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  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • The bomb Tong gives Jensen as a distraction to get into the Belltower ship has a 10-second timer. Did Tong really think it would be enough and never mentioned it since Jensen never asked, or did he try to kill Jensen with it? On that note, since his son uses it as a distraction, was Tracer Tong in on it? He claims he wants to escape his father's reach, but it could have been a mutual plan to allow Tong Jr to leave Hengsha without hassle, tying up a loose end in the progress.
    • Related to the above, is Tracer Tong Jr's real name? It certainly doesn't sound very chinese. Given that he escapes on a boat called "The Tracer", he may have just taken the name as a fake name so his father wouldn't find him.
  • Anticlimax Boss:
    • As expected of the franchise, there are ways to eliminate powerful enemies besides shooting them hundreds of times (though the Director's Cut DLC adds in various ways to do this for players who don't have many combat augmentations or guns). The Typhoon aug is potent enough to kill any boss in a few shots.
    • Barrett, the first boss, isn't immune to gas, be it grenades or the toxic stuff in the cylinders scattered around the area. These can be thrown halfway across the room even without the strength boosting mod. It only takes two of these, three tops.
    • For Fedorova, stock up on Typhoon ammo and spam repeatedly. Alternatively, PEPS and EMP grenades do wonders, provided you have the EMP shielding aug or enough healing items. Doing this may also stun-lock her, glitching her so that she doesn't move. Happy shooting.
    • Namir, the third boss, is a close-combat specialist armed with loads of grenades and a powerful energy weapon, but has a glass jaw. Spam the takedown button as the boss mantles a wall and it's a One-Hit KO (while this was patched out in the Director's Cut, you can still do it while he's decloaking after throwing a grenade). The Pre-Order Bonus Linebacker grenade launcher can take him out in four or five shots Strong hackers can hack a turret from earlier and carry it down to his boss arena, which is almost as fast. If all else fails, you can lob land mines from the elevator onto his spawn point, and they'll explode as soon as his cutscene finishes (it takes about eight land mines, though).
    • Hyron, the final boss, has a terminal to shut down life-support directly in front of Zhao Yun Ru. Hack it or sucker the codes out of Darrow for an easy win. Alternately, bring the laser rifle and Just Shoot The Boss.
    • The boss from the Missing Link DLC, Burke, fights you in a wide open room with a large number of flunkies. However, it's possible, if you move quickly, to get into cover and avoid being spotted by the mooks. If you're good at hacking or have certain augs, it's possible to get directly behind the boss and use a takedown without him knowing. There's even an achievement for doing this. Even better, if you duck into cover immediately and stay there for a few minutes, they'll go back to their patrols, even with Burke continuing to taunt you about how it's only a matter of time before they find you. It's entirely possible — though difficult — to get the Apex Predator achievement along with Factory Zero.
  • Awesome Music: Has its own page.
  • Breather Level:
    • The return trip to Detroit. The previous several levels had you go up against heavily armed Belltower mercs and their complex security systems. The Purity First thugs in Detroit are nowhere near as powerful since they're not augmented.
    • Omega Ranch becomes this in the director's cut; after a few hours of avoiding dozens of mercs without most of your augments, the interiors of Omega Ranch are easy navigate, enemies come in fewer numbers and have easier routes to keep track of.
  • Broken Base: While there was one for console and PC gamers when they didn't know if the Director's Cut would be released for their systems, XBOX and PS3 players are annoyed at how they have to buy the game all over again, and even more so if they paid for the DLC that'll be included in the Director's Cut.
  • Complacent Gaming Syndrome: The developers went out of their way to avert this. Firstly, ammo is always very scarce and doesn't stack well, so you can never go hog-wild with rapid fire weapons. Secondly, important dialogue scenes don't always have the same triggers or flow; you can't always get the same reactions out of people by sticking to the same verbal stance throughout it. And don't get used to always being able to fight enemies the same way; the endgame involves a total shift in combat strategy.
  • Complete Monster: Pieter Burke is the head of the Spec Ops group of Belltower and in charge of developing the Hyron Project. Burke kidnaps Adam Jensen in the beginning and interrogates him through torture. After being freed, Jensen begins to see Burke's long list of crimes. He's been kidnapping random women in the street to be used as test subjects for the Hyron Project which resulted to many deaths, either through the experiments, the operation required to place them inside Hyron, or through Hyron after dying from a year of pain and agony. Once Jensen begins to destroy his plans, Burke forces him a Sadistic Choice between saving his prisoners or the person with the evidence to expose Belltower. Even before this, he was responsible for civilian deaths with his command to kill any witnesses in his covert missions.
  • Creator Worship: The original Deus Ex was a personal project of Warren Spector's. News that Human Revolution was being made without much input by Warren Spector was poorly-received. Initially even Warren Spector was displeased by this news, although he changed his tune after getting to see Eidos Montreal's work.
  • Demonic Spiders: On higher difficulties, enemies with shotguns can instantly kill the player, even at a distance. Getting caught in combat with shotgunners, especially armored shotgunners, is often suicide.
  • Disappointing Last Level:
    • Not as bad as the other games, but it starts to replace the mission hubs with singular levels after the final visit to Shanghai. It's actually justifiable, because Adam closes in on the conspiracy so why would he want to waste time doing random side missions for people? In real life, the main reason for the lack of a 3rd mission hub is the game needing to be released on time but the 3rd hub not being close enough to completion to justify any additional delay.
    • The Final Dungeon replaces enemy soldiers with pseudo-zombified humans turning the game into either a low skilled massacre or a game of running away. Word of God is that Eidos Montreal wishes they had done a better job handling the final mission, though the design intention was always to have the gameplay change suddenly.
      • Unusually for this trope, the catalyst of the disappointment (i.e. the sudden zombieness of augmented characters changing the gameplay) goes on to have a major impact in the sequel.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Malik became the most popular woman of the game quite fast. It makes her death a way too powerful Player Punch for a lot of players who dropped their Pacifist Run at this point or when her body is discovered at the Harvesters' hideout for a Roaring Rampage of Revenge killing spree instead. For the people who managed to save her, her thanks are depicted as a Heartwarming Moment.
    Malik: Jensen, the bird’s fixed and I’m taking of. Now get on with the damned mission, and thanks Spy boy.
    Adam Jensen: Anytime, Fly girl.
    • Sarif is also well-liked for being what should be impossible- a Benevolent Boss in a cyberpunk setting, being a great father figure for Adam, and being all around a swell guy.
    • Pritchard is also well liked for being a sarcastic jerk, yet being quite funny and a great companion on your adventure.
  • Fandom Rivalry: One is already developing between Human Revolution fans and Mass Effect fans. The music and general genre of the two make them natural rivals. Although there is a very large overlap between the fanbases of the games. A lot of people actually liked both titles. Ironically enough, the creators of Mass Effect designed the ending choices of the trilogy to mirror that of Deus Ex, leading to the infamous ending.
  • Game-Breaker: Has its own page.
  • Genius Bonus / Meaningful Name:
    • Eliza is an AI, which was the first program to mimick human intelligence. The room where you first "meet" her is Room 404. The room where her program is housed (and her signal is broadcasted from) is Room 802-11.
    • Picus is a figure in Roman mythology, who developed into a minor god, said to have been one of the first who discovered the use of manure. Or if you prefer, the God of Bullshit.
  • Good Bad Bugs: There's a glitch you can exploit that allows you to get infinite XP, allowing you to get all 68 Praxis points and max out every single Aug you have. Simply save your game in front of a computer, then hack it (nukes make it much easier). Once you've finished hacking and your reward is displayed on screen, exit the computer before collecting your reward, then reload your last save and complete the hack againnote . Each time you repeat this process, your XP reward for completing the hack will double. Just make sure you have a few hours to spare.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • While working on story details for Human Revolution back in 2007, the devs came up with the idea of having Detroit become a major bio-tech center after an auto industry collapse. Little did they know that a real crash would happen the following year.
    • And now Detroit is bankrupt, two years before the game's backstory had it happen. You know things have gone to crap when your 20 Minutes into the Future dystopian science fiction overestimates the amount of time it will take a major city to hit bottom.
    • Not to mention protests over class disparity turned out to be very on the mark shortly after the game's release.
    • Detention policies for American citizens hit closer to home with recent developments in the government.
    • Blink and you'll miss it, but one of the scrolling texts underneath news broadcasts mentions that there has been a tsunami alert in Japan, but it is expected to be harmless. Not so much in real life.
    • The whole theme of technology that could potentially benefit all of humankind having secret backdoors for the benefit of a small powerful group. Edward Snowden revealed the truth about the NSA a few years after the game's release.
    • A West Virginia policeman was fired for refusing to shoot a man his superiors deemed to be a threat. Similar to the Mexicantown Massacre, the man in question was shot by other police officers who arrived on the scene.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: According to a pocketlog in Panchaea, the Prime Minister of Canada in 2027 has the surname Trudeau. Eidos correctly predicted that Canada would have another Trudeau prime minister.
  • Ho Yay:
    • Pritchard becomes more... concerned about Jensen late in the game.
    • And after Jensen goes MIA for a few days, Pritchard expresses a desire to keep Jensen on a leash.
    • When you first talk to Wayne Haas, he sounds more like an angry ex-boyfriend than anything, right down to complaining that it's the first time you've talked in two years, and it's only because you want a favor.
  • Inferred Holocaust: Even if you don't decide to pick "Destroy Panchaea" ending, disabling the Hyron Project inevitably leads to the station's annihilation, since there's no computer to redirect waves and control the pressure of the Arctic Ocean. Further reinforced when Bob Page mentions salvaging remains of something (most likely Panchea) for Morpheus Initiative.
  • Iron Woobie: Adam, for the most part. He does allow his angst to show at occasional intervals, but for the most part he just swallows his despair and tries to get on with his life, dangerous though it may be.
  • Memetic Mutation:
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • Narhari Kahn and Belltower as a whole cross this when they open fire and kill everyone in the Alice Garden Pod apartment complex, despite the fact that everybody, including the one hacker they were after, were unarmed civilians.
    • Hugh Darrow inflicting an immense amount of pain and mental trauma on potentially hundreds of thousands of people, killing many of them. While he did regret it (depending on your dialogue choices) later on it's even worse when you consider that he was partially motivated by something as petty as jealousy. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided shows the long-term result of this, to boot: millions of deaths occurred, and Augs are treated like animals with racial hatred worldwide. In a way, he won, but even he couldn't have seen just how bad it'd become.
  • Most Wonderful Sound:
    • The chime that plays when you hit the start button after starting up the game.
    • When Jensen says the following three words: "Anytime, Fly girl."
    • The original UNATCO leitmotif that plays when entering Sarif Industries for the first time in the intro.
    • When the game finishes, after the secret final cutscene then you get the original Deus Ex theme.
    • "But please... call me Bob."
  • Narm: The scene of Darrow causing augmented people to go insane is chilling... until you notice that the attendee attacking the camera looks strikingly like Barack Obama.
  • No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: The leaked beta convinced a lot of the haters to switch teams.
  • Only the Creator Does It Right: The game was starting to receive this... until the beta was leaked. Even then, angry nostalgic gamers were still upset, to the point a mod mocking it was made for the original Deus Ex.
  • Paranoia Fuel:
    • Visiting the basement of Picus and snooping in their files shows how easily and to how great an extent mass media can manipulate people. But it's just a plot point of a conspiracy theory game, right? Right? Wrong. Picus is a thinly veiled Expy of NewsCorp. Which already controls an obscene amount of media worldwide.
    • Adam himself, especially during a stealth run. So there's this guy in the building, right? And we keep finding our buddies dead/unconscious on the floor, right? But we've still got (dwindling) numbers and familiar ground and security systems on our side, so we should be able to at least find him, right? Right?... Guys? Hey, where did everybody
  • Player Punch:
    • Malik's death, if you let it happen.
    • Made all the worse when you reach Tong's HQ in the parking garage, and her corpse is on one of the tables having been stripped of augmentations.
      • Multiple players have enraged enough at the attack that they instantly abandoned their Pacifist Runs to kill every single damn Belltower merc in the zone. Or after failing to save her or not realising they can save her, the player then abandons the pacifist run after seeing her corpse desecrated and stripped of augmentations like a lab rat.
  • Polished Port: The Wii U Director's Cut, besides combining the game with all of its DLC, uses the GamePad in very helpful and sensible ways that greatly enhance the experience.
  • Porting Disaster: The Director's Cut version was later released on PC. Unfortunately, it was based directly on the Wii U version, which means the graphics are noticeably downgraded from the original. There are also a number of bugs and optimization issues not present in the original PC release, as the DC was based on an earlier build of the game (apparently, the source code for the original patched version was lost).
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • Hacking would be tolerable if it were used infrequently but given that keys, lockpicks and multitools no longer exist you'll be using it for absolutely everything, from opening doors to disabling security grids to hacking computers to read emails. The minigame quickly becomes tedious but it's at times necessary to advance the plot, and the EXP rewards mean players will likely feel pressured to hack every computer and alarm they come across, even if they already have the password.
    • Energy depleting takedowns are your only melee option and energy cells take a decent bit to recharge, notably Deus Ex: The Fall seemingly agreed and added an upgrade to have 2 cells regenerate on their own, which the Director's Cut version of Human Revolution made standard.
  • Sequel Displacement: Because of the large gap between the release of HR and Deus Ex: Invisible War, this was many players' first Deus Ex game. Since HR wasn't a Numbered Sequel like it was originally going to be, and any references to the original games would only be picked up those who've already played them, it isn't uncommon to find players unaware of the first two games.
  • Signature Scene: Everybody seems to remember Adam Jensen's apartment. The scene after your transport is shot down is this for the gameplay side of things.
  • Sidetracked By The Golden Saucer: There are so many computers to hack. Almost none of them are strictly necessary to hack, but the minigame lets you hack literally hundreds of computers over the course of the game. When you enter a large office area, expect to drop at least ten or twenty minutes just running around hacking every computer in sight for experience and money.
  • Special Effects Failure: The takedown animations:
    • They are keyed for the standard character model size. Fair enough. But there are a few enemies (i.e. Ogres) that are a bit larger than everyone else, and the animation for their takedowns remains the same. So if Jensen performs, let's say, his Hey You Hay Maker on an Ogre, he taps the small of their back (rather than the shoulder) and punches them in the heavily armored chest.
    • The spacings for the animations expects a certain amount of room. If you're in a particular cramped area or are on top of something, some of your enemies would end up clipping through the geometry or even through the camera itself (resulting in part of them being completely see-through). One of the Lethal Double Takedowns involve Adam throwing one guy on another and then stabbing both; if you happen to do this in a narrow hallway Adam will slam them against the wall, then headbutt half his torso through the wall while the two guys ragdolls.
    • Since Takedowns are scripted, when you're facing multiple enemies you'll see that they're frozen in place. Normally the animations are chosen in such a way that you don't see this, but during the fight on Panchaea, due to the larger amount of enemies going for your face, you'll see a bunch of them either in mid-stride or mid-jump. Not to mention that the takedowns stay the same regardless of who Jensen is taking down. Which for example, means a pair of street prostitutes will engage in a quick series of kung-fu blocks and counter-punches before Jensen puts them down. Then again, if someone would have to learn martial arts to survive on the streets, it would be prostitutes.
  • Spiritual Licensee: This is probably the greatest RoboCop game you will ever play.
  • Straw Man: Both sides of the augmentation debate get hit with this. The pro-augmentation side is opposed to any kind of regulation or scrutiny even when it's outfitting people with concealed arm blades and bombs, or systems to drug people with pheromones. The anti-augmentation faction are a bunch of violent fanatics who rant about the unnaturalness of augmentations and their leader Bill Taggart is secretly part of the villainous Illumati. Nobody gets to be a reasonable moderate who wants cool robot arms and lifesaving medicine but has understandable concerns about having to get augments just to get a job or having to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of their life.
  • Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Invisible War was basically the epitome of Contested Sequel. Fans took much more kindly to this one. While the first will probably never be topped, this is seen by most as a worthy successor.
  • That One Boss: Jason Namir, as just before the fight Zhao hits Jensen with an EMP attack that makes his augs useless and messes up his hud for the rest of the fight, meaning you can't even tell how much health or ammo you have (other than the screen getting red tinted when your hp is low).
  • That One Achievement: Playing basketball, of all things, since Adam tosses the ball really hard and the ball is inexplicably well inflated for a back alleyway in Detroit.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Augmentation could have been used to explore how new technology can exacerbate existing inequalities and class divisions, in this case by giving physical and mental advantages to those who can afford them while everyone else is left behind and potentially out of a job. Rather than make this argument the anti-augmentation faction instead makes nonsensical claims about augmentation being unnatural despite being happy to wear glasses and carrying phones.
  • Underused Game Mechanic: Did you know that you can destroy doors and vent entrances in this game? Probably not (and if you did, it was only by accident), because there's never a good reason to want to do so. Ammo is scarce enough to make blasting through them a bad idea, it's much easier to hack doors, and vents are never even locked. You can even check their health, but only after you've unlocked them. The feature seems to be grandfathered in from the first game, where destroying doors actually was a useful mechanic if you were out of lockpicks.
  • Waggle: In the Wii U port, clicking the zoom button with a scoped weapon causes the scope view to show up on the Gamepad screen instead of the TV. This can be rather bothersome for those used to the vanilla game.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: The entire augmentation debate is just like the abortion debate. Clinics built for augmentations being protested and firebombed by detractors, supporters declaring that it is their body and they will do with it what they like, and people against it using religious statements to oppose it. In one protest, you can see signs that say, "I regret my augmentation" much like "I regret my abortion signs." And much how in real life how people on the fence about abortion will say "I don't mind it in cases of rape, health issues, or incest," one can hear characters say "I don't mind it in the cases of amputees." The Humanity Front and Purity First has many real-world analogies, with a legitimate political group sharing goals and views with a terrorist organization, such as Sinn Féin and the IRA or Animal Rights groups and the ALF. Conspiracy-wise, Sarif Industries is under fire for trying to end Neuropozyne dependency, and in Real Life, there are proposals to develop embryo transfer to the point that abortion would not be lethal to the fetus - these cannot get off the ground due to anti-technologists protesting stem cell research. The anti-aug crowd want augs eliminated, and Versalife is making a killing on Neuropozyne.
    • One fan's essay on Deus Ex: Human Revolution's Social Satire covers some of the issues nicely.
    • There are instances of some businesses having a "No Augs" policy or asking augmented people to enter from the back, which is more than a little reminiscent of racial segregation. Having to use the service entrance has in the real world also happened in cases where women attended what were normally considered men-only establishments.
    • One Sarif employee talks about how they had the sympathies of the whole world after the attack, but opinions changed against them surprisingly quickly. The exact same description could be used for United States post-9/11.
  • Win Back the Crowd:
    • Successfully won people back to idea of more Deus Ex games after the disappointing "Invisible War'' eight years earlier.
    • The leaked beta turned a number of fans opinions of the game to a much more positive one after the game was leaked, and the leaked players finding out it was pretty good.
  • The Woobie:
    • Haas was ordered to shoot a 15-year-old kid, then blamed for it even though he was not in charge, gets demoted to a desk job and his family gets upset with him because of his demotion. Then he gets fired because he let Adam into the police station and confronts you in the lobby of your apartment building. You can end up killing him after he tries to pull a gun on Adam. Alternatively, you can get him a job at Sarif Industries, which will apparently pay better and be more liberating than his previous gig. Unfortunately, the events at the end of the game end up spelling doom for Sarif Industries, according to the sequel, so he's likely to be out of a job yet again. The poor guy can't catch a break.
    • On the other hand, if you enter the police station through the sewers, he gets to keep his job at the police station, small comfort that that is. Hacking his computer will reveal that his marriage is in trouble as well.
    • A minor sidequest in Hengsha involves a young woman working as a broker. Despite graduating at the top of her class in college, she was unable to get work as a broker without the expensive neural augmentations her wealthier classmates could afford. In order to be able to work and start paying back her student loans, she ended up turning to the Triads, who were able to get her the required implant at a lower cost. However, they then claimed that since she was using the chip bought from them to make money, they were entitled to a percentage of her earnings, for life. Adam can choose to intervene and pay off 1 year's worth of her repayments as a way to release her from a lifetime of debt slavery to organised crime, otherwise he can repossess the chip, or simply force this month's payment from her.

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