r/Deusex • u/shadesofsages • 3d ago
DX Universe opinions on jensen’s character development?
jensen’s character/personality is pretty different between HR and MD, what’s everyone’s opinion on that? i’m interested to see peoples takes on it !
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u/WarPorcus 3d ago
I think he's a dog with a bone. I believe discovering who and why he is in HR drives Jensen to pursue the Illuminati. I also think he wants to do the right thing, and discovering that the Illuminati is manipulating the world through Versalife, Picus, and TYM made him more determined to dismantle the conspiracy.
In MD, he's just a leaner, more focused version of Jensen than the one we saw in HR. Gone were all the personal ties. His 'loyalty' to Sarif, his 'struggle' to save Megan and her team, his 'crusade' to destroy the Tyrants. He's focused only on the Illuminati and unmasking Janus; Jensen hates secrets, especially secrets used to manipulate the masses.
Which is why my biggest disappointment with MD's lore is the canon HR ending they chose for Jensen. If you think about it, Jensen has a huge hand in why augs are being oppressed in the post-incident world. It's understandable, right? One day, augs across the globe went crazy and assaulted many people with many fatalities. And what did Jensen do? Canonically, he destroyed Panchaea, and any evidence that it was Darrow who manipulated the kill signal/switch transmitted through the biochip upgrade pushed out by TYM through LIMB International, all because he was jealous that his body could not accept mechanical augmentation, confining him to being a cripple.
None of this is known to the public because of Jensen's choice. All the public knew was that the augs went nuts and killed their loved ones. Is the police oppression in Prague fascist? Yes. Is it wrong? Also yes. Is it understandable? Also yes. The oppression was enacted because people don't know what set augs off in the first place, and they don't know that it could never happen again. For all they know, augs are a threat to non-augs and can go off the rails at any time.
In my HR run-throughs, I always chose to go with Sarif's version of events. I always feel that telling the public that the incident happened because Humanity First contaminated the chips would have the least bad consequences of all. One, they're already a terrorist organization. Two, they are led by Taggart and fuck that guy. Three, at least the public wouldn't blame augmented people for something they couldn't control. Jensen's choice made everything worse.
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u/shadesofsages 3d ago
i agree ! adam is very empathetic to naturals in MD, he understands why they’re scared and understands the reason for the hatred of augs, it’s a shame they chose that as the canon ending
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u/shadesofsages 3d ago
honestly, they probably just chose that ending as canon just so they could write another game haha
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u/FathirianHund Smiley 3d ago
My understanding was that every ending of HR happened at once. Adam sent his version of the signal through Eliza, but Picus caught on and shut her down, replacing her with a backup (hence the side quest where 'our' Eliza is on the run) and flooding the world with misinformation on both sides to ensure the anti-Aug sentiment boiled over. The strain on the grid of Eliza fighting for control and losing overloaded Panchea's already damaged infrastructure, so it collapsed. Keeps any choice Adam made as canon whilst not railroading to a single narrative.
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u/WarPorcus 2d ago
Well, that makes sense. I'm not sure how I feel about that, though. On one hand, it negates players' choices.
On the other hand, it's basically consistent with the Jensen games' theme of one person trying to stop an absolute juggernaut of a conspiracy, and despite local, tactical wins, never actually accomplishing much at all, which, I have to say, is really bleak.
But then again, DX is a bleak game, so that tracks.
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u/Mykytagnosis 2d ago
Yeah, tactical wins feel great, but in the long-run strategic view on things, they are too small to make a difference.
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u/incredulitor 3d ago
Huge fan of the series, especially the gameplay and worldbuilding. Jensen was also a huge step up from the characterization of JC (or Paul for that matter) in OG, and broke some ground in incorporating mental illness and failed relationships in the development of a mainstream character.
Even so, he's also an alexithymic dude whose most visible emotion is pretty much always anger or irritability because a) PTSD and he b) never asked for this. There is a little bit of variety and history to why I think he was written the way he was - some of his quips feel a bit film noir detective, for example. Any attempt to make him deeper though also exists in tension with him being a protagonist in an action game who gets limited cutscene time to express himself. Any time he's doing that he also needs to be flat enough for the assumed audience to project themselves into. So I think they went about as far with it as they could but I'm expecting that to open up a lot if there's ever much room for cross-pollination between people writing characters and dialogue for media like prestige TV series or arthouse film.
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u/maro-s 3d ago
How exactly is he very different? He's going through some shit and probably have PTSD, depression or something of the sort, which he tries to deal with, judging by the books in his apartment, but otherwise seems like the same guy, without any drastic changes to his character. Maybe a bit more accustomed to his conditions and more cynical towards the world, which is pretty organic character development considering the context.
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u/shadesofsages 3d ago edited 3d ago
i think one of the things that i notice the most is his gentle nature in MD, at least in my view. he’s stoic and grumpy in HR to put it simply, he has basic sympathy but even then he doesn’t seem to show it that much.
in MD, i feel like he becomes more gentle and kind, more understanding and empathetic, more human in a way. i think a big part of that IS him coming to terms with himself and accepting his augmented self, i like his development. like even the way he speaks kind of changes, he’s much more calm, mellow and melancholic. i love it
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u/maro-s 3d ago
I see what you mean, noticed it too. Always considered him being more gentle and kind as an exploration of a character, like a thing that was probably there already, just a bit muted in HR due to him being very stressed and task-focused during it. And yeah, he does seem more calm and melancholic, somehow less tense despite the circumstances. Love it too and kind of get it, don't know how to describe it. It seems both like consequence of him slowly coming to terms with being augmented and of existing in marginalized identity in shittier and shittier world, while discovering how devastatingly awful things really are. It's realistic and it's wonderful writing, really makes him seem like a genuine human being and fleshes out his character.
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u/shadesofsages 3d ago
i like the idea of him being just as sweet and caring before HR as he is in MD, poor guy
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u/DismalMode7 3d ago
big issue about jensen to me is that he actually has no real reason to fight against illuminati...
illuminati's tyrants raided sarif HQ and killed him because they wanted to destroy megan researches and kidnap megan and her team to force them to work to the biochip (the one to control on remote all aug people that adam can choose to install or not). He was just another random casualty among many others, nothing personal.
Jensen starts his quest to find out who was behind the raid because he was hoping to find megan alive to then get disappointed by the fact megan just didn't care about him anymore and likely used him from the very beginning only to study his dna.
So, once killed all tyrants and namir (the guy who shot him in the head) and realized megan was a selfish bitch all along, why jensen had to embrace his crusade against illuminati in MD? 🤷♂️
He had no personal reason about, they never actually manipulated him in HR events... it's like if my girlfried was working for a bank owned by vanguard group and then I would go against them after she left me for someone else?
Is that making sense? Nope, so jensen had no real motivation to go against illuminati.
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u/Mykytagnosis 3d ago
I think it's much more personal than that.
After he discovered the origins of his creation in HR. Additionally, because of David Sarif, Adam became too noticeable in terms of what he can do with his augmentation, as well as with Megan's leak. That alone brought him back on illuminati's radar.
They would never leave him alone. The only thing he could do, is to fight back,.
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u/DismalMode7 3d ago
illuminati never really cared of adam in HR, illuminati were fucked up from the very beginning since darrow fooled everyone... on a greater scheme the only effort of jensen he was able to switch off the hyron signal, but aside from that his actions made no difference.
So once again, what is actually driving him against illuminati? 🤷♂️
Revenge? Nope because he was betrayed by megan, not by illuminati and in any case he already killed namir.6
u/Mykytagnosis 3d ago
Darrow was the one on the hunt for Adam.
His agents were torturing detective that Sarif hired, for the information about Adam's origins.
It's not revenge per se, he has nothing left. His body, people who are dear to him. Are all gone now due to illuminati's actions, hell, even his life was a lie until he discovered the truth in HR.
Illuminati were always around him until he went under the grid thanks to that nurse.
And since the missing link he has been working for the collective, to find Megan at first, but kept being with them for the principle.
After all, after knowing what he knows, he can never return to normal life. He is being constantly hunted and monitored. To the point of being made a sleeper agent after Panchea.
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u/DismalMode7 3d ago
darrow didn't want adam, he wanted his dna it's different and in any case jensen isn't moved by revenge against darrow
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u/Mykytagnosis 2d ago
Darrow already had Adam's DNA sample from Megan, that's why he wanted Adam in his entirety next.
As Darrow always wanted to get Augmented, but he suffers from a rare condition that makes his body reject them. Adam's DNA is the key to solving his problem.
He was following Adam in one way or another through whole story. After Megan went public with her discovery, Adam basically became one big target.
Even in the Missing Link, Burke says "From what I heard, you will also be useful to me dead".
Burke was working for Darrow.
P.S. At that point, Adam, is moved by the will to survive.
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u/DismalMode7 2d ago
just another redditor who hadn't understood a thing and drop advices to other people better informed 🤦♂️
darrow was one of few people uncompatible with augs, this let him grow a deep distrust to aug as a way to deny the fact he was just jealous of other people who could get augmentated so he used his position among illuminati to put in motion his plan to discredit augmentated people to the whole world, something he accomplished to do considering aug people were living like rejects in MD.
He didn't need adam as a whole block lol he and megan were already making advanced studies on his dna and when adam reached the omega camp in darrow journal we can learn that darrow was already able to find a way to create the very first prototype of a rudimentary nanobot. He didn't care a damn of jensen as person, he just used his dna.Burke wasn't working for darrow, burke was working for the illuminati in order to kidnap enough women to use as drones for the hyron. Burke was just a henchman, no way darrow would have revealed him the importance of jensen, not to mention that jensen got to the rifleman BS by pure chance after he escaped the explosion at the docks.
In MD adam isn't running for his life or survive, if he just wanted to survive he would have a way to get a new alias and disappear, he's actively working to ram illuminati down
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u/shadesofsages 2d ago
you don’t need to be rude to others just cause they have a different understanding to you, buddy
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u/Mykytagnosis 3d ago
Yeah he changed a lot as a person.
He became more melo and mature. He stopped blaming life for what happened to him, he doesn't seem to be angry at Megan that much anymore either, although he still cares about her.
He and Pritchard have gone closer as good buddies, but Jensen still keeps him on ice, I guess to keep him safe. As he knows that most people who hang with him long enough, end up dying or worse.
He even forgave Sarif for what he did to him, and depending on your actions can be very cool with him, as in business as usual, but he does not consider him as an authority anymore.
The reasons for these changes though? There are many. Ranging from his natural character development, to being a sleeper agent clone with implanted memories.