THE INDOCTRINATION THEORY (Spoilers)
- Jun 28, 2012 1:20 pm GMT
The "Indoctrination Theory" does make sense if you followed the story and paid attention to what happens. Bioware has had a pretty soild history on the story line and then all of a sudden the end turns to junk? No, I think it was ment to be like that to maybe add more to the game later or another game or just leave it to the user. This kind of like how the Saponaro's ended, if you watched the show and payed attention you had clues (like in mass effect) of what happens and pretty much leaves it to each person to to come up with their own thoughts of the ending...personly I think is lame and dont think is the case. Bioware has stressed to save your data...why? well come on, think about it, because the story is not done. No they are not stealing ideas from the users, the users (ones who paid attention) figured out the story. Is this true? NO that is why its called a "THEORY" and a good one. I did find this story and thought it was good to share. http://www.gamefront.com/mass-effect-3-ending-analyzing-the-indoctrination-theory/
only time will tell of what the truth is.
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- Jul 2, 2012 1:18 pm GMT
"Safegaurding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being." - Kahlil Gibran, "the voice of the poet"SPOILERS
the only part that I disagree on with what most think with the indoctrination theory is that it is all a dream. I think he's hallucinating while in the citidel, but it is really happening because it creates a bigger mess as far as the story goes if you're actually on the ground the whole time having this dream.
I also wonder if the reason they bring you to the choices at the end on the white elevator is because they have given up trying to control you and see their solution as not working, so at that point you really have the universe's fate in your hands.
ie the ending where you say I'm not doing any of these choices and then you hear harbinger say "so be it" and the cycle starts all over again.
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- Jul 2, 2012 11:24 pm GMT
I think Bioware have redeemed themselves somewhat by providing a better insight to the ending with the New EC.
For me the choices at the end were reasonable ones to conclude an epic story that could have had so many possibe endings (including the Indoctrination theory) and is consistent with the ME theme of making hard choices. By allowing the gamer sit back and make a their own minds up on what they would do in different situations where you had to make a choice.
The choices in the series tries to touch on our human emotion and sometimes our moral and political standpoint, such as choosing whether to destroy the geth or to seduce a same sex individual or to choose fate of the krogan during the genophage saga.We all were asked to make personal choices which was ultimately the essence of the mass effect trilogy.
"show of hands- how many of you chose to kill off Kaiden or Ashley in game 1 and not give it a second thought?"
From the onset we've been tested by Bioware to choose each time which is ultimately what I believe the ME series was all about, A fun and entertaining game of choices with a great story but the latter being secondary priority (Bioware would disagree ofc).
Your moral choices were political (think world war 2), religous beliefs and race (my way of life or yours) and lastly the live and let live concept (LBGT rights comes to mind).
All three were featured prominently throughout the series.
Is it ok or dangerous to be this all powerful controlling being "Godlike"? - dont kill Shepard, choose the control option
Does the preservation of Organics Life ultimately is the priority for you? - choose the destroy option
Do you consider that human beings and constructs/machines are equally evolving essences in the world? - choose the merge option
These 3 endings were given to you from amongst a miriad of possible endings and from those 3 youre ultimately asked to question your own morality again, your own view of the world you live in or wish to be living in.
Where I think bioware did get it wrong is by trying to narrow down your choices has created the sense of dilemna that we all would have when choosing such politically charged questions, because we all can refer situations where under different circumstances we would have chosen another 1 of the 3, In reality things arnt always so black or white.
These are major political dilemna for many people and the world alike and I feel Bioware may have gone a bit too far down this route when ultimately ME is a game and games are there to take you away from these life issues for a hour or two.
I chose the destroy ending because of my personal fear that allowing an organically made construct that can process a billion times faster than me is ultimately putting myself at a disadvantage...sorry legion. This decision however should not be taken out of context which was only based on 3 limitied choices and within the context of the story. I had to make a hard choice and the 1 which suited my ending to the game just like when I chose Ashley over Kaiden
All in all I think the ME series is still one of the best ive ever played although i might think twice about playing another if every decision I make leave me consciously preturbed.
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- Jul 11, 2012 12:22 pm GMT
The indoctrination theory used to make sense before the Extended Cut, now it doesn't. Why? Because if everything that's happening is inside Shepard's mind there should not be any outcome after this, I mean, we had to conclude that the cycle repeated itself no matter what, how could you control or destroy the reapers with your mind?, is Shepard a God or something?. If we chose to destroy then the indoctrination failed and if we chose to control the indoctrination succeded, but that's it, Shepard is lying almost dead at the exact same place where he took the hit from Harbinger. At the end the only thing that matters is weather he's dead or not.
Now with this Extended Cut, Bioware explain what happened to the Galaxy... After what?, No one destroyed the reapers, no one controled them, so what is this... From my POV what was a brilliant ending ended up being a complete mess.
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- Jul 19, 2012 9:32 am GMT
Synthesis & Control Endings don't make any sense at all. Especially since you're forced to disagree with the Illusive man. Ok he's wrong but then you go and do the very thing he wanted to do.
That makes about as much sense as synthetics killing all organics to prevent other synthetics from killing organics.
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- Jul 19, 2012 11:32 am GMT
Skarwolf you've basically pinned down how stupidly written the finale was. The synthetics are killing organics in order to prevent organics creating synthetics that will eventually destroy organics? Even Shepard saw how much of an insane contradiction this was, and he says so, but that's as far as the writers go with it. I'm not sure they realized how dumb it sounded. That stupid kid on the Citadel at the ending was just moronic too. Sovereign says that the Reapers are each a nation of their own, but then it turns out the Catalyst or whoever that kid was, ACTUALLY controls the Reapers and they're more of a Hive collective or something? WTF?
They took a terrifying, malevolent alien force from ME1 and then absolutely neutered it at the end of ME3 by making them mindless tools performing their programmed task. What a botch.
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- Jul 19, 2012 1:00 pm GMT
I was hoping they go into Dark Space and investigate Reaper origins.
I mean all 3 games its beaten into our heads that the Reapers are unstoppable and theres no way to fight them with conventional weaponry. The plan ? Ally everyone and make a big armada to try and fight them. Didn't work for the Proteans, or every other species before them. But hey we got this new ultra Crucible 6000 !!!!! How do you turn it on ? Dunno. Whats it do ? Uh don't know. But hey we think it'll work !
They should've thrown in a curveball where the Reapers actually leaked the crucible that when turned on it shut off all the alliance ships allowing the reapers to waltz in and harvest them all.
There was so much more they could've did with this story.
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- Jul 19, 2012 9:20 pm GMTHonestly I even think it would have been better if the united galaxy actually just DID beat the Reapers through massed force of arms. The Reapers' usual play, as we know, was to take the Citadel day 1, shut down the mass relays to organics, and then take them down piecemeal. The Crucible could have just been a huge and super powerful capital ship and the fact that Shepard stopped Sovereign in #1 is what really tipped the balance to the Galaxy's favor. They could have thrown us a curveball or something, but at least this way it would have felt like games 1-2 led up to something, rather than everything boiling down to whether or not you wanted to shoot a red, blue or green laser.
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- Jul 20, 2012 5:19 am GMT
Yeah I thought the whole armada looked cool arriving near earth however I would've liked to see them take out at least some reapers. They didn't even show that. It kinda looks like ones blowing up but then it takes out another alliance dreadnought in one shot and appears to be ok just lots of explosions.
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- Aug 12, 2012 9:05 pm GMTHasta la Vista, baby
[QUOTE="giantk99"]
Has anyone seen this video?
It blew my mind!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ythY_GkEBck
[/QUOTE]
The Indoctrination Theory doesn't function as an ending and was created by the fans simply to cover up how appalling the actual ending was.
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- Aug 15, 2012 1:39 pm GMT
Mustanger
The Extended Cut has debunked the Indoctrination Theory. Thank you BioWare for a great game, please just let the theory die now.
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- Dec 16, 2012 12:54 am GMT
While the indoctrination theory has merits, one thing clearly stands out for me. At the end of the game when Shepard is discussing the control aspect, he says "So The Illusive Man was right after all." To which the child thing says "Yes, but he could never have taken control because we already controlled him." To me, this implies that TIM was indoctrinated and Shepard was not.
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- Jan 18, 2013 1:52 am GMTBiggs613 wrote:
While the indoctrination theory has merits, one thing clearly stands out for me. At the end of the game when Shepard is discussing the control aspect, he says "So The Illusive Man was right after all." To which the child thing says "Yes, but he could never have taken control because we already controlled him." To me, this implies that TIM was indoctrinated and Shepard was not.
this is super late lol, but Shepard WAS indoctrinated, not fully, but he was. The harbinger purposely implied to Shepard that the illusive man was indoctrinated and that he (Shepard) was not. By merely implying that and not directly stating to Shepard that he himself is not indoctrinated, it gave Shepard a FALSE sense of self thought and control, but by believing that implication Shepard proved that he didn't have as much control as he thought.
The only ending that keeps shepard alive is the RED RENEGADE option. The BLUE PARAGON option shows Shepard getting devoured in a non-peaceful way because he has became fully indoctrinated. The proof to that is in the exact words from your post... "Yes, but he could never have taken control because we already controlled him." That was true for the illusive man and it was true for Shepard as well.
This is and will forever be the greatest ending ever in media. Why? Because I played over 100 hours in my 3 save files trying to defeat the reapers and save the galaxy and what did I do in the end? I FAILED, I BECAME INDOCTRINATED and didn't even know it... and that's precisely it, you wouldn't know you were indoctrinated if you were indoctrinated lol. I played paragon for over 100 hours and the BLUE PARAGON option at the end lit up like a beacon, I thought "it's over, i won, i did it!". But what I really did was get defeated by the Reapers. That is a beautiful ending, just wow
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"You probably heard we aint in the prisoner taking busines, we in the killin' Nazi business and cousin, business is a boomin'" - Lt. Aldo Raine
[QUOTE="Biggs613"]
While the indoctrination theory has merits, one thing clearly stands out for me. At the end of the game when Shepard is discussing the control aspect, he says "So The Illusive Man was right after all." To which the child thing says "Yes, but he could never have taken control because we already controlled him." To me, this implies that TIM was indoctrinated and Shepard was not.
[/QUOTE]
this is super late lol, but Shepard WAS indoctrinated, not fully, but he was. The harbinger purposely implied to Shepard that the illusive man was indoctrinated and that he (Shepard) was not. By merely implying that and not directly stating to Shepard that he himself is not indoctrinated, it gave Shepard a FALSE sense of self thought and control, but by believing that implication Shepard proved that he didn't have as much control as he thought.
The only ending that keeps shepard alive is the RED RENEGADE option. The BLUE PARAGON option shows Shepard getting devoured in a non-peaceful way because he has became fully indoctrinated. The proof to that is in the exact words from your post... "Yes, but he could never have taken control because we already controlled him." That was true for the illusive man and it was true for Shepard as well.
This is and will forever be the greatest ending ever in media. Why? Because I played over 100 hours in my 3 save files trying to defeat the reapers and save the galaxy and what did I do in the end? I FAILED, I BECAME INDOCTRINATED and didn't even know it... and that's precisely it, you wouldn't know you were indoctrinated if you were indoctrinated lol. I played paragon for over 100 hours and the BLUE PARAGON option at the end lit up like a beacon, I thought "it's over, i won, i did it!". But what I really did was get defeated by the Reapers. That is a beautiful ending, just wow :)
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Mass Effect 3
- Publisher(s): Electronic Arts
- Developer(s): BioWare
- Genre: Role-Playing
- Release:
- PEGI: 18+
