| DX: Human Revolution - very in-depth and long summary of a newcomer's thoughts and feelings Posted: 18 May 2020 02:15 PM PDT Hi! I've recently finished Human Revolution on the „Give me Deus Ex" difficulty for the first time. The following is my very in-depth and (really) long summary of my thoughts and feelings regarding the game. It spoils pretty much the entirety of it, of course, as I delve very deep into particular plotpoints I found interesting. I just thought it may be interesting to some of you to read the thoughts of a newcomer to the series – I've played DX1 and IW only last year, and now I'm continuing my adventure. The topics with my summaries for the previous games can be seen here, if you're interested: DX1: https://www.reddit.com/r/Deusex/comments/cc1xyn/my_thoughts_after_a_firsttime_playthrough_of_the/ IW: https://www.reddit.com/r/Deusex/comments/eb5rsk/invisible_war_my_indepth_thoughts_after_the_first/ The summary roughly follows the plot development of the game in chronological order, with general summary of some points at the end: From the first minutes in Megan's office I was enamoured with the amount of details in the enviroments – there was so much clutter in the rooms that made them feel lived in and real. I spent about 20 minutes EACH in the offices of Megan and Sarif just looking at their bookcases to see what they are „into", reading their private corespondence (lol), seeing their diplomas from university and whatnot – and I loved every second of it. It seems the game is made with people like me in mind, people that really like to stop and look around at the minute details of the enviroment and then extrapolate from them onto the greater state of the world and what it all means. It was cool. I was also, however, pretty lost and somewhat annoyed by the unclear instructions regarding the non-lethal takedowns. The game didn't tell me (at the time) how or even IF I could take the enemies down non-lethally, even though I was expecting that from the previous games. I died like 10 times trying to get to the various enemies from behind and knock them out, but to no avail. The apogeum of my annoyance happened when I found a dead Sarif Industries guard who had a frickin' BATON *ON HIS BODY* and yet the game didn't let me pick it up and use it. The intro with Jensen's surgery was pretty cool, but I kept thinking that they pretty much ripped off Mass Effect 2's intro with Shepard's reconstruction: the flashes of Jensen on the operating table, the surgical instruments moving around, his vitals flashing and the voiceover describing the procedure – it was all very similar. It's not really a point AGAINST the game, it was still well done and conveyed information well (I was somewhat aghast at the amount of injuries that Jensen suffered – you could see his GUTS hanging out in the cuscene), I just found it interesting I wasn't really a fan of Jensen's augmentations in a broader context of worldbuilding, though. Don't get me wrong – in a vacuum they were really cool, sleek looking and badass. But that's EXACTLY my problem. HR is a prequel to DX1. In DX1 one of the major background plotpoints was the competition between the „old" mechanically agumented agents and the „new" upgraded nano-augmented ones, and the feelings of inadequacy and anger the former felt because they started to be „obsolete". And I felt HR didn't convey that at all, as a prequel. Jensen was a prototype to Gunther Hermann and Anna Navarre, who were themselves the prototypes to the Dentons. And Gunther looked horrible. He straight up looked like someone exchanged his head for a toaster, with big red lightbulbs for eyes. And I could SEE and immediately understand how he might feel „cheated" when comparing himself to the sleek looking, „cool" Dentons – even though if I remember correctly it was mostly about abilities and performance and less about looks. Still, I think the game would benefit a lot if Jensen's augs were more crude and inelegant – the whole angle of „I DIDN'T ASK FOR THIS" would resonate a lot more strongly with me if Jensen DIDN'T look like a totallly cool badass with capabilities normal men can only dream of. But then again, I feel like it's a broader problem in fiction in general – that we seem to be afraid to portray our „heroes" as ugly, disabled or broken. They all have to be rugged but handsome, cool, „trendy" and powerful. I myself would be really glad to play a character that had to REALLY struggle with REAL side effects of the at-the-time unproven technology, but I guess if Jensen was disabled the game would play really differently and would, in the end, be a totally different game. I really liked the first mission with the hostages at the Sarif Industries factory, because after the unclear moments in the tutorial the game quickly confirmed that there indeed IS a non-lethal route, and – much more importantly – that the game cares. The NPCs commented on my performance, they had their own opinions about what I did, and it really made me feel accomplished. I really liked the part where you had to negotiate with Sanders to release the hostage – and in a broader sense, it was a first glipse of the „dialogue mechanic" which I wwas definitely a fan of. It didn't really exist in DX1 or IW – there were no elongated dialogue segments in which you tried to „convince" someone by using the „correct" arguments that would speak to them. I really enjoyed it and I think it was a great idea. I was, however, pretty baffled by the fact that Zeke Sanders left through the door that the police busted in SECONDS LATER and somehow they didn't catch him when he was leaving. Like… they all acted like it was MY fault he got away, but to be honest, I feel pretty blameless in all that. I rescued all of the hostages, only one Sarif employee died and I dispatched all of the attackers non-lethally so that they could be tried and sentenced legally. And the cops were just standing around twiddling their thumbs while Zeke left, and after all that they all still blamed me? C'mon. I liked Detroit as a hub. It wasn't big enough to get seriously lost in or to start hating the backtracking, but it felt relatively real – there were a lot of „generic" npcs around doing regular things, but even they sometimes offered pretty interesting generic responses (that at least once made me stumble upon a major plot realization, but more on that later), and I often stopped to listen to them I was glad that the series finally allowed you to pawn all of the things you couldn't use – in my case it was all of the lethal weapons and ammo. In the previous ones I was always really poor because I couldn't sell anything. In this one I didn't have that problem and it made looting the enemy bodies more worthwhile the sidequests during the first segment in Detroit were pretty good, too – I liked the moral questions about law, vigilantinsm and „justifiable crime" that the quests with Tim Carella's neuropozyne theft and the O'Malley's shadow war against crime, where he tried to get the gangs to erracidacte themselves. It was interesting to explore your ideas about „drawing the line", about when it's „justified" to commit a crime (is it ever?) or about whether it's actually right for Jensen to appoint HISMELF as the one to judge that in the first place, him no longer being a police officer, after all, but just a corporate secuirty chief I really liked the „enviromental storytelling" of Jensen's apartment. It didn't really tell you anything outright, there were no calls from his friends saying things like „DON'T HURT YOURSELF JENSEN, I'M WORRIED ABOUT YOU" while bliking knowingly at the camera, and yet – it told you A LOT about his state of mind and his feelings just by showing you how his apartment looked like. The half-unpacked things, the various painkillers and medicine thrown around, the unmade bed… It all told a pretty powerful story to me, about a man who's depressed, who can't get his life together even after six months since the accident that changed his life. The most poignant thing was probably the broken mirror – and it was strongly implied that it wasn't the first one that he broke. It really touched me when I thought about him waking up, in pain, and then going into the bathroom and seeing himself, or what was left of himself, those mechanical limbs grafted onto his organic torso that will never FULLY be part of him and how he couldn't take it, how he felt broken and weird and couldn't look at himself, so he broke mirror after mirror in a grief-fuelled rage… It's really sad and well done, I think. Also, I was more angry then I probably should be at the realization that Megan's friend apparently enthnanized her and Jensen's dog, Kubrick. Like… why, woman?! First of all, I found it pretty callous of her to say „I didn't know if you'd survive". Like, if she didn't know then maybe she could wait and see instead of assuming he will die, lol. But besides that – why straight up KILL the dog? :< I understand that she may have not been in a position to care for it long term, but surely there are animal shelters in the future? WHY DID YOU DO IT, WOMAN?! I was, however, a little disappointed with the ham-fistedness of the information fed to you about Jensen's lack of need for Neuropozyne and the previous documents found at Sarif regarding Patient X. It was in fact when first visiting the LIMB clinic that I've become like 80% certain I know what the link is there, and I feel like this was supposed to be one of the major reveals? It's not that I dislike the game for giving me clues – I just feel like they were a little too obvious, all things considered. When reading the files in the LIMB clinic I also rolled my eyes a little, because Jensen was then confirmed to be the third (out of 3) DX protagonists that were adopted as children – and it was at this moment I was already pretty convinced that, keeping with the „tradition" – he was probably also experimented upon as a child, which lend itself nicely to my theorizing on the above point, about Patient X It surprised me somehow that the documents in LIMB told me that, apparently, Sarif was legally allowed to augment Jensen because of the clauses of his work contract. It seems… really weird for me that Jensen didn't notice or simply didn't care about such a clause in his contract. Like, is it standard issue for corporate work in DX universe? „In the event of a traumatic injury, my employer is hereby authorized to pack me full of experimental cyberware technology regardless of my consent"? How is that not a million red flags? I really liked investigating Megan's apparent death, but something majorly weird happened at the Police Department. Even though I've never killed any policemen (or anyone else for that matter), nor have I attacked any of them, they suddently turned hostile and shot me on sight. Curiously – it only happened with the guys NEAR the actual police dept, the ones further away seemingly didn't care. I didn't get what their problem was, but I was adamant about my non-lethal route, and I felt like even KNOCKING OUT the policemen would be a bad optic for me, since they didn't like me in the first place (for some reason I don't exactly understand), they probably would like me even less if I hurt anyone, even if non-lethally. So I resolved to sneak all the way through the police dept to get all of the necessary info (that being also the info about the hacker for the main quest). It was long, difficult and a little tedious, because I suck at the game, but that's not even the weirdest part. Even though everyone in and around the department shot me on sight, somehow when I stepped into the lobby, they seemed to think I was JUST A VISITOR in a „legal" area and suddenly turned neutral again. So here's what I did: I snuck through all of the station finishing all of the quests, and then I used the cloak aug to gest past the guard standing at the border of the „resticted" area and then… I uncloaked and stood around whistling innocently as the cops were „alarmed" for 2 minutes looking for „that guy that entered the restricted area". But OBVIOUSLY that guy couldn't be Jensen, Jensen was just standing in the lobby, and standing at the lobby was allowed, after all! So I waited for them to calm down, dusted off my leather trenchcoat and then politely said „goodbye" and left through the front door, like a LAW ABIDING CITIZEN I definitely am. It was really cool to visit the FEMA detention camp being built in Detroit – it's scope, the blueprints and the various notes you find gave you a feeling of your enemies goals and of how the events slowly approach the state shown in DX1. The implications of that location were pretty chilling overall, and later were showcased in it's entire, horrible, nightmarish glory. More on that later. The first boss fight, however, really annoyed me. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to take Barett down non-lethally, only to find out that Jensen killed him IN A CUTSCENE without asking for my opinion. What the hell, game? For 90% of the time the game not only gave me the choice, but also respected it and reacted to it – the npcs commented on my actions, there were slight, but noticeable differences, and now suddenly I was railroaded into killing? It just felt wrong, like it was part of a different game. It was at the point where the „secret backdoor channel" that David Sarif established was discovered that I started to really like the relationship between Jensen and Pritchard (by the way, I always felt like „Pritchard" is some kind of portmanteu between „prick" and „Richard", even though his name is Francis). At first I felt like Pritchard considers Jensen to be just a dumb brute, but over time I started to realize that he somewhat respects him, he just doesn't want, or doesn't know how to properly show that. It felt very… tsundere-y to me and I kinda started to love their back-and-forth, their sarcasm towards each other, even as they continued to cooperate to fulfill their goals the aforementioned channel's reasons for existing and the info conversation with Sarif revealed was a lot less impactful and horrible than I imagined/expected. I had moments when I suspected that Sarif himself knew about the attack in the intro and was somehow involved for his personal or business gain in some way. So to find out he just conducted a very in-depth background checks on Jensen and his past was… borderline inoffensive, in the end. Like – it's maybe wasn't exactly nice and I can understand Jensen being somewhat annoyed by it and the implications of Sarif not trusting him, but to me it seems… pretty sensible and eniterely understandable, especially in the universe full of corporate espionage, patent theft and underahnded competition tactics. at first I really liked Hengsha and it's design. It reminded me a lot of Coruscant, and even more of Taris in KotoR, a jungle of concrete and steel where the lower class is living in squalor in a horrible urban nightmare where you can't even see the sun, because it's blocked buy the skyscrapers and the mansions of the upper class living above you and – literally – looking down on you but as the time went on, I felt like it was a little too empty. It seemed much bigger and more convoluted in it's design than Detroit did, but there was not much to DO there. There was what, 3 side quests during the first visit in Hengsha? I once spent a literal hour just going around exploring, looking for something more to do, and in the end I found nothing apart from generic npcs with their generic dialogue the quest dealing with the murder mystery of Malik's friend was quite cool, though – the whole „investigation" part could've been more expansive, but I liked that in the end Jensen didn't just „combine" the right events and leads in his mind automatically, but you had to reconstruct it yourself and then tell the perp the correct story to finish the quest successfully the „Something, something, death and taxes. Confucius." line spoken to X during that quest was too hillarious for me NOT to say it, by the way I found the Alice Garden Pods location and the various notes/journals found there to be pretty sad – especially the one where a father wrote to his family about a „fabulous business trip" he had, and how his hotel was illustrious and whatever, all the way he stayed in pretty much a RENTED COFFIN and slaved away for a small salary to support his family. I found it an interesting detail that Zhao was apparently an Olympian fencer, although in the end it wasn't really utilized in any way. At the point of exploring her office I was half-expecting that Jensen would have an actual SWORDFIGHT with her at some point. the second boss fight, much like the first, was pretty underwhelming, because again – it seemed to disregard the very freedom of choice to choose a non-lethal route that the rest of the game exemplified. Once again, Jensen just let her die in the cutscene and didn't ask me what I think about it. I really liked the sidequest regarding the mysteries of Jensen's past when you get back in Detroit: first, it provided me with an interesting conundrum with euthanizing Redford. It was difficult for me, because while I fully respect people's choice to choose their own death, I just feel like his particular reasoning was plain stupid. He would rather DIE than be augmented, and it didn't make sense to me. Which made me think of people trying to commit suicide in general: many of them do it because they are not in the right state of mind in the first place. Their reasoning doesn't make sense, because they are not capable of making sense in the particular moment. Some people (including my best friend) think that we shouldn't rescue people that attempt suicide, because that's their choice. I disagree – many of those people don't really want to die, they just want the pain to stop. And more often than not, they CAN be helped in other way and are later grateful for not letting them take their own life. But I *AM* fully in favour of people choosing to end their own life on their own terms, if they think about it clearly and are fully cognizant of their situation. Which brings me to the question: where do you draw the line? Redford's „argumentation" about the „unnatural" nature of augmentations and how he would preferer to die then get augmented was DEMENTED for me and didn't make a lick of sense (more on that later). And yet – it sounded like he wasn't mentally ill, it wasn't that he didn't have REASONS for wanting to die, I just didn't AGREE with those reasons. And in the end I felt like I shouldn't force him (through the pheromones) to live in a state he himself would hate (being augmented), even if I think that hatred was baseless and stupid. I felt like his death was a huge waste and loss, but just because I didn't agree with someone's choice doesn't mean I don't want them to have the possibility of making that choice. I'm very much interested in your opinion about that situation, though – should I have saved him? Why? What's the line between 'respecting people's choice' and 'saving people that are not thinking clearly' in your opinion? the ending with senile Michelle reminiscing about baby Jensen and then Jensen providing her with a security detail to keep her safe was pretty touching. I overall really liked the whole sidequest, even if the whole plotline of Jensen being an adopted kid being experimented upon from childhood seemed somehow re-cycled from the previous DX games, as I already mentioned at the point of searching Taggart's office for information about Sandoval, I was seriously fed-up with the pretty simplistic and annoyingly naive way the game framed the whole aug/anti-aug debate. It seemed to concentrate the most on the LEAST interesting points, namely: the borderline theological/techno-primitivist points about how the „human form is sacred" and how the augs are „unnatural". It's just such a weak, boring, unsinspired argument that it seriously annoyed me how much time and space the game devoted to it. Sure, people with such an attitude towards new technologies, especially bio-engineering, already exist in the real world, and I'm sure they would exist in a setting like DX. It's not unrealistic per se, it's just so stupid that there's not much debate to be had with it. This viewpoint is downright hypocritical and if you took it to it's logical conclusion, it would reduce humanity back to cave-dwelling neanderthals. It's an appeal to natuer in it's clearest, dumbest form – augs are „unnatural" and thus, they are evil. But next to nothing in the modern human society is natural, and that viewpoint means nothing. Cars are not „natural". The internet. Advanced medicine. Surgery. Medicinal drugs. None of those things are „natural". Murder, however, is entirely natural. So is rape – sure, we don't use those words for the rest of the animal world, but if other animals were human, we would conclude that they are commiting murder and rape on a regular basis. Like, seriously, on Taggart's computer there was straight up an email about a girl that was „convinced" by him that her getting what amounts to some advanced PLASTIC SURGERY would be unnatural and would „pollute her body with machines". It's insanity, pure and simple. PACEMAKERS are „machines" you „pollute your body with", according to such logic. Pacemakers are undoubtedly „unnatural". Should we let all of the people that need them die because of that? The whole appeal to nature argument is not only monumentally stupid, it's also very selfish and egotistical coming from Taggart himself. Taggart is a wealthy, fully abled man in his prime that is famous and immensly influential. And he has the GALL and the AUDACITY to tell people that it's wrong for them to „change their natural bodies"? I myself am slightly disabled – it's nothing serious and I can manage just fine living on my own, I don't even need crutches or any kind of movement aid. But even I had two surgeries as a child to help with my problem. And even for me, a person who is, in the end, pretty well off, it's straight up INSULTING what Taggart and many like him suggest about augs and how they disregard the multiple advantages they would give to many people when used as tools in the right way the above is even more annoying because there IS plenty of dicussion to be had about bio-engineering and cybernetic augmentations, and with much more interesting arguments and talking points that the game devoted much less time to. Chiefly, for me, the divide between rich and poor and how at some point it maybe be impossible for the later to compete without being augmented, which they may not be able to do because of financial reasons. It is only lightly touched in the game overall, mostly with the sidequest in Henghsa about the broker that couldn't compete with her richer competitors, so she turned to a crime triad so that she could afford the advanced social aug. I would love the game to concentrate more on this side of the argument, because it's just more sensible and there's a lot more discussion to be had HERE, instead of devoting time to the tired talking points of the technoprimitivist idiots talking about how things are supposedly bad because they are „unnatural". in general I felt like some of the analogies and associations the game made when describing the whole augmentation business were pretty uninspired and boring. It irked me to see signs as „augmented people enter from the back" on the front of a cinema, directly evoking images of racial segregation. It just DOESN'T MAKE SENSE to me that a modern first world country, especially one such as USA with the whole baggage of the racial segretaion in the first place would make a wierd 180 like that, especially on such an issue. Don't get me wrong – racism is, in it's fundaments, irrational, stupid and wrong, but I CAN understand how it worked it the past and how people rationalized it. Those „others" were, at first glance, fundamentally, BIOLOGICALLY different to „us". But agumented people? Dawg, please. This is LITERALLY the same person you knew yesterday, he just has a mechanical arm now. It's almost like you'd suddenly start to consider your friend a subhuman that needs to be treated differently simply because he lost a limb. I don't really understand why Zeke Sanders attacked me on sight at Sandoval's after we parted ways somewhat amicably at the Sarif Industries factory. Still, I didn't kill him even then, because I was on a fully non-lethal playthrough. Maybe he was annoyed because I didn't show up to a meeting in an alley, because I left for the FEMA camp thinking I could meet him later, but it turned out that I couldn't and the sidequest got cancelled the moment where the chopper was shot down near Hengsha and Malik was in danger I abandoned my „no reloads" rule and spent LITERALLY TWO HOURS trying to save her, all the while trying to still not kill anyone. But I think it was worth it – I really liked Malik, she was probably one of the only consistently nice characters, she was very friendly and kind towards Jensen and it seemed she didn't (unless I missed something important) have any kind of underhand/shadowy agenda behind any of her actions. She was just a nice gal, overall, and I couldn't see her die for my cause. I really liked the sidequest with Zelazny's rogue Belltower squad in Hengsha. It was pretty simple in it's actual CONSTRUCTION and there was not much variability in it, but it made me ask some pretty poignant questions about my non-lethal playstyle and how much sense or difference did it make in the end. Because if I knocked them out, there would be two possibilities: either they would get captured by the police, who in this case are Belltower, the EXACT PEOPLE THAT WANT TO KILL THEM ANYWAY. So the best they could count on would be a mock-up trial and then an „unfortunate" accident in a cell. Or they would just have a nap for a couple of hours and then stand up and carry on their mission regardless. So I could kill them myself, I guess, but then not only would I be breaking my no-killing rule, I would also be (indirectly at least) siding with the corrupt officials that they were fighting. In the end I let them go. In an ideal world I'd like them to surrender peacefully and then work out a way to bring down the corrupt officials using legal means. But that was not possible. I wasn't happy with that, but I think it's great that none of the options were really good – it's a quintessence of a good moral choice, in my opinion. it was really chilling to explore the Harvester base and see the effect/remnants of their activity. The whole concept behind them is pretty horrifying overall. It's literally people robbing you of your ACTUAL BODY PARTS. Like, sure, it's pretty horrible to get mugged in general, but most of the time you only lose your belongings. Here, they can literally chop off your limbs and let you bleed out in a ditch, and then sell parts of you to other people. Horrible. But cool! I have… really mixed feelings about the section on the Belltower ship and their sea base afterwards. I somewhat hated the beginning of that segment – Jensen getting automatically captured DURING A CUTSCENE, and then stripped of his augs… It felt like the game tried to artificially amp the challenge by rendering all of my progress irrelevant and I was somewhat annoyed by it. If I didn't get my praxis points back at the end, if it straight up WAS a hard reset in 3/4 of the game, I probably would've ragequit. And there were just SO MANY enemies around… I found it frustrating and tedious, although I fully recognize that's mostly because I suck at the game On the other hand, I LOVED (that's maybe not the best word to use in that context, but still) the actual sea base segment. The nightmarish experiments conducted there, the detention camp and the horrible implications of it's existence were downright bone-chilling to me and the most… touching part of the game for me. Touching is maybe not the best word, again, because it implies some kind of borderline positive feeling. But it still touched me – just in the really negative way, if that makes sense. It showcased to you the full extent of your enemies possibilities and the ruthlesness with which they pursued their goals. It was just nighmarish to think about all of those people snatched off the streets for no reason at all other than the fact that they were there to then be tortured and mutilated in horrible experiments. the talk with the student girl was downright a tearjerker for me. I felt HORRIBLE telling her I can't help her yet and leaving her scared and crying in that cell I was pretty surprised to see Gary Savage taking part in those abhorent experiments. It made me see him and his role in DX1 in a new light – a light that was not really a good optic for him. Because while I recognize that the work at the Hyron Project was probably what broke the camel's back regarding him breaking off from Page and forming an opposition because he regretted what he did, I don't feel like you even CAN atone for taking part in something like that. Like, ever. Incidentally, did he name his daughter in „honor" of Kavanaugh? I loved the variation on the famous „trolley problem" ethical dilemma with the gas redirection. It was a really simple choice in terms of actual game mechanics, but it still carried a lot of weight for me as far as it's moral implications go. I debated with myself over it for more than a week, and even then went back and forth regarding the actual choice. At first, in a vacuum, when thinking about the trolley problem I very much feel that it's not right for people to make that choice at all. That it's not right to choose arbitrarily who deserves to live and who deserves to die. That in a situation like this you should do what you can to prevent it, or to avert it when it happens, but you shouldn't ACTIVELY CONDEMN people to die based on your personal ethics. But then I felt that in a practical, actual situation… to do nothing and then justify it with lofty ideas would be… kind of cruel. To let ALL of those people die FOR NOTHING, to acomplish NOTHING just because you didn't want to choose. So then I wanted to save the prisoners. They didn't have a choice, they were kidnapped and held against their will, and there were hundreds of them. Kavanaugh seemed to be at least partially complicit in what happened, at least at first, even if she regretted her part in the end. She KNEW what she was doing, she just initially deluded herself into thinking it was „worth it" for progress. So if anyone had to die, I'd rather it would be her. But then – the game didn't really tell me I would be able to FREE the prisoners. Saving their LIVES from the gas didn't equal their freedom – they would still stay locked up, and still be experimented upon, or in the „best" case scenario killed en masse after the experiments were discontinued after Kavanaugh left. So without the game letting me know there would be a way to free them immediately after I felt like saving their lives FOR A MOMENT would be a hollow, empty gesture and it wouldn't change anything. So I saved Kavanaugh and prayed that it would make a difference in the long run. It made me feel dirty, and whenever Burke taunted me over my decision, I knew he was somewhat right. And it was GREAT. I love when games do that to me. the „boss fight" against Burke was… weird. On one hand, it didn't FEEL like a boss fight at all. He didn't have any special mechanics or behaviors and he felt like an ordinary mook. But on the other – it was the only one that was possible to solve without using lethal force, and I appreciated it. The game even commented on that, with the hacker's annoynance over the problems my non-lethal choice would cause him Overall, the Belltower base with all of it's horrible, abhorent, nighmarish glory was probably the most INTERESTING location for me, and the one I'll remember the longest. It also seriously caused me to start doubting that my non-lethal approach was actually sensible and morally justified. Because, to be honest, in this scenario you could say I was indirectly complicit in whatever atrocities were conducted there by not silencing the ones responsible forever. After all – there was no one there to take them into custody after I knocked them out, no one to restrain them. The Interpol investigation would take months, maybe years. So all I acomplished was to provide them with a couple hour nap. And after that… they would wake up and go back to abusing, torturing, mutilating and killing all those people. So I changed nothing. I helped no one. If anything – I helped BELLTOWER. I don't have a good answer to that whole conondrum – I wouldn't want to be their executioner. If the game allowed me not to kill anyone, I definitely felt it was right to try and stick with it. But in this case… I just started to seriously wonder if I didn't make the situation WORSE by attempting to make it better. I was more annoyed then I had any right to be by the cavalier, pranky attitude of the people working at the Omega Ranch. There was something seriously wrong with their joke-y attitude and them writing strangly unprofessional emails to each other all the while commiting gross human rights violations by mutilitating and killing people in illegal medical experiments. It reminded me of a quote by Tennenbaum in Bioshock, where she commented on a scientific error made by the Nazi scientists: „If you have to do such things, at least make sure to do them properly". It was interesting to see the different approaches the kidnapped Sarif scientists had towards their situation. One of them was defiant to the end, always planning an escape. One was cowed and afraid, but eager to help Jensen when he showed up. And then there was this one woman, who seemed borderline okay with being kidnapped as long as they still allowed her to conduct groundbreaking research the fight against Jaron Namir was a joke. At that point I resigned myself to the thought that Jensen is just going to kill him in a cutscene, so I reprogrammed the turrets and they shredded him in 30 seconds, all the while I hid behind a pillar and he just flailed his arms around like a mentally deficient child. And then he died. Lol. I had a lot of fun piecing together the clues regarding the Illuminati biochip plot. Forming the links between the emails at TYM about the new biochip, then watching the Picus news recommending getting the upgrade and remembering that Picus = Everett = Illuminati = BAD IDEA was really cool, and I felt great when it was revealed in the end that I didn't fall for it, even though I could have. It makes me wonder, though – how much of a difference would it make? From an in-universe perspective it should be a HUGE difference if your enemies could straight up mind-control you, but I somehow doubt the game would be like „YOU DUN GOOFED X HOUR AGO, SO NOW YOU LOSE THE GAME ENTIRELY, GOOD DAY SIR!" and overall I found the biochip plot to be interesting, cool and horrifying in it's implications. It's something I'm probably the most worried when it comes to hypothetical future cyberware implanted in your brain – that lacking the proper technical knowledge I simply COULDN'T know if there was a backdoor there and that I would realize some day after I stopped paying my taxes, or commited an act of civic disobediance, or protested the government or something, that my arm would suddenly stop working, or that I'm now blind or something. It was a really cool concept, even if somewhat underutilized, because it really only played a role in the ending I was, however, pretty baffled by the fact that Jensen pretty much IGNORED the glitches in his augs, never really reacting to them, and never thinking about getting a checkup or something. Sure, he may not want to seem „paranoid" or like he needs Pritchard's help, but if *I* kept experiencing weird muscle spasms and/or full-fledged blackouts (which is roughly comparable to all your augs reseting) regularly, I would DEFINITELY see a doctor about it, or at least, you know, MENTION THAT TO SOMEONE, like a friend, so that they are not completely surprised and without leads if I happen to suddenly DROP DEAD or something submitted by /u/Little-Dwarf [link] [comments] |
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