While the games never fully explain the exact methods employed by the Reapers to achieve this, through reading the codices and conversations with people who have been “liberated” from indoctrination, the experience is similar to that of hearing a whisper that you can’t ignore, compelling you to do things that you do not want to do.

Indoctrination is the special brand of brainwashing that the Reapers employ in order to “convert” organics to their cause. I can’t mark them because they make up the entire article… Please note: I’ll be talking about the Mass Effect 3 endings, so beware spoilers. So I’m going to go through some ideas the IT poses, and then pose my patented “Athena’s Theory of Shepard’s Indoctrination.” While my ideas are a little different than those imposed by the IT (of course they are), there’s quite a bit of information out there on it, and a number of YouTube videos. Imagine my delight when I searched the interwebs for any information on the possibility of an indoctrinated Shepard and saw that I wasn’t completely crazy other people thought this, too, and gave birth to the Indoctrination Theory (IT). More strange things started happening, until I played through the ending sequence (of the original, and then extended, endings), sat back, and thought to myself: And then I started (gasp) remembering events from previous games. And then a few more odd things graced the screen. But I tucked the information away and continued playing. So there I was, playing through Mass Effect 3, and I noticed some strange happenings in the game that didn’t really make sense.

When I first started playing Mass Effect, I was very careful to not spoil the plot for myself, other than finding out that seemingly everyone hated the endings.

Mass effect indoctrination theory 2019