User blog comment:Awayorafk/Believe. The Indoctrination Theory./@comment-24174486-20120908145307

"Mass effect 3 ended in a very unorthodox fashion."

It ended with you using the Crucible in conjunction with the Catalyst to stop the Reapers, just like you were trying to do for the entire game.

"Plot holes"

Like?

"no final boss fight"

I was not aware that video games were obligated to have final boss fights in order to "make sense".

"anti-climactic"

If you consider accomplishing the goal you set out to accomplish from the beginning of the series "anti-climactic", then that's not BioWare's failing.

"The group of people in the latter category most likely believe in the Indoctrination Theory (IT)."

So in order to like the ending, you have to completely disregard everything that happens in it? I know plenty of people who loved the ending. And the majority of them consider the Indoctrination Theory to be complete rubbish.

"Also, people dont know that the EC was made my a different team than the one that made the original ending."

Something tells me that there's absolutely no proof that confirms this claim.

"Anderson and TIM supposedly each represent a side of Shepard's psyche, while he must choose between them."

Um, no. There is no "[choosing] between them". One of them is clearly the enemy and one of them is clearly an ally, from the beginning of that scene to the end.

"Why else look like the kid?"

Because it wanted to take a form that was familiar to Shepard and presented no hostility? Leviathan gives further credence to this idea.

"If synthesis or control is chosen in the end, shepard's eyes are shown to have 'indoctrinated eyes', like the Illusive Man or Saren. Ironically, these two antagonists supported control and synthesis, respectively."

Saren never supported Synthesis. Saren never knew that Synthesis was a possibility. Saren sought to prove to the Reapers that organics were worth sparing.

"This is a subtle yet effective clue that the Reapers are trying to play on Shepard's morals. Destroy (the only reasonable choice) is colored red, the renegade choice, while the two other choices are 'virtuous' and 'best'."

So the Reapers are acting through a representation of a moral scale in the user interface? In other words, they're playing with colours that in-game Shepard would not know exist.

And this quote really does highlight one of the most ignorant purposes of the Indoctrination Theory: an attempt to promote one choice as being "better" than the others. IT supporters are basically saying "we're right, you're wrong", which in a game like Mass Effect where there are multiple valid ways to get the best resolutions, is absolutely mindless.

"Breath scene: This is THE most important point in the IT, in my opinion. There is NO reason to include this scene otherwise. The devs also DIDNT omit this with the EC, so it was MEANT to be there. For whatever reason that may be..."

There's a simple reason for this: Destroy is the only ending which does not result in the explicit destruction of Commander Shepard's body. Destroy is the only ending in which Shepard does not invariably die.

But that does mean that Shepard is only not indoctrinated if they had a lot of War Assets?

"In the EC, he believes he made the best choice for the galaxy, with unrealistic consequences. These two choices, regardless of outcome, go against everything he has been fighting for the whole series."

As I stated earlier, one of the tenets of Indoctrination Theory is simply coming up with reasons to condemn the other choices. This quote basically advocates the idea that killing off an entire group of allies is invariably what Shepard should want to do, something that is completely against the ideals of a Paragon Shepard.

"This type of thing has been done before, in more ways than one."

Halo 3 doesn't try to make you believe that everything that happened previously was an hallucination; the extra scene on the Legendary difficulty is merely a sequel teaser after the ending scenes. The ending of The Sopranos can easily be inferred as the main character dying; he states earlier in the show that he imagines death to be nothingness, and in the end, the screen is simply black for several seconds before the credits are shown.

Neither of those involve a baseless theory that insists that the creators are completely contradicting the ideals of the series to present two "fake" endings with absolutely no in-game indication that they are "fake". Neither of those revolve around a "theory" that completely ignores everything inconvenient to the "theory" to insist that everyone who likes a different ending than them are wrong. Neither of those are based on making assumptions out of nowhere in order to use as proof for other assumptions.