Dervish said
The indoctrination theory is my head canon. Besides, both TIM and Shepard are BOTH indoctrinated before ME3.Exhibit A)^ TIM back when he was Jack Harper trying to save his friend from a Reaper Device. His eyes take on the characteristic glowy Reaper tech look immediately after. This took place shortly after The First Contact War.Exhibit B) Oh look, Shepard just touched a fucking Reaper artifact that indoctrinated everyone you're fighting in that DLC. I mean, come on. It doesn't get any more damning than that.
This is the only reason I ever pick Destroy because, when you get the perfect ending with enough assets, it's clear Shepard somehow, miraculously survived his/her fall. I like the indoc theory, but I don't think they intended it to be canon, at all.
It's so well tailored, though, and thought out that I don't understand why Bioware didn't think to go with it. And all that crap with the kid... why do I care about a kid so much that I dream about him pretty much every night? Why not Mordin after he died or Ashley or anyone else who died or dies in the game? People Shepard actually cared for deeply and emotionally, instead of just a random kid who died. Because, let's face it, random civilians will die in a war of that scale and there's nothing you can do about it, but when your comrades and people you love sacrifice themselves countless times over it should start effecting you more than a bunch of strangers getting killed because of the Reaper incursion.
I don't understand that and it angered me that they didn't do something with the characters who died except put their plaque on a wall or you saying, "That's for Thane," after you pwn Leng for being a dick butt. Mass Effect was a masterpiece with a few things here and there that made absolutely no sense. I wish they'd done more for those that died, instead of just an honorable mention, but other than that, everything they did was what a sequel and an ending (minus the actual ending) to a saga should be and I applaud Bioware for that.
Mosis Tosis said
Yup, though I initially thought Control may be the best these are my exact issues with it. Just too many variables and too many hypothetical doomsday situations. Same goes for Synthesis, though that one is more of a question of ethics. I think that's why Destroy appeals to a lot of people. It's the best of the three endings: It has clear, understandable results with clear, understandable consequences. Control and Synthesis are so vague, you sort of pick them on faith. If you give them the benefit of the doubt (I.E. "My Shepard will only use the Reapers for good, I'm sure of it"), they're perfectly fine endings...but it requires too much speculation and wishful thinking to be "well written."
That's always an issue for me, but I can be very utilitarian when it comes to big decisions like that, which can end very badly, sometimes. But, yeah, the other two were too vague for me and my mind likes to wander, so obviously I'm going to come to the conclusion that some 50k years later, or maybe even less, Shepard-Reaper goes crazy and enslaves or destroys the rest of the galaxy. Synthesis is an ethical dilemma for me, as well, because you're pretty much playing god and not giving people any choice in the matter. Who knows what happens when everyone just becomes one race. Maybe it's a clever ruse to just make everyone into Reapers. If you think about it, it's what the Reapers were kind of trying to accomplish in the first place. They were the apex of Synthetic-Organic hybrids. What they were doing with the human Reaper, collecting millions of humans to mush them into one genetic slushy to create and preserve humanity in one design was pretty much what Synthesis does to the rest of the galaxy and what the Reapers would have done if they'd won. Or something akin to it.
