I've cooled down on ME3's ending over the years, but I can understand the urge to replace the 'magic button' endings with one that fits in the established lore better, even if indoctrination means the series is left incomplete, haha. Better than most 'the character was dead/dreaming the whole time!' stories IMO.Įven though it's not true, it was another missed opportunity of Bioware's not to have some kind of Shepard/Indoctrination as at least a minor sub-plot (maybe you find the tech necessary to fight it off), alongside never really going into much detail about Shepard's revival, and the scrapped Dark Energy storyline they set up in ME2. It obviously wasn't a 'true' theory, but as far as fan theories go it fit with the lore of the series from everything we knew about indoctrination surprisingly well. Like, especially those final conversations, because artists and SFX teams put those effects there specifically.

Maybe they're right not to when so many people think it's trash because they can't / don't want to understand it.īut indeed, it's amazing how well the Rachni Queen description matched up with those dream sequences, and the sound effects / screen edge effects playing during the final Anderson/TIM conversations, if that was all completely coincidental. Maybe Bioware have missed out on an opportunity here to adopt the theory as canon. It ties the core themes of the trilogy together amazingly well. It may not be real, but it's hard to argue the theory was trash if you understand it. The idea is that the choices you're being given are being presented to you in a way that is trying to sway you into making a decision that you might not otherwise make. If anything it adds even more weight to the final three choices since they'd be a mental battle rather than a physical battle (lack of a traditional final boss fight like Mass 2 had lending the theory more weight there).

It doesn't invalidate any of the choices you made, even the final three choices. Like you guys have seen the theory mentioned, read a brief snapshot of it, and jumped to a conclusion as crazy as ' it was all in Shep's head lol' or ' IT takes away all agency' and just run with it. Seriously, just google the definition of the word). I swear people who say things like this have no idea what the theory really is, or how indoctrination works (it's not pure mind control, it's indoctrination.

Mass effect 3 indoctrination theory