What are you playing? V1: Hangover Edition

saintcross wrote:Just finished Mass Effect 3

I watched my girlfriend cry at the end of Mass Effect 3. The rest of the game leading up to the finale was extremely well-crafted and, in most ways, the best of the series. Then she hit the end and her emotions shattered. Those choices made no sense. That space boy made no sense. That ending made no sense. The crying commenced.

My girlfriend’s FemShep had forgot to question her choices as she had questioned nearly everything she had been told leading up to that point. We were mad. We discussed that ending and examined it and, most of all, hated it. Then something happened. I read a forum post on the Bioware forums stating that the ending is perfect. And they were right. We now think that this was one of the greatest endinsg to any type of media, ever.

Simply put, the player and Commander Shepard are being indoctrinated. The Reapers, knowing they will lose to their opposition, attempt to indoctrinate Shepard in one final attempt to win the war. This is why the ending doesn’t make sense – it is the Reapers feeding Shepard, and the player, lies.

The player is presented three options – yet only one of these options will bring about the destruction of the Reapers (and notice that this option is presented as the least favourable by the space boy). This is also the only ending that can see Commander Shepard breathing in the rubble in the secret ending.

Why is destroying synthetic life (the option that is represented by Shepard’s mentor, Anderson, by the way) the red “Renegade” option and attempting to control the Reapers (the option represented by The Illusive Man) is the blue “Paragon” option? It seems backwards. Almost as though Commander Shepard is being lied to and the player is being challenged to question their decisions instead of blinding picking red or blue.

The whole red and blue theme pops up many times throughout the game, most notably on the Citadel. Go check out the bar, which is called “Purgatory”. There are two arrows on the floor, a blue broken arrow that points in toward Purgatory and a red arrow that points to the way out.

Hey, how about those dream sequences? That kid (who, check it out… nobody else besides Shepard ever even sees) keeps popping up in them, huh? And then in the last dream Shepard watches himself burn with the child. That’s almost like a warning, huh? And the music in those dreams is the same theme as the music scoring the finale. Because the finale, in a way, is also a dream.

It is likely that the indoctrination process is taking place throughout the game, not just at the end. Shepard has had tremendous amounts of contact with Reaper technology, so far as possibly having a bit of it in his brain, if I remember correctly (thinking that information was on one of TIM’s data files toward the end). Remember on Rannoch when Shepard takes down the Reaper and then has a conversation with it? What does it tell him? “We are closer than you can imagine,” or something along those lines. They are inside Shepard’s head, that’s how close they are. Because I would think that if Tali walked up to see Shepard talking with a Reaper, she might want to comment on that. Yet she doesn’t. Nor does anyone else.

I challenge anyone who is disappointed with the ending to go back and play through the game with the thought that the Reapers, at some point, are trying to indoctrinate Shepard. Watch for clues – they are there.

As for a theory on why Bioware would end their saga in such a way – well, the script did get leaked, didn’t it? And all it takes is for one gamer to beat the game with the “perfect” ending, which is what many people shoot for in a ME game, and then post how they did it online, spoiling the organic experience of the choices for subsequent players. That’s why they tacked on that message about the DLC.

There is plenty more info out there about the Indoctrination ending theory. All signs on our second playthrough seem to confirm this theory and it has turned our bitter disappointment into respect for one of the best endings we’ve ever witnessed.

RavenDW wrote:Just finished Binary Domain.
This game was really good. Surprisingly so. A great shooter at the very least, and it even mingles in squad management, a (slightly) branching stories with ending variations. Completely under the radar.