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In remembrance of Marauder Shields

AuthenticM

AuthenticM

Son Altesse Sérénissime
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
30,553
For those of you who were around for the launch of Mass Effect 3 eight years ago now, there was a funny meme that came up about the last enemy the player fights in the game. This guy:

A9EC013A6CF1686CF768B43CACDF3A9B7301BB85


But here's the thing. What is it about this guy that some of us (all of us?) noticed him? Even before the meme, as I was finishing my first playthrough, when this guy popped up, I was taken aback by his health window at the top of the screen... even though there wasn't any reason for it. I thought to myself: "Marauder Shields... what? Was it always displayed this way?" And the answer was "yes"; it was, in fact, always displayed like this. Right?

Anyways. I'm currently watching a playthrough of Mass Effect 3. I haven't played the game since it came out. I platinumed it even before the first DLC was released. So I haven't seen the DLC, nor the extended ending that Bioware added through a patch. I'm looking forward to seeing all of this for the first time.
 
Era Uma Vez

Era Uma Vez

Member
Feb 5, 2020
3,287
Ah yes, the savior that wanted us to not see that ending at all costs.
Gone but not forgotten.
Solid meme.

But also, fuck this guy, it took me 10 tries to kill him on Insanity, because of the fucking aim going all over the place. (yes, i suck at shooters)
 
Enduin

Enduin

You look 40
Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,562
New York
I'm weird. I was really upset at the ending. The original endings before the Extended Cut endings made it seem like the whole Mass Relay System got destroyed. To me at the time that was the end of the ME universe. I couldn't see how they could continue after that. I was more upset and distraught over that than the less than ideal Star Child and 3 color ending, which sucked, but wasn't like end of the world. But then the EC came out and neutered the ending big time and made it clear the Mass Relays were just kind of dinged a bit. I didn't like that. Cause after my initial shock I realized that loss or major disruption of the Mass Relays opened up a lot of possibilities. Having the Council races now having to come up with a way to travel outside of Reaper Tech and the vast swaths of Milkway opening up with that which were never accessible before.

Just tackling the tremendous fallout of the Reaper War was a really interesting premise, but the EC kind of went out of its way to lessen that impact and make it clear everything was kind of hunky dory afterwards and removed a lot of that potential for future titles to explore.
 
VaporSnake

VaporSnake

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,603
Marauder Shields was just trying to protect us from the ending that awaited us, never forget his noble sacrifice.
 
McNum

McNum

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 26, 2017
5,246
Denmark
He lived as Marauder Shields, but died as Marauder Health.

We honor his sacrifice.
 
Lyre

Lyre

Alt Account
Banned
Feb 12, 2020
2,996
London
I wish the collector that Harbinger took over was the final boss in ME2, I loved that guy; love how he just spoke to himself for ages and you'd just tune him out.

Edit - Wait do I have that right? Who's the one that spoke loads in ME2?
 
Voytek

Voytek

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,860
Even though it's a joke that motherfucker became more memorable than a lot of video game bosses. I'll never forget you Marauder Shields.
 
doemaaan

doemaaan

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,727
Such a crazy, amazing time for Mass Effect 🙂. Someone turned Shields into a comic strip series.
 
Crushed

Crushed

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,743
i always liked that he was just hanging out behind a convenient wall of debris cover, just waiting for you to limp up close to him
 
Bessy67

Bessy67

Member
Oct 29, 2017
11,725
He tried his best to save us from that dumpster fire of an ending. Godspeed Marauder Shields
 
Z-Beat

Z-Beat

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
31,951
Bioware should've leaned into it and dropped a Marauder Shields DLC
 
OP
OP
AuthenticM

AuthenticM

Son Altesse Sérénissime
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
30,553
Like I said, I haven't seen anything of the DLC or the extended ending. But as for the original ending, I honestly thought that the indoctrination theory made the ending 100x more interesting than it was at face value.
 
Tahnit

Tahnit

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,965
God damnit they should have gone with the indoctrination theory it would have saved the game. But nope.
 
Odeko

Odeko

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Mar 22, 2018
15,180
West Blue
AuthenticM said:
Like I said, I haven't seen anything of the DLC or the extended ending. But as for the original ending, I honestly thought that the indoctrination theory made the ending 100x more interesting than it was at face value.
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When your ending is so bad fans are begging for it to have been an "it was all a dream" twist 😞😞😞
 
doemaaan

doemaaan

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,727
AuthenticM said:
Like I said, I haven't seen anything of the DLC or the extended ending. But as for the original ending, I honestly thought that the indoctrination theory made the ending 100x more interesting than it was at face value.
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I still believe that is the only ending to ME3. I've seen too much evidence to support it. So literally, Shepard is still lying in a pile of rocks somewhere and there's and war still going on.
 
TheMadTitan

TheMadTitan

Member
Oct 27, 2017
27,425
Enduin said:
I'm weird. I was really upset at the ending. The original endings before the Extended Cut endings made it seem like the whole Mass Relay System got destroyed. To me at the time that was the end of the ME universe. I couldn't see how they could continue after that. I was more upset and distraught over that than the less than ideal Star Child and 3 color ending, which sucked, but wasn't like end of the world. But then the EC came out and neutered the ending big time and made it clear the Mass Relays were just kind of dinged a bit. I didn't like that. Cause after my initial shock I realized that loss or major disruption of the Mass Relays opened up a lot of possibilities. Having the Council races now having to come up with a way to travel outside of Reaper Tech and the vast swaths of Milkway opening up with that which were never accessible before.

Just tackling the tremendous fallout of the Reaper War was a really interesting premise, but the EC kind of went out of its way to lessen that impact and make it clear everything was kind of hunky dory afterwards and removed a lot of that potential for future titles to explore.
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The first half of your post was how I felt about it. Star Child and the colors were eh, but the utter destruction of the Mass Relays was the death of the universe; it was utterly unrecoverable. There was no way they could cross from solar system to solar system in any reasonable amount of time, so a lot of races would just die from starvation once they ran out of food they could actually eat in the systems they were in.

The Extended Cut didn't show that the Relays were just dinged, though. They're shown as being significantly damaged by the pulse. But instead of being nothing but being atomized cosmic dust, they're broken but repairable. Maybe they salvage parts from their ships to get the things in working order, maybe they can gather debris in the immediate area to do it. The damage was vague and extensive enough to show that repairs would take a significant amount of time, but the galaxy would still be connected in a way you could plausibly continue to tell stories without having to handwave it.

There was no way individuals stranded in foreign systems were going to make it out of those systems and through empty space. Krogans and Asari, sure, but humans, Turians, Quarians, and so on, were going to die. And no doubt Earth itself would've been ransacked by competing forces given most of the galaxies humans probably weren't anywhere near Earth at that point.
 
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OP
AuthenticM

AuthenticM

Son Altesse Sérénissime
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
30,553
Chromie said:
What exactly is that theory?
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In short, at the end of the game, Shepard is actually indoctrinated by Harbinger, and everything the player sees is filtered through that. It kinda made sense; there were supporting elements. But the thing is the ending was so bad and disappointing that the theory made it way more interesting than it was.

EDIT:

I believe this was the first video to really signal boost the theory:

 
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TheMadTitan

TheMadTitan

Member
Oct 27, 2017
27,425
Chromie said:
What exactly is that theory?
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That Shepard was hallucinating thanks to the Reaper tech implanted in them that restored them to life and the ending we got was essentially Harbinger attempting to weaken Shepard's will so they wouldn't actually shut down the Reaper network. The theory relied on Bioware eventually putting out DLC to show the true ending where Shepard breaks free from Reaper control via willpower and ending the Reapers, essentially.
 
Chromie

Chromie

Member
Dec 4, 2017
5,283
AuthenticM said:



In short, at the end of the game, Shepard is actually indoctrinated by Harbinger, and everything the player sees is filtered through that. It kinda made sense; there were supporting elements. But the thing is the ending was so bad and disappointing that the theory made it way more interesting than it was.
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TheMadTitan said:
That Shepard was hallucinating thanks to the Reaper tech implanted in them that restored them to life and the ending we got was essentially Harbinger attempting to weaken Shepard's will so they wouldn't actually shut down the Reaper network. The theory relied on Bioware eventually putting out DLC to show the true ending where Shepard breaks free from Reaper control via willpower and ending the Reapers, essentially.
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Ah yes. I remember. This doesn't sound like something BioWare would ever be willing to do. It's been so long since Mass Effect was big. It's a shame to see how BioWare was this giant and now are a laughed at.
 
Enduin

Enduin

You look 40
Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,562
New York
Indoctrination theory would have been such a crazy ass thing for BioWare to pick up on. At the time it probably seemed like a terrible idea to adopt a fan theory like that and far more trouble than its worth, plus the potential hit to moral and pride to staff to upend their work on the real ending, but in hindsight that probably could have been a real game changer for the legacy of ME and BioWare as a whole. If nothing else it just would have made for a really crazy twist of events. The pieces were there and a sizable enough group of people really bought into it that they could have reasonably gotten away with saying it was their intention all along to do a fake out and release the real ending in a post launch free DLC.
 
Hey Please

Hey Please

Avenger
Oct 31, 2017
22,824
Not America
Chromie said:
Ah yes. I remember. This doesn't sound like something BioWare would ever be willing to do. It's been so long since Mass Effect was big. It's a shame to see how BioWare was this giant and now are a laughed at.
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What'd be really insane now is that if they can pull off a Daily Donald Trump, i.e. Bioware announces the plan for a sequel saying "Ackkhtually... the path was always meant to be Indoctrination. We just wanted to see how many of ME players would actually truly delve into the 'deepest lore'! "
 
Siggy-P

Siggy-P

Avenger
Mar 18, 2018
11,872
I dunno about you guys but the indoctrination ending is not a preferable alternative to me. It's a twist about as interesting as all of FRIENDS being in pheobes imaginations.

It's be just as dissapointing, more so even, and I'd rip into a "ah, Shepard was imaging it all along!" ending just as much, if not more, than I rip into the current bad endings.
 
Chromie

Chromie

Member
Dec 4, 2017
5,283
Hey Please said:
What'd be really insane now is that if they can pull off a Daily Donald Trump, i.e. Bioware announces the plan for a sequel saying "Ackkhtually... the path was always meant to be Indoctrination. We just wanted to see how many of ME players would actually truly delve into the 'deepest lore'! "
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I just wonder why they abandoned their dark energy thing.
 
PBalfredo

PBalfredo

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 26, 2017
4,514
Indoctrination theory was always dumb as shit.

It's just another in a long line of unimaginative fan theories that are some variant of "Wouldn't it, like, blow your mind if everything in the final third of movie/book/game was a dream/hallucination/delusion and really the hero was actually in a coma/dying/dead? Like whoooooaaaa!"
 
FluxWaveZ

FluxWaveZ

Persona Central
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
10,903
PBalfredo said:
Indoctrination theory was always dumb as shit.

It's just another in a long line of unimaginative fan theories that are some variant of "Wouldn't it, like, blow your mind if everything in the final third of movie/book/game was a dream/hallucination/mind-control and really the hero was actually in a coma/dying/dead? Like whoooooaaaa!"
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The thing is that it was better than what we got. It was a collective attempt at salvaging the actual ending in a manner approaching denial.
 
Taruranto

Taruranto

Member
Oct 26, 2017
5,070
Chromie said:
Ah yes. I remember. This doesn't sound like something BioWare would ever be willing to do. It's been so long since Mass Effect was big. It's a shame to see how BioWare was this giant and now are a laughed at.
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The theory never made much sense and was full of holes, it was basically people who couldn't rationalize why the ending sucked, despite the fact that it was clear since ME2 they had on idea on how to finish/continue the story.
 
Pilgrimzero

Pilgrimzero

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
8,129
I'm sad that I can't replay ME3 because to get all the DLC I missed I would have to spend like $40 plus bucks. Why is there no complete Edition!?!? The game isn't new, discount that shit!
 

Deleted member 31817

Nov 7, 2017
30,876
PBalfredo said:
Indoctrination theory was always dumb as shit.

It's just another in a long line of unimaginative fan theories that are some variant of "Wouldn't it, like, blow your mind if everything in the final third of movie/book/game was a dream/hallucination/delusion and really the hero was actually in a coma/dying/dead? Like whoooooaaaa!"
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It wasn't sold as a blowing your mind type twist, it was just a way to try and negate the terrible ending through denial lol
 
Enduin

Enduin

You look 40
Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,562
New York
Chromie said:
I just wonder why they abandoned their dark energy thing.
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Dark Energy was also a pretty mehh premise for the Reapers. Maybe better than the AI angle with clashed with a shit ton of the rest of the games, but both were just not good. The entire idea of trying to explain away the Reapers and give a rational behind their actions to me was always faulty. Having them just be an knowable menace was sufficient. They were Lovecraftian horror monsters, they just were scary space squids. Nothing more, nothing less.
 
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