quick question about the extended cut, and the Indoctronation theory

[Rock-nerd]

Sup guys, so i just beat Mass Effect 3 (at long last) with the extended cut DLC. It was alright, nothing angered me, it was a neat ending to the story. But thats not what i'm asking

Does the "indoctrination theory" still hold up, i have no idea what it is yet and i'm about to watch a video about it. but is there any point? has the EC dlc dismissed all arguments for the theory, please let me know. No biasness.

 

[eimatshya]

I haven't played the extended cut, but from what I've heard, and due to the basic premise of the extended cut, I'd say it's invalidated the Indoctrination Theory.

Spoiler: very minor spoiler of ME3's ending

Basically the Indoctrination Theory arose because the vanilla ending of ME3 made no sense except possibly on a symbolic level. It felt very dream like. As such, some people thought that maybe Shepard had been indoctrinated, and the end wasn't really the end but was just her mental struggle to resist reaper control (which played out as a big hallucination). This offered a context in which a lot of the nonsensical stuff from the original cut made at least some sense. Proponents of the theory then suggested that Bioware planned to release a free DLC once everyone had had some time to debate the ending. This DLC would show what happened if Shepard fought off reaper control and got to the "real" ending. Since the extended cut kept the basic framework of the original ending and just tried to make it coherent, rather than giving a new ending in which Shepard wakes up from the hallucination, that pretty much shows that Bioware didn't intend for the ending to be Shepard's indoctrination.

 

[eimatshya]

I guess to clarify my post some more, if the Indoctrination Theory had been true, the Extended Cut would have had to radically change the end of the game, and from what I've heard, it just expands upon the existing ending.

 

[Kragg]

yeah what he said, the extended cut totly killed the indoctrination theory, but the video is a really really good "what if" and i really wish they had done it this way

i suggest watching it