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[Lost Cipher]

noobcannon wrote...

DarkSeraphym wrote...

noobcannon wrote...

have you played any of the other ME games? indoctrination is a huge part of the trilogy and it makes perfect sense in this situation. can you even offer a counter-argument other than "wishful thinking" and "too many things in the real world that say it's not happening"? what things exactly? if you haven't checked it out you should read some of the posts on the the insoctrination theory thread. they point out alot of things you might have missed during the end game that could change your mind. they changed mine.

They do bring up interesting things that are worth considering, however it seems to me like a lot of the evidence that has been presented has been analyzed under confirmation bias. That is not to say that I am faulting any of them for that, confirmation bias is a very really problem when you try to analyze evidence that you have an emotional attachment to (or at least an attachment to the outcome). Regardless though, the problem with that approach is that it means you will interpret any evidence presented as supporting your theory in some fashion. classic example, the field of medicine used to believe that sperm cells were actually miniature people that were being deposited in the womb. Once they had the ability to analyze those cells for themselves, that is exactly what they saw. It seems to me like much of the evidence that is being presented in that thread has the same issue.

fair enough. i just want to say the 3 things that convinced me more than anything are:

1) the "destroy" ending shows a torso with n7 tags taking a breath under some rubble. assuming that's shepard, did you survive that explosion? in space?

They said the endings would be unique.

2) when you're talking to spaceboy, you have no helment, and again, you're in space. you could argue that there is some kind of barrier but it's such a huge open area i just think that seems unlikely.

In ME2 you are on a Reaper that has a big hole in it, Mass Effect field allowed a survivable enviroment.

3) doesn't it seem strange that the green option requires you to jump into a magic laser beam to trigger synthesis (saren from me1)? or stand in the blue one for control (illusive man from me3)? but to destroy the reapers you shoot a gun (with infinite ammo mind you) at a console looking contraption and that destroys the reapers. no keypad? no button? nope you shoot at it. also the destroy one is the only one that has the chest breathing under the rubble. the blue and green option incinerate you and for a short bit you look like a husk.

Again they said the endings would be different. Not understandable. i.e open to interpretation...

these three things are what have fully convinced me shepard is fighting indoctrination, and yet there's so much more evidence too.  i think we're going to get a patch soon that has the  huge epic "all your descions come together" showdown ending we have been waiting for for 5 years.

That would be awesome, but don't be mad if it doesn't happen.

Replies in Bold.

Modifié par Lost Cipher, 13 mars 2012 - 06:55 .

[Linus108]

noobcannon wrote...

Linus108 wrote...

What does it say about the game/writing, that so many fans want this to be true? That they need for it to be true?

BioWare f****n' dropped the ball.

i think they're geniuses. pretty awsome way to emulate indoctrination. i almost feel bad for doubting them.

I disagree.

While I do like the indoctrination theory, I still feel it was poorly executed - and was a really poor way to end the series. You have to keep in mind, this will be the ending of the game.

If they choose to release more for DLC, that's a bonus add on. So for many, the ending will have been a confusing mess. 

[Greed1914]

WQFNHJNHNFNFNFBFNFN wrote...

One quick question for those who completely dismiss indoctrination.

Why is that annoying little kid on the Citadel? The common explanation is that the Reaper god was assuming a form that would be sympathetic to Shepard, but how did he know which form to take? There had to be some element of mind reading or mind control in the ending.

A friend of mine didn't see the merits of the indoctrination idea until I pointed out that it was the same kid, so the Catalyst was clearly in Shepard's head.  Either it was in his head after he reached the end and used that kid as a basis for its appearance, or the Catalyst was in his head at the beginning of the game and that is why Shepard is the only one who saw him and how he seemed to hint at the future. 

[Lost Cipher]

Linus108 wrote...

noobcannon wrote...

Linus108 wrote...

What does it say about the game/writing, that so many fans want this to be true? That they need for it to be true?

BioWare f****n' dropped the ball.

i think they're geniuses. pretty awsome way to emulate indoctrination. i almost feel bad for doubting them.

I disagree.

While I do like the indoctrination theory, I still feel it was poorly executed - and was a really poor way to end the series. You have to keep in mind, this will be the ending of the game.

If they choose to release more for DLC, that's a bonus add on. So for many, the ending will have been a confusing mess. 

Exactly!

[noobcannon]

Linus108 wrote...

noobcannon wrote...

Linus108 wrote...

What does it say about the game/writing, that so many fans want this to be true? That they need for it to be true?

BioWare f****n' dropped the ball.

i think they're geniuses. pretty awsome way to emulate indoctrination. i almost feel bad for doubting them.

I disagree.

While I do like the indoctrination theory, I still feel it was poorly executed - and was a really poor way to end the series. You have to keep in mind, this will be the ending of the game.

If they choose to release more for DLC, that's a bonus add on. So for many, the ending will have been a confusing mess. 

we'll see. i for one am actually glad they're doing it this way on 2 conditions: the real ending is a free patch and not 10$ dlc, and we get it soon, hopefully in the next couple weeks.

[TheDove]

I agree with op. And it would be even worse if it -were- true. When bioware starts handing me incomplete games, I stop buying them

[DarkSeraphym]

noobcannon wrote...

fair enough. i just want to say the 3 things that convinced me more than anything are:

1) the "destroy" ending shows a torso with n7 tags taking a breath under some rubble. assuming that's shepard, did you survive that explosion? in space?

Want my honest answer? I have no idea how that explosion was survived. I really don't and I'll be the first to admit it. However, one of the arguments I have seen regarding that is that the rubble on the ground is clearly concrete and you would likely have not found much concrete in the wreckage of the Citadel and we should expect to see the remains of the Citadel mixed in there. Assuming that the pieces of the Citadel hit a few structures on the way down, its possible you wouldn't. We don't get to see just how big that pile of rubble is that Shepard is laying in.

Regardless though, I really don't have any idea how he survived that explosion. I would say the story has done weirder things by reviving Shepard from death, a permanent status, in the first place; but that would not answer your question nor be a sufficient counterargument to do your point any justice.

noobcannon wrote...

2) when you're talking to spaceboy, you have no helment, and again, you're in space. you could argue that there is some kind of barrier but it's such a huge open area i just think that seems unlikely.

Once again, I am not really sure here either.

noobcannon wrote...

3) doesn't it seem strange that the green option requires you to jump into a magic laser beam to trigger synthesis (saren from me1)? or stand in the blue one for control (illusive man from me3)? but to destroy the reapers you shoot a gun (with infinite ammo mind you) at a console looking contraption and that destroys the reapers. no keypad? no button? nope you shoot at it. also the destroy one is the only one that has the chest breathing under the rubble. the blue and green option incinerate you and for a short bit you look like a husk.

The thing is, all husks have synthetic parts in them. Shepard also has synthetic parts in him. In fact, the only thing I see in that scene is glowing parts within Shepard's body, the same parts that glow on husks, which are synthetic. However, that does not necessarily mean Shepard is a husk, at best it tells us he clearly has synthetics in him and that was a detail we already knew. As I pointed out on that thread, all husks have synthetics but not all of those with synthetics are husks. It is the same logical dilemma of all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.

[AlphaDormante]

Actually, I'm pretty damn sure that the Indoctrination theory isn't true. I'm just headcanoning that it is, because it's the only way the endings actually start to make a lick of sense.

[Leafs43]

I at first didn't give much thought to indoctrination.

I just wanted Bioware to retcon the sh!t out of the endings and give us real ones.

But after looking at the evidence, indoctrination seems possible.

[noobcannon]

Greed1914 wrote...

WQFNHJNHNFNFNFBFNFN wrote...

One quick question for those who completely dismiss indoctrination.

Why is that annoying little kid on the Citadel? The common explanation is that the Reaper god was assuming a form that would be sympathetic to Shepard, but how did he know which form to take? There had to be some element of mind reading or mind control in the ending.

A friend of mine didn't see the merits of the indoctrination idea until I pointed out that it was the same kid, so the Catalyst was clearly in Shepard's head.  Either it was in his head after he reached the end and used that kid as a basis for its appearance, or the Catalyst was in his head at the beginning of the game and that is why Shepard is the only one who saw him and how he seemed to hint at the future. 

the thing i'm still up in the air about is if the kid was ever real to begin with. at the beginning before that shuttle gets blasted, you never see anyone else acknowlege or interact with the kid.

[coldlogic82]

recentio wrote...

noobcannon wrote...

Phydeaux314 wrote...

We did that, too, Dreo.

It's the "So we can't get the ending we want" thread, that's probably going to break a thousand pages in the next day or two. It's represented in the pull that has nearly thirty thousand votes. It's the eighteen thousand people in the facebook group. It's the news articles popping up on Forbes, Kotaku (yes, a couple good ones), MSNBC, and the like.

just want to say i believe the indoctrination theory and think we'll get a patch from bioware soon to properly finish the game. that said i agree that there isn't much in the way of proof, but there IS a ton of evidence. A TON. and not much counter-argument; other than "wishful thinking". perhaps people are sore they didn't figure it out on their own?

It's virtually impossible to present counter arguments to sollopistic theories. "All of reality is an illusion." It can't be disproven because any counter-evidence could also be dismissed as another illusion.

In the case of this indoctrination conspiracy, out-of-game arguments about the writing are legitimate, IMO, and can't be shuffled into the pile as yet another illusion the way in-game evidence could. It makes much less sense in the real world that the writers meant for the crap ending to be a hallucination than it does that they meant for it to be the real ending. Occam's Razor leads to the conclusion that it is far, far more likely that the ending, bad as it is, is what BW intended and is not a trick. Would they release a game with a fake ending for review and purchase? Why? Who in their right mind would ever do such a thing? No, they meant it. That's the saddest truth of all...

Agreed.  I'm a little shocked that some of what I said was simply rejected as "real world" stuff not related to the "game world."  Constraints and problems in the real world are much more important, because those problems are not theoretical or fiction based.  I'm not saying the idea is horrible, I'm just saying the real world disaster this is turning into, the money they've all ready lost, prevents ANY theory, indoctrination or otherwise, from holding any water, because it's incredibly unlikely it would be the case given how the real world works.

And also, I'm very happy to see you point out the response "fine then disprove it" is a pretty bad one.  The game is ultimately fiction, and thus, not a world with set rules, especially in relation to empirical data.  Arguments for and against are, at their best, speculation based off a fictional world in which the inferences don't really exist.  However, the empirical evidence I provide, that is, the business model in which profits are the goal of a product, and the fact that post game sales have dropped, and even their stock has dropped, doesn't rely on reading between the lines of a fictional world.

The fact that this is really starting to hurt EA, Bioware, and their stockholders is bad news, and the simple real world truth is that if they had "planned it all along" then the moment their pockets started bleeding we'd have seen the new material.  The situation is getting worse and worse and we hear nothing.  That's all the evidence I need.

[DarkSeraphym]

coldlogic82 wrote...

And also, I'm very happy to see you point out the response "fine then disprove it" is a pretty bad one. 

I would hope that none of them asked you to disprove their theory. It is the sole responsibility of the individual who makes a claim to defend their own claim in a debate.

[Lost Cipher]

coldlogic82, the fact that your opinion fits perfectly with your avatar name is awesome. And I agree completely.

EA is about money. The reason they are saying nothing has more to do with damage control than anything else. Would you buy the game if you know the ending sucks?

[kent80082006]

The current endings are obviously flawed with so many plot glitches that it simply can't be a production overlook, the abnormalities must be there for a reason, and we chose to interpret that as intentional implements. We have faith in the producers, it doesn't take a genius to see that the ending of ME3 is not consistent with the high quality of plot writing delivered throughout the series. We don't need some industrial or psychological expert telling us we're delusional or in denial, nor do we need the media or some random smart ass convincing us we're wrong, we simply believe there is more to the ending judging by evidence, it's a matter of faith which some will never understand.

[garf]

So it's back to making them bleed until they rewrite or go under.

Assuming we can do that. if Not I'll settle for never buying anything with EA connections again.

Modifié par garf, 13 mars 2012 - 07:25 .

[DarkSeraphym]

kent80082006 wrote...

The current endings are obviously flawed with so many plot glitches that it simply can't be a production overlook, the abnormalities must be there for a reason, and we chose to interpret that as intentional implements. We have faith in the producers, it doesn't take a genius to see that the ending of ME3 is not consistent with the high quality of plot writing delivered throughout the series. We don't need some industrial or psychological expert telling us we're delusional or in denial, nor do we need the media or some random smart ass convincing us we're wrong, we simply believe there is more to the ending judging by evidence, it's a matter of faith which some will never understand.

Please do not take this offensively Kent as I thought it was kind of humorous and not in a condescending kind of way, but if you removed all of the Mass Effect references in your post and inserted ones that revolved around an omnipotent, omniscient diety; your post looks like the same argument I have with religious folk on a daily basis. It can be really fascinating to see patterns within human reasoning.

Modifié par DarkSeraphym, 13 mars 2012 - 07:34 .

[garf]

kent80082006 wrote...

The current endings are obviously flawed with so many plot glitches that it simply can't be a production overlook, the abnormalities must be there for a reason, and we chose to interpret that as intentional implements. We have faith in the producers, it doesn't take a genius to see that the ending of ME3 is not consistent with the high quality of plot writing delivered throughout the series. We don't need some industrial or psychological expert telling us we're delusional or in denial, nor do we need the media or some random smart ass convincing us we're wrong, we simply believe there is more to the ending judging by evidence, it's a matter of faith which some will never understand.

Faith.. pshaw.

I have no faith in bioware. I do have faith in the allmighty dollar's ability to talk to execs who otherwise don't listen and won't care. I DO have hope that if they are made to bleed badly enough They WILL care.

[dkear1]

garf wrote...
Faith.. pshaw.

I have no faith in bioware. I do have faith in the allmighty dollar's ability to talk to execs who otherwise don't listen and won't care. I DO have hope that if they are made to bleed badly enough They WILL care.

Sadly, this is likely to be the only leg we can stand on.

[coldlogic82]

DarkSeraphym wrote...

kent80082006 wrote...

The current endings are obviously flawed with so many plot glitches that it simply can't be a production overlook, the abnormalities must be there for a reason, and we chose to interpret that as intentional implements. We have faith in the producers, it doesn't take a genius to see that the ending of ME3 is not consistent with the high quality of plot writing delivered throughout the series. We don't need some industrial or psychological expert telling us we're delusional or in denial, nor do we need the media or some random smart ass convincing us we're wrong, we simply believe there is more to the ending judging by evidence, it's a matter of faith which some will never understand.

Please do not take this offensively Kent as I thought it was kind of humorous and not in a condescending kind of way, but if you removed all of the Mass Effect references in your post and inserted ones that revolved around an omnipotent, omniscient diety; your post looks like the same argument I have with religious folk on a daily basis. It can be really fascinating to see patterns within human reasoning.

Indeed, my point was not to inflame or insult, and certainly not to imply that finding the indoctrination theory plausable would make one delusional.  Truth be told, this post is mostly inspired by the fact that I definately entered denial upon completing the game.  I'm absolutely amazed to see this kind of reaction on this scale, indoctrination theory aside completely.  I felt a little foolish at first, going into denial over a video game.  But it's not just me, and it's not just super mega hardcore gamers without real friends.  Lots of normal everyday people are having these intense emotional reactions.  That's what I find most fascinating.  That being said, I will admit I could be wrong, but in the case that I'm not, I think a lot of people will be happier sooner if we can accept that this really was a massive mistake and move on.  

And it's only "unfortunate" that money is the leg we have to stand on in a altruistic ethical sense.  We don't like to admit the power and influence it has over our world.  That being said, it's VERY fortunate in every other way, BECAUSE of the power and influence it has over our world.  Money talks, and it looks like they're going to have to listen.

[Tesar]

Casey Hudson is a reaper, and all of us are indoctrinated.

[Malanek]

I don't think you can say it is denial in everyones case. I was OK with the endings, I merely thought they were implemented badly. I dismissed the halucination thread as lunacy until I started to consider how I would have implemented indoctrination in the game. Then I read peoples arguments more carefully and more arguments came in, and they are really compelling. I now think it's quite likely, and as I said, I was perfectly OK with the results of the endings.

[hoisen]

Beat the game and experienced the god-awful ending. I'm not going to deny the indoctrination theory entirely but I'm not going to keep reminiscing over possible epilogues that Bioware will release till god-knows-when.

[TheRisenStar]

Don't have a problem with all the speculation. I like the theory, and hate the ending as is.

I find people giving BioWare credit, as if this were all certain, sort of pathetic. They have done nothing for certain that you or anyone else should praise them for with this debacle. If it turns out later that they did indeed, that is the time for "GG BioWare" and the "I was wrong to doubt."

Assuming infallibility upon the part of BioWare is just how you get disappointed again and how they keep you coming back for more. You must own the fact that it is as likely as not this is just a conventional development trainwreck. "Faith" should be reserved for deeper things than gaming companies or international corporations that sell you entertainment.

Also - you cannot logically prove a negative. Stop asking people to "prove that it is NOT true." Just muddies the waters.

[Aedan276]

Painaid wrote...

Sorry, but I don't think indoctrination can salvage just how horrible the endings were. They just need to be scrapped wholesale and start over.

Not plausible. 

I just want an ending that I won't dread getting to whenever I want to play through the Mass Effect trilogy. That can be accomplished with as little as the addition of one more choice 

[1490]

I do think the "indoctrination theory" was thought up by the writers, and hints were thrown in to indicate that. If you are a writer and you are trying to make an open-ended story, you will throw in a lot of little things to get people thinking, even if the ending is not conclusive: the movie Inception is a great example. However, as of this time I agree with the OP: I don't think the indoctrination theory is the "canon" ending for Shepard- just one of several interpretations of the ending. If it does become realized in a DLC, I think it would likely be because Bioware caved under pressure, and not because they "planned it all along."