So...what if some of the major complaints about ME2 - that Shepard's resurrection is implausible and that fighting the Collectors seems like a diversion from the real threat of the Reapers - were actually intentional choices on BioWare's part? What if the whole storyline - reviving Shepard and sending him after the Collectors, was an elaborate put-on orchestrated by the Reapers and by indoctrinated elements within Cerberus?
Possible evidence for this:
1) We know that the Reapers are interested in capturing Shepard as early as the Horizon mission.
2) On at least two occasions, the Illusive Man sends Shepard into a situation where that could easily occur and withholds information ahead of time (Horizon and the Collector Ship). It fails, yes, but the Reapers and the Collectors are not infallible, just very powerful. And really, you could argue that the rationale for the deceptions is pretty thin. Shepard is an N7, Jacob and Miranda are Cerberus operatives, Mordin is ex-STG, Garrus has been in law enforcement, Kasumi is a professional thief, Thane is a trained assassin, and so on - are these really people who couldn't pull off pretending to walk into a trap?
3) As Shepard asks, just how the hell does Cerberus manage to find a derelict Reaper? Would a race as powerful and capable of operating in secret as the Reapers leave one of their dead just sitting around for other species to find and start poking their noses around? Maybe they just didn't know what happened to that one or where to find it, but it certainly *could* have been another failed setup.
4) For the most part, the Collectors seem to be staging mass abductions, so the Normandy crew are comparatively slim pickings. Maybe they'd do it anyway to try to weaken the capabilities of the rest of the crew. On the other hand, maybe this is the final attempt to trap Shepard after the previous attempts fail, and they figure that kidnapping some of his crew will not only lure him across the Omega-4 relay but keep him off-balance and unfocused.
5) Then there's the Illusive Man's insistence on not destroying the base. Granted, this does make sense even if TIM is *not* indoctrinated or otherwise collaborating with the Reapers, in that it fits his "human dominance" goals and might provide him with a new weapon. But it also makes sense if you assume that at least some of what's going on has been staged - the Reapers probably don't want to waste more assets than are necessary for this conspiracy, and if Shepard fails to escape before the device detonates, then at least they have his body lying around (and perhaps could even attempt another Lazarus Project). Also, note that TIM says the radiation pulse will kill the remaining Collectors - but what about the human Reaper?
6) Along these lines, I was half-convinced, until at least part of the way through the "escape" section, that Arrival was a Reaper setup to get the humans and batarians into a war. But what if it was, in fact, exactly that? We only have the word of Kenson, who's indoctrinated, and Shepard's visions from Object Rho to verify that the Reapers were about to invade through that relay. If they weren't, then they really didn't lose much of anything in doing this - I doubt they care about any of the indoctrinated humans, nor is it clear that they need Object Rho for anything.
7) In terms of technology, something along the lines of the Lazarus Project *would* perhaps seem more plausible if the Reapers are involved. And what's with TIM's eyes, anyway?
Now, of course, there are a couple glaring problems with this theory, namely:
1) Why would the Collectors try to kill Shepard at the beginning of ME2 by destroying the Normandy? I don't have an answer for that - but this is arguably a bit of a problem even if you assume there's no Reaper/Cerberus conspiracy at all, because it's still inconsistent with their later attempts to capture him. So at some point, their plans must have changed. This scenario just requires that they changed pretty quickly after Shepard's death, rather than at some undetermined point during the course of two years.
2) OK, so the Reapers want Shepard alive for whatever reason - but after the Lazarus Project succeeds, they essentially have him. On the other hand, *if* the Reapers were so impressed by Shepard's abilities that they now want to capture him and use him for their purposes, as opposed to just killing him, then simply resurrecting him is only half the goal. They'd want to verify that he's the same person he was before the first Normandy was destroyed, hence giving him a difficult mission to perform and TIM vetoing Miranda's suggestion of a control chip.
3) Perhaps the Achilles heel for this theory, though, is that it requires Shepard being so important to the Reapers that they'd sacrifice most of the Collectors and construct an elaborate subterfuge just for the sake of testing his capabilities and then capturing him. As things stand, the impression I get is more that they'd like to capture him if they could, but it's not their top priority.
So...thoughts? Anyone have any tin foil for me to borrow?
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