This is my ongoing exploration of the Deus Ex Universe, in release order. Whether you’re a newcomer or an old-goer, I hope to make this something you can read along with and enjoy. This time I finish Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
Having finally located the kidnapped scientists, I had been just in time for their work over the past six months to turn thousands of augmented people insane via a signal coming from Panchaea in the Arctic…
The Low Earth Orbit Shuttle that I was aboard careened down towards the facility, only for its parachute to not deploy. Luckily, I crashed into the ocean instead of something solid, and went ashore.
The loading area ahead of me wasan in disarray, with fires burning in some places. I found my way to a hatch in the floor and dropped down into a tunnel, only to be greeted by electrified water covering the tunnel ahead of me. Luckily, there was a metal pipe along one side, allowing me safe passage — but a telltale blue flash gave away a mine’s position. There were some crates next to me, so I threw them down the tunnel, setting off two EMP mines.
There was a barricade blocking my way, but I managed to move a crate to get around it. I ignored a more dangerous path to the right and continued straight ahead and around the corner. In a ventilation shaft I could see a fragmentation mine flashing, so I shot it, and it destroyed some wooden crates which may have proven to be an obstacle. Climbing through the shaft, I spotted another mine at the far end, and shot that one too. Someone really didn’t want to be attacked by crazy augmented people…
Exiting the shaft, I dropped down onto a blood splatter next to a corpse. A pocket secretary next to him contained an email exchange between two Panchaea employees in regards to the electrified floor. I pulled the switch to turn it off, and left the room after upgrading myself with EMP Shielding just in case — people were clearly targeting augmented individuals…
As I walked down the hallway, I stupidly walked into a frag mine before deciding that it wasn’t worth the potential fatality to go that way, and instead climbing up a ladder down an adjacent hallway. I exited the warehouse that I found myself in and went up some stairs to an area overlooking a loading bay. I then went down some different stairs to find a security terminal (thanks to my security scanner) and used an automatic unlocker to hack it. The camera was already disabled, but activating the robot brought a nearby box security bot to life, and it stood ready to defend me against what I could only assume would be an attack.
Looking around and hacking a couple of doors, I found some ammo and a blast door that was shut due to the lockdown which was in effect. Pritchard called to tell me that I needed to deactivate the lockdown from the control room at the top of the tower, then I’d be able to disable the signal from the base of the station at the bottom of the ocean. There was a handy elevator on the opposite side of the loading bay, so I headed up. There were more bodies, a fire burning in the cafeteria, and I spotted one of the attackers through the wall using my Smart Vision augment.
He was closed inside of a room by a badly dented door and a blockade, but I found a vent in the storeroom opposite which took me inside so that I could knock him out. I was going to try not to kill everyone, though I knew “try” was the operative word. Upon exiting the room via the vent, I found a corpse sticking part way out of another vent. Following the hallway around, I passed some stairs and unlocked a door with the code 8024. It was some sleeping quarters with a couple of hypostims, some software, and a computer with two normal emails on it. There was also a ventilation shaft which led to another set of quarters, but that only had weapons, ammo, and a weapon mod that I had no use for.
My Smart Vision showed a security turret close to the top of the stairs, but after hacking a door panel to get into a storeroom, I found and hacked a security terminal to turn it friendly. The hallway past the storeroom was littered with corpses and bullet holes, and the door to the control room was blocked — but the windows had been smashed, allowing me entry.
As I approached the lockdown controls, Hugh Darrow told me to stop. He was the lone survivor amongst the corpses, relaxing on a chair. If the lockdown was disengaged then “whatever demons this station contains are likely to come crashing out on us”. Despite being the father of augmentation, he felt that the hundreds of thousands of augmented people currently going insane was the only way to convince the world that he was wrong. Augmentation was dangerous for humankind, as human nature resulted in a moral compass that augmentation was eroding.
In his rambling rhetoric, he managed to confirm what Megan Reed had said; he actually was working against the Illuminati. It just hadn’t taken the form she had assumed. Without augmentation, humanity would be harder to control. He compared himself to Daedalus, watching Icarus crash into the sea…
As it turned out, my CASIE augmentation was next to useless as I spoke to Darrow. Few of his responses resulted in a flash of any personality type. He stated that for humanity to survive it had to forget transcendence, and for that blood had to be spilled. I critiqued him, saying that this whole thing was horrific, and he couldn’t force people to change. Darrow argued that the only way to get a reaction as a species has always been tragedy and cataclysm, so this was the only option. Extrapolating, I told him that nothing he ever said would be seen as more than the raving of a mass-murderer. He said that people would see his point of view, before going on a tangent about Sarif Industries and Tai Yong Medical using his research without seeing the inherent danger in it.
Taking a chance, I decided to spray Darrow with pheromones. As I hadn’t gotten a firm Alpha or Beta personality type, I went with Omega and pressured him. Why had the father of augmentation never applied the technology to himself? He used a leg brace and crutch to walk, and was seemingly missing an arm. Perhaps he was genetically incompatible, which had made him bitter and angry at those he could never be like? He snapped that he had tried everything, and none of it had ever worked, so he had to take back control. Upon saying that, he realised that he had gone too far. Darrow handed over the override codes to shut down the Hyron Project which was in the broadcast centre, though he warned that the security system was self-determining and lethal…
As I headed back towards the elevator, I picked up some people moving around with my Smart Vision. There were lots of them, and I had only picked up 26 non-lethal P.E.P.S. rounds. I had plenty of lethal ways to get rid of them, much to my annoyance, until I remembered that I had some gas grenades, and those were non-lethal! For the first group, I tossed a gas grenade which knocked them all out. However, before I could even enter the cafeteria some more came at me one by one, meaning that I had to shoot them with my P.E.P.S.
Thankfully, once I was through the cafeteria, there was a group near to the elevator which I could gas with a grenade. I quickly upgraded myself with the Implanted Rebreather and got onto the elevator, the other hostiles unable to approach through the gas cloud.
Upon exiting the elevator I heard gunfire. The security bot that I had activated was killing some more of the augmented, though several still blocked the blast door that I needed to reach on the upper level. Luckily, they hadn’t come down because there was a knee-high blockade, so I could shoot them with my P.E.P.S. at my leisure before knocking out the final one who hadn’t reacted to my presence.
Through the blast door I was able to enter the security checkpoint via a smashed window. Once in the hallway outside, I spotted a hostile in a locker room, so I snuck inside and knocked him out before looting through the lockers. Further along the hallway, I saw someone standing upright, not hunched like the mad augmented. After moving a vending machine out of the way, I found a LIMB clinic with a doctor. She let me use the computer to buy two Praxis kits, and I told her to wait here while I sorted things out.
As I continued down the hallway, William Taggart came on over the building’s public address system. He and several others, some of whom were wounded, had taken refuge in a server room. I exited the building onto a gantry surrounding some large pipes. There was a group of hostiles who I threw a gas grenade at, then I hacked a storage room before realising that two people hadn’t been knocked out by the gas. Luckily, there was another gas grenade in the room, so I threw it at a second group of people before knocking one out who hadn’t been in the gas cloud. There was a large group below me and a partially-blocked door, so I went inside and ignored the people.
Sneaking down some stairs, I hid from a security camera and opened a door which let me into the server room. It was full of hostiles, so I jumped up on top of a server rack. I spotted a security terminal on the floor next to me, out of sight of the augmented people, but couldn’t hack it and had to use an automatic unlocker. It allowed me to activate a security bot and disable three cameras, though the bot was in the hallway outside.
I quietly left the server room the way that I had come and followed the hallway to a blockaded doorway. Moving one of the crates, I was able to use another automatic unlocker to unlock the door and gain access to Taggart. He was angry that Darrow had betrayed the Illuminati, which he was a part of, and invited me to join. He talked about how they only wanted to ensure that the world could control augmentation lawfully, and that this was only supposed to be a safety valve. He asked me to transmit a message when I managed to disable the signal, blaming an accident at Versalife which contaminated the world’s Neuropozyne supply. I said that I’d think about it and left, heading back upstairs.
My route was going to take me past the large group of hostiles, so I dropped down to the bottom floor thanks to my Icarus Landing System. After hopping up a dumpster and scaffold, I tossed a concussion grenade at the group and rushed past them, hopping over some boxes and a generator to relative safety. A message came over the public address system from Sarif saying how he and some survivors had locked themselves in the machine room. Luckily for me, there was an elevator right in front of me, so I used it to go down.
The whole area was filled with the insane augmented, so I jumped up on top of some machinery and used pipes to stay out of sight. Rather than drop down and use the door, I crossed to the other side of the room and dropped behind a fence for safety. I went down the passageway and some stairs, hopping up into a ventilation shaft moments before a hostile came around the corner and almost spotted me. The shaft let out into what turned out to be a submarine bay with Sarif and some other survivors.
As Sarif talked to me, he was clearly afraid that this would set back augmentation research, and potentially lead to bans. So, as Taggart had asked, Sarif told me that I needed to transmit a message blaming this all on Humanity Front, the extremist organisation. I said that I’d think about it before grabbing what I could find and leaving through the door. However, this accidentally set off a mine, alerting the hostiles in the area who came running… After several P.E.P.S. rounds and a couple of punches, I went back up via the elevator I’d arrived on.
Following the hallway, I found a gas-filled control room, and ahead of it a bridge covered with hostiles. Thankfully, there was a vent allowing access to the control room, and I’d already upgraded myself with the rebreather. I hacked a security terminal and used it to make the turrets on either side of the bridge shoot the hostiles. Once the way was clear, I crossed the bridge to reach the elevator leading down to the base of Panchaea.
Once at the bottom, I walked down the hallway towards some corpses. One of them had a plasma rifle which I wanted, as I’d been finding ammo for it all over the facility. Once that was in my pocket, I went through the door to be greeted by someone strapped into a computer — the Hyron Project. Before I could process that, Zhao Yun Ru strode over to what was presumably the master control socket. She stated that she was going to hack Darrow’s signal for the Illuminati’s benefit, and take control of the Hyron Project, the most advanced quantum computers slaved to the human brain.
However, as Zhao was connected, a digital voice said that she was incompatible and it was unable to transfer control despite her protestations that she was able to do it. Jensen grabbed a pistol and fired at her, setting off a security response which saved her and started attacking me with automated turrets. The voice said that I had to purge the tertiary pods to access the primary pod, so I threw an EMP grenade at one of the turrets which was rotating along the top. Using the buttons next to each of the three pods, I lowered the people inside and killed them with my new plasma rifle.
Some insane augmented came running out from somewhere at the same time that some of the floors began to electrify. Luckily for me, I had activated the EMP shielding augment and was safe from the electricity, while it shocked the hostiles. Zhao complained that Hyron had activated “emergency protocols”, but I was too busy to pay attention, running from more insane augmented as well as security bots! By the time I had dealt with all of them with plasma rounds and EMP grenades, Zhao had been shouting some things that I didn’t quite catch before there was a loud smash of glass, and I whipped out my laser rifle, blasting her. She let out a scream and a concussive force incinerated her and threw me backwards.
As I entered the area behind where Zhao had been hanging, Eliza Cassan greeted me on a monitor. Her AI had apparently been connected to Panchaea so that she could cover Darrow’s announcement before his signal cut off communication with the rest of the world. She explained that I had to make a choice: broadcast Darrow’s message about the biochip and Illuminati; edit the message to blame Humanity Front; or edit the message to blame Versalife. While I leaned towards blaming Humanity Front, to prevent people blaming the augmented, Eliza then gave me a fourth option: destroy Panchaea by disabling the pressure regulation controls to make it collapse in on itself.
Believing that the only option was to destroy Panchaea, so that everybody died and no person’s “story” could be spun as the truth, I walked down the short corridor and pushed the button.
“Do I trust Mankind to save itself? That's what Eliza was asking. The truth is I don't know. After everything I've seen, all the fighting, and the chaos around me, I only know what I want to believe: somehow, human decency will triumph.
These past few months, I faced many life-threatening situations. I could have given up many times, but my need to know the truth, to uncover the secrets that others were hiding, and to survive, forced me to keep on going.
Most of the time, I tried to keep my values in mind, knowing my actions did not have to harm others. I held on to my humanity, resisting the urge to abuse power or resources in order to meet my goals. And in the end, I got the job done. But does this mean I have the right to choose for everyone? No. Because it isn't up to me. It isn't up to Darrow. Sarif, or Taggart, either. Ordinary men and women will have to decide together what course mankind should take.
The kind of people who, time and time again, have picked and chosen the future in highly practical ways — slowing change when it's negative, speeding it up when it's good. Can they do it again? I don't know. But I do know I'm not about to let anyone in this station, myself included, stand in their way.”
After the credits, Bob Page told Morgan Everett not to worry, just to keep going through the wreckage for something to use for the “Morpheus Initiative” before a knock at his door cut the conversation short. Megan Reed entered saying that she had only joined them as she had nowhere to go. Page told her that they were breaking new ground on a “nanite-virus chimera”...
Final Thoughts
While I do remember playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution when it first came out, I’ll admit that I didn’t remember most of the plot and really enjoyed revisiting it. It took me about 27 hours to finish, with some saving and reloading on occasion.
It was fun seeing how they tied this into the original game, including the hint about the Gray Death virus, though I wonder if they relied on it too much. And while most of the antagonists in this are part of the Illuminati, they are supposed to be the good guys in the first two games, and I don’t recall even hearing about the Templars in Human Revolution.
But those are minor gripes in what was a fantastic game. If you’ve never played it, I fully recommend it.
Join me next time for Deus Ex: The Fall…
