Recap / Deus Ex Mission 06 Hong Kong

Mission 6:

Hong Kong

Jock's helicopter is promptly autonavigated into an MJ12 base atop the Versalife building as soon as it enters Hong Kong. Jock tells JC that they failed, and that the helicopter's computer wrested control from him as soon as they got near the base. He asks for help getting his systems online, and JC sneaks through the nearby base to remove the weapons lock and open the hangar bay doors.

Jock fires a pair of missiles at a pair of blast doors nearby, allowing JC to escape. He tells the agent to start looking for information in the nearby Wan Chai Market, and flies away as the base's defenses go on high alert. JC navigates through the wreckage caused by the missiles and accesses the elevator.

JC exits out into the market and begins questioning some of the locals, who give him information on nearby attractions and places to visit. Jock also radios to inform him that Tong's compound is nearby, and that Paul used to visit whenever he was in town. JC subsequently finds a young boy who claims to represent the interests of the Luminous Path triad, who is harrassing a vendor for protection money, and follows him to Tong's compound.

JC finds a man with a shotgun guarding a locked door at the front of the compound. JC tries to get permission to enter, mentioning that Paul knows Tong, but the guard, Gordon Quick, won't hear any of it. He instead tells JC to find a woman named Maggie Chow, who he says is holding a nanotech sword, the Dragon's Tooth, that has caused bloodshed between the Luminous Path and Red Arrow groups.

JC subsequently heads to Tonnochi Road, where he finds a Luminous Path member who tells him not to believe Chow's lies. JC heads into the Queen's Tower building and up to Chow's penthouse, where she tells him that she is a Red Arrow member and knew Paul quite well. She claims that the Luminous Path are working in collusion with MJ12, and asks him to find a datapad in the market's police station that proves it.

When JC goes and investigates the station, he finds proof... that Chow is the one who stole the Dragon's Tooth Sword and ignited the rivalry between the two triads. JC returns to Chow's apartment, only for her housekeeper to become hostile and attack him. After dispatching her, JC investigates and discovers a secret MJ12 base accessed through a nearby wall panel, and dispatches the enemies inside.

He also finds a room with the sword locked in a glass case, and is greeted by the voice of Tracer Tong, who tells him he has been listening in on his infolink. Tong tells JC to get the sword and bring it to Max Chen at the Lucky Money Club and make peace between the triads.

JC finds the club and enters Chen's office at the back of the building. Chen expresses concerns about JC's presence, but the latter tells him of Chow's deception and how he obtained the Dragon's Tooth Sword. Upon realizing that the triad was played, Chen learns from his bouncer that MJ12 troops are attacking the club. JC, Chen and several Triad members repel the assault together. Chen tells him that he has called for a ceasefire, and asks JC to inform Gordon to do the same.

At Tong's compound, JC relays the news and Quick happily allows JC to enter. JC heads through and finds Tong, who tells him that he has been watching the agent with great interest, and that Alex has also come to his compound to take refuge.

Tong deactivates JC's killswitch with a electronic machine, and tells him that the agent now owes several favors for saving his life. In a side room, JC finds Alex, who tells him that Daedalus is an artificial intelligence called Echelon IV.

Tong tells JC that the agent owes him the first of several favors for saving his life. He says that the first thing they need to do is find the ROM encoding for the Dragon's Tooth, as it will give more understanding of the weapon's creation and help broker peace between the Triads. He gives JC a code to the nearby elevator for the Versalife building, and JC sets out...

Tropes:

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: The Dragon's Tooth sword. With the required skills and augmentation, you can cut even open some doors or chests that otherwise don't take scratch damage.
• Actually, I Am Him: The player can meet an informant who initially mistakes JC for Paul, and attempts to dodge the conversation by claiming he doesn't know you and can't say anything under penalty from Versalife. JC cites You Just Told Me in his ensuing response, before reassuring him that he is indeed Paul's brother.
• Artistic License – Child Labor Laws: Louis Pan, a kid who has been "promoted" to the role of "night watchman" by Gordon Quick (ostensibly part of the protection racket), is shown working late hours for the Luminous Path. He tells a newsstand vendor that he more-or-less will watch her store overnight because he "(does) a good job" — but that "good job" involves him blatantly stealing a newspaper in front of her, then claiming that the market is dangerous, which is why she needs to hire the Triads' services.
• Asian Speekee Engrish:
  Maggie Chow: Mr. JC Denton. In the fresh.
• Bilingual Bonus: A monk near Tong's hideout asks JC (in unsubtitled Cantonese) if he speaks the language and to move out of the way.
• Broken Record: Tessa, one of the Australian tourists JC can pay the entry fee for at the Lucky Money. Unlike other patrons at the club, she will repeat the exact same dialogue every time the player walks by:
  Thanks for getting me in!
  Thanks for getting me in!
  Thanks for getting me in!
  Thanks for getting me in!
• Crazy-Prepared: An email found on Jock's computer, written from Daedalus, orders him to head back to New York to rescue JC and/or Paul, noting in the process that it secured the necessary flight clearance to get access to a stealth helicopter from the MJ12 helibase (the start point of the mission).
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Discussed in-universe. Alex tells JC that Versalife's success is largely due to keeping its medical secrets proprietary and not sharing them with the medical community. He then notes that if Versalife actually released Ambrosia publicly, "they would make a killing," and muses aloud that there's some other motivation for their secrecy.
• Deep Cover Agent: Jock, as revealed by one of the Triad members in Tonnochi Road. Getting access to his apartment and finding his hidden perch near one of the billboards reveals that he was the "agent" the Triad used to spy on Chow, though the Triad member mentions that the agent was called away on "business in the United States" (referring to Jock's role as a pilot).
• Developer's Foresight:
  • In a moment of preventing the player from unintentionally getting stuck, while at the MJ12 helipad, if you have the Aggressive Defense System augmentation, you can activate it and watch as the rockets Jock fires at the door will explode before impacting on it. However, the devs expected this and have Jock continually fire missiles every 3 seconds until the doors break, requiring that the player turn off ADS before continuing with the plot.
  • If you kill Louis Pan when you get to Hong Kong, Gordon Quick will admonish you for the act using special dialogue. Evidently, the programmers expected that gamers would be so fed up with Pan's annoying statements that they would shoot him. Alternately, if you knock out Pan instead of killing him, Quick will say the same dialogue except for the line, "He was a good earner," which becomes, "He is a good earner."
  • There's a whole range of alternate conversations with Gordon Quick, based on how much of the Maggie Chow subplot has been completed beforehand. Normally, Quick gives you the code to the Wan Chai police station in order to find proof of Chow's guilt, but if you've already visited it (due to knowing the code beforehand), JC acknowledges this and Gordon reacts in surprise. If you've done that, found the sword in Chow's apartment and already visited Max Chen at the Lucky Money, Gordon reacts in shock and immediately allows JC access to Tong's compound.
  • Conversely, if you find the proof of Chow's involvement before visiting her apartment, she will be absent and the conversation with her maid is different (JC calls them out on their duplicity from the get-go and the maid calls for the guards).
  • Chow can be killed during her and JC's first meeting, and she won't appear in later areas.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: The "Grand Piano" in Chow's apartment will play the first few notes of the game's main theme if the player activates it.
• The Drunken Sailor: The infamous group of partying Russian sailors on the top floor of the Lucky Money, who feature several memorable lines.
  I SPILL my DRINK!
• Dummied Out: By clipping outside the level boundaries of the Wan Chai Market, the player can find a duplicate copy of Max Chen standing on top of a building in Tonnochi Road (who gives the same dialogue as in the Lucky Money Club), and an Red Arrow NPC outside of boundaries of the Wan Chai Market who tells JC that Paul and Chow were married(!).
• Femme Fatale: Chow, who alleges that she seduced Paul as a way to sway him from assassinating her. As revealed eventually, this is a bald-faced lie used as part of her plan to lead on JC.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Plenty regarding the Dragon's Tooth Sword, with both Gordon Quick and a fisherman in Canal Road both commenting on it (one explicitly, one obliquely) before you discover it in the MJ12 base in Tonnochi Road.
  • One of the patrons in the Lucky Money (Vince) has bizarre, fragmented dialogue that suggests he was being used as a test subject in Versalife, as he references "being fed to the Karkians" and being punished if he didn't do what he was told.
  • Another pair of Versalife employees reference something called the "Universal Constructor", along with a disquieting rumor that a large number of employees have mysterious disappeared (seemingly overnight) at the company...
• Frameup: It is revealed in news bulletins that JC is wanted for the murders of Manderley and Lebedev, even if the player chose to spare both of them. If the player did kill both of these people, it becomes a case of Framing the Guilty Party.
• Grand Theft Prototype: The theft of the Dragon's Tooth Sword.
• In Da Club: The Lucky Money.
• Improbable Infant Survival: Lampshaded. Louis Pan can be assaulted by the player, prompting a harsh response from Gordon Quick depending on whether Pan was knocked out or killed.
• Inside Job:
  • The player can meet an employee from a convenience store located next to the Lucky Money in the Wan Chai underground mall, who very blatantly tells him he's planning to case the joint — up to revealing the password to him! The player can then use said codes to disable the security inside and swipe some food, along with some newspapers that provide context to what's happening elsewhere in the gameworld.
  • It's also suggested that the informant at the Old China Hand had an inside source in Versalife who gave him the blueprints and thermoptic camo, and as suggested later, Richard Hundley (the supervisor in the Level 1 Offices) is stated in a datapad to have been conducting suspicious behavior — particularly, taking items out of the office in his briefcase.
• Interface Spoiler: Chow's duplicity is absurdly easy for even the newest player to catch because of how many inadvertent clues are dropped by mistake. When you exit the elevator, it is very easy to hear an MJ12 trooper coughing in the background and the sound of a laser grid. Additionally, Chow's security system has an MJ12 symbol on the login screen, and her maid (May Fung) will act increasingly irate if you bother to explore the apartment, even after she just told you to "look around." Additionally, it's possible to trigger an enemy alert and have the maid and MJ12 troops attack you while Chow is still trying to act friendly with you.
• Just a Stupid Accent: The Hong Kong levels are particularly notorious for this. For the game's Chinese characters to speak saying things like "Rucky Money," and "In the fresh"?... (Hint. The Chinese language has the letter "L.")
• Late to the Tragedy: JC shows up in Hong Kong after rioting and fighting between the Triads has resulted in a large number of deaths, including multiple members of both triad groups in the Canal Road tunnel, the missing researcher in the flooded part of the tunnel (who has written an Apocalyptic Log concerning his fate) and information on the Red Arrow Triad head who was slain (presumably by Chow) in the canals.
• The Oldest Profession: In the Old China Hand bar, a prostitute aggressively comes on to JC upon his arrival. "I take care of you... special price," indeed.
• The Password Is Always "Swordfish": You'd think that Maggie Chow would know that making your birthday your password is a bad idea. Also, Chow's computer passwords are the names of her favorite novels.
• Reality Has No Subtitles: Most of the NPC's speak English, though there is a monk that speaks Cantonese with no translation given. ("Please give way" and "Can you speak Cantonese?") There is some Chinese text, but most of it is complete nonsense copy-and-pasted repeatedly.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: If Manderley is spared by the player when they escaped UNATCO, they can find emails and news bulletins stating that Manderley was executed for his failure, and JC was framed for his murder.
• Running Gag: In an encounter that is the first of several to come over the rest of the game, JC is presumed to be a Versalife employee by a flower shop clerk in the Wan Chai Market, and is also presumed to be a spy/working for the organization when the contact in the Old China Hand Bar asks him about Paul.
• Schmuck Bait: Chow's seat-of-her-pants plan is to send JC into an ambush at the Wan Chai Station, ostensibly to "collect evidence," in a bid to further destabilize the Luminous Path and get JC out of the way.
• Sequence Breaking: The player is normally supposed to visit Chow, who sends JC to the police station (where it is discovered that she was lying to cover herself). However, if the player already knows the code to the station, they can break in early and retrieve the needed information, which causes Chow's maid (May) to become hostile immediately and reveal the location of the MJ12 hideout.
• Shoplift and Die: Stealing from the shops in the Wan Chai Market is met with an armed response.
• Spotting the Thread:
  • A fisherman in the lower area of Canal Road will tell JC that he discovered the body of the former head of the Red Arrow Triad (assassinated just before the events of the game), whose neck wound was cauterized. The fisherman chalks it up to technology that can't currently be understood... which sounds just like every other crackpot conspiracy theory the player has heard in the game so far. Except, it's not untrue — the Dragon's Tooth Sword was used to kill the Triad head, and self-cauterized the wound due to having nanotechnology.
  • The businesswoman speaking to the Versalife employee in the Lucky Money asks him what happened to the "data-entry division" of the company, who seemingly disappeared over night, and muses aloud over what the company is doing on Level 2. In response, the employee tells her he's not comfortable continuing the conversation.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: A book hidden under Gordon Quick's pillow in the Luminous Path compound reveals that he's fallen in love with the daughter of the Red Arrow Triad leader — a situation he notes the Irony of.
  Gordon Quick: How unfortunate that the Old Gods should laugh and that she should be the child of their Dragon Head... I know that whatever fate has decreed for us, we shall walk that road together.
• Super Window Jump: The only way to get into Jock's apartment is to blow out the window beside Maggie Chow's initial seating area, and jump from one skyscraper to another — the apartment is inaccessible from the normal route (taking the elevator up to the apartments across the street from Queen's Towers) due to having an infinite-lock door (and the key is only found inside the apartment).
• Swarm of Rats: Poking around the upper level of the Wan Chai Market uncovers an argument between a waiter and a member of the Red Arrow Triad, who threatens to get the restaurant shut down (under threat of rat infestation) unless they pay protection money. (And in restored content, the same Triad member meets with a police officer at the bottom of the stair leading to the restaurant and pays him to look the other way.) The next time you go to the market, a flood of rats will be running around the restaurant — though, amusingly, one of the diners refuses to leave (despite her partner's pleading) because he believes it would be disrespectful.
• Swiss-Cheese Security:
  • A conversation between a Versalife employee and businesswoman in the Lucky Money reveals that, despite the former company's attempts to keep it hidden, knowledge of a "Universal Constructor" has leaked to the 'Net. The same employee suggests that a single leak will render all of Versalife's work useless — Which turns out to be exactly the case once Vandenberg gets its hands on the parts for it.
  • JC's infolink (and other characters' awareness of his actions in Hong Kong) is proved to be quite shoddy, as multiple characters (including Daedalus and Tong) have access to direct communication with him, while Sam Carter appears to have been informed of JC's new account (by Tong and/or Alex) and emails him as soon as he accesses his account for the first time.
• Tempting Fate: Louis goads JC in the Wan Chai Market, by insinuating that he could tattle on him to the Triads and have him killed if the latter doesn't give him money.
• Treasure Hunt Episode:
  • Two mutually exclusive quest-givers (Tong and the sampan trader in the waterways) give JC intel on two different groups that went missing: the former was one of the scientists that worked on JC and Paul's augmentations, and the latter was a group of German treasure seekers who went diving in the waterways looking for valuables. All of the lost parties are dead (with the player showing up Late to the Tragedy in Dr. Feng's case), though they can still be looted for valuables.
  • Alex Jacobson even suggests scoping out Tong's lab for upgrades when the player meets him at the base underneath the Luminous Path compound.
• Video Game Caring Potential: You can give some money to a squatter living in an unfinished apartment floor underneath Chow's apartment. JC can even praise the woman for being honest with him when she tells him she wanted the money for drugs.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: There's nothing stopping the player from going on a mass murder spree in the Wan Chai Market and Lucky Money, and nobody remarks on it after the fact.
• Villain Ball: Maggie holds it for the duration of the Hong Kong section. Realizing that Paul Denton's brother (and fellow augmented agent) has arrived in town and may be looking for her to get information, she decides that she will stay and enact a seat-of-her-pants plan to kill JC instead of getting the hell out of dodge. This results in JC finding out her duplicity, stealing the Dragon's Tooth Sword back and discrediting her to the Triads.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Despite the uncertainty concerning Chow's loyalties, her past as a Wuxia film star has given her a glowing reputation among some of the locals.
• We Have Ways of Making You Talk: A datapad in Chow's MJ12 base shows that she interrogated a Triad leader by cutting off one of his fingers and threatening to cut another one.
• You Just Told Me: Subverted; JC bluffs information out of an informant (who mistakes him for Paul Denton) in the Old China Hand bar by citing this phenomenon.
  JC Denton: (responding to the NPC's concern that Versalife would find him) Versalife... good, we're getting closer. You might as well tell me the rest. If I'm gonna kill you, You Are Already Dead.
• You Shouldn't Know This Already: Most keypad codes are preset and thus can be accessed by a player who knows the code even if they have not found it in-game. The Luminous Path compound's gate is an exception: the code for it will only work after JC is given it in-game by earning the Triad's trust. Even if the player tries Sequence Breaking by hopping over the gate, they will end up stymied later by another keypad-locked door; normally that keypad uses the same four-digit code as the outside gate, but going to it early has it inexplicably require a six-digit code.

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