Deus Ex Human Revolution EP40:Capitalism Endures

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Mar 21, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 100 comments


Link (YouTube)

Here we are, on the threshold. The next episode will wrap up Human Revolution, and I have to say I’m sorry to see it go.

Next week we’ll be doing a special one-off episode. The week after that is right after PAX, so we’re not going to have any Spoiler Warning. Josh and I will both be at PAX, so if you want us to say mean things about video games you’ll have to catch up with us there. I’ll be posting my PAX itinerary next week.

 


From The Archives:
 

100 thoughts on “Deus Ex Human Revolution EP40:Capitalism Endures

  1. Winter says:

    I called out that Dresden Codak comic in the comments yesterday, because it is a Dresden Codak comic, but here it is!

    It’s appropriate.

    1. Exasperation says:

      You and me and also Tobias. I also provided links to the re-enactments on youtube from when the Dresden Codak Re-enactment contest was happening. The live-action version was particularly well done, I thought.

  2. Rasha says:

    Also why with the no option to armpit fart on Hugh? I mean yeah he’s probably immune despite being unaugmented for some bullshit reason, but I’d like to have the logical option to test it. Further why can’t melee against bosses in a non-takedown fashion for good damage like the zombies were? As in something for when you don’t have time to reload and the boos autocounters takedowns? Come to think of it do we not have an option to load the tranquilizers with some form of nearly instantly deadly chemical like cyanide? Just for when fatality isn’t an issue because who cares but stealth still is? Obviously it would be much more effective at dropping people and keeping them down.

    1. Aratrok says:

      You CAN use pheramones on Hugh Darrow. The option appeared at the end of the last episode, and wasn’t taken.

      Also, we have an instantly fatal weapon with extremely common ammunition and silent shots that can be acquired in the first hour of the game. It’s called the pistol.

      1. Rasha says:

        Yeah but I just think it would be cool to have alternate but still logical ammo so you could specifically just take the tranq gun as a lethal or nonlethal as the situation warranted gun without wasting space. Yes it’s an ocd complaint, but dang I want to have more ways to control my inventory. I’d also like more reason to do so mind you but that’s a different problem.

  3. Anorak says:

    Good episode. I never even found the shopkeeper, or Taggart. Actually, I never even went looking for him. I’d had enough of the smug git at the conference.

    I like the fact that Josh didn’t kill Sarif.

    I managed to persuade Hugh to give me the codes, by basically forcing him to see what he’d done to people, I think. I tried to take the tack of “You’re just jealous”, but that wasn’t working, so I appealed to his morality instead.

    So, how would you improve this ending sequence? Shamus, you said that given more setup, it would fit in better with the rest of the game.
    How would you do that? What additional setup, and where, would make the zombies anything other than…zombies?

    1. Thomas says:

      I think the zombies are a no-go. Mostly they needed to involve Darrow a lot more in the story, so we can understand his bitterness instead of just realising it.

      Then you need to make the conversation with Darrow better in context. I think it should have been 4 options, with the 4th always being to kill him and the outcomes were either a) to get him to admit what he’s done and do something big to help (flip a button), b) he commits suicide (for the semi okay choice) c) he remains defiant and you can only leave him there or shoot him.

      Then you have a cutscene. You make this the END of the game. In fact you rearrange the game so that you have already down the level, spoken to Taggart and Sarif and had the epic boss-fight (with more epicness and more resolution) before the conversation. So the conversation caps the game.

      Then after the ending cutscene a panel opens up and Jensen goes to the capsule where he makes his choice. Cue credits

  4. Matt says:

    When I got Panchaea (or however you spell it), I felt like I had suddenly entered a game of Left 4 Dead.

  5. Thomas says:

    I hate the zombies so much. So much. They’re stupid, they really cramp any type of tactical playstyle. You can cover-shooter them. They’re stupid. They make big blocks of them where stealth is really really awkward.

    I liked that Sarif actually prioritised helping others first. That was a good bit of the game, it finally established that he was really good.

    1. Gamer says:

      That’s what bothered me most. As a stealth/non-lethal character, playing through this mission was weird. Not difficult, just weird. The stun gun kicked ass when I was caught, though.

      1. Raygereio says:

        “As a stealth/non-lethal character, playing through this mission was weird.”
        Really? What was weird about it? Some zombies still just stand still, looking at a particular direction. Other zombies have patrol routes like any other enemie in the game.

        It was remarkeble similar to any other stealth gameplay to me.

        1. Gamer says:

          I don’t even know why? I just found that I kept getting caught by them over and over. Thankfully I had plenty of ammo for Stun Gun and PEPS

        2. Thomas says:

          Well if they want into alarm mode they’d go berserk and rush around everywhere in great big mobs. They’d flash around a lot. Lots of them would be looking at walls and it was hard to believe you could actually walk by them because of the games weird cones of vision.

          Most of the time you couldn’t go for cover-based stealth which most of the rest of the game consisted of.

          Finally all the encounters were in these great big groups which was just … odd to stealth through.

  6. Lame Duck says:

    Based on what I’ve seen from Steam achievements, I would say that 25% is a better completion rate than most games see.

    I just checked Braid, which is both well-regarded and short and it’s only been completed by 27.3% of players.

    Edit: Thinking about it, Steam’s sales probably skew the numbers somewhat; I know I’ve got a long list of unplayed games that I’ve bought on impulse because they were reduced by some ridiculous amount.

    1. silentlambda says:

      I enjoyed Braid, but those last few puzzle pieces can be downright maddening. Especially after about ten minutes of staring at the screen and winding time back and forth and back and forth…

      1. Dave B says:

        I currently have about a dozen games in my backlog, but I am fairly confident that I will finish most of them…eventually. While that happens, though, I will miss huge numbers of the current crop of brown chest-high wall shooters. It’s win-win!

        Braid will probably be an exception for me though. I can’t handle many frustrating puzzles before I give up. It’s a great game, just…not for me.

      2. Daemian Lucifer says:

        What would you say about the special puzzles then?Now those were the really maddening ones.

        1. Scott (Duneyrr) says:

          Did you get all the stars? UGH.

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            Indeed I did.Though I cheated and used a guide.Still,it was quite a feat to get them all.Usually Id hit youtube to watch the special ending,but I liked braid and wanted to play through it myself.

    2. Eric says:

      Completion rates on consoles tend to be a bit higher. Very short games like Call of Duty tend to have rates close to 70% while longer ones like Grand Theft Auto are generally between 10-25%. Higher game prices on average mean you don’t have 50% of the audience buying a game just because it’s $2.

      1. Nidokoenig says:

        There’s also the fact that GTA is very open world. If there’s a definite plot that’s highly emphasised, it’d be odd for someone to play for any decent amount of time and not finish. Whereas with Fallout 3, I played that game for about 300 hours, and Morrowind for an equally ridiculous length of time, and I’ve never strictly finished either of them. For Fallout, a big factor was a bug in the stun grenade scene that made it consistently crash, but for Morrowind, I just felt satisfied with how long I’d played and didn’t feel like rolling a new character so I didn’t steamroller the endgame.

        The other factor is that I’ll often drop a game if the story isn’t engaging enough and I’ve learnt every the mechanics have to offer, because I’m very much a mechanics-driven player. If I’m not learning something new and the combat or whatever isn’t very interesting to keep repeating, the game feels like a timesink and I’ll probably play something else.

    3. Neko says:

      You’re bang-on about the Steam Sales thing. I have a huge list of games I haven’t even installed yet, never mind finished.

      Probably there’s some sort of “completed the tutorial” statistic that you could use as comparison.

    4. RTBones says:

      I’m in the same boat. I’ve got several games I bought from Steam because of a ridiculous sale that are not finished yet. So many games, so little money or time….

    5. Pete says:

      Maybe there are more cases like mine where I got Braid because of all the hype only to come to the conclusion that its a boring run-of-the-mill platformer that delivers its oh-so-deep story through TEXT CRAWLS and yeah I know this makes me sound like a Halo fanboy or something but I can usually appreciate indie games, but Braid… nnneh.

  7. Nyctef says:

    I don’t think Josh qualifies for the “hero” discount, anyway

  8. silentlambda says:

    I find it disappointing that you have the freedom to murder Darrow, Taggart, and Sarif in almost any order… and can’t mention it to any of the others. Seems like the game could take that as a cue and change Jensen’s dialog to oppose those factions. Not necessarily force you into an ending, but at least have some different opinions voiced by the characters about it.

  9. krellen says:

    It really seems like incredibly lazy – or rushed – programming not to disable the dialogue weapon-check here at the end game.

    1. Infinitron says:

      I think they have those so that people don’t scratch their heads and wonder why Jensen isn’t carrying that big gun in the dialogue cutscenes.

      (IIRC, in Deus Ex you actually saw JC quickly put his gun back into Hammerspace at the beginning of a conversation)

    2. Jacob Albano says:

      The main thing that bothers me is that you automatically put your weapon away anyway. There should be a thing where Adam just mumbles “Sorry”, holsters his weapon and continues the conversation.

  10. LurkerAbove says:

    44.7% (on Steam) have the achievement for completing the game (on any difficulty).

  11. Infinitron says:

    Actually, one other person can go and tell the world. Well, at least she tries to. Zhao.

  12. Jacob Albano says:

    The reason that Sarif isn’t going crazy is because he didn’t take the chip upgrade. None of the people at Sarif Headquarters did, because they couldn’t get to a LIMB clinic during the riots.

    Why is there a limit on praxis at LIMB clinics if you’re downloading them? This didn’t occur to me until right now.

    Also, the laser rifle has one purpose: ending the final boss battle in a matter of seconds. It goes through walls, so you can shoot Zhao through the glass.

    1. LunaticFringe says:

      …Except there’s augmented Sarif security zombies just outside of where you meet with Sarif. I’m not saying that explanation doesn’t make sense but the guards completely screw it up by raising even more questions (how did these guys get chips? Were they just not at the office? Were they at another Sarif office? If so, how did they meet up with Sarif? And why didn’t Sarif just use his regular security forces from headquarters?).

      1. Jacob Albano says:

        You’re totally right and now I don’t know what to believe.

        1. LunaticFringe says:

          I’m going with it just being a huge oversight that occurred because of financial issues and rushed production. Just take out the Sarif security guards and it makes perfect sense.

          1. Mathias says:

            Sarif was just smart enough to realize that something was wrong with the chip and decided not to take it?

            1. LunaticFringe says:

              Doesn’t explain how Malik or Pritchard decided not to get the chips though. The game really has a plot hole by not explaining this better.

              1. Gamer says:

                Pritchard said that he was looking into the chips when he told Jensen about them. It can be assumed that he found something bad with the chips and told Malik, Sarif, and the folks at HQ.

                It’s possible that the security guards were hired just then. So they already had the new chip before being hired.

                1. LunaticFringe says:

                  It’s incredibly easy to come up with theories, but there is no indication in-game that it happened in the way you describe. That makes even less sense overall. Why did Sarif hire new guards just as a major summit was going on? Wouldn’t brand new guards at a major event be, I don’t know, a possible security threat? Especially since he’s aware of the Illuminati and the way they worm into all aspects of society. He would want individuals he trusts that he knows Adam has cleared.

                  Justifying this afterwards isn’t hard, but it reflects poorly on the game, raises more questions, and is a plot hole if it isn’t properly explained. Even a text document somewhere would have done wonders.

                2. Infinitron says:

                  You guys are trying too hard. Sarif and Pritchard didn’t get mind controlled because they use their own, custom-made chips.

                  The guards are nobodies, so they just go to a LIMB clinic.

                  1. Thomas says:

                    We know thats not true of Pritchard.

                    P said that it was available (maybe that you might need it since you were on ops?) but he was suspicious of it and wanted to look into it. So he could have it, he chose not to.

                    And this is what I expected most Sarif people to think. Chip recall, greatest competitors? I doubt very many of them at all would have gone for it, apart from anything else, they’re scientists they’d want to see what the upgrade actually was.

                    I have to admit, I’d always assumed that they were smart enough just not to accept it, but without evidence and no media control they couldn’t dissuade other people from doing it, just made that decision themselves. I would have found it much more jarring to find that Sarif let a rival corporation of which he knows the Illuminati control, put a new control chip in his head without giving it a lot of thought first. Give the man some respect, the game has already established P was suspicious and Sarif is much more likely to be suspicous than Pritchard

                    1. LunaticFringe says:

                      Is it ever specifically stated that it’s Tai Yong Medical chips though, are there news reports about it or is it only hinted at in emails? All I remember is that the World Health Organization had them recalled and that LIMB was replacing them, I’m not sure if Tai Yong Medical is ever mentioned. Then again, Sarif knows about the Illuminati so he’s probably aware of their UN involvement…but still, even a line like ‘Oh I knew those chips were bad news when I saw the recall on Picus, then I sent a company memo’ would’ve cleared this up a lot easier.

                    2. Infinitron says:

                      I get the impression that LIMB is a kind of faux-benevolent public consortium. Behind the scenes, you have different corporations struggling to earn the right to supply it with their augmentations, but the public face is that of an altruistic non-partisan organization.
                      And both Sarif and the Illuminati have an interest in preserving that public image, each for their own reasons.

                      If David Sarif spread the word that LIMB was supplying people with shady chips, he would ruin that organization’s reputation forever. And that would harm the progress towards the utopian future that he was so looking forward to.

                    3. Thomas says:

                      Okay motivated enough to go check out the actual dialogue. Yeah it doesn’t mention TYM although I think there’s a news report you can read or listen to which I couldn’t find a copy of.

                      However Pritchard says ‘we’ve all had them …since I can’t run these tests on you you may want to pick them up’ So the implication is that lots of people at Sarif would be having the tests run first. At least that’s whats being recommended to them

      2. gyfrmabrd says:

        Those Sarif guards could have been an advance security detail to prepare for the visit of their big cheese in Panchaea. You know, to check the boss’ suite for anti-robot assassins, or make sure there are no crazy multi-contingency mad scientist doomsday machinations underway on the station…

    2. Adalore says:

      Eeeeh… There were Sarif body guards zombie’fied.
      Watch the video about a few minutes before the Sarif Convo. Look for red in their uniforms.

      NINJAS DO NOT WAIT FOR ME TO LEAVE THE PAGE UP FOR 2 HOURS.

    3. Eric says:

      Praxis Kit limits? Artificial supply limits to drive up demand, duh.

      1. dovius says:

        But if you can download them…why can’t you just copy them, free of charge?

  13. Marlowe says:

    Smuggler likes what you are doing but he has to cover his costs. And the union will definitely have something to say about all the workers Jensen killed and KOed.

    1. LunaticFringe says:

      Apparently Darrow hires a massive amount of augmented workers for various roles, it would make sense that the union officials are probably augmented too (after all, they’re basically representing a ‘minority group’). So the union reps are probably running around screaming about giant purple spiders trying to eat them.

  14. Daemian Lucifer says:

    So Josh chikened out of the challenge after all?Yeah,that sarif is such a charming dude,he managed to make even the cuftbert to leave him alive.

    Well for regular zombies you can always say that they are driven by the smell,and they only want fresh(ly killed)meat,so they dont attack each other.For these…I have no idea.

    Do a prince of persia game next(preferably one without the emo prince).That series does give lots to talk about.Plus,a linear game would be a nice change for the show.

    1. Spammy says:

      More fuel for the Jensen/Sarif fire…

    2. Michael says:

      Honestly, I’d love to hear Shamus trashing Crysis 2, and it’s pretty linear. Though, I’ve no idea if that could run with Fraps going short of some pretty creative core exclusion setups.

      1. Packie says:

        Oh yes Crysis 2! A game I like but bloody love to beat up on it because of its sheer stupidity and stupid design decisions. I think a small off-shoot series will suffice.

        And I think you can have an easy time C2 on Fraps since its much better optimized as opposed to the first game. It still looks wonderful on the lowest setting.

    3. Indy says:

      One of the ending options is to let Sarif die. I’m sure that’s how Josh will end the series AND complete the challenge.

  15. Sydney says:

    Taggart shouldn’t be mad that you’re holding a gun. He should be mad that you’re holding such a small gun.

  16. Spammy says:

    I liked the atmosphere of Panchea, of having these swarms of crazy people wandering the station. The eerie nature of the approach to Darrow sucked me in to the atmosphere.

    I didn’t have a problem with the Darrow and his motivations, my problem was with the options. I just leaned on Appeal, and that really disappointed me. I wanted it to be like the conversation with Haas, where you change tack at the last moment to drive the consequences of his actions home.

    And the zombies thing didn’t bother me because I was too busy being freaked out about what to do with these people. I couldn’t kill them, because they weren’t willfully trying to harm me, so I had to deal with them all nonlethally. Good thing though I held onto the PEPS for the entire game!

  17. Venalitor says:

    Here’s for closure!
    I have never started a book or game that I did not finish, multiple times in many cases.

  18. Johan says:

    As to the girl behind the glass:
    I believe you can ask her about it and she says she can’t do anything, as it’s a terminal she can’t actually interact with or something

  19. McNutcase says:

    The term Chris was looking for in relation to Sarif’s facial hair (which, incidentally, I hadn’t even NOTICED until Chris called it out) is douchebeard.

    1. Sumanai says:

      Soul patch. As mentioned in the video. Why is it that every case of facial hair gets a negative name, usually containing the word “douche” and every hair longer than a buzzcut but shorter than 15cm/6 inch gets called as a mullet?

      1. McNutcase says:

        Sorry, but having a soul patch just makes you look like you can’t shave properly, and in the game it looks like a lighting glitch. If you’re going to the effort of shaving that much of your face, go the whole hog. Or, commit to a beard people will actually SEE.

        I haven’t met a single soul patch wearer who wasn’t an unpleasant person. Sarif doesn’t count, being a fictional character. In real life, in my experience, there is a strong correlation between someone wearing a soul patch and that person being a douchebag.

        1. Sumanai says:

          Here’s the thing: Every beard style which has hair on the chin gets called “douchebeard” by someone. I’ve actually run into a situation where someone had hair on his chin, and only his chin, and someone else called it a neck beard.
          Every mustache, that’s smaller than handlebar, is called “porn ‘stache” sooner or later. Most likely by the first person who sees it, unless it’s that one style that was outlawed in 1944.
          Every full beard, regardless of how it’s cut, gets called “hobo beard”.
          And sideburns / mutton chops are a social faux pax in many circles, so no-one outside of biker gangs or similar are allowed to wear them.

          So, should Sarif have a hobo beard, neck beard, douche beard (but one that doesn’t bother you personally) or a porn ‘stache?

          1. Destrustor says:

            Maybe it just goes to show that facial hair in general is less and less fashionable. It’s not as respectable anymore.
            Times are changing.

            1. Sumanai says:

              Strange that lately I’ve been seeing more people with beards or mustaches, then.

          2. McNutcase says:

            Would it help if I explained that I wear a beard?

            I suggest that if Sarif has facial hair, it should look like facial hair rather than like a lighting glitch.

            My feelings about wearers of soul patches that I’ve met in real life are in no way related to my complaints about game art. To me, it doesn’t seem worth the trouble to maintain a soul patch, even though it’s probably more trouble for me to maintain my Gordon Freeman style beard. I won’t wear less than this without going clean-shaven because I don’t look good with anything less, and there’s emotional baggage attached to some styles. I don’t wear more because I have very sparse cheek hair and again, it doesn’t look good on me. I can’t even grow sideburns.

            1. Sumanai says:

              That’s a goatee.

              I really wish I was better at explaining things.

              Someone, somewhere, will hate any beard in the same way as you hate the soul patch. People who create characters really have only two choices: not give beards to anyone or someone has to suck it up.

              So when you’re complaining about a beard style, you’re discouraging people from putting any type of beards on characters. You wish Sarif wouldn’t have a soul patch? If he had a goatee, then someone else would be complaining and calling it names.

              Also name calling beard styles brings in my mind those people who criticise other people’s clothes constantly.

              So please stop calling it a douchebeard.

  20. MatthewH says:

    Mentioned this towards the bottom of yesterday’s broadcast -but here it is higher up and easier to spot. Short form: while we can interface nerves and mechanical devices, we’re a long way from doing it well. Our synthetic receptors don’t recognize fine distinctions between the nerve signals, and the arm actually has a much more fluid selection of movements than mechanical devices do.

    A True Bionic Limb Remains Far Out of Reach

  21. Hitch says:

    Okay, at this point in Spoiler Warning how can anyone be surprised when Cuftbert happens?

    The mind control chip doesn’t seem that hard to understand. (I only know what’s going on from watching this series. So this makes sense to me, but may be invalidated by other information in the game.) The chip was never meant to be a mind control chip. It’s some sort of brain/limb interface thing. But the Illuminati came up with the mind control version. They couldn’t get the original chip to do that, they needed to get everyone to “upgrade” to their new version. They were able to create a downloadable firmware update that made the old ones seem defective, so they could get everyone to come in for the recall upgrade. Sarif because of his Illuminati ties, knew to not get upgraded.

    No. The end of the world does not mean free Praxis kits. That’s standard in all of these type games. How many games set you up as “The Chosen One,” the only hope for the future of the world, goes to great lengths to have every NPC yammer on about how everything depends on you, but you must pay cash and do extremely convoluted favors for every weapon, every scrap of armor, every health potion, even basic food and drinks? It sucks to be a hero. I could never do it. I’d be all, “Screw this. If I’m saving the world, I’m gonna need free loot of everything I need to finish the job. Okay, I can accept that maybe the ultimate weapon is locked away at the bottom of a dungeon and I have to go get it. But I get free starter gear and absolutely no quest to ‘earn’ the map to the dungeon.”

    1. Matt K says:

      The only game I can think of that eschewed this was Lunar: The Silver Star (and it’s remakes) where your buddy running the item shop gave you everything for free.

  22. JPH says:

    I actually found the shotgun to be tremendously useful during the zombies section. They charge right into the reticle and die in one blast. If you don’t care much about the lives of fictional, nameless, nondescript, personality-devoid video game NPCs, it does the job just fine.

    1. Gamer says:

      How heartless can you be!? These people don’t deserve to die.

      1. Johan says:

        I didn’t deserve to waste time on this asspull ending

        I love Deus Ex HR to death in some parts, but by this final level I just wasn’t taking it anymore

        As with JPH, I used the shotgun

      2. JPH says:

        Going by that logic, wouldn’t uninstalling the game be the most heartless thing ever? I mean, think of all the virtual people whose virtual lives you’d end!

        1. McNutcase says:

          To be fair, at the end of HL2 Episode 2, I was crying about the imaginary people who live in my computer, and I still can’t bring myself to replay it.

  23. Michael says:

    Wait, wait, wait… IF Darrow is aware of the Illuminait? Darrow’s a member of the Illuminati. Hell, he’s in the first cutscene with Bob Page. >.<

    Though, I am kinda surprised that Darrow's stunt here and the Page postcredit sequence weren't used to show the impending MJ12 split.

    1. Infinitron says:

      They were used to show it. Not everything has to be spelled out explicitly.

    2. LunaticFringe says:

      It’s hinted at that Megan’s work leads to nano-augmentation, Jensen is the genetic base for the Dentons, the Hyron Project is a precursor to Helios, and Eliza is a child-like A.I. that would lead to the more mature A.I.s in Deus Ex. So there is a lot of pieces that indicate the later plan of MJ12, but I recall that the split only really happened after the Illuminati disagreed with Page on using the Gray Death.

  24. Jeremy says:

    The conversation with Sarif uses the word “son” so many times that it goes from being a speech mannerism to either a big fat hint, or just bad writing. Lines like “Ah, Adam… […] It’s evolution, son” place Sarif as God and Adam as His son, certainly figuratively and perhaps literally.

    “Please son, you have to stay with me on this”

    1. Gamer says:

      That always bothered me. It always seemed that Sarif’s use of “son” seemed forced. Like he’s trying to create an artificial family-like structure in his company.

      1. Johan says:

        I don’t know, it might just be his mannerisms. I know a lot of people with verbal tics like that

        1. Jeremy says:

          I thought it was irritating but plausible earlier in the game, but it got over the top for that conversation.

          1. Anorak says:

            Maybe it’s a ploy to get you to care about him. An in character explanation is he’s trying too hard to be personable and likeable, because he’s under stress and wants Jensen to remember that he “owes” Sarif.

  25. DrKultra says:

    a bit off topic, your Twitter feed disappeared?

    1. Hitch says:

      It only appears on the front page, not individual entries.

  26. guy says:

    One of the scientists mentioned that they were creating a way to get the chip to recieve software updates remotely, so presumably the Illuminati planned to upload mind-control software and Darrow sent insanity software instead.

    The chip is the actual neural interface chip that converts nerve signals to electrical and back, so the cybernetic eyes actually hook up with the visual cortex and suchlike via the chip. But for some reason or other the chip is standardized for all augmentations. I guess that’s so people like Jensen can have only one chip.

    1. decius says:

      Seriously, why is that bit of hardware accessible without major surgery, or at least total anesthesia? Should a neural interface really be hot-swappable, and accessible to amateurs?

      Drunken pranks just got a whole lot more intense- imagine underclocking the brain augs of the rich frat house just before finals.

  27. noahpocalypse says:

    YOU SHOT PRITCHARD.

    (Or someone with his hairstyle.)

  28. Aerik says:

    I have a better plan for Darrow:

    Instead of making everybody a zombie, why don’t you (say) take control of their vocal cords and make them say aloud “Augmentations are allowing powerful people that I don’t know to control my body. Perhaps I should think more carefully about augmentation in the future.” To feel somebody take over my body like that, even just to speak, would be TERRIFYING. Then, instead of a bunch of dead people, and the families of dead people who hate you, you have a bunch of people who have been scared out of their wits and had their eyes opened to the dangers of augmentation, specifically control chips.

    1. Blargh says:

      That is a terrifyingly clever idea.

  29. decius says:

    If I catch you at PAX:East, will you sign your book?

    1. Michael says:

      Of course he will. He’s even bringing a box of them exclusively for that purpose!

    2. Shamus says:

      I’ll sign anything you think would be improved by my signature. :)

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Even a check for $1000?

        1. Sumanai says:

          You really think the check would be improved by turning it into a bouncing check?

      2. Sumanai says:

        That’s a dangerous thing to say.

        1. decius says:

          I’ll say. I’ve got several confessions already worked out…

  30. Gary says:

    On Darrow :

    His actual motivation seemed to be that he saw the Illuminati’s plan and felt responsibility due to his part in creation of the augmentation technology. Darrow also realized that he couldn’t go to the authorities and warn them due to the obvious reason of Illuminati likely having their hands in every authority (which Shamus pointed out), and he couldn’t go public warning people about Illuminati because people would just brand him as a lunatic. If he had gone public with warnings about how his technology could be used to abused he might’ve gotten some intellectuals and academics discussing about this, but regular people wouldn’t care as people don’t seem to mind if things don’t create discomfort in a small enough time frame, much like how people today react to issues such as global warming, surrendering our privacy to corporations like Facebook & Google, or technically granting EA legal access to browse your private files as they see fit (and by extension your e-mails and bank account information assuming that you view those on the computer that Origin was installed on).

    So the only thing Darrow could do was to force people to experience first hand what the danger of his technology was, and this wasn’t as Rutskarn earlier suggested due to a desire to get people to listen to his ideology. This move would permanently shift public opinion towards anti-augmentation technology regardless of how they viewed Darrow as, and that was his end game. This would also explain why a scientific mind like Megan Reed would choose to assist Darrow, because he had an actual rational reason behind his plan and it explains why she’s so fine with being held captive.

    I don’t think that Darrow’s character was ever supposed to be interpreted as a “JRPG-esque” villain who “destroys the world to prove it needs to exist”, more likely scenario was that Darrow’s boss dialogue was actually pushed through to production with a horribly unfinished script due to the (very) likely time/money constraints (as pointed out several times during both of the last episodes, I myself didn’t even make the connection on my playthrough so actually I pieced this together after watching those) and thus ends up being really odd. It almost seemed like the dialogue was just the “ground work” for the argument without the story bits added to it.

    Oh and the I thought the Daedalus & Icarus was a double layered reference for Darrow’s personal feelings towards the augmentation technology and the human tendency to largely implement new scientific discoveries without first researching their negative consequences (much like how Radium was used for anything from painting high visibility watch hands, to glow in the dark condoms only to later discover the dangers of radioactivity).

    But as the game doesn’t clearly state this it is mostly conjecture on my part, but this seemed the most logical line of thought after it was pointed out that the end was the part most likely to suffer from resource constraints.

    The post became longer than expected so thanks for reading this whoever ended up moderating it, and well anyone who actually bothered to get this far.

  31. Lunok says:

    it said it needed one more comment…

Thanks for joining the discussion. Be nice, don't post angry, and enjoy yourself. This is supposed to be fun. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked*

You can enclose spoilers in <strike> tags like so:
<strike>Darth Vader is Luke's father!</strike>

You can make things italics like this:
Can you imagine having Darth Vader as your <i>father</i>?

You can make things bold like this:
I'm <b>very</b> glad Darth Vader isn't my father.

You can make links like this:
I'm reading about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader">Darth Vader</a> on Wikipedia!

You can quote someone like this:
Darth Vader said <blockquote>Luke, I am your father.</blockquote>

Leave a Reply to Hitch Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.