Rebel Leader
THE POWER OF BUTTERSCOTCH BOTTOMS
"You know that indoctrination theory? Yea that's what happen here's DLC" bioware
Not admitting they fucked up.
Mass Effect 3 SPOILER THREAD: LOTS OF SPECULATION FROM EVERYONE
- Thread starter XANDER CAGE
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Not admitting they fucked up.
I don't know what you're talking about. In my ending he came up with me and we shot the illusive brah and starchild and killed the Reapers. Then we went to the club on the Citadel and banged all the chicks.
Yup that's what happened.
Galactic Fork
A little fluff between the ears never did any harm...
True, since it made no sense at all no matter how you look at it?
Empty Space
Member
Considering how hamfisted some the other stuff is I figured it was obvious.
I'm pretty sure whats going to happen in the end is that Bioware will go wow that's crazy we got you guys and take the indoctrination theory as either something post end game where you pick up and finish the fight or a DLC that explains the jungle planet and some at point in that sequence Shepard tells Joker bring everybody here if things go wrong. They will pretend like this was always part of the plan and it will probably pacify a lot of people. They can think they are saving face with this plan and with a lot of people they will accept it as the reality. I very much doubt they expected this was going to happen though and anything that is going to address the complaints will be after the fact. I guess if they put out the DLC for calming people down in a month or so it would be evidence this was planned out, but still its a shitty thing to do to your consumer for the sake of speculation and trying to be trending on twitter for as long as possible.
At the beginning of the game shepard has been confined to his quarters for an unspecified period of time. He is shown watching vent kid from his window. How long has he been doing this, weeks, months? Vent kid is playing with a little model Normandy and laughing. No one else ever acknowledges the child, whether they do see him or not. It's ambiguous. When we see vent kid next (the vent) it is Shepard who notices him. There is a danger high voltage sign next ro the vent. Anderson either doesn't seem to notice the child (how?) or dissmisses him. It would seem very out of character for Anderson to ignore a young child in danger even despite the current situation. When next we see vent kid near the shuttle craft, in each shot he is framed next to caution and danger warnings. Is all this imagery subtext? No one trys to help the child aboard the craft, not because they are scrambling and don't notice him, they all just stand there oblivious to him.
This is just the opening sequence, there are many instances throughout the game which seem intentionally ambiguous and could support indoctrination theory. This is why people are latching on to it, because whether the ending is an indoctrination on or not all these little subtextual nods to it have been put into the game intentionally.
This is just the opening sequence, there are many instances throughout the game which seem intentionally ambiguous and could support indoctrination theory. This is why people are latching on to it, because whether the ending is an indoctrination on or not all these little subtextual nods to it have been put into the game intentionally.
heliosRAzi
Banned
So basically, all of our choices would literally be for nothing
Once again, people, the power conduit that Shepard shoots collapses in pieces of plastic, metal and generic rubble around Shepard, as can be seen around 0:30 in this video of the Renegade ending. Waking up in London is only suggested by the indoctrination theory, because surviving the power line exploding and then the Citadel exploding makes more sense than surviving both those and then surviving falling through the atmosphere down to earth.
Walters' comment about wanting to be like the first Matrix is getting me more mad by the day because I can just see him intentionally causing plot holes in writer meetings at Bioware.
"Shouldn't the team mates that were with Shepard not come out of the ship?"
"No, dude, that's good, that causes the type of great speculation that the first Matrix gave people - did Neo die or were the agents a dream all along?"
Walters' comment about wanting to be like the first Matrix is getting me more mad by the day because I can just see him intentionally causing plot holes in writer meetings at Bioware.
"Shouldn't the team mates that were with Shepard not come out of the ship?"
"No, dude, that's good, that causes the type of great speculation that the first Matrix gave people - did Neo die or were the agents a dream all along?"
I want that good ending. I fraggin' hate sad endings (which is why I didn't finish RDR). However, I'm generally okay with these sort of things if I don't get any choice in the matter. However, I should have had the option to walk away with something relatively happy since I have the option to stack the cards in my favor.
Galactic Fork
A little fluff between the ears never did any harm...
And they were for something in the current ending?
The only thing the indoctrination theory says is that from the point of getting hit by Harbinger's beam and being knocked out, everything after was an indoctrination vision. Blue and Green is giving into indoctrination. Red is resisting.
heliosRAzi
Banned
LOTS OF SPECULATION FROM EVERYONE
Rebel Leader
THE POWER OF BUTTERSCOTCH BOTTOMS
I did think it was odd but i mwas more angry of how my choices mentioned shit.
They may not do it though, but who knows.
PastorOfMuppets
Banned
I think the indoctrination theory potentially sets up Bioware to make things even worse. You're basically saying that the ending is that Shepard was under hypnosis thus giving Bioware an excuse to retcon the shitty parts of the Mass Effect story by saying "Remember when Shepard did ________? Didn't count, because he was hypnotized!"
Man, if you're gonna do that, I say you should just reveal that Shepard is still in a coma from when he first touched the Prothean monument on Eden Prime in Mass Effect 1 and he's been on life support for the last five years.
Man, if you're gonna do that, I say you should just reveal that Shepard is still in a coma from when he first touched the Prothean monument on Eden Prime in Mass Effect 1 and he's been on life support for the last five years.
heliosRAzi
Banned
Well, they would be even more useless in the indoctrination ending because...
this theory doesn't provide a conclusion to the Reaper story. It is, in effect, a dream. Shep wakes up from it in the "best" ending and... credits roll. The main plot goes unresolved.
Zomba13
Member
The main thing with the kid is how unkid like he acts. Like he seriously refuses help from a military officer when the world is pretty much ending. He doesn't even seem scared in the vent.
Galactic Fork
A little fluff between the ears never did any harm...
Yeah, sadly that's true, which is why people expect bioware to release more after that as a way to leach money off people.
And lots of tweets from bioware are making this frighteningly more likely.
So you are buying into the "evil EA indoctrinating BioWare into money-grabbing, ending-cutting bastard within 3 years" theory.
heliosRAzi
Banned
And that makes me angry.
Nothing that extreme is ever indicated. The reapers are trying to indoctrinate shepard, which is manifesting as vent kid and shepards nightmares and the ending is the actual indoctrination. There is nothing to indicate that shepards wider perception of reality is affected before the Harbinger beam hits him at the end of the game.
PastorOfMuppets
Banned
Yeah seriously, if this is the ending to the Mass Effect trilogy, I think I'll just write my own into the story and pretend it's that.
Shepard is actually an accountant in the good old 21st century, who was kidnapped and hooked up to an animus to reveal the secrets of space travel to a high end client, thus revealing that the Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed universes are the same ones.
But as the camera zooms out on our Shepard connected to an animus, it zooms out even further to reveal the medical building and even further to reveal the city of Boston and finally further more to reveal that it's encased in a snow globe being held by an autistic child named Tommy Westphall. The entire Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed universes are the products of the wild imagination of an autistic kid in a 1980's medical drama.
This man gets it.
heliosRAzi
Banned
And the main plot goes unresolved.
I am surprised people think the ending of Matrix provides ambiguity. The end of Total Recall has double or triple interpretation but to me the ending of Matrix was never confusing to me. Neo gains the power to change the law of physics inside the virtual world and he is going to use it to wake people up to fight the machines.
The latest Games, Dammit podcast hosted by Jeremy Parish is a spoiler-filled discussion of Mass Effect 3, so I thought I'd post a link here.
http://www.1up.com/do/minisite?cId=3182486
http://www.1up.com/do/minisite?cId=3182486
That is a thing of beauty.
Zomba13
Member
Yup. I'm over it now (finished it 7 days ago). For the days after it I just didn't feel like playing many other games or updating my website (was going to put up my ME:I review and write one for ME3). At least the iOS game had a better ending. It was a pretty crap story but at least it ended in a way that made sense.
That's the point - Mac Walters really thinks it is ambiguous. It is ambiguous in the way of "what the hell is Neo going to do now", but really not in the ME3 way of not providing closure to any fundamental question the movie was asking.
Shake Appeal
Member
Oh my God, and, like, at the start, when we see vent kid playing with a spaceship, it's like he's controlling it... yes, it all begins to make sense...
I'd happily buy the indoctrination ending if only because it makes the ending less awful. But I will not buy the DLC that 'finishes' the game.
Unless this is all just horribly planned PR groundwork for Mass Effect 4. Which, given how much money this one printed, is entirely possible.
I'd happily buy the indoctrination ending if only because it makes the ending less awful. But I will not buy the DLC that 'finishes' the game.
Unless this is all just horribly planned PR groundwork for Mass Effect 4. Which, given how much money this one printed, is entirely possible.
Galactic Fork
A little fluff between the ears never did any harm...
With the indoctrination theory, they don't, they are the end of the indoctrination vision. Otherwise they make no sense. Why would your team be on the ship? Where was Joker going anyway, and why did he leave. It's all crazy.
Personally, I buy into the indoctrination theory, but I don't think it's a good thing. It pisses me off because if it's true, it's a big troll. So I'm left with 2 options. One, an ending with no resolution that makes no sense and contradicts everything about the game. Or Two, a massive troll on its customers that is a big ploy to get people to either buy the real ending, or simply give people who buy it used a reason to buy an online pass other than the multiplayer.
Call me crazy, but I would totally buy ME4 if it would resolve all those issues and make me love that franchise again.
ScreenSplitter
Member
The hilarious thing to me was that he compared it to the end of the FIRST Matrix. That wasn't ambiguous. Neo TOLD the faceless machine he was going to defeat them. We knew that.
Would be much better compared to the pointless mindfuck that was the Revelations ending. The scene with the Architect/Oracle/Irritating Indian girl is almost synonymous with the irritating as fuck Stargazer scene.
Bioware. I don't care that it's Buzz Aldrin. Made me want to smash my TV open.
Would be much better compared to the pointless mindfuck that was the Revelations ending. The scene with the Architect/Oracle/Irritating Indian girl is almost synonymous with the irritating as fuck Stargazer scene.
Bioware. I don't care that it's Buzz Aldrin. Made me want to smash my TV open.
Empty Space
Member
Not only that it leaves the viewer with the understanding that Neo was unstoppable and his fixing everything was an inevitability. It left the how in question not the what.
This ending leaves both what in this case the consequences of the Catalyst's actions and the how of how are people going to recover from what looks like could be something almost as terrible as the reapers harvesting people.
Wiggum2007
Junior Member
As the camera pans across Earth after the crucible fires, Shepard flies at the camera. Fade to black.
Wow, the whole Mass Effect trilogy is really a concoction of the autistic Vent Kid. That is a theory I can back.
Escape Goat
Member
How does the shockwave move at faster than light anyways? Joker should have been able to keep ahead, if not outpace, any natural force. Unless the Citadel used quantum. Quantum always gets you.
Jibbajabbawockky
Member
Exactly! Did they even watch the Matrix movies? The Matrix has a pretty traditional ending where the good guy defeats the bad guys and lives to fight another day. Why anyone would want to emulate the clusterfuck of an ending to Revelations is anyone's guess.
And all this talk on the Indoctrination theory is silly. Its an interesting theory I guess, but its something BioWare did not think of or else they would have used it in the game. At most they wanted the Illusive Man to take control of Shepard like that Final Hours app says. But they didn't have anything planned for the whole sequence with Anderson and TIM being all in Shepard's head. People that think that are giving BioWare faaaar too much credit.
ScreenSplitter
Member
Can't help but think that's the way they're going.
Bioware: "Keep your Mass Effect 3 save"
The Stargazer is a character in Mass Effect 3. Following the conclusion of the game, he is seen to be finishing his tale of "The Shepard" to a child. He states that it happened long ago, and that many of the details have been "lost in time". The child asks to be told more, and the Stargazer replies that it is getting late, but there is time for one more story.
PastorOfMuppets
Banned
I don't know if anyone else has tried this but during the part where you're making the final push to the transportation beam, I had Garrus and Liara backing me up. As I was running, I turned my character around and saw them running with me but they both stopped dead in their tracks at a decline in the terrain.
In other words, your companions survive because they are cowards.
In other words, your companions survive because they are cowards.
Confidence Man
Member
Your team is on the ship because Bioware ran out of time to properly flesh out the events or redo cutscenes to reflect a changed narrative. They cobbled an ending together out of scraps and hope you'll buy that it's meant to be speculative instead of incompetent.
Rebel Leader
THE POWER OF BUTTERSCOTCH BOTTOMS
I was about to rent Mass effect 3 from.Redbox.. I couldn't bring mu.self to do it .... not even for $0.86
Everyone at Bioware seems to be a big fan of BSG. Seems to clarify why an ending like this would be given the go ahead.
ScreenSplitter
Member
The fact that Joker, who kept trying to fly the Normandy when it was effectively a pile of rubble, and only stopped because Shepard physically dragged him out of the cockpit, would just fly away from the conflict, is pretty unbelievable.
Shake Appeal
Member
We already knew this because they hopped back in the Normandy and fled the system while the war was still in progress!
Escape Goat
Member
What? The game is really fun up until the ending. Totally worth 86 cents at any rate. But I guess in this case, at least in regards to the ending, you get what you pay for.
ScreenSplitter
Member
If anything, just turn it off when Anderson says "Feels like I haven't sat down in years".
Another Bioware laziness here: why is it after the major end battle starts, you can't save manually anymore. That's BS. Auto-save is still on anyway so why can't I save manually anymore? So fucking annoying. I want to save and quit the game since I'm a bit tired but I'm not allowed to do that.
What?I thought you played the game.
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