Deus Ex Human Revolution EP31:
Time to Take Your Medicine

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Mar 7, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 108 comments


Link (YouTube)

I do like when games let you explore philosophical ideas like free will, personal liberty, euthanasia, justice, idealism vs. pragmatism, the nature of intelligence, and so on. I like it even better when the game doesn’t beat you over the head with a right or wrong answer, but simply presents a situation and allows you to come to your own conclusions.

I liked this sequence, but I think there’s something off with this Brent Radford conversation. I think the problem is that you’re not allowed to make the most reasonable choices. You can’t call him an ambulance, but must instead kill him or leave him to die slowly. You’re not allowed to leave him with the drug and let him self-administer the lethal dose, but must again choose between direct action or callous abandonment. You ARE allowed to deny him morphine, but it’s not clear WHY Jensen is doing it. Is it because Jensen wants the info, and doesn’t want Radford to nod off? Or is Jensen just really against drugs? Or is he just being a griefing jackass?

Having said that, this is a really interesting setup and I’ve spent a long time pondering it. Radford wants to die. He’s in fantastic pain. He’s suffering and begging for release. On the other hand, he might feel differently after some medical treatment. If he woke up tomorrow in the hospital, he might find himself with a newfound desire to live. It’s one thing to allow a person to kill themselves. It’s another to let them do it while they’re in terrible (but temporary) pain and flying high on drugs. That you gave them. On the other hand, if he wakes up in the hospital tomorrow and DOES still want to die, it’s going to be a lot harder for him to pull off. Maybe he really does place no value on life as a (in his words) cripple. Maybe it’s wrong to force him to live that life. On the other, OTHER hand, maybe he would discover life isn’t nearly as bad as he thought it would be. Maybe he would come to new conclusions regarding augmentation. Then again, he’s pretty old, so it’s not likely he’s got the vigor to snap back from this and find a new way to live life. Then again…

And so on. Aside from the missing choices, this is a really interesting setup. I’m impressed. It’s not often a AAA game really lets you explore stuff like this without it devolving into sanctimony or melodrama.

I’ll even go so far as to say this: Eidos Montreal is scratching an itch that, at one time, only BioWare could reach. BioWare has lost interest in this sort of thing over the last couple of years, and so this game is really a breath of fresh air for me. I’d even go so far as to say that this is the best dialog* I’ve ever seen in a game.

* Best voiced dialog. I think the old-school text games were probably a little lot deeper, but we’re fooling ourselves if we think more text-based AAA games are in our future.

 


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108 thoughts on “Deus Ex Human Revolution EP31:
Time to Take Your Medicine

  1. Sydney says:

    With you 100%. This was one of only…three? four?…times that a video game Moral Choice Lever made me think for a while. I usually decide whether to go Angel or Satan before the voice actor finishes talking. This one took me a good three or four minutes.

    1. Sydney says:

      For some reason I don’t have permission to edit my comment, so here’s an afterthought in a double post:

      I wouldn’t have gotten to think about this in a BioWare game. I would already be holding the control stick to the top-right before the wheel even appeared. Maybe it would be “I refuse to kill you”, maybe it would be “Okay, I’ll spare you the pain”. I’d find out after one of my spammed button-presses caught a dialogue wheel.

      1. Thomas says:

        Wrong place

  2. Infinitron says:

    I'll even go so far as to say this

    Far? No, sadly, that’s not so “far” anymore.

  3. Lupis42 says:

    With the CASIE, you can also talk him into choosing to live, and letting you call him an ambulance.

    1. Sydney says:

      I usually take the CASIE at around this point in the game. It finally becomes useful (unlocks interesting new paths instead of skipping interesting old paths) in Detroit 2.

      1. Knight of Fools says:

        Yeah, you can convince him to want to get back at the people who did it, or something. He ends up begrudgingly agreeing and deciding to make that his life’s purpose. Those pheromones are pretty powerful stuff!

        I imagine that we could get a Deus Ex: Human Revolution 2 out of this guy. He ends up getting super augmented and becoming Mr Vigilante Justice because some dinkhead sprayed some pheromones on him in an attempt to prevent his suicidal mood… Which is actually a better back story than most AAA games get, now that I think about it.

        1. That’s what they did though, then he died anyway.

          Which is weird because that’s also what I did and he lived

          1. Jarenth says:

            Josh just picked the wrong option, because he’s a dink. He didn’t convince that guy of anything, he just yelled YOU SUCK HAHA and left.

            1. I just assumed reality had ensued and that guy’s anger at Jensen hadn’t done anything about the massive internal hemorrhaging from where a bullet tore up his guts.

        2. Even says:

          It bothers me that it has to be hidden behind the aug. Guess Adam’s just too boneheaded to read other people without it. Getting through his pride just seems like the obvious thing to do here if you wanted to convince him otherwise.

        3. Wandring says:

          I grappled with the ethics of using the CASIE throughout the game. Chemically altering their choices sometimes often felt worse than violence.

          For me, “forcing” him to chose life was the hardest (and most interesting) choice in the whole game; He truly believed he would become a soulless abomination if he was treated, and everyone has to die someday and he wants to pick now. For those curious, I used the pheromones to convince him to live, (figured he was already plenty chemically influenced by the morphine already) and I was quite happy to hear Adam’s dialogue made a pretty good case for it.

          For most of us, after playing a game (of any length) there are only a scant few memories that can be recalled vividly… This one takes first place for me! :)

          EDIT: Punching out Letitia, and pretending she was never in this game takes second place. :/

          1. MatthewH says:

            I disliked this aspect of the game: I thought the CASIE aug should have been used to befuddle people. But here, if I left and called an ambulance, what was he going to do? Curse himself to death? Sure, I can see why I might want to pheromone him into wanting to live, but he can’t stop me from helping him.

            I wanted a “call the ambulance anyway” option.

            It reminds me of some of the more objectionable dialog choices in Mass Effect 1, where you had to have obscene amounts of charm or intimidate to prevent a pencil-necked pencil-pushing Exo-Geni supervisor to not get his head blown off by the well armed and armored SPECTRE standing in front of him.

    2. The Hokey Pokey says:

      This is what I did, and I remember Pritchard called the ambulance. I think the “Radford didn’t make it, nothing I could do,” has more to do with Josh being the bug whisperer than the developers forcing him to die.

  4. SomeUnregPunk says:

    This games side quests were all done with far better quality than the main story itself. The reason why the the side quests exists, the themes are presented well and the flow is acceptable. The quests tend to end well, it doesn’t matter if you choose the angel or the devil route. The main story’s late game and ending just disappointed me. It is almost like they used all their talent on the side quests and then ran out of steam at the end.

    1. Sydney says:

      I think that’s because they tried to do so much with the main plot, but didn’t have enough game to do it with. I imagine with three more hubs, they would still have told the same amount of story, but done so with more detail and depth.

      The sidequests, on the other hand, are exactly as long as they need to be to deliver their full narrative payloads and nothing more, without having to rush or getting dragged out.

      1. Thomas says:

        In a way, this is how things should be though. The idea of a sidequest is it’s content for people who aren’t interested in finishing as fast as possible. The whole point of them is they leave the main story more streamlined

        I mean it’s especially true here because the sidequests are fully related to the main story. And if you add them together you get a fully cool main story (with one or two weak points) that we’d all be satisfied with. It’s just our gameified brains tell us that sidequests aren’t important in some weird way.

        So that’s all cool, however the ending for the mainstory doesn’t work because you need the sidequests for it to make sense. It’s based on summing up how you feel about the world, but that’s only experienced by exploring the world and taking the time to do the additional content. It fully caps off the sidequests, but if you haven’t done them it makes much less sense in context of the story because the end isn’t about resolving the main story and Darrow and Taggart but resolving the main question which was only explored in the extra stuff. Yet the way they place it makes it feel that it should be about Darrow and Taggart and Sarif so it’s unsatisfying.

        They needed a big cutscene immediately after the last boss fight and before the last choice. It should have been, well done you’ve completed the game, now what do you think about more than the game

        1. Infinitron says:

          Good points.

  5. MrCompassionate says:

    Im sorry but when you started talking about Renford lying down begging for release I couldn’t help but wonder whether you were secretly a fan of Jensen/Pritchford slash fic…

    Anyway I agree that this could have been more of a pragmatism against idealism moment if you had the option to save him, and even though I am typically pragmatic I desperately tried to find a way to save him and show him that with augmentations he could live life just as enjoyably as anybody else. But after the conversation with him he just died before I could find some meds for him, so silly.

    1. Sydney says:

      You can use pheromones to convince him to live.

      Which added more complexity to it for me: Do I do something abhorrent (override someone’s volition with my powers) because I think the consequence will be good? What if he wakes up tomorrow, un-pheromoned, and realizes he hates his new life after all?

  6. Packie says:

    Speaking of Eidos Montreal, does anyone know what the heck they’re doing with Thief 4(And no, I’m not calling it Thi4f)?

    Playing Thief 2 and DX:HR recently makes me all sorta giddy thinking about it.

    1. X2Eliah says:

      No clue.. Except that it turns out that they had two dev teams, one working on DX:HR and one on Thie4. So, err.. Idk. There is a small chance that the thief game will have none of the good things the new DX had.

      1. Raygereio says:

        Erm, that’s a problem how? A thief game is a rather different animal then a Deus Ex game after all.

        1. X2Eliah says:

          Like I said, there’s a chance that the thief game will have none of the good things that the DX game had.

          As in, just because one dev team under label X is good, doesn’t mean another dev team under label X is good – and because team A did a good work, doesn’t imply team B will do a good work.

          Do I need to spell it out even more?

          1. Raygereio says:

            I think you missed my point.
            A Deus Ex game is different then a thief game. They are different genres, with different gameplay elements. A more extreme example: Gears of War is different then Total War: Medievel 2.

            So sure, the team that worked on Human Revolution did a good job, but that’s no guarantee that they can make a good Thief game. Similarly, elements of gameplay and design that worked in Human Revolution might very well not work in a Thief games (for example HR’s sneaking system).

            1. Infinitron says:

              I think the point here is that the DX:HR team showed a great loyalty to the original game’s lore and feel. For an example, see the thick Deus Ex Bible they compiled.

              That’s what we’d like to see replicated for Thief 4.

          2. False Prophet says:

            How does Yahtzee’s Deus Ex song go again? “We’re not the same Ion Storm that made Daikatana / Our games are good, and they stay on schedule!”

  7. SolkaTruesilver says:

    /national pride when Montreal is mentionned

    Carry on :-)

  8. Thomas says:

    I’m really confused about this, I convinced him to live and he did. But here he says he’s going to live and then died? That doesn’t make any sense, is this just a bug Josh tripped?

    I think the thing with your choice Shamus, is you aren’t making a choice, you’re just dodging the responsibility for it. He has made it clear he wants to die, he has asked you to do it for him because he believes he can’t (even though the game didn’t show that for you). The option of leaving morphine with him is where you choose to let him die but aren’t going to take responsibility for your choice. The actual choice is do you let him die, it might be pleasanter to let him die but out of your sight but it doesn’t change the fact you actually made the decision to let it happen or not happen. You’re not giving him a choice because he’s actually already made that choice. He was the one who asked you to kill him, that’s nothing to do with you.

    As I said, I’m confused letting him bleed to death was an option, I thought the game didn’t do that

    I also liked that you can piss him off to make him live, because Jensen doesn’t care about his reputation but about that person living. It’s the path of being a good person who doesn’t care about being rough to ultimately save someone. It’s the thing ME2 didn’t allow you to do (on a small scale, it’s the only evil thing you can do on a large scale)

    EDIT: I also felt the senility of the old lady wasn’t meant to be any greater point, but just a lovely little sad moment.

    1. Raygereio says:

      “you aren't making a choice, you're just dodging the responsibility for it”

      It’s the other way around. Radford wants to die, he can clearly do this himself once you’ve brought him medicine kit (as far as I know, there’s nothing to indicate he can’t) and yet he want you to administer the lethal dose.
      Why? Maybe he’s to chicken for it. Maybe he has religious views against suicide and thinks he can twist his way around it by having you kill him.

      But whatever his reasoning Shamus’ solution is not dodging the responsibility because it’s not Adam’s responsibility in the first place. Shamus simply throws this burden that Radford has no right to throw in Adam’s lap, right back in his face.

    2. Shamus says:

      “The option of leaving morphine with him is where you choose to let him die but aren't going to take responsibility for your choice.”

      Except, it WASN’T my choice. It was his. He’s the one who wanted to die, and he’s the one who needed to accept responsibility. Yes, he “already” decided he wanted to die, but there’s “I wish I was dead” and there’s “I’m willing to kill myself”. If he’s so eager to die, then why is he dragging me into it?

      Also, there’s the practical side of things. If I kill this guy, there’s a chance it might be traced back to me. Heck, given the number of people who are sometimes watching the Jensen all-murder livestream, I’d want to avoid clearly killing this guy on-camera. There could be other cameras in the room. Or maybe I’ll leave behind forensic evidence. The point is, I could end up on the hook for murder.

      EDIT: Ninja’d on my own blog!

      1. Thomas says:

        To be honest a lot of this seems to be an animation flaw. Twice in the conversation he was unable to administer himself some morphine so it’s not unreasonable to believe he’d be unable to overdose either. I think the error was just in giving him hand movements (especially since one of the key points was that he had pretty critically paralysed himself)

        But I guess I do give you that saying something and doing it are pretty different things. I just don’t think the game would have lost anything if they’d managed to establish that he wasn’t able to kill himself.

        Because in some way it becomes your responsibility when you got involved in his situation. If he couldn’t take morphine himself than you have the choice of convincing him to live, putting him to sleep or leaving him to die because you couldn’t do the first or stomach the second. I guess there would still be a ‘phone an ambulance anyway’ clause but by that point it’s really distracting from the cool question being posed, because instead of it being how I really feel about the morality of this, it’s how can I circumvent this difficult problem.

        EDIT: Now I’m not sure if it wasn’t bleeding out that should have been the removed choice. Bleeding out is not making a choice at all. I guess it should have been convince, assisted suicide, call ambulance anyway.

        1. Sumanai says:

          Choosing not to do anything is still a decision.

          What makes the “no option to call an ambulance” situation even more frustrating for me, is that in Finland you’re duty bound to call one in these kind of situations. If you don’t, you’re in trouble.

          1. Thomas says:

            I think in the UK it’s the same. Definitely if you’re in any position of authority and security guard probably counts

    3. False Prophet says:

      I got the resolution where I made him angry and he defiantly told me he’d live long enough to kick my ass, but when I left the apartment Jensen told Pritchard he didn’t make it. A glitch, maybe?

      1. False Prophet says:

        Edit: I guess the same thing happened to Josh.

      2. Sydney says:

        Glitch. It’s the only place in the game where multiple CASIE options work, and they failed to implement the “success” Pritchard chat on the second one.

        1. Infinitron says:

          I’m pretty sure it’s not the only place where multiple CASIE options work.

          1. Sydney says:

            Well, it’s one of two. And two others have humorous auto-fails on all three.

            http://deusex.wikia.com/wiki/Social_Enhancer

            The other one has different effects for the different success modes. My point is it’s uncommon and I don’t blame them for overlooking one of the weird cases.

        2. Jarenth says:

          If there’s ‘two options that work’, but ‘they forgot to put the success talk in one of them’, wouldn’t it be fairer to say there’s one option that actually works?

      3. Lovecrafter says:

        Well, just saying you’re going to live isn’t always enough to actually make it. After all, through the entire conversation you’ve been making him spill his guts, in more ways than one.

  9. Dragomok says:

    I found a typo:

    he would discover life isn't nearly isn't as bad as

  10. webrunner says:

    I remember convincing him to actually accept augs since they could save his life (and he wouldn’t be like, crippled as a result of the injury)

    I forget what you have to for that though.

    1. Nick says:

      Just the CASIE and picking appease, I think.

  11. Infinitron says:

    I liked the film-noirish feel this subquest added to the game. Especially the way Radford describes the nurse that saved baby Adam.

  12. Dev Null says:

    On the other hand, if he wakes up in the hospital tomorrow and DOES still want to die, it's going to be a lot harder for him to pull off.

    Or at least it would be, if I wasn’t a stealthy cyborg killing machine…

  13. Infinitron says:

    Those suit wearing men are just Hugh Darrow’s personal goon squad. They don’t appear to be affiliated with the Illuminati in general, nor are they freakishly augmented like the Deus Ex MiBs were.

    One of the points of this subquest was to foreshadow, to observant players, that Hugh Darrow was up to no good.

    1. Gruhunchously says:

      Yeah, it was cool how they teased that the Mibs were actually working for Darrow. Some of the hints were pretty obvious, like the head goon slipping out part of Darrow’s name in his phone conversation, and others were more subtle, like the itinerary they were carrying that listed all the places that Darrow had been recently (like Prague and Singapore).

    2. Phoenix says:

      Yeah they say mr. da… gray.

      Also zer0cool (the nick u see in the computer) was the hacker in the film hackers (1995) with a young angelina jolie.

  14. rrgg says:

    “It’s one thing to allow a person to kill themselves.”

    Oh that is definately a thing, not really a better thing by any stretch of the imagination but it is a thing.

    Moral choices in videogames generally don’t click with me. Partly because I’m always looking for alternatives like you are, partly because it’s too easy to disconnect from really undesirable scenarios, and partly because I’m not much a tragedy person. If I were playing this scenario I probably would have kieuthanized him if only to more quickly cover up the whole fiasco.

    1. Shamus says:

      “Oh that is definately a thing, not really a better thing by any stretch of the imagination but it is a thing.”

      Actually, to a lot of people it IS different. This is what makes it interesting to consider. For you it might be six one way, a half-dozen the other, but for a lot of people (myself included) this is a meaningful choice (if the game had allowed me to make it) and it’s possible to create different scenarios to explore this idea.

      If you kill them at their request, is it the same as having them kill themselves? If you refuse to kill them, is it the same as torturing them yourself? Do people have the right to die whenever they want? Is making someone live against their will morally superior to letting them die according to their own will? Etc etc etc.

      It’s interesting stuff because you can almost set up a situation where belief system A, not matter how well-intentioned, results in more misery.

      I find it’s more fun to ponder this sort of thing in a videogame, than to ponder it in the real world where wrong answers have real human cost.

      1. James says:

        Hi Shamus,

        Long time reader, first time poster.

        I think that describes one of the key things I look for and enjoy in gaming. A story that asks me a question, and gives me space to explore an answer for it. I actually missed this conversation during my run, though I'm not really upset about that- HR has been memorable for me due to that personal way you can go through the game.

      2. rrgg says:

        But that’s the key isn’t it, that there is a “right” answer. Even if it takes a while to figure it out the fun is more or less similar solving an extremely complex logic or math problem. In this sort of instance even if everyone’s answer is subjective, they all come out thinking that they were right.

        The question then is how to create a good moral quandary rather than one which leaves most people thinking “ugh, it doesn’t really matter” or worse “why is the writer forcing me to make this choice in the first place?”

        If the latter ever happens then the player spends 10 hours trying to figure out how to kill the Companions in Skyrim (even the console commands didn’t effing work!).

      3. Z says:

        Exactly. Each action or lack thereof takes a different toll on you or your own ethical standing. As you say, what’s interesting is that the question is well framed (mostly), and doesn’t take a “right” answer for granted.

        I disagree with an earlier poster that there’s a clear “right” answer. Kevorkian has proved that euthanasia can be merciful, and can also put you in jail. Just as illustration, not to try to go too deep into an ethical discussion, but you clearly are interested enough to have posted several times about it:

        Do people have the right to die whenever they want?

        Under many of today’s belief systems, no. There is some sort of fixation with longevity, as if your age at death (and net worth) is how score is kept. In other times and cultures, there were more important things than outliving each other. Some still believe that dying with honour or for a cause are better than living in shame or in oppression.

        But yes, in my view, one does have an inalienable right to die when they choose, for the same reason they have the right to smoke tobacco or drink gasoline or amputate their pinky or run risk of death by thrill-seeking endeavours: my body, my choice, dammit! (for those of the religious persuasion: my soul, my choice as well, dammit!)

        …just adding a different viewpoint, not trying to start a “thing” here.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          While I agree with you,I feel the need to add that that only applies to persons who are of sound mind.If someone is suffering from a trauma,or an illness,the right to do what they want should be suspended from them.

          1. Z says:

            I’m sure you didn’t mean to imply that euthanasia should only be available to healthy people…

            Seriously, though, I think any calls for “the right to do what they want should be suspended from them” is fraught with worse perils than what they wanted to do in the first place, especially if it only affects them.

            1. Nidokoenig says:

              I think the idea is more that a guy in the situation we see here, suffering from fresh trauma and a spinal injury, is almost certainly in shock and thus not in a good position to be making sane decisions. It’s at the very least highly suspect to allow euthanasia without a solid system of checks and balances, Jensen is, to put it bluntly, not qualified to make that call. If the guy gets saved and augmented and doesn’t want to live, he can just move to Hengsha and not get the parachute aug.

              I think what rrgg is getting at about a right answer is that in a video game, we have enough information to make a fully informed decision and cost/benefit analysis of the various actions, not to mention there’s usually an explicitly right way that gets you more exp/loot/exposition/whatever. It’s an argument that can be somewhat overdone if you just blankly assume that the choice with the best rewards is the one the devs favour, (Showing that crime is lucrative but built on repugnant acts is valid), but realistically, the majority of the time there’s no such deep thought behind the reward allocations.
              But the basic point is that a video game is a fixed and knowable thing, there are numbers to be crunched and every option’s consequences are knowable simultaneously, we aren’t stuck with making a snap decision based on guesswork and analogy.
              Passing up the opportunity to metagame to get that information is one solution, but it breaks immersion for many and takes away some of the gravitas. After all, you’re turning down the opportunity to know more about the situation you’re being called to make a very big decision about, that’s reckless and breaks immersion in the same way that the idea that powergaming in a setting filled with demons or cyborgs isn’t sporting. The decision can’t be that important if you pass up easy ways to get more info, and the enemies can’t be that dangerous if you can half-arse preparing yourself to fight them.

              1. Shamus says:

                ” If the guy gets saved and augmented and doesn't want to live, he can just move to Hengsha and not get the parachute aug.”

                I laughed.

                In this universe, you can apparently commit suicide by jumping out of a first-floor window.

                1. Thanatos of Crows says:

                  Well I’ve always told myself the character breaks their legs or is cripled in some other way that would make it nearly impossible to continue the m-m-mission. Afterall it’d be kinda awkward if Jensen broke his limbs while infiltrating the FEMA facility and proceeded to tell Pritchard to call an ambulance.
                  Need to make a comic of that…

                  1. MatthewH says:

                    His limbs are made of solid unobtainium! How is he breaking them?

                    /tongue in cheek

                    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                      Nah,its just his arms.Theyve spent their entire budget on them,so for his legs they just used cheap plastic.

            2. Daemian Lucifer says:

              No,I meant of sound mind.Recently I had some kidney problems,and the pain was so bad that I seriously considered overdosing on pain killers.If the pain were a bit worse,I might have actually done that,and that wouldve been pretty bad.

              Also,ending your life does not affect only you,it affects everyone who cares for you as well.

              1. Simon Buchan says:

                Probably only relevant if you were in a hospital and had a morphine drip, but I hear that it’s nearly impossible to kill yourself with one due to the timing, rate of release and when you fall unconscious. Not that I would like to attempt it!

                Oh, and man, I’m sorry to hear you went through that :(

                1. Sumanai says:

                  What? With painkillers? Without a prescription, I’ve previously bought a pack of paracetamol, 500 mg, 30 tabs. That mean total of 15 grams which is easily enough to destroy your liver. A slow and painful way to go, I would imagine, but when you’re not thinking, you’re not thinking.

        2. rrgg says:

          As the poster before you, I meant that it is important that the individual can see a “right” answer to the question. Just like how in your opinion the answer to “should people be allowed to kill themselves?” is yes. If you are presented with a moral choice and you can’t find a reason to like or prefer either option, then it mearly comes across as pointless and boring.

        3. rrgg says:

          For “Do people have the right to kill or mutilate themselves if they want?” Personally I think the answer is no or at least it’s well superceeded by the right of others to prevent them from doing so/talk them out of it. (I wouldn’t argue for outlawing things like drinking or dangerous sports though, but I don’t think this discussion needs to go in depth)

          But as for the question presented “Is it better to kill someone or let them bleed to death?” The guy dies either way and I don’t really care about either option.

      4. MatthewH says:

        Now that you mention it, this is basically “Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem,” by Judith Jarvis Thompson (standard fare, I imagine, in a college philosophy of ethics class -at least that’s where I read it). It’s somewhat hamhandedly implemented, but much smoother than if they’d actually stuck you on a trolley… but I guess we get there at Panchea, don’t we.

  15. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Werent the important dialogues in plaenscape:torment and baldurs gate voiced over as well?Granted,only the person you were talking to was voiced over,and you were not,so I see why this is the best completely voiced over dialogue in a game.

    On an unrelated note:Congratulations on timing your book Shamus.Now youll have enough money to buy yourself a steambox.

  16. JPH says:

    Protip: “piss him off so much that he wants to live” does NOT work on real suicidal people in real life.

    1. Phoenix says:

      I bet :)

      1. JPH says:

        I’ve been trying to interpret exactly what this comment means for the past ten minutes. I think I’m overthinking.

    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

      But he isnt really suicidal,he wants you to do it for him.He is just in too much pain to think straight,so pissing him off can work.

    3. Thomas says:

      That’s probably quite a wide generalisation. I don’t really know where you could come up with evidence that its true in every case or even in X% of cases.

      On the balance it’s still probably better not to go with that one as a first approach though

      EDIT: Darn this is bothering me a lifetime of fiction on the one hand and no evidence on the other. If anyone can find anything either way on whether anyone has ever actually lived for hate/revenge in their lives I’d actually be really grateful

      1. KremlinLaptop says:

        I think JPH means that going to a suicidal person and trying to help them with ‘tough love’ or in more accurate terms belittling and insulting them isn’t actually going to be a very effective way of getting them to keep from committing suicide. Not that Jensen did this so much, but you see a lot of this where people seem to think that’s how you’re supposed to ‘help’ a suicidal person.

        When in truth when you’re suicidal you probably already thinking you’re the lowest form of shit on the planet and the last thing that’s needed is someone validating those beliefs.

        1. JPH says:

          That’s precisely what I meant.

          1. MatthewH says:

            Not enough to go hunting for it, but I would be interested to know if there is a distinction between tough love of the “you are shit” variety and trying to trigger the survival instinct. Sort of like the distinction between a bully and a Drill Instructor.

            1. JPH says:

              Regardless of the intent, it would most likely serve as a catalyst for suicide rather than a deterrent, by making him think something along the lines of “Fuck you, I don’t want to live in a world with people like you.” I’ve been there and I’ve felt those feelings. They aren’t pleasant.

              Most people don’t seem to realize that suicidal people are in an extremely fragile state of being. Look at it this way: If he’s already in a position where he’s willing to forcibly end his own life, I think trying to trigger survival instinct is a lost cause.

              1. Thomas says:

                I know enough to know that with most people it would make it worse, but I’m also in a position to know that suicidal people have really diverse motivations and sometimes they don’t even feel bad about themselves, or even depressed. Some people don’t feel like their life is bad or even that there’s a reason for it. so I’m wondering if there isn’t a type of person who you could force to live out of hate.

                I know it’s not something you could even dare thinking of doing without some really really intimate knowledge of the person involved but I can’t find evidence either way

                1. JPH says:

                  I’ve never heard of any situation like that.

                  The whole “living out of hate/revenge/spite” thing just seems like a stupid trope used by people who don’t actually understand the psychology behind suicide. And I can see why; I can’t expect everyone to truly understand suicide. But I guess that doesn’t stop them from writing stories about it.

                  1. Thomas says:

                    There are sometimes strange reasons for suicide. Never mind the weirdness of stuff like Seppuku, which seems to be suicide by faux pas. So I don’t know, I feel I’d need evidence either way.

                    Here it seems spur of the moment and whilst he’s in a lot of pain. Maybe a distraction and being denied what he wanted was all he needed at the moment. Anger isn’t a bad painkiller in some ways, but I don’t know I feel a little uncomfortable talking about this because I’m acting like I know a lot more than I do. I do have some experience and it’s clear you have a lot of experience, but I’m still new to this whole thing so I think it’s best that I withdraw

  17. Phoenix says:

    If you leave the building he dies anyway, so Jensen is lying to him and there isn’t a real option to save his life. I tried to save him in my second playthrough but it was meaningless so I reloaded and helped him dying.

    Anywere compared to de:hr mass effect 3 has a worse cover/combat system and far worse dialogs and choices. It makes me miss deus ex

  18. Slothful says:

    If you appease Radford, Adam calls an ambulance for him.

    So basically if you act like a jerk to him, the game assumes you want him to die.

  19. Adam F says:

    You went through a lot of hands up there, Shamus. I wonder what point is in the gripping hand.

    1. Hal says:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gripping_Hand

      It’s a good little bit of terminology, actually.

      On the one hand . . .

      On the other hand . . .

      On the gripping hand . . .

      Doesn’t seem as common as indicated, though. Also, I have been inadvertantly using “On the grasping hand” for a number of years now.

      1. Klay F. says:

        I use feet when I run out of hands…

        Please tell me I’m not the only one. :/

        1. Thanatos of Crows says:

          Well when amusing kids I do! Although I also use afterleg instead of beforehand in said situations…

      2. Adam F says:

        “Doesn't seem as common as indicated, though.”

        Might be a good thing…don’t have to be so paranoid about the moties having gotten loose.

    2. MatthewH says:

      Reminds me of the Harry Truman joke about wanting only one-armed advisers.

  20. Ringwraith says:

    Okay, now I’m very intrigued by Chris’ current credits title, and can’t wait to see how that came about.

    1. bit says:

      Also, “The worst person since me,” Is now probably one of my favorite Josh quotes.

      1. Michael says:

        I enjoy the Youtube comment response to it even more.

        “Technically, you don’t count as a person.” or somesuch.

  21. RCN says:

    Congrats Josh! You managed to bug Deus Ex: Orphan Dellusion yet again! You fail to save the man while doing one of the few things that can save the guy! Good job!

    I liked that you can only save him with the CASIE aug. I mean, this is a nice touch that give some interesting implications (as in, the actual social use for the CASIE, you can pretty much assume hostage negotiators and whoever it is the police calls to appease suicidal individuals must be getting this Aug) and it makes sense. You’re talking to a drugged up guy in serious pain who believes it’ll all be over if he just dies already. You need something more than just a good argument to make him change his mind. Something that would change his current emotional state. Like, say, a chemical response to pheromones.

    Though I don’t know if the omega result is actually supposed to be a failure that fails so spectacularly that makes him hate you so much that he’d rather live to spite you than just die, or is actually supposed to be it working. It does say Alphas get angry by being treated like omegas, and it is certainly what happens.

  22. Specter says:

    dear mr. young

    this comment is only slightly relevant to the video shown above, but would it be possible to change your template so the link under the video opens a new tab instead of loading youtube in the current one?

    1. Raygereio says:

      You could just rightclick on the link and open it in a new tab.
      If you’re using IE the shortcut for that is holding down control while leftclicking on the link.

      1. Specter says:

        yeah, I know. but my request is born of habit… I’m used to having a tab just pop open, so I can read it, close it and continue my reading in the source.
        but here it’s different: I click the link, watch the video, close the tab and tomorrow I start cursing again because I lost my 20sided-tab again…
        and since I have very bad memory it takes quite some time to find this site again…

        1. Raygereio says:

          Well if that’s the issue. You do know the video is embedded, right? You can watch the video in your twentysided tab.

        2. Even says:

          Using Firefox, it automatically opens the link in a new tab for me if I click the YouTube logo on the bottom right of the embedded video. Maybe try that?

          1. Specter says:

            @raygereio: yes, but for some reason it loads slower when it’s embedded

            @even: uuuuhm, ok… didn’t know that… I’m gonna sit in a corner and be ashamed for a bit…

  23. Gamer says:

    I kinda like that choice. You can convince him to live, but only if you have the CASIE augment. It’s an incentive to get the CASIE augment and/or replay the game like with the other gameplay sections. It only seemed to not work for Josh (not killing him) because of a dialogue glitch.
    You can:
    a.) Refuse to do it, and let him kill himself.
    b.) Do it, and give him a mercy kill.
    c.) (CASIE) Convince him to live.

    It beats paragon/renegade because you have much more control of it and don’t have to meta-game to get the option. It’s like how you need a high Speech to get many of the better resolutions to New Vegas quest-lines.

  24. Spammy says:

    The old lady made my heart a little warm towards the end, as she gives you the birthday money she’s been saving for Jensen and tells you to get him something nice. I may have let out a little “Aww” when Jensen immediately called Pritchard to call in a security detail to protect her.

    Also, at the end she said that Jensen must’ve been 12 or 13 by now, which I was (Considering he was apparently genetically modified either in the womb or as a child) about to take seriously. Conspiracy and sci-fi and all.

    1. Simon Buchan says:

      Did they ever say when aug technology in it’s current form (invasive, direct mental control) was first invented? It was Darrow that invented it wasn’t it? Would be interesting to see how well the timelines match up.

      1. Infinitron says:

        Read these books and find out! http://deusex.wikia.com/wiki/Doctorate

        1. Simon Buchan says:

          Hah! I forgot most of those!

          Looks like Darrow had some basic implementations as early as 2001 (wait, what?), so it’s looks plausible that in the 14 years before when [old lady] claims Jensen was born: 2015 (2027 – 12) he had long enough to try solving the PEDOT problem before deciding to set up White Helix and genetically engineering his solution. (Though I’m not sure what he was engineering for… natural Neuropazyne production? Then why is Jensen’s genetics so important?)

  25. Gamer says:

    “When you investigate someone, you have to get into their mind and become them. So he became a perpetually shot drug addict.”

    Why did it take me four times of hearing that line to get the joke?

    1. MatthewH says:

      I get the perpetually shot -but wasn’t the whole point of Jensen’s Patient X status that he isn’t a drug addict?

      1. Gamer says:

        No, but Adam “Reginald Cuftburt” Jensen is. He would take all the morphine and all the alcohol.

  26. MatthewH says:

    I’m glad they didn’t implement this way -but when I was doing the conversation with Radford, I was always afraid that this next shot of morphine was going to be the overdose -so I triaged my questions mercilessly -even when he said “Morphine” I kept badgering him for answers until I was sure he wasn’t going to say any more.

  27. Marlowe says:

    Does Jensen Scissorhands carve unique topiary gardens in his time off?

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