Posts tagged Adam Jensen

I’ve been playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution for the past couple of days, and while i find it has many flaws, i also think its overall atmosphere is very alluring. But what i love the most in any game is the moral difficulties you encounter as a player. I am willing to halt a game and ponder on my next move for hours, until i decide on a course of action I will not regret later. Needless to say, I went with the non-lethal/pacifist, stealth approach, because in my view, Adam Jensen is (or was) an honest cop with a heart of gold, hiding behind this tough, impenetrable persona. Cliche, I know, but unless his augs made him lose his mind, that’s the personality I envision he has.

So back in China, I’m on the Talon A.D quest. Spoilers coming.

Although I decided not to murder anyone so far and go about this game with the mind of a man who believes in doing things by the book, and not turn into a vigilante, I am heavily inclined to let Zelazny go. Clearly, the lawful, by the book approach will never rid the world of a secret society that infiltrates and controls all major governments and that operates above and beyond the law. Taking Zelazny down means that the people who turned him into a super-killing machine with no memory and no measure of his own actions will never pay for what they did. It would be foolish to assume that there really is a lawful way to stop the Illuminati. So my Adam Jensen is facing a moral crisis. Uphold the law and take Zelazny down, or allow Zelazny to seek his own justice? Ah, choices, choices…

UPDATE.  I decided to let Zelazny go. I figured that although I do not approve of his actions, he has his own reasons and it is not my place to say if he is right or wrong. Upon returning, if you try to convince the quest giver, Dr. Wing, that it was the right call, he accuses Jensen of being the type of guy who thinks that “the end justifies the means”. BUT Dr. Wing is willing to have Zelazny KILLED if that prevents the supersoldier from furthering his devious plans. So who is the ruthless, machiavellian one here, Jensen or Wing?

Dr. Wing also felt highly hypocritical. I usually am compelled to spare characters that show depth and consistency, even if I don’t necessarily agree with what they’re doing (unless they’re outright criminals with no redeeming qualities), which stands true for Zelanzy, but not for Wing. This doctor guy doesn’t sound like someone who treasures doing things “in accordance to the law”, does he? Now I don’t know if Wing was intentionally written to be paper-thin, or if he was just poorly written, but clearly Zelanzy had a lot more going for him, as far as depth and emotional resonance are concerned. Wing performed the operation that made Zelanzy forfeit his memory, identity and any moral benchmark, and now his solution to “fix” the problem is to hire someone to have Zelanzy “terminated”. Puh-lease. I wish I could have told Wing that if he’s so eager to make the world a better place, he should stop performing high risk operations on black-ops soldiers, quit the dirty job, expose them to the public, and stop looking for hired muscle to clean up after him. Afterwards, if you try to talk to Wing, he says in an angered voice “Do you know what you’ve done?!” No, do YOU know what you’ve done?

originally posted on September 29th.