hell, I do Let's Plays, a videogame blog, podcast and reviews, so it really isn't that I think just playing videogames, or doing further things with them, that is sad.

Onto the actual theory, I personally feel that Bioware has ruined the story. If they back track and then tack on the indoctrination theory and make that the official version of events, it will be even worse. It's too late, it's done, they can't just retroactively fix it. Not to mention that doing that would completely undermine the writers and the official company line that the ending was fine.

 

[pure.Wasted]

[snip.

ok...I sort of get it

but what would they need to change?

OK, that depends totally on our goal. What specifically do we want to accomplish with Shepard being indoctrinated? We want to fuck with the player, show how scary the Reapers really are, and foreshadow the fact that the organic/synthetic conflict is really the heart of the story. We have two ways of doing this: 1) foreshadow that Shepard isn't in full control of himself, and 2) manipulate the player to arrive at the same "organics and synthetics will always cause trouble" conclusion the Reapers want him to come to, shocking him when he gets to the ending, suddenly forcing him to wonder, did I really arrive at this conclusion through being reasonable, or was the game/the Reapers manipulating me all along?

Spoiler: I had time to kill tonight.

Off the top of my head:

1. Have Miranda tell Shepard, preferably in ME2 but at least in ME3, that the Illusive Man did have an opportunity to cross some wires in Shepard's brain. If it's in ME3, have her say that she spent the last few months sneaking into Cerberus facilities to find out if it's true or not, but found nothing. Still, she can't take being the only person who even suspects that something might be wrong, so she decides to tell him after all. But as there's no way of knowing for sure, all we can do is hope that she's wrong. But she should suggest an alternate motivation, so while we know SOMETHING is wrong, we have no idea what it is. For example, she might say that TIM possibly implanted a surveillance chip in Shepard's head, meaning he can see everything Shepard does. State over and over that humans are not capable of creating control chips. It's impossible, so Shepard has no reason to worry about that. (Doesn't mean the Reapers aren't capable of it, and TIM is using Reaper tech...)

2. Give the Quarians and Geth a bigger role, and make them even less reasonable. This will give players more incentive to be rude when they have the opportunity to be rude, making brokering a peace between the races even more difficult when it comes down to the wire. In the end, it should be more difficult to manage than it was in the final game.

3. Give Shepard an opportunity to convince other characters on his team that "organic vs. synth" is a very serious problem. Multiple opportunities (each of which can be ignored), and don't make any of them blatant "There goes wacky Shepard again!" moments. The Prothean is already on his side, which is really great for this. Garrus might start out as a skeptic, but let Shepard talk him into seeing the Geth for the threat they really are, especially since despite Legion's help, they were once again taken in by the Reapers. Very subtly shift the focus of Shepard's aggression from the Reapers to the Geth in these situations.

4. Dick around with the Paragon/Renegade options. There's a semi-explicit understanding that the blue option is always the heroic option. What we want to do, subtly, is have the game tell the player what to think. Use the blue option to make him do worse and worse things, or use the red option to make him do stuff that is targeted more and more specifically at the Geth and Quarians. In Vancouver, clicking top left should lead to Shepard saying "let's unite all the races and save the galaxy!" Over time it gets slowly worse and worse, until you get to London, where clicking top left should lead to Shepard saying "this iteration of the life cycle in the galaxy has failed, the best thing we can do now is give up our genetic code to the Reapers in the hopes that they can do something useful with it, meanwhile we need to move over and let some other organics have their day in the Sun, and hopefully they won't create any synthetics like we did. Our time is over. We should stop being selfish." The bottom left option might say, "The only way to defeat the Reapers is to beat them at their own game. Instead of throwing our lives away pointlessly, we can merge with them and keep our genetic code completely intact. One day, when someone in some other cycle does figure out how to beat them, they can extract us out. For now we have to do whatever it takes to survive."

In no way do I expect/want players to pick that "Paragon" or "Renegade" ending - they SHOULD realize how crazy it is - but the point is the Reapers are making it difficult for Shepard to distinguish between his own ideals and theirs. And if this isn't Shepard talking, at what point did Shepard stop having a voice? How much has he already done that was steered toward the Reapers' misguided goals?

This Paragon/Renegade option would be contrasted with a single regular talk on the right side of the screen saying something distinctly ignoble, like, "Our individuality is more important than anything else in the galaxy." Click that, you again get a choice of three similar to before. Select the non Par/Ren choice AGAIN, and you get just two options: Paragon and Renegade. This time REAL Paragon and Renegade options, because Shepard has finally succeeded at exerting his own will over the Reaper indoctrination. Neither of these two last options ends with Shepard dead, and both of them show and explain in detail what happens to Shepard, what happens to Garrus, EDI, Joker, Liara, Tali... eeeeverybody.

This is one way of making an indoctrination ending fit thematically and stylistically with the content of the entire game. It's bold and it makes a very concrete statement, none of the current vagueries. That said, I'm not convinced that it works in the context of the first two games. On the one hand, it would have been a very interesting way to send off the current generation of simplistic dialogue wheels and morality systems, in preparation for adopting more complex, more intricate systems that allow us to express ourselves even better through our avatars. It would have made the Reapers seem even more formidable, and allowed a Shepard who doesn't blindly click blue/red to stay true to who he is.

On the other hand, it STILL takes control away from the player in a certain way despite the first two games not really doing any of that. I mean, it wouldn't necessarily be any worse than the auto-dialogue already is, and people have been able to largely overlook that feature. And it would be thematically meaningful. But still, I'm wary of doing something in the final installment of a trilogy that has such irrevocable effects.

If I could summarize my wandering thoughts, I would say that even though an indoctrination ending is absolutely possible to get right in a way that is meaningful and consistent with the rest of the game (although it takes EFFORT and lots of painstaking foreshadowing), even if you get that far, it doesn't mean it was automatically great. If the first two games didn't do it, it's still anyone's guess whether you'll execute it perfectly, whether people will respond positively...

A reasonable question at this time would be "what ending was ME3 meant to have, based on the way ME1-3 were written and designed?" Cut the London missions as they are, they're crap. Replace them with something like the Suicide Mission, but five times more epic. Every single surviving character comes in to bail you out. Every single race you got on your side flies in with their fleet to draw the Reapers off your back. Every loyalty (or not) pays off, every surviving character pays off, all your big and small decisions pay off, over a single 2-hour extravaganza. You run up the Citadel, same confrontation between Anderson and TIM, you get to the control room and we get the original Dark Energy ending. Paragon - screw you, we'll try our own thing. Renegade - screw you, we'll try our own thing. Other - let's join with you guys in the hopes that it does something. Then you have a 10 minute reunion with everyone who survived, and a lengthy epilogue, final shot is of scary space with Dark Energy that'll eventually come for us, hope we get a solution. Unless you joined with the Reapers, in which case you get a lengthy epilogue saying how 500 years later they devised some chemical reaction and saved the galaxy, cut to: some single-celled organisms splitting into two-celled ones on a planet that will never know the danger of Dark Energy. Optimistic and happy. Our sacrifice was not in vain.

That's the ending ME3 needed to have.

 

[Vault101]

It's not about not having fun, it's about the ridiculous lengths this guy has gone to

the fuck?.....people go to extreme lengths to play videogames..speding thousands of dollars on rigs pre-ordering, taking sick days off work they put time and efforting to film themselfs playing then entirty of a game, they make machima, fan-art erotic fan fic...should I critcise them becuase I think its rediculous?

ALL he has done is gathered together all the main points made in favor of IT and assesed weather or not they seem credible, he debunked a few (like the trees post-harbinger lazer) he's also added a few new ones (the piles of bodies)


[quote/] I'd say the same thing about other conspiracy theorists who make similar videos and writings, but about real life.

I don't have an issue with doing videogame things. Hell, I do Let's Plays, a videogame blog, podcast and reviews, so it really isn't that I think just playing videogames, or doing further things with them, that is sad. [/quote]

does this guy look angry/crazy/dead serious to you? is he sitting there with a tin foil hat yelling about the government or the aliens? its just some guy making a video about somthing hes passionate about..about somthign harmless..about somthing interesting

its not even a conspiricy theory, its an interpretation an anlysis

the line youve drawn between "sad" and "acceptible" is fucking stupid....its abrtrairy, its your god damn opinion

do I call the nostalga critic sad because he makes videos ripping apart old movies? no , thats his thing his videos are for entertaiment , same with he AVGN andf same with indoctrination theory..its not different from your podcasts/reveiws, and your lets plays

"who the fuck videos themslefs playing a game and expcts people to watch that?"<- see I can do it too (not my opinion)

its about as rational as me saying "COD is awsome!..but RPG's? pfft those are for losers with no lives!!"


gaming sites, videos thats what all this is all about,its just fucking entertainment...apologies if its not a lets play or a reveiw...should we also disaprove of parodys and funny videos?


[quote/]Onto the actual theory, I personally feel that Bioware has ruined the story. If they back track and then tack on the indoctrination theory and make that the official version of events, it will be even worse. It's too late, it's done, they can't just retroactively fix it. Not to mention that doing that would completely undermine the writers and the official company line that the ending was fine.[/quote]

Bioware are NOT changing the ending...indoctrination theory does not require them to change anything..thats the entire point of IT...

thats what they said...Im just wating to see what they come up with, because Im honestly really interested to see what they can do with a few poxy cutscenes if the ending is to be taken at face value

 

[GameMaNiAC]

Basically it means that the ending should be self contained and wrap up any lingering plot points that remain. You should not need a video that is longer than the actual ending of the story to explain what happens in the ending of the story. The exception to this rule is if you are setting up a sequel...which considering that ME3 was supposed to be the conclusion of the story arch, is not the case here hence the extreme levels of fail.

Yes, but this video wasn't made by BioWare. It's a fan-made breakdown of the ending. I see nothing odd about it being longer.

 

[TomLikesGuitar]

There are currently three big problems with indoctrination theory:

1. EAoware has dismissed it completely already. They've outright denied that's what they were aiming for with the ending which is a shame because it's the only way to may sense of the garbled mess they've released.

have they?

Yup it was part of the announcement for the extended cut DLC, along with telling us we still won't be getting the promised diverse endings just an explanation of why they think it all made sense.

This is incorrect.

I believe the response was something along the lines of "we can neither confirm nor deny this theory".

 

[Vault101]

Will people stop with this bullshit already. People will always see what they want to see, and the human ability to find and match patterns is unparralleled. But just because there's a pattern there, it doesn't mean it's deliberate or intended.

Really, this is pathetic. You're just like the people who scanned random letters in the bible and ended up with Hitler and all sorts of prophecies that "came true". Even Bioware said the so-called "indoctrination theory" wasn't what they ended up doing, so cut it out.

STOP HAVING FUN GUYS! (I know Ive already said that..)

in all seriousness though...its just an interpretation an analyisis..other than being sick of hearing about ME3 for the past few months I don;t get why people are so hostile

liek I said to the other guy..how is this any different to a reveiw, a lets play or a funny video? this IS different, we arnt sitting here preaching about the underground reptile people or how jesus was a protheain

 

[Vault101]

This is incorrect.

I believe the response was something along the lines of "we can neither confirm nor deny this theory".

definetly a wise move on Biowares part...

IT doesnt require them to change anything..just add

 

[Zen Toombs]

-snip-

Okay, so I watched all but the last 5 minutes of that video. I found him to be as irritating as some of the worst of the pro-Mass Effect ending crowd. He displayed a number of misunderstandings of the lore and a number of logical falicies. For the latter, a particular favorite of his was circular logic - at several points he raised the following as proof for Indoctrination theory:

An event is happening. Indoctrination Theory says we should interpret these events like so. Therefore, we should interpret these events like so. Therefore this is great evidence for the Indoctrination Theory!

Just my 2 credits.

Thank you Vault, I appreciate being sent the video. I do think he was wasting our time though.

 

[TomLikesGuitar]

-snip-

Okay, so I watched all but the last 5 minutes of that video. I found him to be as irritating as some of the worst of the pro-Mass Effect ending crowd. He displayed a number of misunderstandings of the lore and a number of logical falicies. For the latter, a particular favorite of his was circular logic - at several points he raised the following as proof for Indoctrination theory:

An event is happening. Indoctrination Theory says we should interpret these events like so. Therefore, we should interpret these events like so. Therefore this is great evidence for the Indoctrination Theory!

Just my 2 credits.

Thank you Vault, I appreciate being sent the video. I do think he was wasting our time though.

Guess what?

I can tell by your paraphrasing that you actually didn't watch the video.

He says something specifically a few times in the video which actually contradicts your ENTIRE paraphrasing.

So if you actually watch it and are willing to admit your paraphrasing was incorrect, I'll debate the theory with you all day if you like, but otherwise you're not really giving it a fair shot.

 

[Savo]

Oh lordy that is a long video... I could watch a movie in that time. I'm already fairly convinced that the IT is true or on the right track. The theory has problems, but there is some evidence for it that is extremely convincing that I haven't ever heard explained away by its critics. We just have to wait and see, everything is speculation at this point.

 

[SweetLiquidSnake]

The only thing worse than making another ME3 post, is the Masshole that spent 90 minutes blabbing about the Indoctrination Theory. They cry because they spent 100 hours playing and sculpting their story only to have it destroyed in minutes, so instead of cutting their losses and moving on they spend another 100 crying about it. Like playing another game already!! Jesus Christ.....

 

[Zen Toombs]

Guess what?

I can tell by your paraphrasing that you actually didn't watch the video.

He says something specifically a few times in the video which actually contradicts your ENTIRE paraphrasing.

So if you actually watch it and are willing to admit your paraphrasing was incorrect, I'll debate the theory with you all day if you like, but otherwise you're not really giving it a fair shot.

For one: snip parts of my quote for space. Repeating my talking to Vault is irrelevant and only serves to clutter up the thread.
For two: for the love of all that is holy, get off your high horse. You're getting a nosebleed.

Because guess what?

I can tell by your comments that you didn't actually read my post.[footnote]A cursory glance, yes, but not too much more.[/footnote]

You say that I said something that I never said.[footnote]Look at the bolded portion. I am only paraphrasing something said only a few times. You say that I was us[/footnote]

So if you actually read it and are willing to admit your comments were incorrect, I'll debate the video for a moment longer and the Theory all day if you like, but otherwise you're not giving it a fair shot.

I found [the maker of the video] to be as irritating as some of the worst of the pro-Mass Effect ending crowd.
-snip-
[The video also used] circular logic - at several points he raised the following as proof for Indoctrination theory:

An event is happening. Indoctrination Theory says we should interpret these events like so. Therefore, we should interpret these events like so. Therefore this is great evidence for the Indoctrination Theory!

Spoiler: Overly long explanation - Tom, please actually read this.

If you read the italiciced part, you'd notice that I have a distaste for those who think that the ending to Mass Effect 3 was glorious and wonderful (like Casey Hudson does). This implies that I am not your enemy, but you seem to be convinced that I am. On the contrary, I'm a huge fan of Indoctrination theory. I'm only not a fan of the video maker.
If you read the bolded part, you would notice that I said "several points" which means at more than one point. I recall noticing the basic form I mentioned being used at least at two points. He did not always use that form of logic, and he brought up a number of good points. I will argue that all of those points have been brought up better by others, but that is neither here nor there.

Please do not slander me, and please actually read the posts you are commenting on. Finally, please do not be hostile to others if you do not want hostilities directed at you.

 

[Mewick_Alex]

I still don't believe the Indoctrination Theory.
And I wish people would stop bring up Shepard's eyes. Shepard has had those implants since the start of ME2, they show up when you play Renegade. And when your face gets burned off I'm pretty sure they will show even as a Paragon.

I'm probably a believer in the IT, but I never liked the eye thing either. Fot me it's because The Illusive Mans eyes have always had the wierd blue glow, even before he went off on a reaper control bender. Throughout ME2 he clearly believed the reapers were a genuine threat, and his goals were at odds with the collectors (and therefore reapers) goals, yet he still had the supposedly 'indoctrinated' eyes.

 

[Vault101]

The only thing worse than making another ME3 post, is the Masshole that spent 90 minutes blabbing about the Indoctrination Theory. They cry because they spent 100 hours playing and sculpting their story only to have it destroyed in minutes, so instead of cutting their losses and moving on they spend another 100 crying about it. Like playing another game already!! Jesus Christ.....

crying?...oh for fucks sake...strawman strikes again

but apoligies..we should just be talking about how much we hate ME3 and EA instead I supose

 

[Vault101]

-snip-

Okay, so I watched all but the last 5 minutes of that video. I found him to be as irritating as some of the worst of the pro-Mass Effect ending crowd. He displayed a number of misunderstandings of the lore and a number of logical falicies. For the latter, a particular favorite of his was circular logic - at several points he raised the following as proof for Indoctrination theory:
.

YOU.....your not suposed to disagree with me

kidding, where is his inconsistansies with the lore?

also the bodie thing...that was creepy..really