User blog comment:SunyiNyufi/My idea of Mass Effect 3 ending with Indoctrination Theory and what would come after/@comment-1900300-20120326021859

I’m sorry but ill never understand the Indoctrination Theory. I get the reasoning and maybe your right but ill never get why people want it. It screams to me of people who hate the ending presented so much they would rather an essentially horrific ending as long as it makes slightly more sense.

Indoctrination has always been presented as permanent and incurable, akin to brain damage. So after three games, 80+ hours of gameplay, our countless personal choices, it is the preferred ending for Shepard to be reduced to a drilling, brain dead lunatic without any say from the player? That is Shepard and our reward for all our hard work, bringing the entire galaxy together to face down the Reapers? And even if Bioware wanted to continue the ending, they would have to break their own lore by making indoctrination curable. It has never been presented as curable and has not been shown as going away with the Reapers. Those indoctrinated by Sovereign are still indoctrinated after his death, likewise for the Derelict Reaper. And if it can be cured then what about all the people Shepard has killed because they though indoctrination was incurable. Are we going to tell Liara we could have saved her mum if we just knocked her out instead of violently murdering her before her eyes?

So apparently by this theory the whole even on the Citadel was just something in Shepard’s head, with Anderson and TIM representing his will to fight and indoctrination respectively. The problem I find is considering we have spent the last three games building up to a climactic fight of every species against the Reapers, I find that the stakes are high enough already. Compared with the looming apocalypse occurring outside, Shepard’s inner insecurities are simply not my concern and are so insignificant you cannot expect me to be emotionally invested. That is the point of a three act structure. Characters deal with their emotional problems they have by the end of Act 2, so Act 3 can focus on their struggle with the antagonist without their insecurity getting in the way. Even Final Fantasy characters get over their many issues by the end of the game.

If it works fine, but right now all I see is that people hate the endings so much that we would rather have Shepard reduced to a brainless slave to his enemy without any choice in the matter from us. To bad about the friendships and lovers we fostered over the three games, to bad we don’t know the fate of the fleet we spent the whole game gathering, too bad we cared more amount the characters then Shepard having some existentialist moment at the worst possible time.