Deus Ex Human Revolution EP36: Ancient Chinese Secret

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Mar 14, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 60 comments


Link (YouTube)

The Airport Security game I mention in this episode is still around, and you can play it here. (Warning: Site is a bit spammy.) It’s one of those things that’s better in concept than in execution. It’s great satire, but it’s not exactly a bundle of kitten giggles in the gameplay department.

 


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60 thoughts on “Deus Ex Human Revolution EP36: Ancient Chinese Secret

  1. Gamer says:

    The best part about the Laser Rifle is that it can shoot through walls, allowing you to bypass the whole final boss by shooting it directly instead of going through and taking out the things in the center. (Being vague to avoid spoilers.)

    1. Pete says:

      Everyone who had the laser rifle at that point in the game has now, after reading your post, experienced a relapse of smug satisfaction. Except me, because I walked up to the REDACTED, pulled out the rifle, and went “nah, thatd never work, this sort of thing NEVER works” and proceeded in the intended fashion.

      1. Gamer says:

        To be fair, I didn’t know it could do that until my second playthrough.

    2. Raygereio says:

      C4 a far more satisfying way to deal with the final boss.

      It’s also fun as applying C4 in the right way allows you to skip over several phases of dialogue, bossbanter, mookwaves, etc, and you get to see the game soil it’s pants trying to deal with what you just did.

      1. SougoXIII says:

        Wait you can C4 the last boss? How does that work? I always rely on the laser rifle as the ‘skip this bullcrap’ button.

        1. Raygereio says:

          It’s not a skip button like the laser is.
          Basically you use C4 to delive massive damage at once, instead of spread out over time. Resulting in the game freaking out a bit and spitting out all of it’s boss posturing, banter, etc at once.

          It’s fun (to me at least) because it shows clearly that no one playtested that fight with the DLC items.

    3. Grudgeal says:

      Mind you, so can the Typhoon for some reason.

      1. Gamer says:

        You can Typhoon through the glass.

    4. Nick says:

      Yeah, having never seen what that boss fight actually entails I’m actually kinda hoping that Josh does it in the intended fashion, rather than cheatyfacing it with the laser rifle like I did every time

      1. Blargh says:

        Final boss: You’re supposed to pop open the cores (either through buttons on the sides or terminal hacking) and kill/knock out the people inside, which overloads(?) the boss, breaking the glass somehow. Mooks attack every time you take down a core.

        I feel pretty stupid now, using the laser rifle on the turrets and putting up with that crap. Overall, it’s pretty silly, but still better than the other three.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          I had a plethora of gas and emp grenades and mines at that point,and that works like a charm against those mooks.

        2. Thomas says:

          I liked the last one. There was breathing space for tactics, you could use stealth or hacking (or convo skills if you had it), you could fight your way out, you could get weapons so elite you just win. You could wait out a timer.

          The set-up was a bit gamey. It didn’t feel real, but it was fun for what it is. It wasn’t like the others where I just wanted to glitch through them.

    5. RCN says:

      The best part of the laser rifle is that you can shoot it with pin-point accuracy from cover without looking. Suddenly, Adam Jensen becomes Niko from GTA. Found this use against the plasma boss and pretty much that became my strategy against him (spending all my laser ammo on his face from cover).

      Later, I took his rifle in place of the laser, because it is not as freaking big. However I only ended up using it in the last boss, and only because I ran out of emp grenades (if I knew the last boss was behind a glass wall…)

    6. Packie says:

      Best part about the laser rifle is combining it with the aug vision equals maximum Trololz.

      I literary created an entire save in a later section just to screw around with the laser rifle on unsuspecting guards. Never knew what hit ’em.

  2. Infinitron says:

    Perhaps the GPL “beacon” is actually a distributed network of micro-transmitters implanted throughout the scientists’ bodies?

    1. Gamer says:

      But nanotechnology hasn’t been developed enough yet in Human Revolution. There are e-Books talking about the potential of nano-machines.

      1. Infinitron says:

        Didn’t say they were nano-scale. Just smallish.

    2. Nyctef says:

      Yeah, something like that. I thought that maybe there were just multiple GPLs, some in the body, some in the augments, and Jensen just happened to pick up the one in the arm.

      Edit: The episode ends .. and did Josh survive that fall !? The suspense is killing me ..

      1. Tohron says:

        Think I could barely make out him having 26 life left.

        1. Bryan says:

          I thought the screen blipped red — but that might just be the 26 health, I suppose, not the death animation.

          The world may never know. Most likely because it’ll be edited out of tomorrow’s episode. :-)

    3. ? says:

      Or it could be part of the aug that connects to the nerve endings, therefore making it difficult to remove it without damaging the host. Sarifs team of augmented surgeons in state of the art operating room could probably do it, if not rushed and prepared for operation. Sandoval improvising in former FEMA facility? Harvester butchers? Not so much.

    4. Corpital says:

      Maybe they ate GPL bacon and its marker proteins are spread troughout their entire blood system.

    5. Piflik says:

      Or maybe the rest of Sevchenko’s body is stashed away somewhere else in that base. Tong just wanted to replace his arm, but that doesn’t mean that he disposes of the body immediately. The GPL device could be anywhere in the body.

      1. Hitch says:

        Could have been in the body bag Josh looked at and said, “Why is there a body bag here?”

      2. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Yup,tong does say “They gave us his body”.

      3. Infinitron says:

        Ah yes.

  3. Theminimanx says:

    There’s another store on Pangea where you can buy two more praxis kits. I hope you show it of because Jensen is such an ass when talking to the shopkeeper.

    1. Gruhunchously says:

      He is? I just watched that scene, and he doesn’t seem particularly rude to her; he just tells her that it’s not safe to come out.

      1. Theminimanx says:

        Before basically saying: well you’re stuck here anyway, might as well sell me stuff. OK, thanks for the praxis points, later!

  4. RTBones says:

    Regarding the augs and embedded GPLs…I always took the ‘cant get the GPL’ not to mean physically but more ‘cant access the GPL inner workings’. In other words, while the physical hardware might be located, there might be some sort of protection/intrusion alert such that if the GPL is removed or altered in any way, the aug itself becomes useless. Perhaps the hardware that is the GPL has an intrusion detection such that it flashes itself (essentially a self-destruct) when removed – the issue being that unbeknownst to anyone but the aug makers, some required bit of logic to make the aug function also gets destroyed.

    In a crude sense, think IE of not so long ago. MS at one point insisted IE was not removable from their OS – and they could do this because they included one OS-required bit of code inside an IE DLL. Remove said DLL (when removing IE), and the OS becomes unstable.

    1. Gamer says:

      But that doesn’t really make sense because Sandoval lowers the frequency, meaning that he accessed the inner workings.

      Besides, if you can get to them, it should be relatively simple to remove them with state-of-the-art medical science.

      1. RTBones says:

        Just because he’s lowered the broadcast frequency doesn’t mean he’s got the ‘whole nine yards’ – meaning he may be able to mod the broadcast but not remove the GPL.

        What I’m getting at is he may have part of the equation, but not the entire solution. He may have lowered the frequency EXTERNAL to the actual GPL, in other words, a hack. Take the output going to the ‘transmitter’ portion of the GPL, pipe it through a ‘filter’ which ‘tunes’ the output to the lower frequency – without actually disturbing the inner workings of the GPL itself.

      2. Daemian Lucifer says:

        But he doesnt have state of the art medical science at his disposal.Did you look at that room back in that base?Its not that well equipped.Plus there was not that much time to do it for every one of them,so he was both lacking time and equipment.

      3. Ringwraith says:

        By the way they express surprise at ‘the lengths Sarif has gone to’, it’s hinted at that it may have some sort of bomb or otherwise lethal device as a failsafe, thereby making it impossible for anyone who kidnaps them to disable the GPLs with defeating the entire point of kidnapping them in the first place.

  5. McNutcase says:

    … that better not have been Josh killing himself by falling off a building in the final seconds of the episode. Because so help me, Josh Viel, if you DID kill yourself, having gone on an upgrade spree and STILL left yourself enough Praxis to buy the parachute, I will track you down, buy a parachute, and force-feed it to you!

  6. burningdragoon says:

    So I’m convinced that Jenson must have some sort of compartment in his torso that he puts his trench coat in since sometimes it just disappears suddenly.

    PS. Shamus, I got your book in the mail today!

    1. krellen says:

      I got the book yesterday, and stayed up all night reading it.

      1. Sumanai says:

        Got it today. Which surprised me, since shipping from US should take three weeks minimum, and now took under two weeks.

  7. Destrustor says:

    The “walk ten feet and come out three miles farther” thing can be explained by the magic of the loading screen. I always consider loading screens to be able to take me any arbitrary amount of distance.
    Also, if you take the time to look back when entering this zone, you’d see that the door you come out of looks nothing like the door you entered, meaning Jensen traveled at least a noticeably longer distance than was shown.
    Would you rather have been forced to manually walk Jensen in real time through the miles of boring-ass chinese sewers, or sit in Malik’s chopper for the hours of transit between detroit and hengsha, or “play” through Jensen’s cold sleep before finding megan?
    Are you secretly the kind of person who would actually enjoy “desert bus”, Josh?

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      I was just to say that.You enter a loading screen,and then exit in a completely different part of the city.Heck,maybe you drove there,and entered the sewers just outside the harbour.

      1. Sumanai says:

        In that case the game does a poor job of telling the player that this is what happens.

        Not a big problem, certainly not something I’d foam about, but I like it when people make fun of stuff like this. It’s amusing, even if misplaced and especially if correct.

  8. silentlambda says:

    I remember Josh’s surprise in the twilight episodes of Fallout 3 (or New Vegas?) at having not taken the silent running perk as a stealth character.

    The drinking game must wreak havoc with his memory.

  9. krellen says:

    If you look up “Ancient Chinese Secret” in Wikipedia, it redirects to Calgon.

    1. ClearWater says:

      If this game had been made somewhere in Europe it would have gone something like this.

      Adam: “Tong? How did you get this frequency?”

      Tong (singing): “Washing machines live longer with Calgon!”

      1. X2Eliah says:

        But Canada is totally the Europe of the American continent.

        1. False Prophet says:

          Montreal definitely is.

  10. Rasha says:

    Wouldn’t tacos be an ancient Mexican secret?

    1. Hitch says:

      That’s the secret.

    2. Sumanai says:

      I imagined Rutskarn’s tacos to be made thus:

      Order a taco and Chinese. Empty the taco, pour the Chinese in the tortilla. Rutstaco.

  11. Museli says:

    I’ve never heard of that Calgon ad before, as the ones we get in the UK are far more boring. When I heard Tong use the line ‘Ancient Chinese secret’, I just assumed he was mocking the way that some folks in the western world have a tendency to ascribe some vague mysticism to the Chinese.

    1. Chris says:

      Just so everyone’s on the same page, this is the Calgon ad the joke/episode refers to (with a lady who I swear is doing some sort of proto-Princess Leia acting).

      And of course I can’t mention Calgon without mentioning the MST3K episode of Space Mutiny.

      1. ClearWater says:

        The wife doesn’t seem to have decided whether she’s American or Australian.

  12. Grag says:

    Rutskarn asked about a game where you are a base commander but occasionally drop into an FPS mode to sort problems out personally..

    Dungeon Keeper, dude.

    It was optional, but it helped a lot in the early part of a level when the imps were low level and lazy.

  13. Zukhramm says:

    This is where I quit the game. The story to crawling through ducts ratio seemed to be a little too low for me. The whole Illuminati thing had not managed to interest me, maybe if I had played the original it would, and the whole augmentation story did not seem to be going anywhere interesting either. That and knowing I had two more bosses to go just got me to drop the game.

  14. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Rutskarn,you disappoint.I was expecting you to say “Ancient usa secret”.Now that wouldve been funny on many levels.

    There were a few tower defense games on steam recently where you are in first or third person,and can shoot at enemies as well as erect towers all around.

    Also this.

    1. Eljacko says:

      Even better: Ancient Californian Secret.

  15. Keredis says:

    I’m really kind of surprised that Josh never grabbed the “Hack robots and turrets” upgrades for maximum havoc. Or would that have been too impersonal a way to kill people for Reginadam Jensbert?

  16. LunaticFringe says:

    http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/

    I guess Natural Selection somewhat counts for what Rutskarn described, it’s basically a tower defense RTS and a multiplayer FPS mixed together.

  17. Eljacko says:

    I can actually see how the parking garage would make sense. You’ll notice that all the cars in the parking garage are kind of ruined and dilapidated, and the gang is operating right in the middle of the garage as opposed to in secret behind closed doors. The way I see it, Hengsha probably had roads at one point but they were built over, causing the parking lot to become abandoned and allowing Tong’s gang to move in.

    This also explains why Tong uses the parking garage instead of his club. The club would be a really conspicuous place to have this whole operation going on, whereas the abandoned parking garage is relatively covert.

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