![]() Zhao Yun Ru is a more typical evil corporate mogul than David Sarif. It makes him a fool and, worse, shows how many people the Illuminati are willing to sacrifice as part of their endless power games.ĭeconstructing the evil corporate mogul archetypes are David Sarif and Zhao Yun Ru. Isaias assists the Illuminati in numerous terrorist actions but also carries out his own plans to fight for a cause William Taggart cares nothing for. Isaias Sandoval, Taggart's assistant, truly believes in the evils of augmentation. William Taggart preaches nonsensical diatribes against cybernetics but his followers passionately believe in his so-called points. Unlike what you'd expect, Purity First doesn't appear to be controlled by the Illuminati. Underneath William Taggert is Purity First, a anti-augment terrorist group. As long as people are angry and distracted, they aren't thinking clearly. ![]() Like race-baiting, homophobia, and innumerable pet causes the emotion is what's important. American politics is filled with rabble rousing by both parties, drawing on their members' prejudices advance their agendas. It's questionable whether he has any real opinion on Augments whatsoever, save the possibility they might eventually threaten the Illuminati. He uses the religious inclinations of his audience to lead them down whatever road he chooses. In short, William Taggart is an enormous hypocrite. After all, what is an easier target than televangelism? Then, at the end, it was revealed William Taggart was a member of the Illuminati and really only wanted to prevent the proliferation of augments across the world. I felt it was a blatant pandering to the secular leaning nature of video gamers. For a long time, I wondered why they felt the religious right would be against augmentations. William is a stereotypical televangelist-esque demagogue who is preaching against the cause of Augmentations under the guise of them being unnatural. The most visible figure of the Illuminati is William Taggart. It was just on the back of poor peoples' corpses. Bob Page, central villain of Deus Ex 1, had arguably better motivations in that he wanted to make a paradise. Like many real-world corporates, they are willing to manipulate the law in order to generate a better pay day for themselves. In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the Illuminati are simply a collection of people out for their own power. In the first and second games, the Illuminati were morally ambiguous and depicted as a valid choice for guiding humanity's destiny. In the Deus Ex franchise, the embodiment of 'The Man' is the Illuminati. As a result, to keep people in line, the wealthy have to keep the impoverished oppressed or focused on other matters. In the USA, politicians can be bought (always have been), and when the ultra-rich can buy politicians then they can make the laws. It helped expose the fragile peace which exists between the ultra-wealthy and the ever-increasing ranks of America's poor. One of the biggest issues of the 2008 Presidential election was the housing-induced financial collapse. Then I thought about it for awhile and realized Deus Ex's central conflicts over augments and the proliferation thereof was an excellent stand-in for questions over wealth disparity. After all, Augments are still very far away and aren't really a good stand-in for an existing problem like the X-men's mutants and racism. Unlike Batman: Arkham Asylum, which I felt had a obviously strong satirical message, I wasn't sure whether or not Deus Ex: Human Revolution worked as an allegory. In a way, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a reconstruction of many discredited tropes like the evil megacorporation and cybernetics make you evil. In the end, I'm tentatively putting it in the category of true cyberpunk while its predecessors ( Deus Ex, Deus Ex: Invisible War) are post-cyberpunk. I went back and forth on whether or not Deus Ex: Human Revolution fell into the category of true cyberpunk (the world screwed by technology) or post-cyberpunk (containing elements thereof but going in a different direction). Eventually, people ran with cyberpunk and produced animes like Bubblegum Crisis and movies like Robocop. The punk influences talked about how technology was transformed into a tool of oppression rather than liberation while the cyber elements predicted a net-controlled world where cybernetics were a part of daily life. The cyberpunk genre was created by William Gibson with the 1984 novel, Neuromancer. Warning - this review will contain spoilers for the ending of Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
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