Deus Ex DX Ending Discussion

[DJOGamer PT]

I've completed Deus Ex last night with GMDX 9
This time I've decided to go with Everrett's ending, rather than the typical Helios choice

And after watching the cutscene and pondering on the game's themes today, I've started to see both these endings in a different light
I now honestly have an equal amount of doubts regarding these two endings virtues and faillings - I'm talking Helios and the Illuminati's endings of course, I still think Tracer Tong's plan is just stupid

So I've decided to make a thread and poll to see how you guys think
Also because I find the lack of DX discussions on the RPG subforum a sad state of affairs for this website


Just one rule for this thread (specially if you're gonna vote in the poll): don't take any other DX game into consideration; i.e. Invisible War and Jensen's shenanigans are to be ignored, they don't exist as far as this thread goes.

 

[Nano]

New "dark" age is the best. ANARCHY REIGNS, BITCH.

Helios ending is way overrated. Benevolent dictatorships are a myth.

 

[Tyranicon]

New "dark" age is the best. ANARCHY REIGNS, BITCH.

Helios ending is way overrated. Benevolent dictatorships are a myth.

Nobody, and this means nobody, knows what the fuck is going to happen should an AI achieve General Intelligence. They might make us and the rest of the solar system into paperclips, or establish a perfect utopia. Trying to glimpse into the mind of something so alien to our own concept of intelligence is futile.

 

[Wunderbar]

Dark Age is an impossible ending, because sooner or later the technology will be restored.

 

[Wunderbar]

Do people seriously believe that if you nuke internet the whole world would suddenly turn medieval? It'll go back to the way it worked before in like 30 yrs or so.

 

[agentorange]

"I've completed Deus Ex last night with GMDX 9"
stopped reading right here

 

[Sykar]

Do people seriously believe that if you nuke internet the whole world would suddenly turn medieval? It'll go back to the way it worked before in like 30 yrs or so.

Entirely depends on the extend of destruction and how much of the human population would be wiped out.

 

[notpl]

Do people seriously believe that if you nuke internet the whole world would suddenly turn medieval? It'll go back to the way it worked before in like 30 yrs or so.

Entirely depends on the extend of destruction and how much of the human population would be wiped out.

If you laid sufficient waste to the surface of the planet right now, mankind absolutely would not ever bounce back. Easy access to surface minerals which have now been 100% depleted is what made our progress up to this point possible, a more primitive leftover remnant people would not be able to re-achieve what we did.

I don't really know the specifics of how the tracer tong ending is supposed to work, though. Just frying every computer chip in the world wouldn't do much in the long term, it's true.

 

[Wunderbar]

Do people seriously believe that if you nuke internet the whole world would suddenly turn medieval? It'll go back to the way it worked before in like 30 yrs or so.

Entirely depends on the extend of destruction and how much of the human population would be wiped out.

Dark Age ending only destroys centralized communications (i.e. internet).

Collateral damage only possible if we assume that the lack of communications and the ensuing chaos would cause countries to start nuking each other.

 

[Sykar]

Which is not improbable.

 

[Funposter]

modded ending where Helios-JC genocides the Jews inshallah

 

[gerey]

I now honestly have an equal amount of doubts regarding these two endings virtues and faillings - I'm talking Helios and the Illuminati's endings of course, I still think Tracer Tong's plan is just stupid

Tong's ending is not really stupid, he basically wants to destroy the whole technological base and start from scratch, and who can really blame him when one takes into account modern technology like PRISM, Meta, Facebook, Twitter, the Chinese surveillance system et al? And all of that is a hundred times worse in the DX timeline.

The death count and damage to the infrastructure would be catastrophic, of course, but ultimately humanity would be free of techno-tyranny for a few centuries at least.

The Illuminati ending is regressive - it's basically a decision to not really change anything, and this despite the game letting you see firsthand the kind of horrors this regime has unleashed upon humanity. And yeah, sure, the Illuminati will shut down the grey death and not go to Page's extremes, but in the end the world will still be under the thrall of a bunch of globohomo oligarchs that have proven themselves utterly inept in its management.

The Helios ending is apparently the best one, ushering in the age of an immortal benevolent dictator, but the ending of DX:IW (and sorry for mentioning it) paints a subtly more sinister picture. In the end we really have no idea what the AI might decide to do, how it will govern, how it will deal with dissent and people rejects its rule. It's a wild card. Not that the AI having the name of Greek god is going to put anyone's mind at ease.

Dark Age ending only destroys centralized communications (i.e. internet).

The impression I got was that he was wiping out everything networked, and in the DX future that's pretty much everything, from airplanes to nuclear power plants, so those shutting down or going out of control would be pretty significant, and the ensuing chaos would cause even more damage and destruction.

And with as delicate and complex system as the modern one it would take humanity a century or two to bounce back, which would give humanity another chance to roll the dice and maybe avoid the same dystopian future as the one in DX.

 

[Tyranicon]

In the end we really have no idea what the AI might decide to do, how it will govern, how it will deal with dissent and people rejects its rule.

In one way of thinking, that ending is kind of the ultimate cop-out, as it essentially surrenders all of humanity's agency in its own future to a hyper-intelligent AI that might be a benevolent machine-god, or anything else it wants to be.

It's kind of hyper grimdark that the Deus Ex universe considers that the good ending.

Then again, it might also be the conclusion our universe comes to as well.

 

[Wunderbar]

Dark Age ending only destroys centralized communications (i.e. internet).

The impression I got was that he was wiping out everything networked, and in the DX future that's pretty much everything, from airplanes to nuclear power plants, so those shutting down or going out of control would be pretty significant, and the ensuing chaos would cause even more damage and destruction.

It would only be this way if you suspend your disbelief and assume that in the future even the critical infrastructure sectors are networked.

 

[gerey]

It would only be this way if you suspend your disbelief and assume that in the future even the critical infrastructure sectors are networked.

Today many are. There's been several cases of hackers actually being able to sabotage them remotely.

 

[Joggerino]

Dark Age is an impossible ending, because sooner or later the technology will be restored.

Yeah but the idea is giving humanity a second chance. An opportunity to advance in a different direction.

 

[Gargaune]

There's little point in polling consensus on this one because it hinges on how you prioritise the interests of the protagonist or humanity at large, and it ultimately comes down to how risk-averse you are, since that's the clearest way to rank them - the Illuminatti are a restoration of the familiar, with its good and bad, the New Dark Age is a leap into chaos, but a relatively predictable one, and Helios is an epic coin toss for both JC and the rest of the world.

If you mean "appropriate" as in stereotypically cyberpunk, Helios and the New Dark Age are probably on par, with the Illuminatti probably being the less "tropey" of the three.

And actually the implication is that *if* JC i.e. the player is a good person then merging with Helios will create a benevolent dictator.

Might, not will.

JCD: "A benevolent dictator... Maybe it's after my brain so it can figure out what people want and how to control them."
[...]
PD: "If we could trust the AI to be fair and just, as it appears to be..."
JCD: "If the brain it assimilated was [sic] mine, maybe it could be."
PD: "I don't know. I wish I had an answer for you but you'll have to decide for yourself who [sic] you can trust."

It's just an assumption between the Denton brothers, the game itself doesn't make that implication. And JC's post-merger monologue about "many that live in darkness that must be shown the way" continues that ominous ambivalence.

 

[Sykar]

Dark Age is an impossible ending, because sooner or later the technology will be restored.

Yeah but the idea is giving humanity a second chance. An opportunity to advance in a different direction.

The problem is not technology per se though. The problems are sociatal and economical. Unless capitalism is overthrown and democracy reworked into something that makes sure that everyone is well enough provided for nothing will change even during a second attempt.
To me all endings are garbage which makes this game feel kinda WH 40k light. Depressing and hopeless.

 

[roll-a-die]

Dark Age is an impossible ending, because sooner or later the technology will be restored.

Yeah but the idea is giving humanity a second chance. An opportunity to advance in a different direction.

The problem is not technology per se though. The problems are sociatal and economical. Unless capitalism is overthrown and democracy reworked into something that makes sure that everyone is well enough provided for nothing will change even during a second attempt.
To me all endings are garbage which makes this game feel kinda WH 40k light. Depressing and hopeless.

One of the things that didn't make sense to me about the Illuminati ending, is just how they were expected to insert themselves into MJ12's chain of command, to use their resources.

Basically, how would Illuminati make a massive leap from, defeated and/or gutter trash who've been ruined and separated from most of their powerbase, too... MJ12's scale.

 

[Joggerino]

I think the mechanisms of societal control can get advanced enough that we get locked into a system and there is no way out. In that case the Tong ending makes perfect sense.

 

[roll-a-die]

I think on a scale,
Tong's ending makes the most sense,
The Helios Merger makes the second most,
and the Illuminati has the most leaps of logic required for it to be a success.

That said, Tong's ending to me, as a kid called out to me the most. A restart to societies mechanisms. An out with the old in with the new.

Where now, seeing the evolution of AI and machine learning, and the like, I wonder if we don't/won't NEED a man machine interface to humanize the algorithms that increasingly run our lives.

The most likely ending, if you manage to solve the context, or suspend disbelief though, is quite like the illuminati ending. Eventually, someone will end up on the top of the heap again, it will be Bob Page and Walton Simmons, just with another pair of faces. SSDD.

 

[bionicman]

All the endings suck tbh, I think that's the whole point.

 

[vota DC]

Bob Page offered me a whole continent at least, so illuminati ending Is the worst

 

[GrafvonMoltke]

Where's the dance ending?

 

[PorkaMorka]

Even from a very, very non-anarchist perspective the Tracer Tong ending is the only decent one, it's a second chance for humanity (or whatever part of it you care about) to not suck. Most likely the second chance won't go any better than the first, but at least it's delaying the bad ending, which may be the best you can hope for at that time.

The other endings are obviously bad. And not because the AI is a "dictator". It's giving up, as others have described above.

I'm impressed, the endings still hold up today, at least if you just think about them without actually watching the animations, heh.

Most likely we'll either be enslaved by the "Illuminati" or some technological dystopia and maybe the best we can hope for is to crash the whole thing to prevent that.