Deus Ex Pitch Part 8: Resolution (Post-Mortem Post)

By Heather Posted Wednesday Oct 26, 2022

Filed under: Projects 36 comments

And speaking of missions, let’s get back to the job at hand…

Mission 9: TBD

This stretch of the game is really light on details. I don’t have a setting for this mission, except that it should probably be some sort of industrial facility owned by South African industrialist Samkelo Mensah.

We need to take care of Mensah. Also here is fellow board member Camila Ferreira, a Brazilian Environmentalist / Politician. We should find these two together, plotting. Camila is evidently an environmental crusader, and here we learn she doesn’t actually care about the environment and it’s all part of the game to her. 

Mensah has [some polluting property] that isn’t really working out for him, and he wants to get the red ink off his books. He asks Ferreira to shut it down. She’ll get credit for stopping a polluting industry, which will help her in the polls. At the same time, Mensah will be able to blame his losses on “environmental regulations” instead of taking responsibility for his poor management and leadership. In return, he wants her people to look the other way for this other place he’s starting up. It’s clear this game is familiar to the two of them, with each of them benefitting from their feigned conflict.

This time, Everett decides to tell us about himself:

I got my start working on the first-generation of social media platforms. I was in University just after the turn of the millennium, looking for a way to distinguish myself. A lot of the Old Guard was scared of the internet. DeBeers in particular. He was afraid that people would route around our stranglehold on the news, and we’d be neutered or even exposed. 

But I saw an opportunity. Social Media gave us the tools to take DeBeer’s adversarial politics and supercharge them. With the right algorithms, we could find the most enraging members of the left / right conflict and signal boost them. We could deliver a non-stop feed of fear and worry about the horrible things those “other people” were doing. It was exactly the fear and paranoia that MaCarthy had tried and failed to sustain half a century earlier.

As I told Lucius at the time, “If Dorothy had spent the entire trip bickering with Scarecrow, Lion, and Tin Man, they never would have discovered the Man Behind the Curtain.”

You want to know how well it worked? During the cold war, there was a never-ending supply of movies, books, and television shows where two people from opposite sides of the Iron Curtain would team up for some adventure and become friends in the process. They would set aside their differences and discover that their mutual distrust had been making them weak. These stories were a direct reflection of people’s feelings at the time. Deep down, common people longed for reconciliation.

Can you even imagine someone making a story like that today, featuring explicitly red state and blue state people? It’s been decades, and it’s never happened. Nobody wants reconciliation. Thanks to the internet, the animosity is a self-sustaining reaction. Anger is both the food and the waste product of social media.

We used to have to manage mass media carefully, talking out of both sides of our mouth. It was a brutal balancing act. But now everyone has their own version of the truth, curated by algorithms controlled by us. 

Once again, Everett asks you to kill the conspirators and spare the infrastructure, and once again you’re free to work with him or do your own thing.

Okay, we’ve now dealt with everyone except Maggie Chow. We should learn her location when we take care of Mensah and Ferreira. 

Mission 10: Stalemate

Here we drop a reminder that Troy is still wanted for the assassination. He’s infamous for brazenly killing one of the most popular leaders in a generation. Even if he can somehow prove his outlandish story about being hijacked, there will always be people who blame him. He’s a marked man for life, and really needs a clean slate identity from Everett if he ever wants to live a normal life.

Everett only has one directive for us this time: Kill Maggie Chow. He will overlook it if you’ve been sparing people up until now, but here he puts his foot down: Chow needs to die.

Maggie Chow knows you’re coming. You’ve already eliminated the rest of the Board. So she’s hiding out in some fortified location in Hong Kong. The place is wall-to-wall with Seraphim guards and everyone here is part of the conspiracy, so if the player is in a mood to purge, they’re not going to have to worry about civilians / innocents. If they’ve been lugging around a big, nasty weapon and hoarding ammo for it, then this should be a good place to cut loose.One of the frustrations with “Human Revolution” was that at the end, the army of mooks was really a mass of delirious innocents. You were finally in a free-fire zone and loaded up with the end-game weapons, except nobody in front of you was deserving of your wrath. It was very unsatisfying.

Of course, there should also be a way to stealth / hack past everything as well. Gotta respect the genre.

At the end, we find Maggie Chow hiding in a panic roomPerhaps not a literal panic room. We’d need to figure out where this mission will take place if we want to know where Chow might hide. Maybe we should finish writing this thing before we begin production, you know? behind bulletproof glass. She speaks to us through an intercom.

She says she knows she’s beaten. She renounces her leadership position, and just wants to be left alive. (To go live her life of wealth and privilege without paying for her crimes, naturally.) If you spare her, then she offers you something in return: Morgan Everett’s location. If you really want to break the conspiracy, then you need to take him out.

There’s a control panel nearby. You can open the door to her panic room and kill her, or you can open (some other door) and allow her to escape.Again, we can start with this two-door idea as a starting premise and work out what sorts of locations might plausibly provide a setup like that. In the end, there’s always the lazy Bond Villain answer of “generic underground techno-bunker.” If you do the latter, she’ll tell you how to find Everett.

So what is it you really want? Do you want personal revenge for what happened in Washington, or do you want to end the Board forever?

We get a player-directed conversion where we can ask her questions, ask about her goals, and learn about her side of the story. Once we’re done, we make our choice and Maggie Chow is either dead or escaped forever.

Endings

Ending #1: Paid in Full

If we kill Chow and Everett is basically happy with us, then we head back to the same London rooftop from earlier. 

Inside, there’s a box of goodies waiting for Troy. It should contain a fat stack of money, a pile of augmentation upgrades, a few weapons, and a new identity.Now would be a good time to do a callback to the chess conversation and have his new last name be “Knight”. Maybe even put the actual knight chess piece in the box, just to be cute. Everett appears as a hologram and makes it clear that we’re never going to see each other again.

We get a last conversation with the guy where we can debate him a bit and clear up any lingering questions. Then Troy takes his treasure and returns to the heli. 

Roll credits.

Ending #2: Backstab

If we kill Chow, but otherwise have betrayed Everett’s wishes in all of the previous missions, then the ending is a little different.Perhaps there’s some critical threshold of shenanigans that Everett will tolerate. Whatever will feel natural to the player. It kinda depends on how many optional side-objectives we have in the game and how many opportunities the player has to piss him off.

We end up in the same rooftop office, but this time the box is empty, except for a small note with a crosshair that says “Sorry :(“.  Again, we speak to holo-Everett:

“I’m sorry Mr. Denton. I don’t want you to think this is personal. I have immense respect for you and your abilities. But it’s clear you never cared about our mission, and you’ve just been waiting for your chance to stab me in the back. I’m simply preempting you. I wish we could have parted on friendlier terms. Farewell.”

A wall opens up, and a ton of Seraphim guards pour in.

After we mop them up, Troy walks back to the heli and flies off. He’s still a fugitive, Everett is still in charge, and he didn’t even get any cool loot. 

Yes, this ending kind of sucks. Sure, Everett is a bit thick when it comes to reading people. But you’ve been thumbing your nose at his wishes and blowing up his shit for the whole game. Even he could see your murderous intent coming. If you’re looking to take on the Illuminati, maybe you need to be a little more subtle than this, you know?

Ending #3: Scorched Earth

If we spare Chow, then she reveals that we’ll find Everett back in Switzerland. She gives us some access card / password to get us into the inner sanctum.

The castle is really fortified this time. Everett evidently figured out we’re coming. We go through yet ANOTHER murder dungeon to get to the man. This time we’re able to get into the secret meeting room that we couldn’t enter last time. We get to stand in the shadowy board room we saw in the opening cinematic. 

We find Everett in a control room of some sort. Once we enter the control room, a little conversation with Alex gives us a choice.

One option is to just kill Everett and blow the place up. This will put an end to Upper Management forever. Nobody will ever know what happened, but Everett and his machinations will come to an end.

The ending is a cinematic of the castle blowing up and the heli flying away, with a voiceover from Troy saying he doesn’t care about clearing his name. He just wanted to make sure the bad guys were brought to justice. A sort of DIY justice.

Roll credits.

Ending #4: Promotion

As above, but when we get to Everett in the control room we could talk to him instead of blowing him away. He’ll say he’s impressed that you managed to track him down. 

“If you disagree with how I’m running things, then why don’t you join the Board and help guide the organization in a different direction? The Board is a meritocracy, and you’ve proven your worth. A seat is yours if you want it.”

And then the player can debate Everett a bit. (The same dialog options we get in other endings.) Alex abandons you if you do this, and Everett welcomes you to the team.

We get a closing cinematic that looks a lot like the opening one, with a bunch of shadowy figures sitting around a shadowy board room,The lighting is a little better this time, so we can see people’s faces. running the world. Everett is at the head of the table, and Troy Denton is sitting at his right hand. If you spared any of the other conspirators then they’ll be here too. (Except for Chow.)

Troy gives a voice over about how things will be different this time because he’s a good person and means well and won’t repeat the mistakes of the past. Roll credits. 

I can’t believe you picked this one. What’s wrong with you?

Ending #5: The Truth, Illuminated

Troy either knocks out or kills Everett. Once we enter the control room, a little conversation with Alex gives us a choice. We can either blow the place up, OR we can take the information on Everett’s jumbo computer and just dump the whole thing on the internet. Everything. The entire conspiracy. Just tell people the truth, and let them sort it out for themselves.

This is Alex’s preferred ending, and if you’re willing to hear her out then she’ll argue hard for it.

This is the most ambiguous ending. This is also the one ending where Alex narrates instead of Troy. We see a montage: We see Troy at some sort of congressional hearing. Troy being questioned in an interrogation room. Headlines calling him a “Whacko” and “Conspiracy Theorist”. We see regular people holding protest marches, demanding the truth. Ideally, we should have people coded heavily red state / blue state. Except they’re marching side-by-side, holding signs together, holding hands, working together. 

Alex’s voiceover asks questions of Troy: Did we do the right thing? Will people believe us? Can the system be changed? Is this hate something the system created, or is it something we made ourselves, and they just harnessed it? I guess it’s up to us to find out.

Roll credits.

 

Footnotes:

[1] One of the frustrations with “Human Revolution” was that at the end, the army of mooks was really a mass of delirious innocents. You were finally in a free-fire zone and loaded up with the end-game weapons, except nobody in front of you was deserving of your wrath. It was very unsatisfying.

[2] Perhaps not a literal panic room. We’d need to figure out where this mission will take place if we want to know where Chow might hide. Maybe we should finish writing this thing before we begin production, you know?

[3] Again, we can start with this two-door idea as a starting premise and work out what sorts of locations might plausibly provide a setup like that. In the end, there’s always the lazy Bond Villain answer of “generic underground techno-bunker.”

[4] Now would be a good time to do a callback to the chess conversation and have his new last name be “Knight”. Maybe even put the actual knight chess piece in the box, just to be cute.

[5] Perhaps there’s some critical threshold of shenanigans that Everett will tolerate. Whatever will feel natural to the player. It kinda depends on how many optional side-objectives we have in the game and how many opportunities the player has to piss him off.

[6] The lighting is a little better this time, so we can see people’s faces.



From The Archives:
 

36 thoughts on “Deus Ex Pitch Part 8: Resolution (Post-Mortem Post)

  1. Octal says:

    Trust Shamus to come up with a wide variety of endings that all seem logical and satisfying. They really seem to 1)flow naturally from the player’s choices, and 2)cover all the bases.

    Formatting note: the first footnote has escaped containment. Maybe italics don’t play nicely with footnotes?

    1. Paul Spooner says:

      Yep, the italics was doing it. Changed it to quote title reference instead of italicized and it seems to be working now.

  2. MilesDryden says:

    “We see regular people holding protest marches, demanding the truth. Ideally, we should have people coded heavily red state / blue state. Except they’re marching side-by-side, holding signs together, holding hands, working together. ”

    We can all agree this would be the least realistic thing to happen in the entire franchise, right?

    1. pseudonym says:

      Well, it has happened before. Nations bonding over a certain event.

      Unfortunately that event usually is an invasion by another country.

    2. Nathan says:

      Holding hands is a bit much, and, if anything has been shown by the last few years, it’s that protests are not gentle, sedate affairs, yeah.

      Still, with good faith and a willingness to be vulnerable, blue tribe people and red tribe people can bridge some gaps, and work together in common cause. There are some things that, as a blue tribe person, I cannot budge on, for reasons of human rights. There are certain policies that I will never support, and consequently some candidates that I will never support, and may go quite far to oppose. I know that the same is true for red tribe people, for rights reasons, along with reasons of faith. But there are things that we can find agreement on, when we choose not to believe that the other side is ontologically evil. And there are people who are willing to take those steps, at least for some members of the other camp that seem open.

      I won’t say much more, to avoid violating the no politics rules, but I think that it’s not *too* much of a stretch from Shamus here.

  3. Gargamel Le Noir says:

    That was great stuff. I would only temper the last ending by also having a more worrying image. Alex could say “Maybe the world would be better off” (cue the blue&red people) “or maybe it was in serious trouble” (cue heated debates in the UN or something), “but at least it was our world again”.

  4. BlueHorus says:

    Sad to see the series truncated like this. I bet that Shamus would have expanded on every single mission, turning them into a full article given the chance.
    Still, thanks again to Heather for posting what there was.

    Regarding the endings:
    – Kind of sad there’s no ‘Fuck it, humans seem incapable of being truly fair to each other so let’s give overall control to an AI instead’ ending, like in the original Deus Ex.

    – I love the idea that you can just straight up fail to betray Everett. Damn straight taking down the Illuminati should be hard, and failure to prepare means you just get put down after you’re no longer useful. It was one of the things that made the story of VTM: Bloodlines so good; it just let you straight-up make the wrong choice.
    Honestly, in a way this feels like it should be the ‘standard’ ending – Everett didn’t get to where he was by being nice, and Denton is a threat.

    – There should also be a ‘Betray Everett, side with Chow & join the Illuminati’ ending, just for completeness. And in THIS case, how much she trusts you is based on how often you went against Everett’s wishes during missions. It’d basically end up with two of the other endings being slighty reskinned – either you’re part of the Illuminati, standing next to Chow instead of Everett, or it’s Chow betraying you at the end.

    1. Pax says:

      – There should also be a ‘Betray Everett, side with Chow & join the Illuminati’ ending, just for completeness. And in THIS case, how much she trusts you is based on how often you went against Everett’s wishes during missions. It’d basically end up with two of the other endings being slighty reskinned – either you’re part of the Illuminati, standing next to Chow instead of Everett, or it’s Chow betraying you at the end.

      But the question is, do you earn her trust by consistently going against Everett, or being a loyal laptop to him up till this point?

      1. BlueHorus says:

        The most logical thing would be keeping a tracker of things Chow wanted, which Everett wanted undone.
        Maybe some side objectives in missions: “While you’re in the Network News building, Chow altered this algorithm in the AI that moderates comments in their website. Go to this server and reset it for me” – or similar.

        If you do it, Everett gains trust in you. If you don’t, Everett doesn’t trust you, but Chow notices that you didn’t and you earn some credit with her…

        …or better yet, there’s three options.
        – Everett made the AI search comments for keywords that signalled dissenting opinions, then referred them to a bot/troll network that would post a response starting an argument. Keep the division going! (Change the algorithm)
        – Chow altered it so that the comment was still noted, but instead of responding, the system would simply track down what information was availabe on the person posting it, so they could be monitored. (Leave the algorithm)
        – Alex, meanwhile, wants you to delete the algorithm altogether, for Freedom of Speech reasons. (Delete the algorithm)

        Each one has the potential to affect the way differnt NPCs treat you.

    2. Lachlan the Sane says:

      – Kind of sad there’s no ‘Fuck it, humans seem incapable of being truly fair to each other so let’s give overall control to an AI instead’ ending, like in the original Deus Ex.

      In fairness, it seems like the AIs in this game are much less advanced than Daedalus/Icarus/Helios from the original Deus Ex. The AIs that we met were the staffing AI in Japan and the vote-rigging AI in Everett’s office, which were both intelligent at their particular jobs and reasonably good at explaining their decisions, but were also fairly specialised into HR and voter management respectively. Maybe leave the super-AI technology for the hypothetical sequel to this reboot…

      1. Paul Spooner says:

        We could call the sequel “Free Radical”

  5. Philadelphus says:

    Yes, this ending kind of sucks. Sure, Everett is a bit thick when it comes to reading people. But you’ve been thumbing your nose at his wishes and blowing up his shit for the whole game. …[in footnote: Perhaps there’s some critical threshold of shenanigans that Everett will tolerate. Whatever will feel natural to the player.]

    (Expanding on the comments from the previous article) It turns out Everett was merely feigning ignorance of all those stupid things you’ve been doing with his hologram this whole time, and he finally got fed up when you – somehow – managed to haul an entire toilet into the room and have him deliver his monologue from inside it.

    1. MrGuy says:

      I guess (and this dovetails with my comment elsewhere on why you should believe Maggie), why should you NOT expect this ending the whole time? What earthly benefit is in it for Everett to let someone who clearly knows too much survive? Loyalty? A chess player knows value in a sacrifice.

      I’d take this ending one of two ways. One way – in addition to the note, there’s a microswitch that activates a NEW hack of your augs. Denton leaps off the building to his death. Credits play over “Presidential assassin Troy Denton committed suicide today….” news story.

      Second way – maybe this ending (or maybe also the one where Everett is happy) is another opportunity for him to offer you the board job. Really, it’s the only realistic alternative to killing you. He can’t have an enemy who knows his name, roughly what he looks like, and what he does roaming the streets, Especially not a resourceful one.

      1. Chris says:

        Maybe the inbetween missions talks could adjust the ending. If Denton seems starstruck by the illuminati or someone who just wants everything to be over with and hide away, then Everett might figure he’s not of any danger. The package would contain a ticket to a paradise island where Denton could kick back and enjoy his retirement. Or Everett feels like he has to maintain his honor and therefore reward Denton. See it as a small risk in order to seem like a just leader to the rest of the conspiracy. “Look, I did not kill someone who knew too much because I have my honor, im not like Maggy. You better support me because I wont be as harsh on you as Maggy would be”.

      2. Leserlich says:

        Why throw away someone who was an useful asset and could be once again an useful asset in the future?

  6. MrGuy says:

    I would hope you could find a way to write around it, and it’s a trope of the genre, it’s somewhat weak for the ending to turn on this:

    There’s a control panel nearby. You can open the door to her panic room and kill her, or you can open (some other door) and allow her to escape. If you do the latter, she’ll tell you how to find Everett.

    This feels very Rachni Queen in its setup. Why should I trust that Maggie would give us the location, and not just “peace out” the moment I open the door? Why would I trust that her telling me (and only me) “OK, I renounce my position on the board!” is binding? Shouldn’t I expect her to wait for me to take out Everett and then have her swoop in from the wings and take over? She’s the last of Upper Management. Who could possibly stop her?

    Why can’t I open the door I can enter and then NOT immediately kill her? Give me Everett’s location first. Or “you’re coming with me – you’re going to on trial for what you did as soon as I kill Everett”.

    It’s really hard to set up a decision where you can have a very binary A or B without it feeling unsatisfying. And the “open one of two doors, which leads exactly to one of two options” is really hard to make “true” in a way that feels satisfying.

    Also, programming note:
    * The entire article appears to be on the front page
    * This entry, along with 7 and 6 (but NOT 5) are missing the Epilogue tag.

    1. Lino says:

      If this was a movie that type of setup would be easy – just have the main character knock down Chow and hold hiler at gunpoint.

      But in an open game like Deus Ex, that would feel extremely cheap. The player has been through this entire ordeal, they’ve meticulously gone through a hard level, and at the end they’re forced into a choice by a cutscene. Just imagine what players would be saying:
      “Why can’t I just shoot her the moment I walk in the door? Also, why am I sneaking around, I’ve been going through this base guns blazing, why is my character suddenly sneaking around?!”
      “Wait, why am I just walking through the door with my gun out? No one on this level has even detected me once, but now I’m suddenly barging through doors with my gun out like some lunatic?!”

      You could go around that by having a bespoke cutscene based on playstyle, but that would be much more difficult (and expensive!) to do. So I think that the “bulletproof glass” solution – while cartoon-y – is the most elegant one.

    2. beleester says:

      “You made it clear just how easily you could have killed me tonight – I’m not stupid enough to try and cross you after that.”

      Like, where’s Maggie going to run to? She was hiding in her Super Illuminati Doomsday Bunker with a bazillion guards, and you cut through her security like butter. And her co-conspirators are similarly dead or intimidated into compliance. And you’re about to either expose or blow up the conspiracy, depending on your choices when you hunt down Everett. She’d still be wealthy, but that doesn’t mean she has an easy way to reclaim control of the Board.

      It would be nice to have some sort of more elegant way to have her hand over control of the Board, though. Maybe she’s got some sort of electronic Macguffin that gives her access to the Management network (a necklace with a hidden USB key?), and she either leaves it behind as she escapes, or you kill her in a way that conveniently destroys the Macguffin.

      1. Tuck says:

        She can be behind bulletproof glass, poised to destroy her computer/drive/macguffin. She’ll ask that you press that big red button that you know will let her escape, and in return she’ll leave the macguffin intact. By the time you get to her room, she’ll be gone.

        When she sees the player first appear through the glass: “I was about to destroy this, but now I see a better option for both of us.” — cue conversation about Everett etc.

    3. Syal says:

      Alternately, what reason does she have to not tell us where Everett is? I guess it’s all she has to bargain with, but you’d think she’d want to send Troy after Everett no matter what.

      Maybe we change it so this isn’t just Chow, it’s also an AI loyal to Chow. The AI can use your interactions with Everett to pinpoint him, but its priority is Maggie’s safety so it will only help you find Everett if you spare her.

    4. Paul Spooner says:

      Fixed the whole article on the front page. I’m not going to mess with the tags though.

  7. unit3000-21 says:

    Well, this feels like a second goodbye with Shamus, I kinda hoped this series would go for really long so we could pretend he’s still here :(

    1. MrGuy says:

      Yeah. I’ll miss this series for sure.

  8. MrGuy says:

    Sort of separately, and maybe the wrong time but since we haven’t seen her in awhile, it’s still really weird to me that Maggie Chow was physically present in the White House to hack Denton (and whatever part of the camera system). Seems really counter to the way these guys work to get her hands remotely dirty.

    I guess there’s some aspect of “who can get a meeting with the president?” But it feels like her showing her face, in front of numerous witnesses, being in the President’s meeting log, etc., seems like way more risk than someone in Upper Management would want/need to take if the only thing that has to happen is “Get the magic button in a room with the president and the secret service, and press it.” Surely Upper Management has plenty of folks that owe them favors that can get into a room with the president.

    1. BlueHorus says:

      Was that Chow? I thought it was Atropos, the ‘Woman in Orange’ and an augmented operative used by Upper Management. She was a boss fight in a previous mission.

  9. AllWalker says:

    I made a prediction that different playstyles would unlock different lore dumps. Like how hackers get to hear the Russian intel boss’s speech but fighters don’t. It looks like that prediction was wrong. But! This is a living document, so I can make it right.

    If Camila is a fake environmentalist, that tells me she’s good at seeing which way the wind is blowing. Maybe if you sneak your way to her, she doesn’t think you have the stomach to kill her, so she doesn’t tell you anything. If you mow your way through her guards, though, she surrenders and tells you everything.

    As for Samkelo, maybe he feels paternal towards the people under him. The best business leaders know the value of finding the best people and treating them right. His employees are like his tribe, maybe even like his family.

    By knocking them out and sparing them, you showed you could have killed them but didn’t. Beat him without killing them and maybe he’s more open towards you, seeing you more as a skilled rival. Kill any of them, though, and all he’ll see you as is his enemy.

    This is another case of the game naturally and invisibly responding to different playstyles. Like the Sam Carter story arc, people would figure out the conditions eventually, but it would be cool to play the game through in different styles and get different insights into the world and characters.

  10. Lino says:

    Absolutely brilliant! I expected no less from Shamus. Even though this is still a rough draft, this is a great basis for a story. It would also make for a terrific book. Too bad we’ll never get to see it :/

  11. Xbolt says:

    So, we come to the end. It’s a great plot outline, and I’ll miss this series.

    Now all we need is a plucky band of people to fire up Unreal 5 and start hammering out a game.

  12. The Rocketeer says:

    Roll credits.

  13. Lachlan the Sane says:

    I was thinking a bit about Samkelo Mensah and how to distinguish him from a different South African-born industrialist/technology CEO who has been making more than a few headlines recently so he can come off as a subtle reference rather than a deliberate parody. Here’s some thoughts for his backstory and personality, designed to make him come off as morally ambiguous as possible.

    – Mensah’s grandfather was a white man who made big, big money off Apartheid. But in the 80’s he saw which way the wind was blowing, married a black woman, and transferred most of the legal ownership of the businesses to her. There are conflicting reports as to how much this decision was pragmatic, cynical, or out of genuine love. (Mensah’s father also married a black woman, so Samkelo is only one-quarter white).

    – Samkelo himself rose to international prominence by building rail transport across Africa. He’s established two ultra-high-speed rail lines that travel north-south across the continent as well as numerous branch lines and metro systems. The deals that he’s cut with the various governments mean that he has made an enormous amount of money off those railways. He has a finger in pretty much every possible pie — he makes money off the easements, the lease of equipment, the rolling stock, and even takes a cut of every ticket sale.

    – Mensah’s main business is superheavy manufacturing — his factories build cargo ships, trains, construction equipment, and other things that require thousands of tons of steel. Mensah wants southern Africa to be a manufacturing hub on par with China. The factories pay a good wage by African standards, but they’re notoriously dangerous.

    – Mensah has a public image of being a kind boss who respects his workers, but he also pushes hard against unionism and lobbies hard against increased workers’ rights in the African parliaments. None of the public officials want to mess with him, because they really don’t want him closing down factories or delaying their rail extensions.

  14. evileeyore says:

    Fully posted on the frontpage, just as Shamus would have done. It hits right in the feels.

    1. Sleeping Dragon says:

      Tradition… Tradition!

  15. Type_Mercury says:

    While it’s disheartening to reach the end, I’m glad we got to read this story pitch!
    God Bless, everyone!

  16. William H says:

    This isn’t the end of the pitch
    Where’s the day-one DLC?
    Where’s the microtransactions?
    end sarcasm

    1. BlueHorus says:

      Oh, you misunderstand…Alex is the day-1 DLC. You can’t get her ending unless you pre-order the game or buy her seperately.

      Hey, did I mention that this game was acquired by EA?

      1. Simplex says:

        And then the original creators were fired (see ZA/UM).

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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>

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