74 Antworten in diesem Thema

[Monica21]

I would suggest both of you replay the Derelict Reaper mission.

 

Who is "both of you"? And if you're referring to themikefest, he's probably played it more times than you. What would be the point of it?

[Monica21]

Both you and him. The point of replaying? It could explain some of the questions you have.

I've played it. You could just tell me.

[themikefest]

I would suggest both of you replay the Derelict Reaper mission.

What does that have to do with you mentioning Anderson saying it reminds him of the collector base when he never said that as I pointed out with the link in my post?

[themikefest]

Both you and him. The point of replaying? It could explain some of the questions you have.

Are you referring to the video logs that showing the Cerberus scientists on the derelict reaper being Indoctrinated? If that's what you're talking about, wouldn't Garrus be showing signs of being indoctrinated since he can be with Shepard for nearly the whole trilogy except the beginning of each game and the arrival dlc?

[AlanC9]

I would suggest both of you replay the Derelict Reaper mission.

This move never works. Anyone who replays it will see the same things he saw before. You need to tell people what they missed.

[themikefest]

This would explain how Anderson knows what the Collector base looks like because the Reapers altered his memories.

Watch the video I posted. It will tell you why he mentions the collector base

[dorktainian]

https://www.youtube....h?v=6_RGX1ujGUU

 

Just watch this.  The video is a great one that leaves out indoctrination until after all the presented facts.  It goes into the choices and why they are right or wrong.

[Monica21]

This would explain how Anderson knows what the Collector base looks like because the Reapers altered his memories.

But Anderson doesn't say, "it reminds me of the Collector Base." He says, "It reminds me of your description of the Collector Base." Anderson doesn't "remember" it at all. He's just reminded of Shepard's reports.

[SwobyJ]

To OP without reading rest of thread:

 

"Question:  How important to the theory is it for Shepard to be unconscious or just lying on the ground and imagining the whole Star Child encounter?"

-'Exactly Original' IT? I think it is crucial to it. Original IT = Shepard in rubble undergoing a sort of Indoctrination that he can then wake up from and finish the fight.

 

You don't have to believe all of that. I know I don't. But then again, my thoughts on the ending go far beyond IT in craziness so maybe you shouldn't listen to me.

[SwobyJ]

Everything will change, but on our terms.

 

MEA, meeting old characters, but in a different way.

 

Memory alteration. Consensus. Genetic material. Preserved and connected.

 

There is no war. There is only the harvest.

 

Play the game. You are in complete darkness. Wake up.

 

Access Leviathan. You have breached the darkness. Breathe.

 

Access Omega. You'll break the containment. Snap out of it.

 

Access Citadel. You will win. And when you do, everyone will be waiting.

 

The dawn will come.

 

 

There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own, you cannot even imagine it.

 

Saren is a vision of the future. The evolution of all organic life. This is our destiny.

 

Ghost riders in the sky... Grim Reapers on the Wild Hunt.

[corkyspetals]

After holding off the ending of my second playthrough, I finished last night.  I don't accept all the details of IT, but I think there is something going on beyond the simple, "it's exactly as it seems" explanation.

 

 

Reasons?, my paragon Shep, who hasn't shown any glowing scars for years, now has glowing scars.  When Shep meets TIM, Shep experiences some weird disorienting blurry stuff.  Anderson gets stiff like he's being controlled.  Strange whispers are in the background.  To me this clearly indicates that some influence is starting to affect Shep. 

 

 

Starchild.  During the conversation, the Catalyst admits that the original "solution" is no longer valid.  The Catalyst is fallible.  Maybe deceptive.   The Catalyst is providing the choices, so maybe even the Catalyst doesn't fully appreciate the consequences.

 

 

 

I know a lot of these can be explained away by head cannon and technobabble, but the writers intentionally included these things in the game for some sort of reason.  They thought about this ending a lot.  I don't believe in the "I dunno, I thought it would look cool." explanations for all these details.

 

 

 

So it comes to this.  Are all these things put in the story so that the gamer will read between the lines?  Or are they there to emphasize Shepard's struggle in making the choice?

 

 

And after saying all that, I'm not 100% happy with any of the choices.  Even the best decisions have bad consequences.  And that's why like the ending.

.

[Dantriges]

My one didn´t have any scars. Chakwas tells you, that the scars stay away, if you keep on paragon (in different words). The blurry stuff is TIMs control power. IIRC TIMimplies it and everytime he fistpumps, one of you is doing something. So yeah the influence is TIm toying with his new cyberpowers, which seem to be some form of the dominate power.

 

He tells you in destroy in a polite way, that you would be an idiot if you choose it and in control that he wouldn´t appreciate being replaced if you take lower right.

 

Well IMO the Catalyst is really dumb or let´s say very focused on a narrow spectrum of possible solutions but opinions vary on that.

[AlanC9]

After holding off the ending of my second playthrough, I finished last night.  I don't accept all the details of IT, but I think there is something going on beyond the simple, "it's exactly as it seems" explanation.
 
Reasons?, my paragon Shep, who hasn't shown any glowing scars for years, now has glowing scars.  When Shep meets TIM, Shep experiences some weird disorienting blurry stuff.  Anderson gets stiff like he's being controlled.  Strange whispers are in the background.  To me this clearly indicates that some influence is starting to affect Shep. 

The real explanation for this is that originally the Horizon mission was going to have a sequence where TIM's newly-developed Indoctrination technology was used on Shepard. TIM's using the same tech on the Citadel. The Horizon sequence failed in playtesting (players hated losing control of the PC) and was cut, so the Citadel sequence seems to come out of left field.

[corkyspetals]

My one didn´t have any scars. Chakwas tells you, that the scars stay away, if you keep on paragon (in different words).

 

 

My Shep was %99.999 Paragon with a teeny little streak of renegade at the bottom.  He hadn't shown scars since halfway through ME2.  Why would they show up now?  They appear (I think) as he approaches TIM and Anderson.  It's the cut scene after the long slow walk.  Why would any renegade related scars show up all of a sudden?

 

 

 TIM's newly-developed Indoctrination technology was used on Shepard ...  and was cut, so the Citadel sequence seems to come out of left field.

 

I hadn't heard about that (I'm new to ME).  So if that is true, the implication is that Shepard was brainwashed into working for Cerberus?  Even so, it leaves open to interpretation how much influence Shepard is under at the end.  Evil forces of Indoctrination  vs.  Shepard struggling to focus on choices and consequences.

 

BTW, it seemed to me that paragon Shepard spoke to the Star Kid as if it were a child.  I don't know if that was intentional or the actor's choice.

[AlanC9]

I hadn't heard about that (I'm new to ME).  So if that is true, the implication is that Shepard was brainwashed into working for Cerberus?  Even so, it leaves open to interpretation how much influence Shepard is under at the end.  Evil forces of Indoctrination  vs.  Shepard struggling to focus on choices and consequences.
 
BTW, it seemed to me that paragon Shepard spoke to the Star Kid as if it were a child.  I don't know if that was intentional or the actor's choice.

TIM isn't supposed to have had the tech until late in ME3; it's the Horizon experiments that let him come up with it, and those didn't happen until the war, obviously. And this wasn't going to have any implications for anything at the time; in the same script outline we find that there are essentially the same three choices we got -- destroy the Reapers (Shepard may or may not survive), control the Reapers, or "become one with the Reapers." There's nothing to interpret.

Professional IT theorists try to make the case that Bio added IT after that script outline. So they first took an indoctrination sequence out, and then added more indoctrination afterwards, because reasons

[dorktainian]

I am new to the ME franchise, I just played the whole series this spring.  I played with the EC and really had no idea about the ending controversy and never heard about the Indoctrination Theory.  When I first played the ending I was a little confused (surprise!)  but thought the whole IT was just cranky fans creating a conspiracy theory to ease their minds.  I have to say I now find IT to be more compelling than I originally thought.

 

 

Question:  How important to the theory is it for Shepard to be unconscious or just lying on the ground and imagining the whole Star Child encounter?

 

 

 

 

The reason I ask this is because as I played though the ending I was wondering if something like this was going on (before I ever heard about the IT).  My interpretation was a little different.  To me, Shepard did actually go to the crucible and have a conversation with the Star Child.  A lot of what happened seemed like Shepard was under the influence, the crazy horror of the long walk, the star child, angel and devil  Anderson and TIM.  And Shepard's eyes (there seemed to be a lot of visual focus on the eyes.).  To me, Shepard was (mostly) conscious but fighting the mind control and the breath scene was on the crucible.  When I heard about Indoctrination Theory I learned there were all these rules about what happened, which blackout started the hallucination, never getting to the crucible, etc..  My first impressions didn't fit neatly into Indoctrination Theory.  I just ignored IT and tried to interpret the ending at face value.  And that was pretty unsatisfactory.  The final choices were confusing.  I totally accept that there were no easy answers, that all choices had uneasy consequences (like real life).  But to me the choices didn't align with the whole paragon/renegade thing.  Which was another layer of confusing.

 

 

 

Anyway,   In IT, does it ALL have to be hallucination?  What did I miss?  I'm approaching my second playthrough of the ending and a little curious.

 

 

If I were you I would go back to the last dream.  Everything after that throws the lore out of the window.  IT is kinda based around Shep never getting back up from harbingers shot - which as we've seen before disintegrates any mortal hit by it.  (watch the beam run - and the other soldiers)

[Dantriges]

I hadn't heard about that (I'm new to ME).  So if that is true, the implication is that Shepard was brainwashed into working for Cerberus?

Don´t think it´s mental domination/brainwashing. Anderson and Shepard could still think and talk freely. I assume it´s some kind of kinetic control, TIM can control movements but not your thoughts, which would fit as a biotic power. So he´s yanking your arms with mass effect fields. 

[AlanC9]

If I were you I would go back to the last dream.  Everything after that throws the lore out of the window.  IT is kinda based around Shep never getting back up from harbingers shot - which as we've seen before disintegrates any mortal hit by it.  (watch the beam run - and the other soldiers)

I've watched the beam run many times. I haven't seen Shepard actually get hit by that beam yet.

[Esthlos]

I've watched the beam run many times. I haven't seen Shepard actually get hit by that beam yet.

S/he was grazed by an hit vehicle and left for dead.

Someone really needs to have a little talk with Harbringer...

EDIT: Just checked, and it was the squad to be grazed... sorry, I remembered wrong.
Shepard definitely got hit directly by the beam, and survived relatively unscathed an attack that was previously shown to be able to one-shot spacecrafts.

[Ptolema]

I'm in the same boat as you OP just finished playing and find IT really explains a bunch of what I felt were "clues" but I never found the answer before the end.

 

Also, I think the ambiguity about the ending is what Bioware was aiming for, and why there're still people here, years later, discussing it.

 

(Creepiest evidence for IT? Those bodies that are suddenly piled up around you when you wake up? Kaidan and Ashley in their Virmire armour.)

[AlanC9]

EDIT: Just checked, and it was the squad to be grazed... sorry, I remembered wrong.
Shepard definitely got hit directly by the beam, and survived relatively unscathed an attack that was previously shown to be able to one-shot spacecrafts.

Well, this will be the longest delay between a reply to me and my response ever, but better late than never.

I looked at that vid. It doesn't show what you say it showed. It goes to whiteout without the beam ever striking Shepard.

[gothpunkboy89]

Well, this will be the longest delay between a reply to me and my response ever, but better late than never.

I looked at that vid. It doesn't show what you say it showed. It goes to whiteout without the beam ever striking Shepard.

 

Spash damage. Direct hit would have vaporized him. How ever splash damage would explain survival and why his armor is partially melted.

[iM3GTR]

My interpretation:
Mass Effect was so screwed up so badly since ME2's story line happened (a shame, considering most of that game is great), that it really ceases to matter what happened.