327 réponses à ce sujet

[robarcool]

There is no confusion. It is a game, not the Da Vinci code. TIM is a bad guy.

[88mphSlayer]

at the very least i want to see what's going on in reality

because outside-looking-in is meaningless without proper information, as far as the virmire survivor is concerned shep could be indoctrinated working for the reapers as well

[Sepewrath]

JamieCOTC wrote...
Saren was indoctrinated and didn't even know it.  Sovereign merely let him think he was in control.   

Yeah but there was two faces to Saren, the one before we knew Sovereign existed and he was this great character. Then, there was when he was clearly indoctrinated and playing a panicked, second fiddle to Sovereign.  I don't think TIM will fall into this, I doubt he will be indoctrinated, the guys character is built on being morally gray, nothing he does would be surprising. So if he is simply hunting Shepard because he thinks he can win this fight, without Shepard and secure dominance for Cerberus at the same time, it would come as no surprise to me.

[Dean_the_Young]

robarcool wrote...

There is no confusion. It is a game, not the Da Vinci code. TIM is a bad guy.

The voice acting in what we've seen makes no reference to TIM, only Cerberus troopers attacking.

[88mphSlayer]

robarcool wrote...

There is no confusion. It is a game, not the Da Vinci code. TIM is a bad guy.

right and sovereign was just a convincing lie by saren to throw you off his tracks

nah but seriously, after ME1 it would be a cop-out if the trilogy ended so simply

[JamieCOTC]

marshalleck wrote...

JamieCOTC wrote...

marshalleck wrote...

JamieCOTC wrote...

Applying Occam's razor to this scenario, Boba Fett missed the shot because he was shooting at the good guy. Applying Occam's razor to Mass Effect, TIM either has been indoctrinated the whole time or will be at some point in ME3.

Well, there's a good possibility Shepard is chock-full of Reaper tech. Maybe it's altering his or her mind or behavior at some point in the game. Look at Saren; now, realize that's not the only parallel drawn between the two characters (recruiting an army of rachni, geth, krogan, etc). I'd say "something's wrong with Shepard and Cerberus wants to stop it" is pretty simple as well. 

Bold part is highly doubtful as Shepard is too much of a brick for that to really work.  Still, Cerberus could be playing it safe and trying to kill Shepard as they know s/he if full of Reaper tech and is therefore too dangerous to let run around the galaxy. This is a common theory of the pro Cerberus crowd.  And as you say, it's pretty straight forward. 

Touché! I can't really argue with that. I think the only "so-and-so got indoctrinated" plot I could stomach would be if it's Shepard, and it's written in such a way that the player themselves believe their Shepards have been doing the right thing, trying to save the galaxy all along. It would be an awesome parallel to Saren's story from ME1, and a bit of a twist on the KOTOR SPOILER AHEAD, WARNING WARNING Revan reveal in KOTOR. Bioware could execute it pretty well if they wanted to, I think.

I suppose I should be bracing myself for the big "TIM is indoctrinated" reveal in ME3, though.

And just before s/he destroy's Harbinger, Shepard wakes up in a psychiatric hospital, suffering from severe PTSD after having had his/her whole team wiped out on Akuze/Elysium/Torfan.  

Joking. 

[Klijpope]

marshalleck wrote...

Turns out SB was completely unpredictable and nobody could have ever possibly guessed. Entire new species made up just for the role. Personally I think that's cheap, and not really very interesting. It's not something you can look back on with a sense of enlightenment and say, "ah, yes, I see how that all makes sense now." It's just some random asspull.

It would have been so, so, painfully dull if it was just some salarian or volus dude, or an AI. There was not enough info to even start to speculate who, or what, the Shadow Broker was.

It was a fantastic reveal, something that actually looked threatening (tougher than any krogan), and Liara's puncturing of its smugness was brilliant. The reveal of the Shadow Broker had to be surprising; you're asking for it to have been predictable?

Much superior to a batarian stroking a white varren.

[Dean_the_Young]

Meh. Besides the general weakness in ME1's handling of foreshadowing (something ME2 fortunately broke), the Broker had all sorts of alternative explanations that could have been both (a) not creating a violent!Sue race, and ( actually more exoctic than 'kingpin.'


One alternative idea I've long since considered far superior was that the Shadow Broker network could have been a pseudo-religious spy network which conducted espionage for its own sake. Call it the creation of the last of the Salarian League of One, since then it's grown and expanded into its own cult that values secrets, creating a network with legendary ability to infiltrate governments... but a comparitive blindness to unglamorous small-scale data trawling.

'The Broker' could even still have been a Yahg, but in this scenario the Yahg was just the trusted spokesman: the actual Broker was a Council of the elite spies who learned the most secrets.

[marshalleck]

Klijpope wrote...

marshalleck wrote...

Turns out SB was completely unpredictable and nobody could have ever possibly guessed. Entire new species made up just for the role. Personally I think that's cheap, and not really very interesting. It's not something you can look back on with a sense of enlightenment and say, "ah, yes, I see how that all makes sense now." It's just some random asspull.

It would have been so, so, painfully dull if it was just some salarian or volus dude, or an AI. There was not enough info to even start to speculate who, or what, the Shadow Broker was.

It was a fantastic reveal, something that actually looked threatening (tougher than any krogan), and Liara's puncturing of its smugness was brilliant. The reveal of the Shadow Broker had to be surprising; you're asking for it to have been predictable?

Much superior to a batarian stroking a white varren.

There were many brilliant theories, usually which drew on bits and pieces of the codex from the first game. Too many for me to remember specifically. Dean has a good one, and there were many other years ago on the old forums. I guess what you call "predicatable" I consider grounded in the established lore of the world, rather than just made up by the seat of their pants as they go along.

[robarcool]

88mphSlayer wrote...

robarcool wrote...

There is no confusion. It is a game, not the Da Vinci code. TIM is a bad guy.

right and sovereign was just a convincing lie by saren to throw you off his tracks

nah but seriously, after ME1 it would be a cop-out if the trilogy ended so simply

What I meant that TIM maybe willing to advance humanity's interests, but he is probably Saren 2.0, who thinks working with reapers can be the best way to avoid being annihilated. Bioware has said that TIM is an antagonist and I will believe that to keep things simple.

Modifié par robarcool, 10 juillet 2011 - 11:54 .

[Arppis]

LTiberious wrote...

I never thought of TIM as a villain.

'cos i dont see racists as bad people. I see them as folk fighting for their own good.

I don't see them as bad either... I do seem them as idiots thou.

[Dean_the_Young]

robarcool wrote...

88mphSlayer wrote...

robarcool wrote...

There is no confusion. It is a game, not the Da Vinci code. TIM is a bad guy.

right and sovereign was just a convincing lie by saren to throw you off his tracks

nah but seriously, after ME1 it would be a cop-out if the trilogy ended so simply

What I meant that TIM maybe willing to advance humanity's interests, but he is probably Saren 2.0, who thinks working with reapers can be the best way to avoid being annihilated. Bioware has said that TIM is an antagonist and I will believe that to keep things simple.

Since when has 'antagonist' been simple?

More to the point, since when has TIM been simple? This is the man, after all, who may have more or less planned out the entire plot of ME2 before Shepard was resurrected, from Horizon to the Reaper IFF.

[The Twilight God]

alihou wrote...

Maybe BW has purposely mislead us into thinking TIM is a bad guy? I mean look at his character, he's shady to begin with...  when we played ME2 for the 1st time our minds saw a possible villain for a second... I'm most sure most of us doubted him... some of us probably even said this: "he's sooooooooooo a bad guy"... The whole revelation of Cerberus being indoctrinated and TIM is against us all of a sudden... it seems like a big plot point to reveal before playing the final installment of the game. What about the Reapers? Are they actually the villain or is there a bigger meaning that we don't know yet? Bioware has made some mention of a "Luke I am your father" plot twist...

Are there any conspiracy theorists out there? I am not saying these will be 100% plausible possibilities...Maybe ME3 is more complicated than we actually think...What are your thoughts?

If we are being "fooled" it would be akin to Legion hunting Shepard down. Yes, he was, but we expected him to be popping up throughout the game as an antagonist. Kai Leng, in this case, may be a squadmate.

But a bold faced lie? Only Christ Priestly does that and only about "mistakenly" leaked DLC that "wasn't supposed to be revealed yet" *wink wink* Oh, and claiming DA2 wasn't rushed, but in fact a high quality game. But other than that we typically don't get lied to.

[Sepewrath]

Dean_the_Young wrote...
One alternative idea I've long since considered far superior was that the Shadow Broker network could have been a pseudo-religious spy network which conducted espionage for its own sake. Call it the creation of the last of the Salarian League of One, since then it's grown and expanded into its own cult that values secrets, creating a network with legendary ability to infiltrate governments... but a comparitive blindness to unglamorous small-scale data trawling.

Its superior to you because its your idea, not because its a better idea.

And to the poster talking about people using established lore, putting together threads that doesn't exist and following leads that people dreamed up wouldn't have made anymore of a legit outcome, than what they did do.

[Seboist]

The Twilight God wrote...

alihou wrote...

Maybe BW has purposely mislead us into thinking TIM is a bad guy? I mean look at his character, he's shady to begin with...  when we played ME2 for the 1st time our minds saw a possible villain for a second... I'm most sure most of us doubted him... some of us probably even said this: "he's sooooooooooo a bad guy"... The whole revelation of Cerberus being indoctrinated and TIM is against us all of a sudden... it seems like a big plot point to reveal before playing the final installment of the game. What about the Reapers? Are they actually the villain or is there a bigger meaning that we don't know yet? Bioware has made some mention of a "Luke I am your father" plot twist...

Are there any conspiracy theorists out there? I am not saying these will be 100% plausible possibilities...Maybe ME3 is more complicated than we actually think...What are your thoughts?

If we are being "fooled" it would be akin to Legion hunting Shepard down. Yes, he was, but we expected him to be popping up throughout the game as an antagonist. Kai Leng, in this case, may be a squadmate.

But a bold faced lie? Only Christ Priestly does that and only about "mistakenly" leaked DLC that "wasn't supposed to be revealed yet" *wink wink* Oh, and claiming DA2 wasn't rushed, but in fact a high quality game. But other than that we typically don't get lied to.

I'm hoping Kai Leng becomes ME3's "Zevran".

[Dean_the_Young]

Sepewrath wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...
One alternative idea I've long since considered far superior was that the Shadow Broker network could have been a pseudo-religious spy network which conducted espionage for its own sake. Call it the creation of the last of the Salarian League of One, since then it's grown and expanded into its own cult that values secrets, creating a network with legendary ability to infiltrate governments... but a comparitive blindness to unglamorous small-scale data trawling.

Its superior to you because its your idea, not because its a better idea.

It's not my idea, to the first.

For the second, I've already briefly touched upon why it was better: feel free to address those if you'd like.

And to the poster talking about people using established lore, putting together threads that doesn't exist and following leads that people dreamed up wouldn't have made anymore of a legit outcome, than what they did do.

In so much that deus ex machina can be deemed legitimate. Not all people feel that, however: many consider it a serious flaw in an epic.

[Dean_the_Young]

Seboist wrote...

I'm hoping Kai Leng becomes ME3's "Zevran".

Bi-****ty, overly flirtatious, and a sob-story with a heart of gold somewhere past the career killing?

[Klijpope]

marshalleck wrote...

There were many brilliant theories, usually which drew on bits and pieces of the codex from the first game. Too many for me to remember specifically. Dean has a good one, and there were many other years ago on the old forums. I guess what you call "predicatable" I consider grounded in the established lore of the world, rather than just made up by the seat of their pants as they go along.

This is precisely my beef with all the kind of expanded universe stuff there's out there for this type of thing. By all means, connect stuff to the established lore, but not all the time, and not everything. Making stuff up by the seat of the pants is what storytellers, and world builders, tend to do, at least creative ones.

Making everything having to directly refer back to what they've already come up makes the galaxy seem very small, and going too far down that route leads to Darth Vader building C-3PO!

That there's other alien races out there is implicit in the whole ME Codex, so actually giving us one is a totally legitimate, and creative way of doing it. It also meant we could have a unique (in the ME series) boss battle.

ME has become complex enough really. IF the whole game was about taking down the Shadow Broker, then maybe a more complicated set up could be justified, but, as a tertiary element in the storyline, keeping it straightforward was probably best. In that case, any iteration of something we'd already seen, or heard of, could easily have been an anti-climax.

In fact, 'Arrival' did something like what you suggested, leaving hints in the Cerberus Daily News, then having Shep encounter a cult-like organisation with a shadowy leadership. That ended up being pretty prosaic, all told.

[alperez]

While it may be cool for a reveal that Shepard is indoctrinated and that Cerberus's motives may be something along the lines of stopping Shepard before serious damage is done.

It would be seriously brave for Bioware to go a route where the person you've been playing all along in some way, shape or form turns out to be wrong or evil or potentially evil or anything like that.

Its going to be pretty much more black and white than that, Shepard won't be Saren 2.0 (cerberus may think this because of their own indoctrination) but they won't go the route that Shepard has been or will be indoctrinated also.

The whole point so far has been that we as Shepard are the person to stop the reapers because of our actions, to reveal in the third game that we were or have been indoctrinated all along would be tantamount to slapping every single player in the face.

Tim being indoctrinated while being somewhat cheap or having him turn into a cardboard villain not being the highest quality writing while being a bit of a facepalm moment is also the most logical thing and how they look like and probably will go.

For me i have no problem with it, Cerberus were evil from the getgo, every single experiment they did turned out badly for them (if shepard takes out Tim then the lazurus experiment falls in line with this also) so having Tim be indoctrinated either from the beginning of when we know about him (his contact with the artifact) and then falling further into indoctrination (me3) makes perfect sense.

I don't get why people have so much of a problem with it, its not like at any point they said TIM was a nice guy and just because we worked reluctantly (in some cases anyway) with him doesn't mean we should have ever trusted him.

[toddx77]

Ok Im just going to say it because it popped into my head and maybe it means something. When I see his name written as "TIM" instead of "Tim" I think it could stand for To Indoctronate Man. I know its a far stretch but just throwing it out there.

[marshalleck]

Seboist wrote...

The Twilight God wrote...

alihou wrote...

Maybe BW has purposely mislead us into thinking TIM is a bad guy? I mean look at his character, he's shady to begin with...  when we played ME2 for the 1st time our minds saw a possible villain for a second... I'm most sure most of us doubted him... some of us probably even said this: "he's sooooooooooo a bad guy"... The whole revelation of Cerberus being indoctrinated and TIM is against us all of a sudden... it seems like a big plot point to reveal before playing the final installment of the game. What about the Reapers? Are they actually the villain or is there a bigger meaning that we don't know yet? Bioware has made some mention of a "Luke I am your father" plot twist...

Are there any conspiracy theorists out there? I am not saying these will be 100% plausible possibilities...Maybe ME3 is more complicated than we actually think...What are your thoughts?

If we are being "fooled" it would be akin to Legion hunting Shepard down. Yes, he was, but we expected him to be popping up throughout the game as an antagonist. Kai Leng, in this case, may be a squadmate.

But a bold faced lie? Only Christ Priestly does that and only about "mistakenly" leaked DLC that "wasn't supposed to be revealed yet" *wink wink* Oh, and claiming DA2 wasn't rushed, but in fact a high quality game. But other than that we typically don't get lied to.

I'm hoping Kai Leng becomes ME3's "Zevran".

Shepard's boy-toy?

Ping ReconTeam. 

[Seboist]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Seboist wrote...

I'm hoping Kai Leng becomes ME3's "Zevran".

Bi-****ty, overly flirtatious, and a sob-story with a heart of gold somewhere past the career killing?

Hey, if he goes around hacking whole squads to death like in Retribution then I can put up with that.

Modifié par Seboist, 11 juillet 2011 - 12:19 .

[marshalleck]

alperez wrote...

It would be seriously brave for Bioware to go a route where the person you've been playing all along in some way, shape or form turns out to be wrong or evil or potentially evil or anything like that.

You must not have played Knights of the Old Republic. This is old hat for Bioware--in fact, the lead writer of KoTOR was the original lead for Mass Effect. Hmm...

Modifié par marshalleck, 11 juillet 2011 - 12:24 .

[Seboist]

marshalleck wrote...

alperez wrote...

It would be seriously brave for Bioware to go a route where the person you've been playing all along in some way, shape or form turns out to be wrong or evil or potentially evil or anything like that.

You must not have played Knights of the Old Republic. This is old hat for Bioware--in fact, the lead writer of KoTOR was the original lead for Mass Effect. Hmm...

How was it handled in that game? Was there as many choices there as in ME?