User blog comment:SunyiNyufi/My idea of Mass Effect 3 ending with Indoctrination Theory and what would come after/@comment-4933332-20120331093552/@comment-3527219-20120331153116

“just imagine a love interest Liara who already watch her mother indoctrinated pleading with Shepard” - I would seriously be willing to give all my money to them to do that scene, cos I'm pretty sure that Liara's writer would be able to pull it off, and because I just finished Noveria on my ME1 re-play. ;__;

About the whole idea: I like it. It is really interesting, and IIRC Bioware even said somewhere that they planned to have a section in the game where you don't actually have control over Shepard, but dropped it because it was hard to implement gameplay-wise. But the idea is still solid, and would be an actual and also interesting twist to the story. However for it to integrate more into the story, I think there should be more conversations previous to Earth where Shepard gets to question their chances and his/her own humanity, because then and ending like this would make really sense.

However, while this indoctrinated ending idea is good on paper, it might not resonate well with most of the fans. Shepard is always displayed as a strong character, who even if he/she has doubts, can shake it of and focus on saving others/doing the mission. So when you change that end suddenly Shep becomes weak, and contradicts his/herself, players won't really like that, especially not of you are forced to kill people you might like during that time. Perfect example for that is how even the most badass renegade Shepards usually cure the genophage, because they just can't stand having to kill Mordin and Wrex. So it's a bit risque ending imho. Though it could be an alternate sort of “bad” ending...but it would require a bit too many resources to do... I mean, if you look at my idea, you can see that every end is intentionally very similar, and most of the differences occur over radio chatter or in most likely non-voiced cut scene, which aren't that hard to do. However having to write completely different dialogue trees for every possibly squad mate who could be the one convincing Shepard, and then record with them etc. It's a lot.

But in a perfect world where game developers aren't smug idiots, and they don't have deadlines, and have unlimited resources, endings like this would be present in pretty much every game, and I would love to play it! :D