Hi everybody. A while back I had an interesting discussion about IT on a different fansite. It may be rehashing old ideas at this point but we’re all fans here so I thought you all might appreciate some new material to digest. I have edited it for clarity, and to remove names and some flamebait. Enjoy.
Bacteriophage wrote:I may have a... maybe not unique, but unusual opinion.
I was not a fan of Indoctrination Theory before, but I am now. Previously, IT was a ham-handed attempt to obviate the blue and green options in service to the red (and hopefully future content), but now with the Reject ending, I think it is a form of
fridge brilliance specific to that ending.
People forget that Bioware practices a kind of reverse form of
Narrative Causality. In their stories, because they give the player control of certain decisions, and said stories feature flashbacks or ambiguity in the past or present, player decisions in the narrative future actually establish the plot of events in the narrative past.
I can think of three examples of this off the top of my head. In Star Wars:KOTOR, the flashback/reveal of the main character as Reven changes based on what the player gender is. In KOTOR 2 the player gender determines which of two squad mates join up. In Dragon Age:Origins, the player decision of what race to play as determines some of the back story of a second character (Duncan) such that the character will always meet the player. Even in Mass Effect 1, the player chooses certain backstory elements at character creation.
I suspect that's what's going on with the endings in ME3 writ large. No matter what your decision is, it is always 'the best' one because as soon as you choose it,
Narrative Causality kicks in and the nasty implications of the other options become true. If in your playthrough you choose blue, then the Illusive Man was retroactively correct, green and the Starchild was retroactively telling the truth, red and TIM was wrong and the starbrat was lying through his teeth.
But now we have a fourth option.
It's a perfect fit for the Indoctrination Theory because it gives us the option to say NO! without messing up what was the authors original vision. The fact that it kicks you in the nuts a moment later is immaterial because an IT fan thinks it’s all a dream anyway. And you're STILL left wanting to see the 'real' ending. And I think Bioware may have deliberately thrown the IT fans a bone
right here. Anyone else think that sounded like Reaper noise?
[quote] Doubter # 1 wrote:
[quote]Bacteriophage wrote:
red, the IM was wrong and the starbrat was lying through his teeth. [/quote]
How exactly is the starkid lying through his teeth? He said all technology will break but can quickly be rebuilt... which is true. He says all current synthetic intelligences will be destroyed, which they are. He warns that Shepard is part synthetic and therefore there could be a real danger for him, which is the case. That's why not all destruction endings include the gasp.
The only uncertainty there is whether or not new synthetics intelligences will be created and if they will revolt. The star-kid isn't lying; it genuinely believes that this will be the scenario, probably because its creators did not want it to contemplate any other scenario. [/quote]
Bacteriophage wrote:Well the big lie would be that control is possible, or that synthesis doesn't turn everyone into husks. He may also be an
unreliable narrator when discussing details, but there are possibly others.
Prior to the EC, a lot of people had reason to believe the Starchild was not truly neutral toward the destroy ending. Even after the EC, he doesn't strike me as being completely neutral toward it. There is still the possibility that he lies in oblique ways. It always struck me as unlikely that the catalyst could have the subtlety needed to fiddle with the DNA of all organics but lack the necessary subtlety to selectively destroy Reaper tech. It may be that possibility exists with the catalyst's cooperation, but the starbrat chooses to not let this be an answer because he's not really trying to 'find a new solution'. He's only willing to cooperate in finding one on his terms.
The starchild may be a victim of Indoctrination himself since he is the embodiment of the Reapers' Will and Indoctrination is involved in the creation of each Reaper individually. I thought it was significant that even in the Extended Cut, you cannot challenge the starchild with the EDI/Geth/organic alliance. He claims synthesis is the final solution but it didn't work in the past because organics 'weren't ready'. But now with the Geth/EDI, Shepard has facilitated a Big step towards this end but the starchild is unwilling to let this scenario play out. The kid may not be lying in the sense that he truly believes what he says, but this is a trivial detail if the kid is still wrong.
Remember, though, that I suspect Bioware employs reverse narrative causality in their storytelling so none of this would be hard and fast TRUE. Rather, it retroactively becomes true if you choose the Reject end or possibly Red end.
[quote]Doubter # 1 wrote:
[quote]Bacteriophage wrote:
Well the big lie would be that control is possible, or that synthesis doesn't turn everyone into husks. He may also be an
unreliable narrator when discussing details, but there are possibly others. [/quote]
Control is possible, as seen in the control ending. The synthesis ending does not turn everyone into mindless husks, if nothing else it turns husks back to sentient beings.
And no he is not, in the first place he is a character not a narrator, he can lie but he's not a narrator. Second of all a core rule of unreliable narrators is that you as person who experiences the story should by the end of the story know (or at least have a well founded suspicion,) of the (un)reliability of the narrator or character.
You can't just go; ‘well I know how the story goes but still he's lying and here's how he could have lied, and the narrator is lying too.’ Imagine if I would seriously go...
Well you know about Nabokov Lolita? Well Humbert lies even more than you would suspect see, Lolita was in fact 25 when the story started and you know how everyone dies in the end well that's not true they all fake their deaths and live a long life in brazil. ... people would think I'm mad. We know that what the star-kid offers is genuine because we see the consequences of our choices, in fact even proposing that somehow choosing one makes it automatically the best choice is wrong, since if you choose not to choose (or shoot the kid,) you see the grim consequences that follow.
If BioWare really wanted to make each choose the best choice they could have still made that end work and end-up better. In short you can't just go he lies without proof.
[quote]Bacteriophage wrote:
Prior to the EC, a lot of people had reason to believe the Starkid was not truly neutral toward the destroy ending. Even after the EC, he doesn't strike me as being completely neutral toward it. There is still the possibility that he lies in oblique ways.[/quote]
The problem here is that the starkid states out right that he is not a neutral party. I never had the impression he was neutral; not before, and certainly not after the EC.
He flat out says, he's the collective consciousness of the Reapers, build by those that would be the first Reapers. His purpose is to prevent synthetics from destroying
all life. Obviously he has his own hierarchy of preferred choices. Saying he appears biased is like saying the Empire State Building is a tall building... yeah he is, he is not shy about it and even a second of thought is enough for anyone to understand why.
He likes the destroy option the least because at least in his mind it is the one where there is most chance that things will end up going wrong. Namely that organics 'forget' about the risks of AIs that they build them again, that the AI kill and destroy all organic life. He is very clear about this...
The control end is his second choice, while there's still risk for all organic life there are now much bigger safeguards in place... a rebellion of new AIs would quickly be put down. There's might be a risk of the ShepMindCopy going power mad but that's pretty unlikely. It's only the second choice because there's the Synthesis option available. (Interesting side note and speculation: There is a some
cut dialogue in Mass Effect 2 where Legion describes the Reapers as having actual copies of the mind of the sentients that are processed. If this is still the case (just not told to the player because you would suddenly realize that every reaper you killed was essentially genocide of an entire species,) then the question is does Shepard end-up enslaving/brainwashing/altering trillions of minds.)
See he vastly prefers the synthesis option because it permanently solves the perceived problem, if organic and synthetic become one than there no chance that synthetics and organics go to war against each other, therefore he would have fulfilled his purpose.
[quote]Bacteriophage wrote:
It always struck me as unlikely that the catalyst could have the subtlety needed to fiddle with the DNA of all organics but lack the necessary subtlety to selectively destroy Reaper tech. It may be that possibility exists with the catalyst's cooperation, but the starkid chooses to not let this be an answer because he's not really trying to 'find a new solution'. He's only willing to cooperate in finding one on his terms. [/quote]
We do not know what the Star-Kid's capabilities are. Just saying ‘well if he can do the synthesis ending then he should make precisions bombs’ is akin to have someone ask: "Well if you can do microsurgery and reconnect severed nerves why use something as crude as chemotherapy to deal with cancerous growth, and cause a lot of collateral damage to other cells."
[quote]Bacteriophage wrote:
The starchild may be a victim of Indoctrination himself since he is the embodiment of the Reapers' will and Indoctrination is involved in the creation of each Reaper individually. [/quote]
Since he created the Reapers, (and yes it was literally him that created the first Reaper.) it would be highly surprising that he would be indoctrinated by them.
[quote]Bacteriophage wrote:
I thought it was significant that even in the extended cut, you cannot challenge the starkid with the EDI/Geth/organic alliance. He claims synthesis is the final solution but it didn't work in the past because organics 'weren't ready'. But now with the Geth/EDI, Shepard has facilitated a Big step towards this end but the starkid is unwilling to let this scenario play out. The kid may not be lying in the sense that he truly believes what he says, but this is a trivial detail if the kid is still wrong. [/quote]
You must remember the Star-kid is not interested in one (or a few) instances or in a short period of time. He's a long-term thinker, and work with generalities. Sure Geth/EDI are good now but what in 5 million years or what about the AI that for example the yahg or the Raloi could make? The future is a very long time, and has a lot of possibilities. The synthesis choice is a solution to this problem.
[quote]Bacteriophage wrote:
Remember, though, that I suspect Bioware employs reverse narrative causality in their storytelling so none of this would be hard and fast TRUE. Rather, it retroactively becomes true if you choose the Reject end or possibly Red end. [/quote]
You are wrong. By making a choice you don't change the past or the motivations of the Star-Kid... The Star-kid was not lying to you if you chose the Destruction ending but not lying to you if you choose the control ending... and if you think otherwise you are making things far more complicated than they need to be.
[/quote]
Bacteriophage wrote:[quote]Doubter # 1 wrote:
And no he is not, in the first place he is a character not a narrator, he can lie but he's not a narrator. Second of all a core rule of unreliable narrators is that you as person who experiences the story should by the end of the story know (or at least have a well founded suspicion,) of the (un)reliability of the narrator or character. [/quote]
We're both right. As per the trope site: "One common technique is to use a Framing Device, so that the narrator is presented as a character in the frame story, to emphasize that he is not actually the author." So yeah, I use the term somewhat broadly. I would argue that there is plenty of good reason to be skeptical of the kid. It's fine that you disagree. One's level of skepticism towards the kid is part of the decision making process in choosing the right end.
[quote]Doubter # 1 wrote:
...he created the Reapers, ...it would be highly surprising that he would be indoctrinated by them...
He flat out says, he's the collective consciousness of the Reapers, build by those that would be the first Reapers...
(Interesting side note and speculation: There is a some
cut dialogue in Mass Effect 2 where Legion describes the Reapers as having actual copies of the mind of the sentients that are processed. [/quote]
That is speculation on my part. Because the minds that get incorporated have a good chance of being indoctrinated (did you see the datapad journal in London describing the poor soul fighting the compulsion to go to the processing site?), my speculation is that over the cycles the kid accumulates more and more indoctrination taint in his collective mind, making him more rigid in his thinking.
[quote]Doubter # 1 wrote:
You are wrong. ...and if you think otherwise you are making things far more complicated than they need to be. [/quote]
I don't think less of you for thinking this way. It's a pretty far out idea that goes against common notions of narrative. I really don't think I'm wrong about the examples I gave from KOTOR and DA:O. There are actual flashback cut scenes that change based on future player choice. But extrapolating from those relatively minor examples to the final climactic decision of a series is a big hurdle. But I would encourage you to consider just what is more complicated from a creator's point of view. To craft a fully coherent story where players have choices that are both differently meaningful to the different players and founded on the same set of underlying truths, or to craft a story where there is just enough ambiguity to make things interesting (and easier to craft) and provide differently meaningful choices to different players based on imperfect information, somewhat like Schrodinger's cat, the truth of the ambiguity only being pinned down upon the players decision?
[quote]Doubter # 3 wrote:
[quote]Doubter # 2 wrote:
Ugh, that Indoctrination Theory. I've just never really seen any evidence of it that didn't strike me as some people
spotting patterns that weren't there. [/quote]
Which sounds passably like indoctrination.
Good god, the Reapers are going meta. [/quote]
Bacteriophage wrote:Doubter # 2, you are absolutely correct. And Doubter # 3, you are perhaps more correct than you realize.
The Indoctrination Theory was always better as a meta-argument critiquing the quality of the game than as an attempt to understand what was the ‘cannon’ ending.
I have never seen any IT ‘evidence’ that rose above the level of circumstantial at best. Fans of the theory did their darnedest to throw up all kinds of nitpicky details and then tended to get upset when others didn’t see them as ‘proof’. Particularly after the Extended Cut, arguing that IT was the secret ‘true’ ending of ME3 places you firmly in the realm of conspiracy theory.
But I think IT works as a critique of the endings. The vanilla endings were so awful to some players that it made more sense to throw them out entirely, embrace ‘
the Death of the Author’ philosophically, and go with the ‘super-secret real end’. That the fans were able to construct a narrative that more or less fit the lore of the game and arguably surpassed it in quality is simultaneously an indictment of the developers and a plea for more content.
Even after the endings were cleaned up in the Extended Cut, there are some who still consider the endings odious. Some for thematic reasons: Genocide, Violation, or benevolent (
or not so benevolent) Tyranny. Some, like me, feel trusting the child based on having viewed the results previously breaks immersion. But with the Extended Cut, we now have the Reject option.
[quote] “What that fourth option did - that ability to refuse not only on a textual level but a metatextual one - was to allow me to reject the game itself, within the game itself. It was an admission by the creators that, for some, their vision was unacceptable. It was a subtle form of humility…
I was allowed to draw a line. I took them up on their offer.”
source[/quote]
So did I.
-edit-
Ack! Still diddn't catch all the formatting
Modifié par Bacteriophage, 23 septembre 2012 - 04:34 .
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