Mass Effect

ClockworkUniverse

See the highlighter-looking button? click the drop-down menu next to it, set it to black. That should hide your text.

gentlemanorcus

Grunt is officially in my top five of favorite characters from the franchise. That scene of him fighting the rachni was ridiculously badass. He survived since he was loyal in ME2.

Some of us should have a multiplayer match sometime. 

EDIT: Fixed.

ClockworkUniverse

^That's not black; it's dark grey :P

Forzare

Yeah, that scene was great.  It completely faked me out.  :V

ClockworkUniverse

Yeah, it was pretty awesome.

gentlemanorcus

Yeah, I totally thought he would die, what with the sorrowful yet triumphant music.

 

gentlemanorcus

I am the very model of a -BOOM-

No, I just have something in my eye...

TheConductor

So I'm playing through the series now, as we speak. Only finished the Expose Saren stuff on the Citadel. I forget how much I love this game.

Forzare

I know it's just wishful thinking, but I like the theory about the ending floating around the Internet that says

Spoiler:

the ending sequence was due to Shepard being partially indoctrinated and hallucinating.

ClockworkUniverse

Yeah, that would actually be preferable, though I still prefer the version where I just quit before the ending starts getting dumb.

Forzare

Spoiler:

I've been reading that megathread about it on the official forums, and it's actually pretty convincing. There's a lot of evidence for it.



And honestly, I think that having the protagonist be fighting indoctrination at the end is pretty cool.



But it's a win-win for me, since I see pretty much three options:

1. There is no Broken Steel DLC, and the ending is the ending. There's enough evidence floating around that I can feel good interpreting the ending as Shepard being indoctrinated, or that it ends with Anderson dying and the Reapers going splodey.. Which isn't the best scenario, but I can take it.

2. There is Broken Steel DLC, using the indoctrination theory as a starting point. As I see it, this is probably the best outcome. Continuing on from the Destroy ending (which represents beating the indoctrination), it would invalidate the crap parts of the ending without saying that none of it ever happened or whatever.

3. There is Broken Steel DLC that basically overwrites the ending, and we get a better ending.

Unrelated:

Crimson

I'm actually kind of impressed at how many memes, for better or worse, they crammed into this game.

ClockworkUniverse

^^YES.

Forzare

Is it just me, or is the Mass Effect Twitter being especially cryptic today? :V



^^ Most of the ones I noticed made me at least smile, if not laugh. Usually stuff like that makes me roll my eyes. I'm not sure if that's more indicative of me being a massive Bioware fanboy (I won't argue that) or of quality or whatever.

ClockworkUniverse

I just watched the video about the indoctrination theory for the ending...that was really convincing. I actually like the ending quite a bit if that's the case, and the plot holes completely vanish.

The after-credits thing has no excuse, though -_-

Forzare

I know, right? If it turns out to be true, and Bioware manages to spin it to the general population so that it's believable that it was intentional, I could see ME3 going down in history as one of the best endings ever instead of the worst. If it ends up being paid DLC though, that won't go over well.



That after credits thing was bad, but I can kind of forgive it. I can see what they might have been going for, at least.

Spoiler:

I thought about it, and I figured it might be the result of Liara's message to the future. Some alien race finds it, learns about Shepard and her adventures from it. Could explain why "The Shepard" is some kind of mythical figure instead of someone they knew all about.

I dunno. It's still kind of dumb though.

ClockworkUniverse

Oh. That might make sense...maybe. Idunno. They still look exactly like humans -_-

What finally sold me on the theory is that the codex mentions that indoctrination involves ghostly apparitions trying to make you think helping the Reapers is the right thing to do.

Forzare

For me, it wasn't really any one thing, but there were so many little things that didn't add up/pointed to this. Too many for me to really see as coincidental, and I usually laugh at these kinds of conspiracy theories.

Spoiler:

There's a message you can get on the SB terminal about that Asari who you can let live on Saren's base. If she survives through ME2, she ends up indoctrinated and kills a bunch of people. But she talks about a voice that talked about how she had to do it so that the Asari could ascend. The Starchild talks about ascension a lot.



Destroy is made to look like a bad idea, but the ones where the reapers survive are painted to look appealing.



In the first game, Saren, who's heavily indoctrinated by this point, advocates what's pretty much exactly the Synthesis option.



The Illusive Man, similarly indoctrinated, advocates the Control option.



When you take Synthesis or Control, your face starts to burn off, you look like a husk, and you get the blue Illusive Man/Saren eyes.



Breathing in space.



No one ever interacts with the kid.



Harbinger just up and leaves after he shoots you.



Coates says that everyone is dead, even though you and Anderson are able to cross. Anderson doesn't seem to be anywhere nearby when you head up, yet he gets to the control panel first.



There's piles of bodies and a dream-tree after Harbinger lazers you that weren't there before.



When you have enough EMS to survive Destroy, the Starkid says "Wake up."



When you confront the Illusive Man, you see those oily shadows from the dream, accompanied by the Reaper's BWOOOOONNNG.



And other stuff.

They still look exactly like humans

I dunno, Asari at least look a lot like humans, so there's precendent. And really( it's so tiny that they could look like Batarians and we wouldn't really be able to tell.

ClockworkUniverse

Most of the stuff you listed were reasons I thought it too, and I wouldn't have believed it without them, but the thing about ghosts confirmed it, IMO.

Asari at least look a lot like humans

Canonically, they don't. Go to the bar on Ilium in 2, and listen to every conversation at the bachelor party.

Forzare

I'm not sure that that really means anything. I've always thought that bachelor party was just a joke. The human notices the face, the turian notices that the back of the head looks like a turian fringe, and the salarian notices her flexibility.



Also, they were probably drunk.

ClockworkUniverse

I like the idea, though, and given how important personal canon is to this series, I feel justified in believing it :P

Forzare

:V My point still stands..

Spoiler:

Stargazers and his kid could still be aliens, and it wouldn't break what we've seen so far. We only see them from behind and from very far away, they could easily look as different from humans as, like, batarians do.

Forzare

Is it ever confirmed in game that

Spoiler:

Shepard's implants used tech from Sovereign? If it was, I think that's a big point in the theory's favor, and I feel like I remember that being mentioned. I like to think that the indoctrination really began when Shepard spent two days unconscious next to Object Rho in Arrival, though.

ClockworkUniverse

^^Yeah, true.

^No it isn't confirmed. I was under the impression that it was just some stuff to get his systems started. Nothing that would kill him if it failed. It being tech from Sovereign doesn't make much sense given the videos you see of TIM giving the orders regarding Project Lazarus.

As for Object Rho...that doesn't make much sense to me. Shepard has a lot of opportunities to screw things up, so why wait? He could've easily just let the reapers in. As for why he wasn't indoctrinated by that...it might be because he was unconscious.

I think the indoctrination probably began either when Harbinger showed up or when you meet TIM.

Forzare

Spoiler:

I figured that Shepard was indoctrinated by the beginning of 3, but that she was strong enough that the only real manifestation of it (before she gets badly wounded and weakened by Harbinger) was the dreams.

ClockworkUniverse

Spoiler:

Just given the strength of indoctrination as seen elsewhere, I don't buy that.

Forzare

Spoiler:

The thing is, when we usually see indoctrination, the subject is usually in constant contact with Reaper stuff for the duration. In Shepard's case, she's only around reaper artifacts for at most two days at a time. I'm not entirely sure that's long enough to cause full indoctrination, but it is long enough to plant the seeds, I think.



There's circumstantial evidence that the kid might have been a hallucination on earth, too.



And assuming Shepard is only indoctrinated at the end, where is the signal coming from? Harbinger, after the pew pew? It can't be just from being around the Reapers for the push, or else everyone on earth would be indoctrinated.



Or I could just be blowing steam.

Forzare

Spoiler:

I'm downloading the app right now to see if this is real. Because if it is... Lol I dunno.

ClockworkUniverse

^^True...it could be that 

Spoiler:

he's indoctrinated only enough for it to inhibit his effectiveness by preventing him from sleeping, rather than forcing him to take actions (hence the nightmares), but then the secret no-organics-allowed inner core areas of the Citadel finish him off...

^Yeah, I saw that. Very interesting.

Forzare

Spoiler:

I think it's more likely that full indoctrination happens before the Citadel. When Shepard wakes up in the Destroy ending, she's surrounded by/buried under what looks a lot like stone and concrete and rebar. The Citadel is a lot shiner than that, and it explodes anyway. Shepard wouldn't survive a fall to the planet; she was already killed once by a very similar set of circumstances.



So it either happened when Harbinger lasers her, or in the shuttle, which crashes/crashed before the conduit run.



Also, Vega mentions hearing a humming noise, which is indicative of indoctrination tech if I remember correctly.