Belial wrote:If the beacon offered immunity to indoctrination, there wouldn't be all those stories from the prothean extinction of prothean colonies falling to indoctrinated agents.
Ditto for prothean VIs being able to detect all stages of indoctrination. It's far more likely that prothean VIs only trigger on the "you actually have reaper tech inside you, I can see it with x-rays" level of indoctrination.
Unless they were built by survivors after the purge who would've had time to study indoctrination and come with way's to detect it, see the Asari goddess for a possible example of this.
Belial wrote:If Shepherd were to fall to indoctrination it should have happened on the dead reaper, after being hit by object Rho or at the collecter base.
Arguably she did. The thing about indoctrination is that it doesn't magically convey the reapers' wishes to you. It just softens you up, makes you more open to suggestion, and also unhinges you a little bit (or a lot). The scientists on the derelict reaper (and the salarian research subjects on virmire) weren't working coherently on the reapers' agenda, because there was no one to communicate that agenda to them, no conscious mind to sculpt their newly pliable brains. Instead, they just went ratshit nuts, because the reaper's emanations made them extremely suggestible and unstable and then...failed to suggest anything coherent, because it didn't have a brain.
So it's fully possible that shepard is fully or partially through the "softening up" stage of indoctrination throughout most of the game, and waiting to be activated by a suitably strong-willed reaper, much like Rana Thanoptis, who the game offers as a conveniently-timed example of a character who appeared to be totally okay until she was triggered and it was revealed that she'd been indoctrinated for years, since you first met her.
I didnt realise who Rana was until 2 mins ago when I googled her, kinda makes the 'shepherd's undectectable indoctrination' theory a little awkward if you blew Rana away in ME though. Other than that, yeah I see your point, this makes me sad.
Belial wrote:Also, the synthesis ending makes even less sense than all the other endings. "A new DNA"? What does that mean? And how does everyone get circuitry in them? How does that change anything? If organic/synthetic synthesis is the solution to everything forever, why aren't cyborgs and the Zha'til already perfect and acceptable? And where did the silicon to make all those arbitrary circuits come from? Did it come from handwavey space magic? It did? Graaaarr.
Don't care! Space Magic makes Joker and EDI together so Space Magic makes your arguent invalid! I am a 9 year old girl! Squeeeeeeeeeeeeee!