(XL) Was the Ending a Hallucination? - Indoctrination Theory Mark IV!

I understand the heat of the laser could kill shephard if it was close enough and not have to hit him directly but it doesn't show you it getting close enough before the white out.also while I was running down the hill there was one laser from harbinger that looked like it should have killed me lol as it was shot right in front of my shephard and shephard tripped a little bit forward into it and afterward I was like your lucky shephard. Shephard wasnt lucky because harbinger happened to miss more than 3 times, it was more like the luck of the draw. Shephard proved himself more worthy of being indoctrinated than vaporized. Also the leviathan said there was something different about shephard that had the reapers scared... WTF was it? His ability to lead a galaxy full of chaotic organisms?

dirksirs45 wrote:No watch the scene again and tell me you didn't actually see the laser hit shephards flesh. We just assumed it did because of how it was presented. Nothing can survive a shot from a reaper so shephard was not hit directly. Harbinger could easily direct it past shephard injuring him with the explosion of the mako next to him. He did the same thing to shephards squadmate to injure them. Plus harbinger didn't want to kill shephard. When I first watched the extended cut part where shephard takes his squadmate to the normandy I was like WTF are you doing shephard! Then harbinger just sits there and watches when he could directly shoot shephard or the normandy which would kill shephard. Plus the transport beam did have an interference which can be signals. Signals coming from reaper tech usually means indoctrination signals or maybe the reapers form of social media idk. Maybe the signal indoctrinated the missiles headed for that reaper defending the beam lol

Shepard.

A shepherd is a type of dog, someone who tends to sheep, or a guide. Commander Shepard is the main character of Mass Effect. Shephard is nothing at all, really.

Obviously Reapers' beam weapons have variable output. They're shown one-shotting everything from heavy cruisers to humanoids. Harbinger just had its output set low enough to severely injure but not kill Shepard. Because it doesn't want to kill Shepard, it wants to test Shepard. Killing Shepard would've been easy. They could've done that anytime they wished. But they want to give Shepard tests of his abilities that are very difficult but possible to pass. If he passes, then he will earn his place in a future Reaper. If he fails, he wasn't worthy anyway.

There's absolutely nothing to indicate the signal was anything more than missile guidance jamming.

yeah the typing on an android tablet and its autocorrect was too much of a hassle to care about the spelling but I thought that was irrelevant to the point I was making since all of my grammar was bad throughout that mess of text ;). Anyway it's not obvious harbinger dialed down his shot to injure Shepard because almost nothing was set in stone for the ending. I'm just throwing out another possibility as the idea of Shepard being hit by any form of laser still seems shaky. You still haven't mention anything about the interference from the beam which I was interested in your opinion of it as I always found that little bit of info suspicious.

Also Shepard is a shepherd, guiding the galaxy to safety. ;) yeah a shepherd is a person not a dog. Unless you are talking about a German shepherd you silly goose ;)

A sheep dog counts as a shepherd I guess

mmm

must be time for some awesome honey badger capers.....

dorktainian wrote:everything that happens after the 'white out' happens in that split second before shep gets hit, right up to the breath scene doesn't it.

only one outcome shows shep survive harbies blast.

This makes sense just from a Battle of Wills type thing. Like, as long as Shepard chooses to have the resolve, he/she will survive it just like he/she survived past getting straight up murdered at the beginning of ME2. Shepard got revived because of how valuable he/she was. In essence everything His/Her will had accomplished up to that point, his/her collective willpower thus far. Prevented the Reapers from being able to stop this cycle's "Shepherd" early on. Even when they send their goons in for the direct execution. The sheer chaotic and uncontrollable nature of Shepard is counterpart to the Reapers themselves. Where the Reapers are galactic demigods that control a universe in such an orderly and efficient manner as to have succeeded in bending the universe to their wills, uninterrupted for literal Eons. Shepard is counterpart to that as a mere human, lifespan? A meager 100 years. So fragile that something as trivial as just sleeping the wrong way can kill. But so chaotic that not even the Reapers can control him/her.

Someone who is passively chaotic. That's what you need to destroy the Reapers. Because it means even when Shepard is at his/her weakest point, he/she is just that much more volatile.

Also further justification for Shepard being able to break out of indoctrination. Is that most people probably ARE still too weak willed. Yes, the will is tested. But I think it's more so a huge lack of preparation. Most cycles the Reapers are here before anyone knows what the fuck. Little alone any clue that indoctrination is a thing. When you think about it, only our cycle had this much foreknowledge on this secret weapon itself.

A lot about our cycle is lucky just based on the fact that the Reapers are so EXPOSED. It's as if they only won consecutively because of the trump card of secrecy.

In this case in particular, I think indoctrination is more INDEFINITE than it is INEVITABLE. The Reapers themselves have their limits, but they usually don't have them tested. A less advanced lifeform would have a hard time out-willing a Reaper. I'm pretty convinced that Shepard pulled it off because of the unique circumstances. As Rif has mentioned in the past, you'd expect there to be resilient force surrounding Shep in the rubble. Such as squad mates, the whole galaxy.

A proper reveal would've lead to something like the united forces realizing Shep was out for the count and them basically taking the attitude "Shepard worked so hard to protect ALL of us. The entire galaxy. Now it is our turn to protect him/her".

Terramine wrote:Also further justification for Shepard being able to break out of indoctrination. Is that most people probably ARE still too weak willed. Yes, the will is tested. But I think it's more so a huge lack of preparation. Most cycles the Reapers are here before anyone knows what the fuck. Little alone any clue that indoctrination is a thing. When you think about it, only our cycle had this much foreknowledge on this secret weapon itself.

A lot about our cycle is lucky just based on the fact that the Reapers are so EXPOSED. It's as if they only won consecutively because of the trump card of secrecy.

In this case in particular, I think indoctrination is more INDEFINITE than it is INEVITABLE. The Reapers themselves have their limits, but they usually don't have them tested. A less advanced lifeform would have a hard time out-willing a Reaper. I'm pretty convinced that Shepard pulled it off because of the unique circumstances. As Rif has mentioned in the past, you'd expect there to be resilient force surrounding Shep in the rubble. Such as squad mates, the whole galaxy.

A proper reveal would've lead to something like the united forces realizing Shep was out for the count and them basically taking the attitude "Shepard worked so hard to protect ALL of us. The entire galaxy. Now it is our turn to protect him/her".

ME1: Shepard gets out of the rubble, saving others
ME2: Shepard pulls others out of the rubble
ME3: Others pull Shepard out of the rubble?
MEA?: Others get out of the 'rubble' (in some sense, even symbolically), saving Shepard?

And THEN we finally fully move on from almost anything Shepard haha

I'm more inclined to believe Mass Effect: Andromeda IS rubble.

smash016 wrote:I'm more inclined to believe Mass Effect: Andromeda IS rubble.

Pretty much, Bioware will have to pull something incredibly spectacular to make me interested again. Andromeda just being a solid game wont cut it because I will always have that ending at the back of my mind, that voice telling me that all of this is happening even as Shepard never got out of the rubble, that the war never properly ended.

There will be no pre-order for me, I will look at the reviews but unless it is something like straight 10s I wont touch the game until I have an idea of whether this will just be yet another burn.

smash016 wrote:I'm more inclined to believe Mass Effect: Andromeda IS rubble.

This.

just a thought.

in the first mass effect 4 trailer there were some recognisable things, such as ship wreckage and krogans and ruins and stuff. where does the second trailer and andromeda come into the equation?

i don't get it. what the fuck are they playing at?

Andromeda ain't rubble. it's damage limitation.

dorktainian wrote:just a thought.

in the first mass effect 4 trailer there were some recognisable things, such as ship wreckage and krogans and ruins and stuff.  where does the second trailer and andromeda come into the equation?  

i don't get it.  what the fuck are they playing at?

Andromeda ain't rubble.  it's damage limitation.

Easy.  They're playing at making people reminiscent of the good memories of Mass Effect because when people are deciding whether to buy, EA wants them looking toward the pleasant past and not the shit-blisteringly awful future.

Rifneno wrote:
Easy.  They're playing at making people reminiscent of the good memories of Mass Effect because when people are deciding whether to buy, EA wants them looking toward the pleasant past and not the shit-blisteringly awful future.

QFT.

Andromeda by the looks is a fucked up love child of Mass Effect 1 & Dragon Age Inquisition. I feel it's going to have the look and feel of ME with a lot of the mechanics that DA:I had. If that leak a while back had any ounce of truth in it, we can expect to explore worlds then head back to the ship to fuck about with a galaxy table or something for 9 hours, that's pure speculation though.
I loved ME 1, no matter how dated it is now it's still a pretty good game, but i'm not expecting Andromeda to be anything but an echo of what it was.

WeAreHarbinger wrote:

Rifneno wrote:
Easy.  They're playing at making people reminiscent of the good memories of Mass Effect because when people are deciding whether to buy, EA wants them looking toward the pleasant past and not the shit-blisteringly awful future.

QFT.

Andromeda by the looks is a fucked up love child of Mass Effect 1 & Dragon Age Inquisition. I feel it's going to have the look and feel of ME with a lot of the mechanics  that DA:I had. If that leak a while back had any ounce of truth in it, we can expect to explore worlds then head back to the ship to fuck about with a galaxy table or something for 9 hours, that's pure speculation though.
I loved ME 1, no matter how dated it is now it's still a pretty good game, but i'm not expecting Andromeda to be anything but an echo of what it was.

judging by the way EA released battlefront, i'm expecting a stripped down shell of a game with all real exploration content being released as premium cost dlc. (cough....destiny......cough......damn you activision)

if that happens they can stick their game right up their fucking arses.

dorktainian wrote:

WeAreHarbinger wrote:

Rifneno wrote:
Easy.  They're playing at making people reminiscent of the good memories of Mass Effect because when people are deciding whether to buy, EA wants them looking toward the pleasant past and not the shit-blisteringly awful future.

QFT.

Andromeda by the looks is a fucked up love child of Mass Effect 1 & Dragon Age Inquisition. I feel it's going to have the look and feel of ME with a lot of the mechanics  that DA:I had. If that leak a while back had any ounce of truth in it, we can expect to explore worlds then head back to the ship to fuck about with a galaxy table or something for 9 hours, that's pure speculation though.
I loved ME 1, no matter how dated it is now it's still a pretty good game, but i'm not expecting Andromeda to be anything but an echo of what it was.

judging by the way EA released battlefront, i'm expecting a stripped down shell of a game with all real exploration content being released as premium cost dlc.  (cough....destiny......cough......damn you activision)

if that happens they can stick their game right up their fucking arses.  

As far as I, and I hope a lot of us, are concerned they can stick it right up their fucking ass no matter how they handle DLC.  They fucked us on a real conclusion to the story of Shepard and the Reapers.  Nothing else matters.

"Together we can build a future greater than any one of us can imagine."  - Admiral Hackett, Extended Cut Destroy Ending

"As the line between synthetic and organic disappears, we may transcend mortality itself to reach a realm of existence I cannot even imagine." - EDI, Extended Cut Synthesis Ending

"I will create a future with limitless possibilities." - ShepReaper, Extended Cut Control Ending

"There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own you cannot even imagine it.  I am beyond your comprehension.  I am Sovereign." - Nazara, Mass Effect 1


I can't shake the feeling the Milky Way was screwed no matter what.  Even the Destroy ending makes an oblique reference towards achieving a Reaper's point of view.  Control claims to have achieved it but fails to elaborate, suggesting ShepReaper can't actually imagine it but rather simply assumes he can or will soon.  I don't think I need to further point at the parallel between EDI's line and Sovereign's.


EDIT: It finally occurred to me that ShepReaper's ending is all about Shepard droning on about serving the many... like a subservient drone taking orders from the many whether he realizes it or not.  In Control indeed.

Yeah I'd noticed these Nazarian echoes, too, in the endings. However, my interpretation is quite different. Scary Door.

I don't see anything creepy or foreboding about what Hackett said.  He's just referring to the fact that this is the first cycle in billions of years that actually has a future.  While the Lovecraftian horrors like talking about things being beyond human comprehension, "not being able to imagine" is a very common colloquialism.  "Wendy's food is so fucking bad, you can't even imagine.  The difference between Wendy's and sewage is that sewage contains less hepatitis."

The music for control and synthesis were very dark and unsettling.  The music for destroy is not.  Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

I don't consider the Extended Cut Synthesis music to be dark and unsettling at all. That would be Control (and not all of it, just a constant current). Synthesis instead feels progressive, light, and calming.

But it also doesn't give me any feelings of victory, jubilance, and it doesn't sound as necessarily 'wonderful' as SynthEDI claims it to be. I even feel slightly sad at it. I mean, that's even an element of the Destroy music, but more in the sense of mourning those who died. In Synthesis, I start feeling I should be mourning some element of the whole galaxy being 'lost'. Instead of "It was worth it" that I feel with (non-Vaporize?) Destroy, I think "Was it worth it?". (And for Control "...it was worth it?....")







Anyway, what I mean is that all convey some sense of winning, but I feel more complex about it after that. Control and Synthesis both do not give the galactic resolution that Destroy does, but I also don't think Destroy is shown all that differently from the other two - and this includes that the narration speaks of collective (not individual) imaginings of the future.. even in Destroy. And previously, and I could be wrong, it was Nazara/Sovereign that spoke in such a way.
Destroy - We (cooperative galaxy) all imagine a future we can build
Control - I (collective entity) see possible futures that I will create
Synthesis - We (collective galaxy) transcend to unimaginable futures(/realms?) that we will reach
Refuse - Rejects it all, ending up winning as a cooperative entity (so to speak; relying more on beacons for next cycle instead of the war effort + crucible)

Jesus tapdancing Christ.  What is it with this board and this defeatism bullshit?

Destroy wins.  I don't know how much clearer this could've been.  Shepard doesn't get indoctrinated eyes, the Reaper avatar disintegrates as Shepard fights off the indoctrination (seemingly for good if the symbolism is anything to go by), the gun morphs as the illusion is stripped away and reality begins to set in, and then he wakes up in rubble.  One of the major factors in IT's founding was destroy being represented so differently, and entirely positively.

Why the fuck would they even give a choice if all 3 are failure?

Easy there with the giant facepalms. No, I think Destroy won.

I'm just curious about what we wake up to. And whether it'll really feel as much like winning in the longer run to many players.


Garrus: If they're lucky, they grew up thinking the galaxy is basically a decent place.Some rough spots here and there, but for the most part, life makes sense. Now they find out it was all a lie. They wake up to see these things in the dark that just want to destroy everyone they ever cared about. If they survive, there'll be a lot of angry orphans out there looking for answers.

I like to think we'll just have some big weapon firing and killing all Reapers and we get a pretty-much solid happy victory party. But I'm not inclined to believe that. Within the ending though, OF COURSE I think Destroy WON. What you said, isn't what I was getting at at all. Breath Destroy to me is like Full Suicide Mission Victory on overdrive to me. Its still the real plot-structural ending, even if RP otherwise is allowed (do your job or get vaporized, still technically a choice, ha).

If this is just still part of a series for Shepard (in some sense), it doesn't just 'end' with Destroy. We wake up then....? Its just happy and get drinks at Rio? I really am not inclined to believe that. Every injury can leave scars. And every mental trauma can.

I'll sum it up: I don't think Shepard became indoctrinated with Destroy. I think he survived the indoctrination process. And this can still mean harm and continued difficulty, just as with surviving typical real-world indoctrination. But at least over half of Shepard's story (trilogy-wide, not just ME3 or ME2-ME3) has been an insistence that he'd rather have that happen than give up the fight when it is most important.



EDIT:Its not really a bad thing to note the painful cost of war and resistance, musically or otherwise. Its just part of the reality.
The Crucible may employ punishment-based psychology (losing EDI, losing Geth if around, what-ifs about synthetics, painful galactic recovery if Low EMS, difficult recovery if High EMS, losing the shorter term potential for technologies) to avoid Destroy, but its actually still outweighed by the lessons the trilogy has of things like Control and Synthesis being primarily temptations that can be very bad things (or at the very least, more bad than good) when not measured correctly and with proper context and utilization.

Me saying Destroy music is a little sad isn't me saying its a bad choice. Its really like any post-war film music. It maintains some somber tone because to not do so, ignores the people and events that led up to the victory. As far as IT goes, the 'Nazara-type language', if its even legit, could still just be the lingering effects of the unreality before waking up and leaving the experience behind - AKA still a win.

SwobyJ wrote:Easy there with the giant facepalms.

I didn't realize the resolution differences until after the post. And I was way too lazy to resize. Shitty image hosting sites don't show full resolution well if it's larger than "medium size".

No, I think Destroy won.

I'm just curious about what we wake up to. And whether it'll really feel as much like winning in the longer run to many players.

What, you mean the amount of damage done and lives lost? Well of course. The only way this could've possibly ended without losses too catastrophic for comparison to anything else was if we stopped the Reapers somehow from getting to the Milky Way at all. Sadly, that was never going to happen. It's a terrible old shtick. You can never stop the villain's plan, you can only beat him after he obtains godhood or whatever.

Garrus: If they're lucky, they grew up thinking the galaxy is basically a decent place.Some rough spots here and there, but for the most part, life makes sense. Now they find out it was all a lie. They wake up to see these things in the dark that just want to destroy everyone they ever cared about. If they survive, there'll be a lot of angry orphans out there looking for answers.

I like to think we'll just have some big weapon firing and killing all Reapers and we get a pretty-much solid happy victory party. But I'm not inclined to believe that. Within the ending though, OF COURSE I think Destroy WON. What you said, isn't what I was getting at at all. Breath Destroy to me is like Full Suicide Mission Victory on overdrive to me. Its still the real plot-structural ending, even if RP otherwise is allowed (do your job or get vaporized, still technically a choice, ha).

I meant that destroy wins the battle against indoctrination. Why would destroy win the war with the Reapers? IT's basic concept is that the decision chamber isn't real and it's all in Shepard's hallucinating mind. That it's merely a metaphor for the indoctrination process. Given that our very base concept states that destroy never really happened, why would the Reapers have died?

You know what kind of IT'er thinks that the Reapers are really destroyed? Jessica Merizan, that's fucking who.

If this is just still part of a series for Shepard (in some sense), it doesn't just 'end' with Destroy. We wake up then....? Its just happy and get drinks at Rio? I really am not inclined to believe that. Every injury can leave scars. And every mental trauma can.

This "drink at Rio" shit again? Why do people give so much credence with literally just one line of dialogue from a douchebag that nobody even likes and a lot of people sacrificed at the Collector Base purely for the lulz?

I don't pay any credence to Extended Wrist Cut. It's the worst thing since Hitler. They were literally forced to do it. It doesn't count IMO.

SwobyJ wrote:I'll sum it up: I don't think Shepard became indoctrinated with Destroy. I think he survived the indoctrination process. And this can still mean harm and continued difficulty, just as with surviving typical real-world indoctrination. But at least over half of Shepard's story (trilogy-wide, not just ME3 or ME2-ME3) has been an insistence that he'd rather have that happen than give up the fight when it is most important.

The real world has nothing like Reaper indoctrination though. Honestly, I don't think Shepard will suffer any noteworthy ill-effects from it. While all that crap at the end was symbolic and metaphorical, the way Starbrat was just sort of... atomized indicated to me that the Reaper influence on Shepard's mind has been purged for good. Things start turning back to normal. He wakes up in the rumble mentally healthy. Probably physically devastated, but mentally healthy.

There's also the rachni queen. She, too, resisted indoctrination and as far as we know has suffered no ill effects from it.

EDIT:Its not really a bad thing to note the painful cost of war and resistance, musically or otherwise. Its just part of the reality.
The Crucible may employ punishment-based psychology (losing EDI, losing Geth if around, what-ifs about synthetics, painful galactic recovery if Low EMS, difficult recovery if High EMS, losing the shorter term potential for technologies) to avoid Destroy, but its actually still outweighed by the lessons the trilogy has of things like Control and Synthesis being primarily temptations that can be very bad things (or at the very least, more bad than good) when not measured correctly and with proper context and utilization.

Me saying Destroy music is a little sad isn't me saying its a bad choice. Its really like any post-war film music. It maintains some somber tone because to not do so, ignores the people and events that led up to the victory. As far as IT goes, the 'Nazara-type language', if its even legit, could still just be the lingering effects of the unreality before waking up and leaving the experience behind - AKA still a win.

I don't see any "Nazara-type language" though. There's one line that's also common colloquialism. In control and synthesis, the whole speech has a very Reapery tone and as a whole seems very foreboding. Destroy does not. Not-Hackett's words also make sense. A caveman couldn't imagine today's society, why would someone born only a hundred or so years from now be able to imagine how our society will look and how our lives will be after a million years of progress? This is a classic case of looking way, way too hard.