Caltrops - Deus Ex: Human Revolution





	[quote name="WITTGENSPOILERS"]1. Jensen's past. A shit-ton of sidequests have you going around talking to people and browbeating your boss and saving an old man and talking to a forgetful old woman to find out that you were created in a lab and your "real" parents burned the place down. But after that the plot thread just fucking disappears. You never get anything conclusive after you leave Detroit the second time and never hear anything else about it. See, I had thought the way this would play out was that it turns out Adam Jensen is JC Denton/Paul Denton/Alex Denton's biological father/original DNA, and Bob Page would tell you what he planned before he put a bullet in your brain at the end. BUT NOPE. After your return to Detroit the entire thing disappears. Plot thread gone. Fuck you, make the connections on your own, player! What do you want us to actually have you DISCOVER THINGS?! 2. One of the endings is for you to blame the entire thing on "tainted Neuropozyne" from VersaLife on behalf of the Illuminati, creating a backlash against cyberware technologies. Uh, that's great and all except <b>BOB PAGE OWNS VERSALIFE</b>, which becomes one of the biggest producers of nanotech in the first fucking game! Bob Page is still an Illuminati member at this point and the MJ-12 split hasn't occurred (proof of this can be seen in the fact he speaks with Morgan Everett in the secret conversation at the end). WHY WOULD THE ILLUMINATI WANT YOU TO DESTROY BOB PAGE? It makes no goddamn sense. 3. Eliza. The game's big mid-game reveal is that Eliza, the Elizabethean-collar sporting news anchor who occasionally gives news broadcasts between missions, is an AI. WHOA DIDN'T SEE THAT ONE COMING. After you meet Eliza in the middle of the game, she never helps you again or tries to communicate with you until the very end. Compare this to how after you escape UNATCO in Deus Ex, Icarus is hounding your steps (ICARUS HAS FOUND YOU! RUN WHILE YOU STILL CAN!) and sending you creepy fucking voice messages, while Daedalus is guiding you. She's an afterthought, and her only mention in the ending is that she was apparently scrapped to create Morpheus, an easter egg character from Deus Ex 1 you meet in Everett's office. (what's with female AI's and bad fates? Leela from Marathon had the same thing happen to her. SHODAN, etc....) Also: The director had stated that they were trying to make some sort of visual distinction with pro-augmentation people wearing some sort of futuristic Renaissance clothing with stupid frilly collars and anti-aug people wearing more modern 21st century business outfits, but that dichotomy goes out the fucking window when you realize that Picus is staunchly anti-aug and Eliza has the most Ren-Faire costume ever. (Note: I liked the neo-Elizabethean clothing trend in general in the game and thought it gave it a hint of unique character. That doesn't change the fact that Jean-François Dugas is a pretentious and stupid fuck) 4. The Icarus/Daedalus thing only appears in the trailers. The only other sign of it is a brief quip from the Bond villain towards the end of the game. (Other than the Icarus Landing System, which is fuck awesome) 5. Ezekiel Sanders. He becomes a redshirt enemy in the later half of the game. It's really absurd considering how much development they put into this fucking guy that his fate is to be waiting for you behind a door with a shotgun to be blown away. I do admit the trap he sets for you was pretty hilariously clever though. 6. UNATCO and the Statue of Liberty. I mentioned it already, but one of the big things in hyping this game was that it was going to show us how we got to the same point in Deus Ex, with the formation of UNATCO and the bombing of the Statue of Liberty. Doesn't happen. Ever. The only mention of UNATCO you hear is in a newspaper headline that says "U.N. PLANS TO FORM COMMITTEE TO EXPLORE INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE TO TERRORISM", and there's no mention of the Statue. The NSF does get a brief mention on a newspaper, but again, this is just all bullshit. 7. FEMA. You discover that the Spec-Ops mercenaries who burned down your company six months ago are occupying a secret FEMA facility. This is all mentioned to Pritchard and Sarif, but after that the link between the U.S. government and the conspiracy is never investigated again. Jesus, what was the point of that? More name-dropping and nodding horse shit. 8. David Sarif mentions the Illuminati to you in a cutscene. But it's also never followed up on, other than that a vague "they" are behind all of this. But it's all spoon-fed to you on a plate. Sarif just tells you out loud instead of explaining it or having you figure this shit out. You never find MJ-12 facilities beneath your streets, or hackers talking via e-mails about it. It's just there, dumped on you to never be mentioned again. You never find out who the people Bob Page was talking to in the intro were, other than that some of them were possibly people you meet later in the game. 9. The Illuminati's motivations are fucking stupid. They're afraid of augmented people so they start anti-augmentation sentiment across the world and try to use the U.N. to ban the practice? Oooook. This is a complete 180 from what their behavior was in Deus Ex, where cybernetics are the norm (though the social stigma to them is still attached) and nanotech is on its way in to supplant cybernetics, while the luddites were the conspiracy theorists and anarchists of the NSF and etc. 10. The "Glitch". I thought there was going to be some sort of penalty for not getting a tainted biochip 3/4ths through the game, but it never materialized. The distortions and software problems your cyberware suffers just sort of disappear after you leave China for the second time. By contrast, if you take the tainted biochip (like one of your secondary objectives STUPIDLY tells you to do), you have to fight the third boss without any aug powers. I liked where they were going with this, but I'm disappointed that they didn't reward my worrying that I was shooting myself in the foot in order to avoid becoming affected. 11. I don't fucking care if it's 2027. You will never be able to recall MILLIONS of tainted products worldwide and replace them all with your secret Trojan Horse chips within a span of 24-48 hours. Never. An 8th grader could have spotted this flaw in the Illuminati big plan. 12. You have a conversation with your surgeon at the LIMB clinic across from Sarif Industries early in the game where she has a deep conversation with you about human choice and augmentation and etc. This is never elaborated upon. (Where I thought they were going with this was that if you took a tainted biochip/refused to get a tainted biochip in China, you'd fly back to Detroit and have to get an emergency surgery done on you to fix it, but again this never materialized). 13. In general, the game pretends like choosing to fuck people instead of help them will come back to bite you in the ass, but asides from Ezekiel who it turns out WILL fuck you unless blow his brains out, this never happens. The only other time I can think of is that if you give a hacker a gun around the game's midpoint, he'll later wire you 2000 creds as a thank you, while if you tell him to fuck off he'll die. [/quote]