I just did some reading on the Mass Effect 3 Indoctrination Theory.
Basically, fans posit that Shepard has been undergoing a gradual indoctrination process throughout the whole series. The most notable effects show up in ME3 i.e. the child that only Shepard seems to be able to see, the mysterious dream sequences, and the entire end sequences after getting hit by Harbinger's beam.
Apparently after that point, it's all in Shepard's head with Anderson and the Illusive man (who could not have possibly been there before Shepard) were both parts of his mind, each representing resisting the reapers or submitting to them respectively. When Shepard inadvertently shoots Anderson in the left gut, the scene afterwards shows Shepard holding the same spot on his own body with fresh blood.
Also, if you choose to destroy the reapers you will get a split-second sequence after the credit showing a torso trapped under concrete with the N7 insignia (presumably Shepard) take a breath. The location and debris indicate this is on Earth and not the citadel, suggesting that Shepard never left Earth after getting hit by Harbinger's beam.
It's a conspiracy man!
I just did some reading on the Mass Effect 3 Indoctrination Theory.
Basically, fans posit that Shepard has been undergoing a gradual indoctrination process throughout the whole series. The most notable effects show up in ME3 i.e. the child that only Shepard seems to be able to see, the mysterious dream sequences, and the entire end sequences after getting hit by Harbinger's beam.
Apparently after that point, it's all in Shepard's head with Anderson and the Illusive man (who could not have possibly been there before Shepard) were both parts of his mind, each representing resisting the reapers or submitting to them respectively. When Shepard inadvertently shoots Anderson in the left gut, the scene afterwards shows Shepard holding the same spot on his own body with fresh blood.
Also, if you choose to destroy the reapers you will get a split-second sequence after the credit showing a torso trapped under concrete with the N7 insignia (presumably Shepard) take a breath. The location and debris indicate this is on Earth and not the citadel, suggesting that Shepard never left Earth after getting hit by Harbinger's beam.
It's a conspiracy man!
I watched a ten or so minute video on this soon after I finished the game. It's actually pretty fucking amazing how well it all lines up. I don't know if it was Bioware's original intention or not (might be the biggest troll ever if it was and I honestly don't really think this is anything more than sublime coincidence), but considering the legwork that someone else did for them in discovering all this shit and linking it into a completely plausible scenario they probably should pay attention to some of it when they try to salvage their ending.
Huh? Don't complain, be happy some of the endings are good? Is that the extent of his reasoning?
Yeah, I don't know what he's trying to say. It doesn't even sound like he really does with his last words:
I guess what I'm saying is, do you waste your time on web forums complaining about crappy videogame endings? Or do you cherish the great ones and marvel at how lucky you were to get the chance to experience them?
It took him three pages of writing that I didn't read in order to press that point (apparently), and it's fucking stupid. I mean, I make fun of the crying over Mass Effect all the time, but it does serve a purpose: Bioware (and everyone else) is now very aware that people aren't going to let half-assed endings just slide. And yes, as much as I make fun of most of the people crying about it, most of them are completely correct. The following spoiler doesn't have any actual ending details or plot spoilers, but rather describes why, in my mind, the ending was functionally broken:
The majority of legitimate backlash over the ending isn't because it the plot didn't go the way people wanted it to or because they weren't happy with the decisions of the writers but because the ending is legitimately broken and structurally unsound. It literally could have been made by someone who had never played any of the three games and it literally could have been used for dozens of other games out there. It entirely feels like it was developed in isolation from the rest of the story (it probably was) and it shows. There's an art to ending a story and you have a lot of breathing room in how you do it, but this strayed so far from it that there's no way you can actually look at it and feel the least bit confident that they took it seriously. That, combined with the fact that the grand finale of a series which promoted the culminated effects of player choice as it's mantra didn't really account for them at all in the final hour lead the fans to lose their shit. As they probably should.
This guy is an idiot though. What he's saying boils down to "Hey, just be happy you have something to eat :)" No, motherfucker - I was promised steak, I paid for steak, and I'm kind of a little bit choked that you just gave me a plate of white rice.