Looking for general impressions on HR's Setting/Endings

[Jonas]

New Sons Of Freedom

That's the one, thanks.

Somehow, knowing that you have to read the books to understand what the fuck is up with the boss fights just makes it even worse.

[nerdenstein]

New Sons Of Freedom

That's the one, thanks.

Somehow, knowing that you have to read the books to understand what the fuck is up with the boss fights just makes it even worse.

I agree with you. I was constantly expecting a little bit more from the story... and then it ended. I set my expectations too high in terms of story I think but as Chris pointed out, all the good stuff happens afterwards.
I saw Morgan Everett's name pop up on a Picus computer and fully expected to bump into him at some point. Boy was I disappointed.

But I suspect that's because both him and Lucius Debeers appear in The Icarus Effect too...

[chris the cynic]

Um ... no. Canon is that MJ12 was the Illuminati's doing (probably some time in the vicinity of the 1950s if you trust the continuity bible) Page just made it independent. In canon MJ12 existed before Page was even born, it just happened to be a branch of the Illuminati.

^this is what I initially thought as well, but a lot of Deus Ex 3 sites tell it otherwise stating that MJ12 shouldn't exist at this point.

With sites there isn't a lot you can do, but if someone on a forum or whatnot should say that you can smack them with this:

From: LDeBeers//UpNet.873.484
To: BPage//UpNet.658.9044
Subject: RE: Bovine Manipulation

>I'd like to investigate the possibility of resurrecting
>the bovine manipulation project (MJID-9803HU8932), with
>an eye towards recreating the "Gray" lifeform -- while
>the project was deemed a failure at the time, it _was_
>successful as a propaganda tactic in diverting attention
>away from actual Dreamland research. With recent advances
>in genetic science, the Gray lifeform could be engineered
>to protect MJ12 facilities while also serving as a useful
>bit of meme indirection.

An interesting idea, Bob, but I'm sure MJ12's research allocations can be put to more substantial use pursuing our human augmentation projects; however, I'll bring up the idea with Stanton and Morgan.

Lucius

That's one of the recently accessed old emails Julia Shears pulled out of the archives in Area 51*. It has Bob Page talking to Lucius DeBeers, the head of the Illuminati, about MJ12 projects, facilities, and resources. Hopefully an email of Bob talking to his Illuminati superiors that says, "Hi, I was thinking of reviving project MJID-[number] to protect MJ12 facilities." which gets a response of, "I think MJ12 resources would be better used elsewhere," would be enough for someone to realize, "Hey, MJ12 was part of the Illuminati back when Bob Page was."

-

*
Alain, I don't have much time -- I managed to hack into the archives maintained by Helios. It was... amazing. There were files and messages in there going back almost a hundred years, names of things I've only heard people whisper about as rumors. I barely had time to get my bearings before the ice started to come down, and I just managed to snag a few e-mails that had been recently accessed before I was cut off. I don't think anyone noticed, but I've got to go back on shift now or else someone really will be suspicious. If you get a chance, find my machine and see if you can make anything out of what I recovered.

Login: jshears
Password: momerath

Julia

[Jonas]

What was the purpose of MJ12, anyway? Was it some sort of military enforcement branch of Illuminati, or did it chiefly concern scientific research, or what? Were we ever told?

[chris the cynic]

What was the purpose of MJ12, anyway? Was it some sort of military enforcement branch of Illuminati, or did it chiefly concern scientific research, or what? Were we ever told?

Whether we were told depends on whether you mean in the game or at all.

In the game I don't think they said, though I could be forgetting something. You get implications, but never any actual statement. For example the email already quoted has Page suggesting doing some genetic engineering and DeBeers saying he thinks the effort is better spent on augmentation. I'd hazard a guess that that's nano augmentation, but even if it isn't both of the things the email says MJ12 might work on are very much on the technology side of things. They're not influencing politics or finance, they're not preforming military stuff, they appear to be doing R&D in a lab.

Similarly Dowd's statement that Page realized that technology itself could be a source of politcal power would seem to imply that the branch of the Illuminati Page led towards world domination was more likely full of scientists than, say, staffed entirely by economists*.

If you're interested in things we are told out side of the game then the continuity Bible is there for you. In the middle od the 20th century the Illuminati decided to add two new arms, one was economic, the other was MJ12

Majestic 12 was the Illuminati's technology and communications leader. It doles out technological advances and stores those the world is not yet ready for (or those too powerful to give to potential enemies). It controls the supply of drugs -- licit and illicit and can introduce new diseases as it wishes (diseases for which it already has a cure ready and waiting, of course). Majestic 12 is also charged with influencing and, where possible, managing the world's intelligence organizations. The communications end of things proved more difficult to manage.

Then it goes into detail about the difficulty in monitoring and controlling communications and how that led to both Aquinas and the AIs in the game.

The purpose of MJ12 was to control technology.

-

The Illuminati doesn't seem to have had a branch of enforcers. There is mention of them having a military arm, but Dowd says they never had troops, so the impression that I'm left with is that the military arm was used to influence other people's troops. (If you're good enough at that you wouldn't need your own troops.) I'm not sure whether the terrorists they had on payroll would be under the jurisdiction of the military or political arm. Perhaps it might be cause for some interagency scuffles.

Anyway, somehow they still managed to assassinate at least on US President (Kennedy) and it's worth noting that the RX-84 Simons mentioned was supposedly test run in 1984 (that's where the "84" comes from.) So even without enforcers, they were still prepared to enforce. Maybe the military branch was an enforcement branch that simply used other people's troops to do the dirty work, or maybe they never had a branch dedicated to enforcement.

-

The internet went down in the area, so pretend this was posted hours ago.

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*Random thought experiment bait: What would Deus Ex be like if it had been the Bilderburg Group (the Illuminati's economic arm) that rebelled instead of MJ12.

[Jonas]

Thanks, that fits well with what I remembered. It makes sense for the Illuminati to have no troops, as they could probably get just as far by placing their people in positions of power within major national militaries and (probably especially) private military companies. Human Revolution seems to hint that the MJ12 troops we see in DX1 started out as a regular PMC, but I could be misinterpreting the role of that faction in the game.

It may be interesting to note that the obvious mentions of Illuminati in DXHR make them out to be not so much a vast organisation as a small collective of extremely powerful people with similar goals. DX always gave me the impression that MJ12 was an actual organisation with a hierarchy and lots of proper facilities and everything, but I suppose none of those research facilities or military bases under MJ12's control in DX would be registered under anything even approaching MJ12 or Illuminati, they would be owned by companies owned by other companies owned by yet other companies owned and run by Bob Page.

I suppose it's just about time for me to hunker down and read The Illuminatus! Trilogy.

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

and if we want the real life version of MJ12, they were supposedly a US government organization designed purely to cover up the secrets that the government didn't want leaking out to the public. They mostly get associated with UFOs though and thus the credibility that they actually existed or not is subjected to a lot of debate. They were the secret technological end of the US Government- which is why they're associated to the Illuminati (whom are supposedly meant to rule North America). How this all ties back to freemasonry however is a bit of a long stretch, the masonic lodges were the Illuminati's enemies, their ethos was "Illumination" of the masonic lodges because they wanted to control them.

The historical stuff written about the Illuminati has a lot of merit, their war on Freemasonry I'm very much to believe did happen.

However the New World Order did not, I'm fairly certain of this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majestic_12
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminati

I too still need to read Illuminatus. I've heard they're pretty good novels.

[Jonas]

Random amusing aside: this is the lodge of the Freemasons in the old Danish capital city of Roskilde - don't know if it's their main building in Denmark, but turn that camera around and check out the view

[chris the cynic]

I likewise have yet to read the Illuminatus Trilogy. (Though I do have a copy of the Principia Discordia, for whatever that is worth.)

The MJ12 conspiracy theories start with a document supposedly about their formation in response to Roswell. Given that in Deus Ex the "aliens" were the cover up rather than the thing being covered up, that would mean that the Illuminati released the name into the wider world themselves, presumably to preempt something more accurate or to throw someone who was on the scent off of it. I'm not entirely sure why, but I've always really liked that aspect of it. A lot of conspiracies are played straight in Deus Ex (FEMA, for example) but with MJ12 the conspiracy theory itself is What They Want You To Think.

The conflation of the Illuminati and Freemasons goes back a long time. The source for this is a documentary on the History Channel which, given the fact that their standards allow for shows like Ancient Aliens, makes it questionable at best. Also this is from memory. So, you know, take this with a grain of salt. I have been told that during the Illuminati panic that swept America George Washington was asked to denounce/renounce Freemasonry, apparently because people couldn't tell the difference, his response was basically to say, "They're not the same, I'm not a part of the Illuminati," or something to that effect. Like I said, this is from memory.

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Oh, random note of worth:

Tong's speech where he gets Adam Weishaupt's birthday wrong is apparently a reference to the Illuminatus Trilogy which makes the same mistake. (And places similar significance on the numbers 17 and 23 to get there.)

[chris the cynic]

Random searching on the internet says that the idea of a link between the Illuminati and Freemasonry (beyond the first stealing rituals and members from the second) is probably due to this book which is mentioned on the Wikipedia page for the Illuminati, but not in a way that makes you think, "Oh, that's the reason people connect the Illuminati and Freemasonry." The book apparently claims that the Illuminati and the Freemasons worked together to cause the French Revolution. It inspired someone else to write a book called, "Proofs of a Conspiracy against All the Religions and Governments of Europe, carried on in the Secret Meetings of the Free Masons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies," and those two books apparently form the basis of seeing the two as allied rather than in opposition.

[bobby 55]

Random amusing aside: this is the lodge of the Freemasons in the old Danish capital city of Roskilde - don't know if it's their main building in Denmark, but turn that camera around and check out the view

Holy crap! That's some cathedral on the other side.

I found an email from Morgan Everett.. CEO of PICAS, mentioning their new telecommunication building in Northern France.

[Jonas]

Chris, help me clear up another thing please: is Paul a clone? I always got the impression that he's the original, but DXHR may be vaguely suggesting that he's a clone of Adam Jensen. Or he could just be related in the normal way, of course... either way is it something we know about?

[Jaedar]

I've always been under the impression that Paul was not a clone.

[chris the cynic]

Chris, help me clear up another thing please: is Paul a clone? I always got the impression that he's the original, but DXHR may be vaguely suggesting that he's a clone of Adam Jensen. Or he could just be related in the normal way, of course... either way is it something we know about?

This is something we know about.

Paul isn't a clone. In Deus Ex you've got the email describing the plan to use the genetic data gathered via the small pox vaccinations to discover couples likely to produce (through the ordinary means) kids likely to be compatible with nano augmentation, then, once the've got those kids they'd have them cloned with the clone raised by the "parents" the the resulting siblings could be used for experiments and whatnot. That's what happened with Paul. You've also got Bob Page talking about Paul's parents (no scare quotes) in an email to Walton Simons. There could be one or two other things.

If that isn't enough you've got the Deus Ex Continuity Bible which goes into great detail about the whole affair, general takeaway: Paul was definitely the original.

If that isn't enough our own walton simons (lowercase) emailed Harvey Smith with questions one of them being about JC's parents (because at first glance it looks like they died twice) and found out that the confusion was stemming from the fact that both the biological parents and the foster parents were killed. At least I think that was the response, unlike the continuity bible I don't have a copy of the email on hand to double check.

[Added] That last one might need more explanation. If Paul were a clone of AJ then the closest thing he'd have to biological parents would be AJ's parents, his surrogate mother would be an MJ12 employee, and it wouldn't make all that much sense for Page to say JC needed a more supervised environment since he's already being raised directly by employees (it might make sense to say the current supervisors suck, recall that even the MJ12 employed foster parents eventually decided they liked the Dentons and were killed for it) and ... yeah. [/added]

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Beyond the fact that we know that Paul was the original, I think there's another problem with the idea that AJ was the original. The info we have says that the plan called for finding potential subjects that had yet to be born. To find people compatible with nano augmentation they were looking for "those couples most likely to produce desirable offspring". Which means that if AJ was the original then Morgan Everett was working on the nano augmentation project before AJ was born. A quick check says that Adam Jensen's date of birth was March 9, 1993. So the nano augmentation project was already going strong before 1993. Does that seem right to you?

Also, how old to we think Everett is anyway? Because that email was addressed to him. So think about how old you thought he was when he got that email, and think about how old he was in the game. If AJ were then original then you're right about how old he was when he got the email, he'd be 25 years older than you thought in Deus Ex. If you're right about how old he was in the game, then he'd be twee 25 years younger than you thought when he got the email. (Or you could split the difference at 12.5 and 12.5, or anything in between so long as you account for an extra 25 years between the two.)

And then there's the question of what the hell is up with giant gap between when Paul and JC were born? In Deus Ex the idea is that the gap was because they spent some time running tests, when the tests started being favorable they impregnated Paul's mother with JC. (Apparently they really like the age of five they determined that Paul was an ideal test subect at the age of five, cloned him, and then waited until they were five to run tests on the clones. One or two results from that were promising enough for them to say, "Paul is awesome, let's get a clone that was developed in the same womb as the original," and there you have JC, who is 11 years younger than his identical brother.) If they've already had clones to test on for 25 years the decade long gap doesn't really make any sense.

[Jonas]

Thanks. That also seems to make it unlikely that Adam is somehow related to Paul, since Paul would have been born in... 2019? And as far as we know, Adam had no offspring 8 years later. Could well be Adam Jensen didn't actually have anything to do with the Dentons apart from a very similar genetic mutation. I'm not aware of anything in Human Revolution that contradicts that.

Thanks!