Marauder Shields

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About

Marauder Shields is the final enemy that appears in Bioware's Mass Effect 3. Following the poor reception of the game's ending sequence, fans on 4chan and Reddit began joking that the Marauder was put in the game to stop players from reaching the disappointing ending.

Origin

On March 14th, 2012, a thread^[1] was posted to 4chan's /v/ (video games) presenting the theory that the final marauder^[3] Commander Shepard encounters in Mass Effect 3 was actually the game's final boss. One of the earliest comments in the thread gave the character its name, Marauder Shields, based the type of protection he was using which was noted on the health bar over the character. Soon, others followed up with Manly Tears and one-line comments that read: "his name was Marauder Shields."

He was the final boss, /v/.

But you just don't understand how series this was.

This isn't just some random Marauder that popped out of nowhere, this Marauder waited to fight you from the very beginning.

All this time, he waited for you, but he was just unable to fight you from countless delays and interruptions.

He knew you were comings back to earth, so he trained and trained to get his chance to kill you.

From games, Mass Effect 1 and 2, he was finally able to face you in the end of 3.

Even if he lost, he would at least know that you were his final opponent.

Spread

As the thread continued, commenters playfully martyrized the enemy, seeing him as the only thing standing between players and the disappointing ending. Later on March 14th, screenshots from the /v/ thread were shared on the Mass Effect subreddit.^[5] Additionally, a thread dedicated to the enemy character was created on the official BioWare Forums^[16] and a video titled "His Name Was Marauder Shields"^[2] was uploaded to YouTube depicting the character's backstory.

On March 15th, the Twitter account @MarauderShields^[4] was registered. The following day, a Facebook fan page^[6] and a single topic Tumblr^[11] titled "His Name was Marauder Shields" were created. Additionally, deviantArt user ~koobismo^[9] posted the first installment^[10] of a series of comic strips entitled "Marauder Shields: Meet Shepards Last Foe."

By March 19th, threads about the enemy appeared on the Mass Effect LiveJournal community^[17], Gamespot^[13], GameFAQs^[14] and the Rooster Teeth^[15] community forum. On March 20th, Buzzfeed^[12] posted a series of images featuring the creature, calling him the "unsung hero" of Mass Effect 3. Additional posts about Marauder Shields can be found on Reddit^[18] and Tumblr.^[19] There is also a Google+^[7] profile and a wiki^[8] for fans to compile information about the character.