Wilson didn't try to kill Shepard.

[LizardWizard]

Wilson didn't try to kill Shepard. Miranda deduced that Shepard was ready for a "trial run", said "trial run" being the clean up of all Project Lazarus assets. Project success required for Shepard to be brought back as he was, physically and psychologically. If he was not able to survive the cleanup, he would have been part of the clean up for a failed project. This is the sort of thinking that characterizes Miranda. He's brought back under circumstances where he's forced to rely on Cerberus' help, developing some form of trust with them, which suits Cerberus. Wilson might have sold some secrets, but he was fully invested into the completion of Project Lazarus as his logs reveal.

Anything to prove or disprove this hypothesis?

[T02my]

Wilson was an agent of Shadow Broker, who tried to sell Shepard's body for Collectors. Definitely he did not need Shepard alive, MECHs were ordered to start shooting at her without any attempts to stun or something.

[SwobyJ]

My own interpretation is that:
-Yes, Wilson WAS trying to kill Shepard, wipe away the evidence of how it happened, and get paid by the Shadow Broker because he wasn't being treated with respect by Miranda.
-BUT TIM actually knew all this was up, or at least predicted it. So the whole thing actually did still act as a sort of trial run for Shepard, to test just how well he acts against weirdly high odds. Yes, TIM has made it damn clear that he's willing to toss assets away just to make sure he has Shepard do amazing feats.


But you know what? IMO the point of the Lazarus Project story is that there is no objective truth to find about it. Its all perspective and opinion on things, without clear 'answers'. Or at least more of that kind of thing than we'd have found in most of ME1. Most players are expected to just go along with Miranda and forget about Lazarus, but, but....

You can just as well believe what you believe, OP, and it works. Maybe Wilson really didn't plan for Shepard to die, and really was surprised that Shepard survived. Maybe Miranda was killing off a loose end to their whole practice of Shepard, and she just doesn't tell us about this later because while she can like and love and respect Shepard, she'll always have secrets, compartmentalized nature going on.

~~~

Or I'm all wrong here and Blitz is right. That's certainly the most obvious take, and I admit, the most likely.

[LizardWizard]

Thanks for the replies, but I was wondering if there was anything that directly disproved that hypothesis. Wilson working for the Shadow Broker (though it's more likely that he was just another seller to him than directly working for him) doesn't, as the Shadow Broker has shown no hostility or bias against Shepard in the past when he tried to strike a deal with him in Mass Effect 1. It only makes Wilson a likely liability in the eyes of the illusive man and Miranda, who both hate the threat the Shadow Broker presents with the potential of revealing their covert activities and who have established their dislike for anyone who acts behind Cerberbus' back.

It sounds like it is subjective. Thanks for your reply SwobyJ. I guess the only thing that suggests he was guilty is the lack of proof that one would expect to appear to show Cerberus' backstabbing nature had Wilson really not been guilty.

Still, from my point of view, this adds a whole new context to when Miranda refers to the situation as a "field test" when they escape, when Miranda is found already waiting in the shuttle bay evacuation area (conveniently were everyone was supposed to go to in the case of such an emergency) instead of being trapped by the mechs or making her way to the shuttle area, where it only makes sense she should have reestablished contact with Commander Shepard were it not a test. When Shepard first regains consciousness, Wilson's numbers are right (which is why Shepard is able to remember the moment clearly), so Miranda puts him under sedation so she can prepare the final phase of the tests and the cleanup of the first stage of the Lazarus project (so no loose cannon is left which can reveal weaknesses or data collected on Shepard's restoration) and proceed to the second part, the provisioning and manning of the SR-2 Normandy vessel to deal with the Collectors. Wilson is only surprised to see Shepard awake, given Miranda's objections and actions, and gets dangerously close to giving away Miranda's part in the plot, that she was not supposed to be anywhere within the evacuation area (but you were -supposed to be in- as opposed to -dead-), which is why he's shot immediately. He is a traitor to both Miranda and the Illusive Man in that he was willing to sell information off to the Shadow Broker, which made him an unviable candidate for leading R&D in Normandy, forcing Cerberus to fall back to their contingency plan and search for a replacement, encouraging Shepard to do so with what could only have been a second choice for a pro-human covert ops group like Cerberus, the salarian geneticist Mordin Solus.

[T02my]

Collectors were hunting for Shepard's corpse, they probably did need Shepard revived intact as he/she was for them own research probably. I think that Collectors could be interesting in Project Lazarus and perhaps they were aiding to the project through IM. What if Illusive Man was long-time ago indoctrinated, so Reapers were manipulating him as they wanted to? I'm saying "probably", because Reapers in Drew Karpyshyn's version basically were the machines what tried to find a solution for Dark Energy problem, but without destroying all organics. And Reapers in ME 3 were trying to find a solution for countless wars between organics and synthetics, it fits in my theory written above, but I don't count ME3 as canon game by plot.

Shadow Broker (SB) has a reputation for being an actual broker for the long time, so it was not in his interest to compromise the deal with Collectors. And Wilson could be tired of working for the idea and when he received a good offer... you know.

The station where Lazarus Project was running had security only of MECHs and only two people expect Wilson had combat experience: Jacob (chief of security) and Miranda. Maybe because of Miranda's "perfection" behaviour Wilson did not believe in her abilities to survive, it was Wilson's mistake number one. Second mistake - he did not predict that Miranda could force Shepard to awake from coma, so maybe that's why MECHs were shooting at Shepard, they simply have a program to execute all alive organics but don't touch "dead" bodies.

And why Miranda was sure about Wilson's guilt? He was responsible for MECHs software I guess.

[LizardWizard]

Wilson didn't have access to engineering where he was found and where he claims he headed to try to and find a solution to the sabotage, as Jacob points out. He would not be responsible for the defense grid software if he didn't even have access there. That's the only bit that truly places any suspicion on Wilson, but then again, Shepard himself has no problem getting over there as well. Considering the only other option for Wilson would have been to head to the evacuation area and leaving the project he had invested so much in in failure, it seems like a plausable explanation. Since he was a spy for the Shadow Broker, he also might have procured access during one of his intel theft sessions.

From Wilson's point of view, selling information to the Shadow Broker was selling information on a project he had invested himself whilst receiving little to no appreciation from Miranda, the only other significant project lead. It seems unlikely he'd purposely injure himself needlessly and let the mechs attack him if he was responsible for the sabotage, or that he would remain on the station when it happens. Wilson knew Shepard could and had awakened from a comma and was only sedated. He also doesn't have anywhere near the security clearance of Miranda. We never see the bots attack Miranda either.

The shadow broker, as Liara T'Soni points out, seems to have been working with the Collectors in some ill-fated scheme to save himself from the Reapers. The shadow broker was competing with Cerberus for the acquisition of Shepard's body from the start, and acquired significant debt from its failure.

For your theory, I'd say it's more likely the Shadow Broker's retaliation for its debt was the reason Wilson retaliated and, knowing Shepard was already conscious, might have decided to steal Shepard's body himself by hacking into station security. It might even be possible for both possibilities to be true - Wilson was lead to believe he could hack into the defense network only to have it backfire on him, which worked out for Cerberus by performing cleanup on all non-essential personnel, getting rid of Wilson as a loose end, and performing field tests on Shepard, all whilst making all blame fall on Wilson. Though I doubt Jacob would be deemed essential or informed of the plan under these circumstances, given his open criticism of the Illusive Man's goals, but the fact that he survived wasn't entirely an inconvenience either.

[SwobyJ]

OP, I don't necessarily believe your theory here..

But I love it.

BUT, I can only accept it when it mixes with my own crazier ideas, like ME2 being somewhat illusory and ME3 being in a sort of Reaper world of memory+illusion. Because I'm crazy.

Its just hard to just believe your theory in itself, with Miranda being so kind and apologetic in ME3. I hope that doesn't spoil much for you.

But what I WOULD love is for a big twist in the next game where we see the 'real' Miranda and she's actually a completely manipulative beatch, regardless of ME2-ME3 narrative. Where we get reveals that yes, Lazarus Project was indeed a test where Cerberus tossed away tons of assets in order to test Shepard.

Buttt, that's a whole other matter.


"It might even be possible for both possibilities to be true"
Yep, quite possible.


I'm going to wait until the next game because I go for any theories, but yes, I'd like it to somehow be true that Miranda was part of a ploy to get a working Shepard into Cerberus hands, clearing away the evidence.

[LizardWizard]

The next Mass Effect game is probably going to have to do a whole lot of twists if they want to beat having the reapers as the game's principle villains, so who knows what kinds of twists it will have.

Yeah, I suppose seeing Miranda's character development could convince me otherwise. It's just that from the events in the mission and Cerberus' own infamy, it's highly suspicious. I'm going to list a few annotations I made while playing that intro mission and put a lid on this theory for the time being.


* Miranda loses comm connection, but while Shepard claims he hears an explosion and gun fire in a dialogue option to Jacob, the recording doesn't actually have it - it's just seems to cut from interference. It might just be an oversight...

* Jacob mentions Wilson is only chief medical technician, but whoever did this must have had top level access to the facility. Would chief medical technician have top level access to the security grid?

* Wilson seems more concerned about getting "Miranda's appreciation for everything he's done" than payback throughout his logs.

* According to Wilson, he tried to shut down security mech, but whoever did it fried the whole system, making it completely irreversible. If Wilson had done this, why would he stick around the area this whole time? It's completely irreversible.

* Miranda was over in D-Wing, according to Wilson. Shepard and Jacob just came from D-Wing as well. They never see Miranda. This is also possibly what Wilson was going to exclaim before he was shot.

* Wilson doesn't want Jacob to prematurely reveal they work for Cerberus. "It will piss off the boss." This suggests he still sees himself as their employee. During an earlier log, Wilson does show some concern over the amount of money being moved and some of it being sent his way, a possible allusion to how his greed might have gotten him involved with the Shadow Broker, but he seems much more concerned with the success of the project otherwise.

* Miranda claims Wilson would have killed them all if she had risked bringing him alive for questioning, and that she had risked too much on the project to let it fail. Yet in just the other side of the last room, you can find a recording where Wilson's claims that Shepard can be salvaged is what kept Miranda on the project in the first place. Before that, in an earlier log, Miranda also comments on how Shepard must be evaluated thoroughly to make sure he's the same Shepard.

* There are mechs through the evac shuttle area, even though Miranda must have arrived before Shepard and must have had a chance to clear out the area.

* She asserts that everyone else is expendable when Shepard suggests looking for survivors.

[SwobyJ]

Not to mention Miranda being a Biotic AND TECH character, This, like all your points, could mean nothing, or it could mean..something :O.