User blog comment:Awayorafk/Believe. The Indoctrination Theory./@comment-5916798-20151009123613

This is absolutely the most ignorant thing I've ever read. Are you people that fucking dense, that you missed the entire point of the game? Apparently.

Since none of you seem to grasp the point of these games, let me try to spell it out for you. The Reapers were conceived by the Catalyst as a solution to the never-ending war between organic life and artificial intelligence throughout the galaxy. His solution was to wipe out ALL sentient life just before it becomes able to create artificial intelligence, thus preventing any war between organic and non-organic life. But they don't just wipe out life, they harvest it. They catalog the races' DNA together to be part of the Reapers themselves, so that they survive in some fashion, and weaker, less intelligent life gets a chance to develop, thus preserving life in the galaxy. Over the course of these "cycles", the sentient races start to realize in some fashion, what is going on, and try to not only warn the races of future cycles of their inevitable fates, but also to create a "weapon" to fight against the Reapers. Over the course of the cycles, plans for the Crucible are created, survive, and are added to, until finally the Protheans, during their cycle, manage to survive the Reapers long enough to sabotage the Citadel, preventing the easy invasion of the Reapers for the next cycle. It is because of this, that the Reapers are unable to teleport directly into the galaxy during the Human's cycle. So, the Catalyst sends Sovereign to fix the problem. However, Sovereign takes so long in reaching the galaxy from deep, dark space, the Quarians manage to create the Geth, who, due to the misunderstandings between organics and A.I., inevitably become involved in a war against the organics. Sovereign works in secret, recruits the Geth, recruits Saren, and initiates his plan. Shepard stops Sovereign from reactivating the Citadel, and destroys Sovereign. Jump forward to the third game, and the Reapers finally arrive to the galaxy, and the Crucible is ultimately completed and joined with the Citadel, AKA the Catalyst, completing its design. Shepard, despite all odds, survives, and manages to reach the relay and arrive on the Crucible. When he approaches the Catalyst, it, being an AI, and thus highly logical, realizes that its plan was not the answer. If after all these cycles, organic life manages to thwart his plans and approach him, obviously his plan isn't working as intended. He realizes he doesn't have all the answers. So, he asks Shepard, the one selfless person who managed to reach him, for help. He works with Shepard to come up with a better solution. Depending on how well the Crucible is completed (how much resources you obtain), the Catalyst has more power to try more methods. Then, Shepard makes a choice: 1. He chooses selfishly and foolishly to destroy all non-organic life, and *hope* that war between organics and AI doesn't just start over again. (It will) 2. He chooses to sacrifice himself to essentially BECOME the Catalyst, controlling the Reapers, and becoming a sort of galactic police force to prevent war from breaking out between organics and AI. 3. The Catalyst scans Shepard's DNA, and recognizes that Shepard is "ready", or compatible to become the template to fuse all organic and artificial life together, thus finally creating a mutual understanding and completely ending the conflict between organic and artificial life forever. The Catalyst had attempted this before, however, it never worked because no appropriate template was ever found. Due to the major cybernetic implants given to Shepard when he was "resurrected", along with his ability to beat all the odds and reach the Catalyst, the Catalyst is convinced that it will work this time, as long as it's Shepard 's DNA. Shepard then sacrifices himself to create peace between organic and artificial life throughout the galaxy. Yes, it's tragic. No, it's not depressing: everybody dies, and few deaths truly have meaning, but if Shepard dies in this way, his death is more meaningful than anything, as he dies to create harmony between the two struggling forms of life, ending the eternal conflict once and for all. This is truly the best and most beautiful ending possible. The ultimate objective of the games is to overcome the inevitable conflict caused when artificial life is created. This is truly the only ending that fully accomplishes this. If that's not enough for you, then I don't know what to tell you. Maybe stick to Call of Duty.

I will now debunk every point you've made in regards to this silly little "theory".

1. Early on in the game, we see Shepard try to save a little boy from Vancouver, only to fail and watch the child get into a ship and die, along with the rest of the people that he couldn't save. THIS IS A VERY TRAUMATIC MOMENT. The child dying is a metaphor for Shepard failing and not being able to defeat the Reapers. The child appears in Shepard's nightmares for the rest of the game, symbolizing his fear of failure. The flames engulfing Shepard in the last one is symbolism for his fear of dying before he's able to save his friends and the galaxy. The guilt carried for failing to save the child, coupled with his fear of failing to save everyone else from the Reapers causes the Catalyst to appear to him as the very child he failed to save. The image of the child dying weighs so heavily on Shepard that the Catalyst picks up on it, and chooses this form. I honestly thought this was obvious, I guess not to everyone. I will admit that the child could potentially be a hallucination of Shepard's, but there is no evidence to suggest it's because of indoctrination, it's more likely his fears and the weight of everything that's happened to him up until this point finally taking its toll. I mean, Shepard's done a lot of crazy shit over the course of the previous games. People don't get to walk away from that without some kind of mental anguish.

2. This point is ridiculous, quite frankly. In both the control and synth endings, Shepard's body is DESTROYED, and either uploading his mind into the Catalyst to control the Reapers, or his DNA is uploaded to be used as a template for all life, organic and artificial. You cannot, in any capacity, legitimately use the fact that Shepard's eyes at this point in time look "different" as evidence towards indoctrination. HIS BODY IS BEING DISINTEGRATED. OF COURSE IT LOOKS STRANGE. Furthermore, if this is what they intended, why doesn't it appear in the only ending where his body is NOT destroyed? Easy. Because it's just the process of his body being destroyed, and you are looking WAY too far into it. Yes, it's ironic that his antagonists wanted this same things. That doesn't mean he's indoctrinated. That's why it's irony. Otherwise it would have been expected. BONUS: The Illusive man's eyes are the way they are because they are cybernetic, NOT due to indoctrination. His eyes looked that way in the second game, BEFORE he had ever come into contact with Reaper technology. As such, it's IMPOSSIBLE that he was indoctrinated beforehand.

3. Okay, no. Just no. The colours are NOT reversed. If you actually believe the Destroy ending is the most reasonable choice, then I don't know what to tell you, but you were not playing the same game as everybody else. Either that, or you're just a bad person. The theme of the entire trilogy is the struggle between organic life and artificial life (A.I.). If Shepard chooses to destroy all A.I., this is ABSOLUTELY NOT a resolution. It's a lazy, quick-fix that ultimately does WAY more harm than good. Organic life will continue, technology will advance again, and A.I. will, I repeat, WILL be created again somewhere, starting the cycle of war and misery all over again. The Control Ending is not the "good" ending either, it's simply a compromise. All it accomplishes is the Reapers leave and go chill in dark space again. What happens, in say a thousand years, or longer, when the Shepard-catalyst decides that the original Catalyst's solution made sense? That's a long time to be by yourself. Lots of time to think, and Shepard at this point is technically an AI, so nothing is stopping him from reaching this conclusion. Even if this doesn't ever happen, more A.I. will be created, if not by organics, then by currently existing A.I., and war will begin again. The green Synthesis ending is the only "good" ending, because it perfectly resolves ALL conflict between artificial and organic life by merging them together, creating a new form of life. Each side gains the others' perspective, and peace is assured, at least, between artificial and organic life. Which, again, is the theme behind the entire series.

4. I didn't see any plot holes, and you failed to provide them, so I'm just gonna go ahead and skip this part.

5. By the "Breath scene", I assume you are referring to the extra bonus scene at the end of the Destroy ending, where by if you gathered the maximum amount of resources and multiplayer readiness or w/e it was called, it briefly shows Shepard waking up after the destruction of the Crucible and all artificial life. This scene was merely a "reward" for completing the game 100%, and as it's the ONLY ending where the annihilation of Shepard's body ISN'T required to achieve, it's the only ending he could conceivably survive, so that's why that's there. If none of it happened, and it was all a dream, then why does the "Breath" scene ONLY occur when Shepard makes the ONLY decision that he could potentially survive? Because it all happened. Let's look at the scene. Shepard wakes up in the rubble of the citadel/crucible. What we see is rubble, and nothing else. No fires, no skyline, no bullets, no other bodies, nothing. Complete silence, aside from metal scraping sounds one might hear on a space station such as, oh I don't know, the CITADEL? If he were truly still on earth, there would be SOME semblance of conflict. If the argument is that it takes place after the Reapers are done and left, this too is bogus, as Shepard, being the ultimate archenemy of the Reapers, would have definitely been searched for and recovered by the Reapers, to be converted into Reaper tech, thus completing their victory over him. This is effectively, the WORST ending in the game, as it shows Shepard is a selfish brat that didn't learn anything throughout his adventures, ultimately choosing to destroy all artificial life when he could just as easily have sacrificed himself to save all forms of life. And yes, of course they left that scene in, what on earth would be the point to removing it?

6. No, you're wrong again. The Synthesis ending is EXACTLY what Shepard had been working for throughout the entire series, at least, if you were playing as the Hero, and not the Villain. Why should Shepard "get" ANYTHING? Peace throughout the galaxy has been achieved. His sacrifices have all led to this. What more could he want? The Control ending just has Shepard rebuild earth and then take his reapers and fly away. Unrealistic? Really? Is it any more unrealistic than the Hanar, or hell, the Reapers? It's a damn science-fiction story. Whining that you found this one aspect of it as "unrealistic" is like complaining that the Force in Star Wars is unrealistic.

I see a lot of people hating on the writing of these fantastic games, and I simply do not understand HOW you could possibly conceive it to be bad, or poor quality. If you choose to believe in this indoctrination horse-hockey, I don't see how you could possibly justify the writing as being ANY better. In fact, it would be infinitely worse, because it would completely invalidate EVERYTHING that you did in the third game, potentially even earlier than that, depending on when you "decide" that Shepard was indoctrinated. If Shepard was indoctrinated, the story ends with NOTHING being accomplished, Shepard dies in a ditch, and all sentient organic life is destroyed, the cycle begins again, and the point of all three games was moot. If that's not bad writing, I don't know what is. Furthermore, it completely destroys any credibility for "good" writing for ANY future Mass Effect games. If humanity is destroyed, how are there humans in the Andromeda galaxy? "Oh, this group of humans left the galaxy before the Reaper stuff ever happened, and nobody ever mentioned that there was another galaxy they could reach!" or "Oh, there were ~already~ humans in the Andromeda galaxy somehow! Please ignore the giant gaping plot hole as to how, and why there are humans (or any other race from the Milky Way galaxy) here already!" Seriously? Do you not see the problem with this? It creates more problems than it solves, and it literally destroys the story of these games.

Sorry, this "theory" is wrong, and you people either completely and entirely missed the point of the story these games were trying to tell, or you simply have poor taste and sought to bring the story down to your level.