No doubt about it – the ending of Mass Effect 3 ruffled a few tail feathers! Hard Core Mass Effect players have been in love with this game for years and really took it personal when Bioware grabbed hold of the reins in the last minutes of the trilogy and funneled the game into one of three scripted endings. The Mass Effect user base – players who cut their teeth on the power of choice – cried foul when they lost control at the moment of orgasm — at the peak of gaming ecstasy — when instead of deciding the fate of the universe they were left fumbling with the controls of a defibrillator.
One strong current in the mass effect river of thought is the indoctrination theory as an explanation to why Mass Effect 3 ended the way it did. I was thinking about doing a post on the indoctrination theory when I ran across “The Indoctrination Theory – A Documentary” Video from the CleverNoobNetwork that is presented here. Stick a fork in it – Done. No need for me to write a post on the subject since this video is obviously a labor of love and does a great job of dissecting the indoctrination theory.
What does BioWare have to say about the theory? BioWare’s Mass Effect Developer team fielded questions from fans at PAX East 2012. Producer Michael Gamble had this to say: “The indoctrination theory kinda illustrates how committed the fan base is (laughter). The thing is we don’t want to comment either way and here’s why. We don’t want to be prescriptive for how people interpret the ending – especially with the extended cut DLC coming out. . . we want the content to speak for itself and we will let it do so.” Full developer Q&A video HERE.
The Indoctrination theory video is an hour and twenty-four minutes long so pop some popcorn first, open a brewsky, and enjoy.
Rachni Queen: “I do not know what happened in the war. We only heard discordance. Songs the color of oily shadows. . . . We were only an egg. Hearing mother cry in our dreams – a Tome from Space hushed one voice after another. It forced the singers to resonate with its own sour yellow note.”
Alright, first off I’d like to thank stumbleupon for pulling me across your page.
I’m not going to go into much detail, bicker, or choose sides on an ending. But I would like to point out a few things for it. The two plausible fixes I see for the ending dlc is when you choose the destroy option, Shepard notices “Hey this place is going blow.” So the only logical action is to find a way off the ship, of coarse he finds a way out and while he’s being transported back it get’s cut off sometime before he’s all the way to the ground or the blast propels him towards the ground, thus the rubble pushed up around him. (Consider if the reapers beam hit him the rubble wouldn’t be piled around him as it is in the cut-scene. Going off the indoctrination Theory the rubble shouldn’t be around him that well placed and pushed up around his body, not saying that it’s not possible.) As for his Squad mates, it’s going to be more of a “We need help taking out the Reapers in space buy a bit of time Normandy, the team see’s the pulse wave coming from the Citidel and see’s it’s taking out Ships so they try to out run it. Best way to out run the wave? The Relay. That’s all I can say for the dlc.
The real issue I can see here is to quit focusing on the game aspect, yes all this theory plays well into the Mass Effect series. But the focus should be more on understanding the developers and their publisher. The developers did throw a bunch of ideas around maybe some of the ideas got put in game but later scrapped or lost focus on them leaving little clues and making room for theories.
Now think about this, you’ve put all your time and effort into a project for average people we’ll say you built a bird house and you’ve painted it, it’s got 2 stories whatever you want it to look like. You’ve put a lot of time love and effort into this project. All of your colleagues, classmates whatever have been watching it. Then when you’ve finished it they all say hey we love that but, where you painted a door on the back of it, why don’t you actually cut that out and add hinges to make it a real door? It’s not a real big deal unless you’ve already decided that you like it just the way it is and you don’t want to put anymore time then it needs into it. That’s how the developers more than likely feel about this. In the end yes they will compromise, but it’s not going to be the door with hinges you want it’s the little door knob they forgot to paint on that backdoor because they ran out of time for the projects dead line.
The Final piece I can take from this, is more towards the business aspect of EA. Time management and Budget. I can’t get to detailed in this subject because I haven’t seen EA’s accountant books but once they’ve already put money into a project the worse thing in business is to hear we need more time or more money. Either is really a bad notion but to say “We need both to re-write the entire ending because the fans don’t like how it ended.” EA is just going to look at the wad of cash they’ve already made and say “See this? This is real we already have this, that’s not going to change. Gamers will continue playing your games way after this one it’ll just be a small bump in the road, but if we have to hand you more money and it flops even with the slightest chance your cutting into our already large profit margin, and no matter how small of a cut into that profit margin is that’s a big definite no.”
That leaves you with two options, continue to re-write the ending without EA’s backing and more than likely hear them bicker while you work not only on this unscheduled project but other games your working on as well. Or bite EA’s bullet of “Fans are only a small portion to worry about we didn’t become a mass publisher by putting faith in the fans we became big by putting our faith in money and (already hand in money) profit.”