Deus ex human revolution tvtropes9/21/2023 ![]() ![]() They are battle-tested and know how to handle a crowd.” Players not aiming at a pacifist play through will shed few tears over shedding much blood during the martial law portion of the game. If you have the slightest doubt, treat the individual in front of you as a threat,” and “ are exactly the kinds of officers you want for the task at hand. Meanwhile, the local and state police in Prague are all – with the single exception of one incompetent detective mere months from retirement – such unapologetic assholes that one encounter with them would have Dick Wolf rapping “F-k the Police.” Among the official orders these cops eagerly carry out, included are “…it’s better to be decisive than hesitant. ![]() All Augs are perfect pacifists the only terrorists actually among their ranks prove part of a plot by the Illuminati. For all its layers of intrigue and conspiracies, Mankind Divided is more black and white. Gold was the dominant color visually in Human Revolution, but grey was the dominant color thematically, every decision put before Jensen individually and the world at large lacking a clear cut answer. Moreover, it is far more willing to delineate for the player which viewpoints are virtuous and which are villainous. It utilizes the fiction of Deus Ex and the tropes of the cyberpunk genre not to continue the themes and narrative of Human Revolution so much as to comment on the grievance culture and identity politics which have dominated the discourse of the last three years. The few who speak in opposition to forcibly rounding up and deporting Augs to a veritable concentration camp are labelled Social Justice Warriors.Īs should be obvious from the above, Mankind Divided wears its politics on its sleeve. Every “Natural” human is at best biased against Augs and at worst openly discriminatory of or predatory upon the Augmented. I was surprised not to find separate bathrooms and water fountains to boot. Augs are segregated from the rest of the population, forced to live in ghettos, sit at the back of the train, and at some locales enter the building through a separate entrance. “Augs Lives Matter” is among the first works of graffiti that Adam Jensen comes across as he makes his way throughout Prague. Having discussed exactly this issue at my Futurology Society, my Philosophical Society, and other similar venues, I’ve heard the same breadth of opinions expressed in real life as in Human Revolution.Ĭontra Mankind Divided, which casts “Augs” not actually as individuals with advanced prosthetics, but as a thin allegory for various minorities. ![]() Hugh Darrow and others like him were in the minority for demonizing self-directed human evolution via augmentations as evil in itself, but nevertheless represented an opinion many individuals would genuinely hold. Others, such as William Taggart, tempered society’s optimism for technological salvation with calls for caution, arguing for government regulation to keep pace with the technological innovation. It posited that some like David Sarif would promote cybernetics as a step -forward for human evolution, one which the species as a whole should eagerly embrace. It anticipated which technologies would be emerging in the immediate future, and imagined the broad spectrum of reactions society would have to such upheavals. Like those predecessors which inspired it, the Deus Ex franchise presents a world in which multinational mega-corporations wield greater influence than governments over global events and individual lives alike a world where technology has advanced in areas of artificial intelligence and cybernetics even as society has correspondingly declined in areas of economic security and civil liberties a world in which only a hardboiled detective straight out of film noir is the closest society has to a knight in shining armor, coming not to save the day but rather only to survive the night.Īnd yet, despite sharing all the tropes of this same subgenre, it is with respect to their top level genre that Human Revolution and Mankind Divided fully diverge. Both fit squarely in the sub-genre of cyberpunk, inheriting all of the trapping of classic works like Blade Runner, Robocop, Ghost in the Shell, and Shadowrun. ![]()
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