The Mass Effect 3/BioWare Thread

Personally, I think it's pretty obvious that Liara was mind-controlling Shepard ever since she went all "EMBRACE ETERNITY" on his ass, manipulating him into serving the goal of galaxy-wide Asari supremacy by pointing him at their enemies, giving him visions of some made-up invaders, and feeding a god/martyr complex in which he was the only one who had the conviction to do what needed to be done, and everyone who saw through his lunacy was just blind to the real threat. There's no denying this unless you didn't play the game or weren't paying attention; I mean, it's RIGHT THERE. The plot holes and inconsistencies surrounding everything to do with the Reapers, hints throughout the series that Asari are constantly mind-raping other species and messing with their perceptions, Liara's manipulative nature as demonstrated in ME2, everything.

Still haven't heard anything that contradicts this.

 

What about Morinth wouldn't her mind-raping and manipulation supersede Liara's mind rape? Especially that she was right beside him. The fact Shepard can resist her contradicts your theory! Ha!

 

I have enhanced my previous post to make the intent clearer.

(But obviously, that's because Shepard was expecting Morinth to try and pull something, whereas he had no reason to suspect Liara at first. Plus, Morinth had to overpower two minds instead of just one, because Liara was deeply embedded in Shepard's psyche at that point. Objection overruled!)

 

Wrong! Liara was already removed from his mind. Samara was already manipulating him to kill her daughter. But I doubt she would as embed into Shepard's mind as Liara, they didn't spend as much time together and she didn't Eternity him. So if Shepard could resist Morinth without Liara in his Mind it only states that Samara was really strong ming controller but Shepard wasn't manipulated by Liara anymore!

 

The IT bullshit is really jarring IMHO, since it clashes with portrayal of Reapers as ancient, invincible juggernauts that roflstomp known universe every once in a while. Overwhelming power renders subterfuge kinda pointless. Then again, Bioware pretty much raped the Reaper concept anyway.

 

What about the theory that the Reapers are really just a front for the Jews?

 

Well, the game having no consistent internal logic can necessarily only support interpretations that involve protagonist having their head messed with.

 

Yes, however, in case of FF8 the ending is plain and simple given the overall tone of the game as well as the in-game logic; in fact it's a textbook example of a happy ending that should leave the player doubtless as to what happened. The guy who made that video is simply overthinking it and constructing a theory for the sake of creating a theory (not to mention there's a simpler way of proving that Squall could be dead should you really want to). When it comes to Mass Effect 3 the endings were not even vague - they were just literally absurd; to the point of showing the protagonist dying and then supposedly alive, same as the squadmates who should be on Earth either dead or severely injured on the deck of the Normandy for no apparent reason. Hence I don't blame players for coming up with the IT, especially that it was well grounded, based on facts and correctly inferred, logical conclusions. Even the scene with Shepard waking up and taking a breath made sense after choosing to destroy the enemy -- which was the goal since the first game -- as a result of withstanding the indoctrination attempt. Moreover when the thing exploded Bioware become very cryptic and vague about the issue, sending various signals via twitter and other media that there's something more to it than wishful thinking. And at that point they had a perfect opportunity to render themselves good writers in the eyes of the fans as well as a perfect material for the next game.

But that ship has already sailed. After both the EC and Leviathan it's obvious that the RGB endings were intended to be the endings and various comments from the devs themselves as well as the devs diary confirmed the IT to be untrue.

The idea was to make a scene in which the player loses control over indoctrinated Shepard, but never managed to implement it.

 

If true I suppose this is actually really funny. The theory rides on a gigantic presumption that BioWare was really subtle when in actuality they wouldn't have been if only they could.

 

Exactly. Walters and Hudson wouldn't be able to write their way out of a porn movie.

 

I can understand them believing it at the time. But still believing that all of it's still valid, despite the fact that most primary evidence that it was possible having been cleaned out by the extended cut, and what remains relying on a shitton of vague assumptions. How do we know that Kai Leng was 'more indoctrinated' than Shepard? Because he's basically the only member of cerberus who hasn't become a techno-monster, and his reasons for wanting to fight Shepard are pretty clearly laid out (i.e. he's a high-functioning sociopath who likes killing people), apparently Shepard is indoctrinated because he has bad dreams and headaches, which are also, funnily enough, common symptoms for people suffering from high stress or PTSD (and whaddya know, it happened soon after Shepard witnessed the one thing s/he's been spending the past few years of their life trying to stop first-hand). It was basically the result of people taking dozens of little details scattered throughout the game and trying to build a structured theory out of it, but now that the Extended edition and the Bioware devs' knocked out half of the proof, people are desperately still trying to prop it up as a valid interpretation despite it losing most of its foundation.

 

BUT, BUT...

VEGA DURING THE GAME SAYS HE HEARS THIS WEIRD RINGING ON THE SHIP. AND WHEN YOU READ THE CODEX ENTRY ON INDOCTRINATION A CONSTANT SIGNAL IN YOUR EARS IS ONE OF THE SYMPOTMS OF BEING INDOCTRINATED. INDOCTRINATION THEORY IS REAL!

 

It's better to remain in denial than to kill yourself out of desperation.

 

Never heard of the Drowned Sheep Theory? it says that its all the delusion of a sheep that has just drowned and before it dies it has a vision, that vision is everything that happens in mass effect.
Explains successfully plot holes in the series with "but of course, if its a sheep dreams its bound to not make sense".
It simply is too convenient, a lot of things point towards it, nothing really debunks it, and most of the things against it are arguments against a single point of evidecence. Jesus fucking christ, i said i was done, i just cannot believe people can be that stupid or ignorant, it really calls for a study.

 

The ironic hilarity of a guy who believes in one crackpot theory slamming down a similarly stupid crackpot theory.

 

Do you live in a bizarro dimension where the Extended Edition never happened?

 

Followed by the Leviathan DLC which goes even further into the nonsensical motives of the Reapers. Then there are comments of the writers themselves in which they go in-depth about their favorite ending, and the devs diary which is also telling in terms of the intentions behind the contrived epilogue. The evidences are overwhelming and can't be dismissed.

 

Study as in why people refuse to believe what is right there, itd be an interesting read.

Necroscope Quotes plox, links, i want to read.
Jick_Magger_101 nope, after seeing it again there is nothing that disproves it, its just a couple of half assed images that show how sheppard would have wanted things to end.

 

Ok, I'm gonna start googling and researching BSN right away just to prove what anybody with half a brain already knows.

 

Cool, could you also find something that bothers debunking shit from the IT without attributing them to lazyness? Because thats what seems to be the only real excuse they can come up with.

 

The option to refuse. The very fact that Shepard is now able to outright refuse to make a decision on the matter shows that he is still perfectly in control of his mental faculties. If he was able to refuse while in the deepest throes of indoctrination, that would imply that the Reapers allowed him to be able to simply say "fuck it" and bleed out on the ground. In which case, why bother giving him a choice at all? If simply leaving him to die in a corner and guaranteeing their victory was always a possibility, why wake him up and outright offer him the chance to destroy you all at the pull of a trigger? For that matter, why would the Catalyst then be frustrated over your indecision? Wouldn't he be happy since you just guaranteed the reapers a chance at victory?

That and it snatches up most of the 'things' that everyone initially pointed at the obvious proof of IC: it clarified that the 'destroy' ending is the only one with a gasping Shepard because it's also the only one which doesn't require Shepard's death. Gives a cutscene to explain where your squadmates go, giving an epilogue in general, etc. Where in these epilogues is the faintest hint given that something is amiss? Anything? Wouldn't they want to take the opportunity given by the chance to revise the ending to make it a little more obvious? I'm not asking for Brazil here. Maybe a bit of visual glitches, a few subtle hints here and there, a la Taxi Driver. Oh no, instead they just stick on a, well, mundane happy ending with absolutely nothing to actually hint that it's anything beyond a generic happy ending. They've scrubbed the whole thing clear of ambiguity and used the opportunity to desperately insist that this is nothing more than a happy ending through-and-through.

And once again, the Prothean hologram didn't detect that he was indoctrinated. Arguing that it didn't notice because he was "only partially indoctrinated" is a whole other load of bullshit because it introduces a whole other can of worms in regards to indoctrination, which we know little to nothing about. So now the process is easily seperatable? How do you know Kai Leng is 'more indoctrinated' than Shepard? (because, as I said, we already have an in-character explanation as to why he'd want to fight Shepard which doesn't even require him to be indoctrinated to fit), where is it explained how Prothean indocrination-detection technology only works when you're fully indoctrinated?

Seriously, you think this is the first time fans have desperately clung to the overly-elaborate theories they string together? There's an entire fucking TVTropes article dedicated to this.

 

From Patrick Weekes:

And then, just to be a dick… what was SUPPOSED to happen was that, say you picked “Destroy the Reapers”. When you did that, the system was SUPPOSED to look at your score, and then you’d show a cutscene of Earth that was either:

a) Very high score: Earth obviously damaged, but woo victory

b) Medium score: Earth takes a bunch of damage from the Crucible activation. Like dropping a bomb on an already war-ravaged city. Uh, well, maybe not LIKE that as much as, uh, THAT.

c) Low score: Earth is a cinderblock, all life on it completely wiped out

I have NO IDEA why these different cutscenes aren’t in there. As far as I know, they were never cut. Maybe they were cut for budget reasons at the last minute. I don’t know. But holy crap, yeah, I can see how incredibly disappointing it’d be to hear of all the different ending possibilities and have it break down to “which color is stuff glowing?” Or maybe they ARE in, but they’re too subtle to really see obvious differences, and again, that’s… yeah.

From Wikia

 

Sure, it only takes about 10 minutes using google to completely debunk the IT using statements from the developers, but why bother listening to that when you have a completely unsubstantiated theory that can't be disproven because you just reject any contrary evidence?

 

Don't you know? That is just clever misinformation spread by the devs! It is so obvious! They have to keep the reveal secret until ME4 after all!

(Maybe I should have done it in all caps to be more authentic.)