On Mass Effect 3’s Indoctrination Theory a.k.a. It Was All a Dream

Lucas Versantvoort / October 2, 2014

To say that Mass Effect 3 was a disappointment of cataclysmic proportions is one hell of an understatement, but to recap in what ways it failed isn’t the point of this article. I would much rather respond to the popular theory many enthusiastic gamers have developed to (desperately) make sense of out of Mass Effect 3’s unsatisfying ending: the Indoctrination Theory (IT).

I’m going to break a key rule by not recapping the game’s ending. If you’re reading this article, I think it’s fair to assume you’re already very familiar with the IT... What the indoctrination theory proposes is that the ending takes place inside Shepard’s head. Shepard is in fact being indoctrinated by the Reapers without his knowing it (obviously). This indoctrination process starts during the final dash toward the Conduit when Shepard is hit by Harbinger’s laser and a white light engulfs the screen. From this point onward, we enter Shepard’s mind which balances his own subconscious desires (destroying the Reapers and saving the galaxy) against Harbinger’s indoctrination, attempting to convince Shepard of the futility of his actions and that he should just surrender.

            Although this is a well-conceived theory, I have two problems with it: one, it goes against the game’s main themes and what the trilogy has tried to be; two, it’s entirely unsatisfying from an emotional viewpoint. The whole point of the game is to create drama, to stir the player’s emotions. You have to unite the galaxy against the Reapers. This presents all kinds of possibilities for drama, like the final conversations you have with your squad mates, etc. It’s because you care about the characters (or at least some of them) that you care about the outcome of the game’s story. The Mass Effect games were never a Star Trek-ian scientific, intellectual experiment, but a giant, space opera à la Star Wars. The IT completely goes against this, because it makes the entire ending play inside of Shepard’s mind. The main conflict of the entire trilogy, saving the galaxy from the Reapers, thus remains unresolved! Which brings me to how unsatisfying the ending is even if you accept the IT. For all its intellectual merits, how can anyone say that the IT turns a terrible canon ending into a fantastic, cathartic experience? If anything, it’s putting a Band-Aid on an open wound and rationalizing away that the ending BioWare delivered wasn’t in fact rushed or poorly conceived, but a towering, intellectual achievement. The main problem of the canon ending, namely that it leaves the viewer confounded instead of emotionally worn out, remains unresolved if one accepts the IT ending. It basically makes the ending fit into the It Was All A Dream category, a type of ending that firmly resides in Cliché Valley. The ‘it was all a dream’ idea is probably the most pointless ending explanation in existence, because when you’re well into the ending, it suddenly does a 180 and tells you that it didn’t really happen, but it was all in someone’s head. Well, then what was the ever-loving point and where is my real ending? This is Mass Effect, a Star Wars-ian space opera. Where is my proper ending? Where is my emotional catharsis?

According to the IT, that small final scene with a wounded Shepard breathing, is when he wakes up. Well if that’s true, then his ‘dream’ was one big useless diversion and only now can we actually start saving the earth. But of course, the game ends… According to Mass Effect wiki user Awayorafk, “Shepard waking up may lead you to think "yea, so now what?" but you see, thats [sic] the beauty of it. we know our cycle wins the war, as evident by the stargazer scene. How they actually pulled that off post-Shepard-getting -fucked-up is up to the subjective player.” The same criticism applies to this. Leaving something as the whole point of the trilogy up to the gamer isn’t artful; it’s ridiculous. So, let me get this straight. You spend the entire trilogy gathering allies, preparing the fight against the Reapers, etc. only to have the game end with, 'oh yeah, you know you already won, because of the Stargazer scene, so now you get to wonder how you did what you’ve actually wanted to do for three entire games…?' Yeah, I don’t think so.

            Again, when I first delved into the IT, I was quite surprised by how many details supported the theory. It’s well thought out. The problem remains however that it provides zero emotional satisfaction which is what the ending should have done in the first place and turns the ending into ‘ahh, you see, it was all in his head, so that explains everything’. Yeah, it explains everything, because you can explain absolutely everything using that theory: ‘But wait…what if it was all in his head?...Genius!’ Implying that the ending took place in Shepard’s head suggests that no ending actually took place which might even be worse than the canon ending. 

Source:

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Awayorafk/Believe._The_Indoctrination_Theory.

Image: 

http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/8620/indoct.jpg