I just finished the game, and I found the ending sequences to be the most moving i’ve seen in a video game since Aeris got a katana through her chest.
I ended up saving just before the final choice and reloading so I could see all four. I found it very interesting how the ending you choose depends so greatly on your personal philosophies about so many things - capitalism, democracy, free will, transhumanism, the social contract, authoritarianism, libertarianism, the role of government and the press, and so on. I’d personally like to know how the people who played the game felt that the final decision should go.
For the record, I myself chose Sarif’s ending - i’m a big believer in transhumanism myself, and I believe that in the long run the benefits of enhancing the human form will outweigh the temporary growing pains as society learns to adjust to the new norms.
I wasn’t comfortable with Sarif’s ending because of all the things I saw corporation do. They just had way too much power, and it was important for the people to know that, and make sure they limit their influence on government and the markets.
At the same time I wasn’t comfortable letting the illuminati guide my dog around the block, nevermind the next step in human evolution.
So I told them the entire truth.
Unfortunately the cutscene showed the people reverting back to “religious ideals”, which broke my heart.
Science is the way forward people, you just need to build in some checks and balances.
I ultimately chose Darrow’s (even though I watched them all, natch). Let truth out, though the Heavens fall.
I admit I hesitated a long time between that and Jensen’s, because I have a self-negation streak a mile wide, but then that particular ending makes little sense when you think about it. Adam goes on and on about “it’s not my place to choose, let the people decide by themselves”, which is fine… but then, they can’t make an informed decision when you deliberately choose to obscure facts and destroy all evidence, Jensen you idiot ! As for “I can’t decide for the whole of mankind, that would be hubris or something”, by choosing to conceal everything you are, in fact, deciding what’s best for mankind. And treating them like children.
I never even considered Sarif’s or Taggart. Sarif because corporations are by nature secretive, amoral (not immoral, amoral) and they were the ones responsible for this whole shit in the first place. As for the Illuminati… why yes, I do trust shady influence peddlers more than myself in ethical matters, I mean that just makes sense !
I watched them all, but I “choose” Sarif, I guess… I mean, I didn’t actually care, since I knew how the world of Deus Ex turns out. That’s sort of the problem with giving the player a plot choice in a prequel…
This was my thought process, why hide information from the people based on what it MIGHT incite? That’s the excuse every oppressive country with censorship has used for like… ever.
Personally, I like the idea of transhumanism, so Sarif’s was tempting, but I couldn’t bring myself to hide the information. In real life, I probably would have wanted to press Darrow’s Button, and then fly over to the news station and have a filibuster explaining what I thought, hell Sarif and Taggart can come and express their viewpoints too, and we can have a nice formal conference in front of the news with well supported views on every side.
I noticed in all four endings that Jensen talked about how “i’ve tried to keep my morality and not kill when I didn’t have to”. I wasn’t playing a pacifist run, but i’d been doing more sneaking and nonlethal takedowns than head-on combat, and I wasn’t killing people unless they shot at me first or I didn’t see a way to get close enough for a takedown (I wasn’t carrying any nonlethal weapons except the PEPS).
Does this narration change depending on whether you do more killing?
I wasn’t completely happy with any of the endings. I am all for telling the truth and exposing corporations for what they are, but i don’t think it would lead to a complete abandonment of the technology. I went with Sarif, i couldn’t help but like the guy.
The problem I had with the endings is that (a) I know they’re irrelevant and (b) they’re somewhat unrealistic. People aren’t going to abandon technology, though they might well reassess its role in the world and shift away from augmentation.
For me, it was a case of flipping a coin between Sarif and Taggart’s endings. Personally, I consider Taggart’s ending the Canon one (I know most of the internet disagrees with me though), but Sarif had some compelling views too and he was a pretty likeable guy who really did seem to want the best for everyone.
I’m torn between the Taggart ending, which the way it was phrased would mean that they weren’t eliminating cybernetics, but not letting corporations run wild with it, and the Darrow ending with whole truth coming out, and leting people make their choices based on that. Really none of the choices are anything but bitter.
A couple of considerations, however – first, are we supposed to take seriously the premise that the truth is actually revealed and people actually believe it?
Second, the frequently supplied rationale for human augmentation is that it’s used to help the crippled. But from what I can tell, it’s mostly being used to borg-out street thugs. No one even tries the excuse that “well, the technology falls into the wrong hands now and then” and of course they should be embarrassed to do so. Looks to me like letting the technology fall into the wrong hands is the actual business model. The question is far less “should humanity tamper with its own nature” than it is “why the hell are we letting anybody who wants it get turned into a living weapon?” The distribution of lethality is also a moral and philosophical dilemma worth discussing.
Also left under-explored is the issue with VersaLife. The proliferation of cybernetics is of tremendous profit to them, and it certainly appears that by working with Jensen’s unique genetics Sarif plans to break the addiction cycle of the anti-rejection medicine (Neurozopyne?). But that is underplayed when the question of whether to allow corporations to run wild on their own counsel arises. It matters that for all his shenanigans, Sarif is actually pushing for a solution to one of the major ethical issues of the story.
Then again, I can’t quite match any of these endings with the game it’s supposed to be a prequel to. Actually, Deus Ex if anything suggests a world in which cybernetic augmentation is extremely unusual. I don’t think this is a prequel so much as a back-dated reboot.
And, yes, I never expected other than that Jensen would be Patient X, and I find it implausible that Jensen didn’t figure it out either. They hammered the clues in so hard right from the beginning that if it wasn’t him, it would have constituted a major jerking-around if they had revealed that it wasn’t him. There is such a thing as dramatic irony, where the audience is supposed to understand something that the character doesn’t. In the famous case-in-point of Oedipus Rex, this works because it is the point of the whole narrative. In Deus Ex, it doesn’t work, because Jensen’s realization of the truth is more of a side issue than the culmination of the dramatic or thematic force of the story.
Johnny Angel, I noticed that too. DX’s aug technology seemed to mostly be of use for turning yourself into a killing machine. We see a few people with aug tools, although this is really, really stupid: replacing your hands with blowtorches does not really improve productivity.
I can kinda see aug computer interfaces being popular and useful, but they don’t actually seem very advanced. Maybe it ultimately just works out to be a fancy in-your-brain GUI, not really better than mouse+keyboard.
Of course, by acknowledging this aspect of the controversy, they would risk creating controversy by obvious parallels to real-world-right-now corporate profits generated by selling way more weapons than the world could possibly need if they were only ending up in the hands of law-abiding hunters and home-defenders. But they do take an unambiguous stand against borging-out ho’s.
Sarif Industries is really fucking evil, and the “patient x” was one of the poor souls they abducted and kept in appalling conditions in a testing facility/prison below the building.
Jensen.
I figured both were about equally likely, but the first hint of “you’re accepting the augmentations abnormally well” made me seal it in as Jensen.
Hmm… while I didn’t like any of the “I will manipulate things endings”, and chose to let Darrow confess, I was really anoyed at Sarif. I would have been mightily tempted to help him, except that they did a fantastic job painting his character:
He’s not a bad man. Never that. But he’s actually the most narrow-minded character in the game. Yes, narrow-minded. He sees things one way and can’t comprehend that anyone else might not. He’s so obsessed with the future he’s creating that he never stopped to ask whether it’s worth it.
All in all, I love him as a character. Every word and conversation is perfectly realized. He does care about people, but he’s blind. Like Taggart, he’s a well-meaning schemer. Sarif is completely reckless in pursuing his goals. Taggart is actually comparitively sensible, and probably does worry that society is about to run off the rails entirely. I got the sense he was a memeber of the Illuminati to keep thigns from exploding, while The Dragon Lady was out for pure wealth and pure.
I also found ti was interesting that Darrow was himself so tempted to aug technology: he’s an anti-Jensen, just aslimited as Jensen is . But I think people were to harsh on him. He undoubtedly knew that if he simply waited, he could have had his augs via the new anti-rejection technology. He chose to carry out his plan anyway. He may be wrong, but he’s not simply getting his eprsonal revenge on the world; that was merely the seed.
That’s funny - I couldn’t find it in me to like the guy, despite his seemingly good intentions. I don’t know if it’s his voice, or his tone, or his choice of words, but everything about him oozes condescension, manipulation and “you just don’t *get *it, boy” to me.Different strokes I guess
Actually, that’s one part I didn’t quite get.
I was a bit tired when I reached that point of the game and got distracted during the convo but when you confront him towards the end, it’s fairly obvious that he feels sore that he’s got crummy first generation augs while Adam has pimp tech Xtreme. But… isn’t the whole point of augs that you can just yank them in and out at will, and keep up to date ? At least Tong didn’t see nothing wrong about switching arms on the fly - so what exactly is keeping Darrow from grabbing the latest, most fuck-off legs on the market ? I mean, he invented the damn things, so it’s pretty clear he’s not like that private detective who thinks metal steals your soul or something
Darrow can’t have augs, if you play the conversation right, you learn that the reason he’s so bitter about augs is because despite the fact he invented them, he’s in the 1% or so of the population that has immediate, instant rejection to them due to being biologically incompatible, hence why he has a cane and not the more flashy augmented prosthetics.
