Use of your material (IW remake)

[Neveos]

I posted here earlier about wanting to revise IW, which was given an ok by Eidos Montreal. I was originally gonna do this on the new UDK with 3d studio max, but now I'm just gonna do it with the Deus Ex SDK because I can't bother reprogramming everything. I plan on making this revision as a way of killing all this free time, but I just tried out TNM, and was extremely impressed. There are multiple items and skins in this mod that I would find incredibly useful in building the revision. I am pretty serious about making this mod, and I would credit TNM should I use anything you guys made. But I will ask you first if you would allow me to reproduce anything, since you hold the legal copyrights.

[Trestkon]

Thanks for asking! You can of course use whatever you like, as long as we're credited. Good luck with your project

[Neveos]

Awesome. Thanks a million. By the way: I'm pretty sure Joe Greene was innocent despite his reaction to an accusation.

[nerdenstein]

By the way: I'm pretty sure Joe Greene was innocent despite his reaction to an accusation.

That was pretty random? Or did I miss something?

Good Luck with the Mod.
It sounds like an awesome idea I can't wait to see what becomes of it

[Neveos]

Yeah, I guess it was pretty random, but I had just played the part where I was talking to chris the cynic, and he believed the Midnight Sun was actually a tabloid that was under MJ12 control, because of the Joe Greene incident. But I actually think Joe Greene was innocent, as well as Shea, and the "thug" that gets triggered is simply the result of mentioning Dowd's name.... gosh that was pretty random... but I just thought die hard fans would like to think about it

[Hassat Hunter]

That thug is triggered by talking to Greene or Shea about Dowd.

Nothing we can't know having access to the mission scripts .

[chris the cynic]

On the topic of learning from game files, these are the developer's comments on Joe Greene conversations:

I faught the urge to insert a Choice in this conversation but went ahead and did it. The idea is that if JC is persistent about spilling the beans to the press (and to an MJ-12 operative at that) he will catch some heat from Manderley -- which could be a hint that Joe Green will betray him to MJ-12 later. Also, it might be cool if JC is quoted in a news story that the player finds only if he has talked to Joe Green. We'll see how much of the above pans out.

-

Green knows that the player is supposed to be in Hong Kong and suspects that he has figured out that UNATCO is about to arrest Paul.

-

Green has just hatched a plan in his head to ambush Dowd and player.

-

Light-hearted, not giving away the fact that he is planning to arrange an ambush for the player.

--

There's also his previously mentioned reaction to being accused and the fact that Manderley learns about when you speak to him even though only he and you know it happened. (Though that, on its own, could be attributed to other factors.)

[Neveos]

The dev comments are pretty condemning, so if you wouldn't mind, could you tell me more about where you found those?

But my reasoning was that Greene was getting a little close to what was actually happening (you'll notice that the Midnight Sun gets closer and closer to the truth), and the Illuminati would have naturally wanted to eliminate him to keep everything under wraps. Filben snaps a photo of Greene being questioned by the MJ12, but one which doesn't seem to show Greene is conspiring. If he was being given directions by MJ12, it doesn't look like Greene is happy about it, so he may be getting threatened or forced, but it doesn't look like he is being offered a position in Washington, which Filben claims. Consider his most recent article located just outside the bar in this level:

"!=!==!=== MIDNIGHT SUN ===!==!=!
Food of the Gods?

NEW YORK -- Ambrosia, the mythical food of the gods, may in fact be something
more than a myth -- it may be a cure for the mysterious "Gray Death" that has
infected this city with sickening dread over the past several months.
What is this Ambrosia, and where does it come from? Speaking on the condition of
anonymity, highly placed sources have revealed in an exclusive to the "Midnight
Sun" that Ambrosia is the government codename for a cure to the plague that has
already taken so many lives. Unfortunately, the current manufacturing process
appears to yield only small amounts of Ambrosia which have so far been
prioritized for ranking government officials and a select group of industry
leaders. "It's a matter of money and connections," said one source. "There
simply isn't enough to go around."
If such allegations are true then it goes far beyond the terrible events of
recent memory: it is evidence of systemic corruption that rises to the highest
ranks of President Mead's administration, a callous disregard for human life
that must -- and will -- be opposed! -- Joe Greene, Senior Staff Writer"

"JOE GREENE
They've got PROOF. They found the cure. It's called Ambrosia.

JC DENTON
Don't believe everything you read.

JOE GREENE
Har-har.
Check the public terminals. It was a big day in the news.
Wish I'd been the one to get the scoop on Ambrosia.
I bet someone already has a book deal on the cover-up."

Filben frames Greene to convince JC to murder him. You'll note, from an moral standpoint, the irony in the conversation goes something like this:

JC: "I don't like people who ask a lot of questions."

Filben: "No shit. Man, you really did change sides."

Which is significant of JC having not really changed sides at all. After all, it was the Illuminati that murdered the X-51 scientists in the sub-base, and this is something which has to be dug up. So that, hidden in these events, we're able to lose our trust in the Illuminati which helps us make our decision in the end.

Also, the marines, in the next mission, claim they are friends with Greene, and will tell him what they learn about FEMA's presence at the Wall Cloud.

Consider, also, that the thug that comes after JC is also triggered if one speaks to Shea, which we presume is ex-UNATCO. In fact, just mentioning Dowd to her makes her hush JC up:

"JORDAN
What do you want? Prices have tripled to 30 because of martial law.

JC DENTON
Heard the name Stanton Dowd?

JORDAN
What do you want with Dowd?

JC DENTON
A private matter. Know where I can find him?

JORDAN
I'm gonna say this once. That German mech from UNATCO already came by looking
for you. You got money to spend, fine; this curfew's killing me, but leave me
out of your business. That guy's oiled up and ready for a fight.

JC DENTON
Gunther...

JORDAN
Do you want something or not?"

The thug is released because we failed to follow Filben's instruction:

"Be careful who you mention the Illuminati to". Those two could have been bugged, bribed, or forced. Either way, I don't think it is moral to kill Greene, but we are supposed to walk away suspicious of the Illuminati, of which Tong warned us.

[chris the cynic]

The dev comments are pretty condemning, so if you wouldn't mind, could you tell me more about where you found those?

The conversation files (which are in DeusExConText.u) occasionally include comments from the developers. Most of the time it isn't anything profound, a note saying that someone is whispering, what accent someone is meant to have, or in one case a thing saying that they corrected a typographical error, but other times it has interesting things like the things I quoted.

But my reasoning was that Greene was getting a little close to what was actually happening (you'll notice that the Midnight Sun gets closer and closer to the truth),

I would say that MJ12 is using the Midnight Sun to cover up the truth. We'll get to that in a moment though.

First, the example you give is Greene's article on Ambrosia. He says that he didn't break the story. (He claims he wishes he was the one.) The story was already out there, him reporting it didn't hurt MJ12 in any way. He even says people can find out via the public terminals. So him reporting on it hardly indicates that he is not a spy.

In fact, it is pretty much an imperative. He couldn't have any credibility if he didn't report on Ambrosia. If he let a story like that pass unannounced while the news was available from other sources he would lose any credibility he has. This would be a problem for two reasons. The first is that it would inhibit his ability to make people believe misinformation. The second is that what that loss in credibility would do among people like the sailors who planned to tell him, as opposed to The New York Times, the truth about what FEMA was doing at the Brooklyn Naval Shipyards. If Joe Greene is the person people go to when they think they have the truth, and he works for MJ12, that provides valuable information to MJ12. They know what people know about them. That is an incredibly important thing to know. They also know what people think they know about them.

MJ12 can use the information gathered by people coming to Joe Greene to form cover stories and alternative explanations. They don't actually need to hide to truth so much as discredit or distort it. The truth being out there is only a problem if 1) it is presented in such a way that it will be believed, 2) there is no other narrative that will be believed instead of it and 3) the noise to signal ratio is low enough for someone to separate the truth from the mess.

With that in mind, consider what Greene works for. It isn't just a newspaper, it is a tabloid. Those outside of the United States might not understand the significance of that term. When Manderley says "And stay away from the press this time, especially the tabloids," he is not saying that non-broadsheet newspapers are worse than broadsheets. He is using the term in the way it is used in the US (which makes sense, he is an American in the US as written by an American in the US.) This is a tabloid. If you're in a supermarket and you see a paper claiming that the gateway to hell has been found, a bunch of public figures did something outrageous that they didn't actually do, or a half bat half human adolescent captured the enemy leader that paper is a tabloid.

If you think I might be making too much of the word tabloid as used by Manderley and JC, consider that this is the paper that put out an article saying that the President of the United States was from Mars based on a crater that they said the martians had carved out in the image of his face.

So reporting on a story in The Midnight Sun is already giving people reason to dismiss it*. Consider the conversation:
Person A has just made a seemingly outlandish claim (which happens to be true) with no evidence to back it up.
Person B Where did you hear that?
Person A The Midnight Sun.
Person B The paper that says the President is a Martian war hero? You'll believe anything.

Reporting things in a tabloid already is already distancing a story from mainstream acceptance. Of course some people are ready to believe it (those at Brooklyn Naval Shipyards for example) and for them it is also necessary to discredit, distort, or drown out the truth.

An example of how to do this can be found in the article on the Gray Death:

But was this plague an accident of nature, or a design of science? Dr. Kenji Ishii of the New World Biomedical Health Center in New York thinks not. "My analysis of this plague indicates that it is decidedly unnatural in origin, and in point of fact, may be extraterrestrial." He went on to speculate about those afflicted. "Obviously, a disproportionate number of the indigent seem to be infected, a situation that makes perfect sense if you consider it prelude to an invasion. No more effective way to disrupt the social, political, and military fabric of Earth has yet been devised."

The plague is indeed unnatural, it was a design of science. There we have the actual objective truth, immediately after it is stated, in the same sentence, it is linked to the idea of it being extraterrestrial. The article skillfully links the idea that the plague is artificial with the idea it is part of an alien invasion.

If someone (correctly) rejects the idea of an alien invasion and they link that idea to the idea that the plague is artificial then they will (incorrectly) reject the idea that the plague is artificial. The truth is discredited by linking it to falsehood.

If someone accepts the article as correct then they correctly believe the Gray Death is not natural, but they also believe that it is somehow related to an upcoming alien invasion. They have an element of the truth but that element is wrapped in falsehood leaving them with a completely distorted view of reality.

By presenting part of the truth it is possible to actually make it more difficult to get the truth if you present it in the right way. It seems to me that that is what Joe is doing.

Which is significant of JC having not really changed sides at all. After all, it was the Illuminati that murdered the X-51 scientists in the sub-base, and this is something which has to be dug up.

It is certainly true that an Illuminati scientist was responsible for what happened in the sub base, but I think it is somewhat misleading to say it the way that you did. It was an MJ12 base and he murdered everyone. The way you say it it sounds like he specifically targeted the X-51 scientists when in fact he didn't target anyone, he sabotaged the entire facility.

Actually I am unclear on whether or not there were X-51 scientists in the section sabotaged. You would assume that there were, but one of the X-51 people says, "You can imagine our jubilation when we heard about the accident." You would think they wouldn't be very jubilant if their kidnapped compatriots were killed.

Also, the marines, in the next mission, claim they are friends with Greene, and will tell him what they learn about FEMA's presence at the Wall Cloud.

Just to touch on this again, if Greene is a spy then this is great news for MJ12. It means they'll know exactly what outsiders know about what happened there. That will allow them to create a story that will lead anyone attempting to investigate away from the truth. They can even have Greene publish that story, the sailors would probably believe it and thank him for it.

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* It should be noted that just because something is from a disreputable source doesn't mean that it is false. For example the first paper to report that American politician John Edwards had had an affair and fathered a child during it, and whatnot, was The National Enquirer. When I found out that an Enquirer reporter had been harassing Edwards about the story before anyone else had any idea there was a story I was shocked. The Enquirer has reporters? Ones that actually go out and investigate? I thought that they just had a bunch of dishonest people who sat around in a darkened room and made shit up.

[kdawg88]

It's great to see people going into such depth into the writing, even if the writers didn't intend it be so.

[Neveos]

Yes, it does seem like JC is curious how Manderley knew about his conversation with Greene, and the dev comments are a dead give away, so I was wrong... Seems like a strange accident that it looks the other direction.

[Hassat Hunter]

Code: Select all

		// unhide shady guy
		if (!flags.GetBool('MS_ShadyGuyUnhidden'))
		{
			if (flags.GetBool('MS_StantonUnhidden'))
			{
				if ((flags.GetBool('GreenKnowsAboutDowd') &&
					!flags.GetBool('JoeGreen_Dead')) ||
					flags.GetBool('SheaKnowsAboutDowd'))
				{
					foreach AllActors(class'ScriptedPawn', pawn, 'ShadyGuy')
						if (pawn.IsA('ThugMale'))
							pawn.EnterWorld();

					flags.SetBool('MS_ShadyGuyUnhidden', True,, 9);
				}
			}
		}

Pretty self-explainatory. If Green (unless dead) or Shea (even when dead!) knows about Dowd the shady guy spawns. The next function is related how the sahdy guy makes the MJ12 troops appear...

[chris the cynic]

That Shea makes him appear even while dead is interesting*. It implies something I hadn't considered before. What if Shea is bugged? Not as in, "There is a listening device in the bar," but rather that she has a lot of equipment that UNATCO built still attached to her body and if any of that includes a microphone, or something that could function as a microphone, UNATCO might be able to tap into that.

UNATCO has certainly installed things in mechs without telling them about it in other cases.

-

* Actually it is more complicated than that. Shea making him appear even while dead is only interesting because the developers specifically considered the possibility of an informant being dead in that section of coding and chose to have mentioning it to Shea work if Shea is dead. That implies that the thought process was not, "After JC leaves Shea calls the shady guy," because they recognized that for the person JC mentioned Dowd to to do that would require that person to be alive and chose not to treat it like that in Shea's case.

[Neveos]

I think it is safe to assume that Shea is bugged in the sense that UNATCO can listen in on her through her systems. She hushes up JC before the raid in this segment:

"JORDAN
Drink up. We're about to close.
So they brought you over for the raid? That's surprising.

JC DENTON
I'm not involved with any kind of raid.

JORDAN
Oh. Well, then you probably want to stay out of the crossfire. I just assumed...
So what do you need? Ten credits, anything in the house. Last call.

JC DENTON
Thanks for the advice.
Tell me about this raid.

JORDAN
Best thing in these situations is to clear out. That's what we should've done
earlier during the fighting.

JC DENTON
Who are they after?

JORDAN
Agent Denton, I know who you are, and I know your brother. You should leave the
city. Trust me."