Deus Ex's Missing Link Mission Provocatively Evokes Post-9/11 Fears, Poses Morally Complex Choices

I just finished "The Missing Link", the new downloadable mission for Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and while it's a fun, 6-9 hour add-on to the original game which I also enjoyed, where it really shines is the underlying story and design: Essentially, "The Missing Link" is a nightmare scenario meant to evoke our post-9/11 fears and an era of outsourced private military contractors. On top of that, the mission ends on a complex moral choice for the player, where neither option is good, and either choice says more about your values and reasoning, than the outcome. From just that perspective, The Missing Link is much more successful than the original Human Revolution game, where the theme of human engineering was pretty trite, and the endgame moral choice too simplistic to mean much at all.

Here's what I mean -- and be warned, Missing Link SPOILERS after the break:

In The Missing Link, the player character Adam Jensen discovers that Belltower, the Blackwater-like private military corporation, is running human engineering experiments on "terrorist" suspects, who are out of reach from the public, let alone lawyers, in a secret, offshore installation. With their orange jumpsuits, it's pretty clear the developers are trying to evoke Guantanamo. (Or more accurately, a Guantanamo of our worst but conceivable future.) It's a pretty rare experience in a mass market action game, to be skulking around in a black site prison such as this, where dozens of almost certainly innocent people are piteously and constantly wailing for mercy that never comes.

The player does ultimately get a chance to free these prisoners at the end, but the choice is morally heavy: Due to a poisonous gas that can be shunted in one of two directions, you're given the option to release hundreds of these detainees, or free a single person, a scientist working on these inhumane experiments, who has agreed to report the project's existence to the authorities. So essentially, the choice is to save hundreds of lives now, or save just one, on the hope that she can save many more. It's the kind of ethical dilemma that keeps philosopher's up at night. (And sad to say, probably a choice that people similar to Adam Jensen have to make in real life, all the time.) Some gamers have been disappointed by The Missing Link, but I hope they appreciate the intellectual ambition that has clearly gone into it, making it superior to Human Revolution, and more in line with the original Deus Ex from 2000.

As a game experience, to be sure, Missing Link is not perfect. It has an annoying and unnecessary side quest, and some of the area exploration feels repetitive. (Lots and lots of ship corridors.) And in the final mission, you're confronted with several extremely dangerous mercenary commandos, and the design is such that it's impossible to engage them all at close range. That means you probably can't defeat them with non-lethal means. That's a serious departure from the Deus Ex tradition, in which the player has multiple options to accomplish any mission.* But by then, after getting a good look at what the mercs are responsible for, you don't particularly mind killing them all.

Update, 11:50pm: A Redditor informs me that it is possible to complete the mission non-lethally. SPOILER-clad details here.

Comments

[Masha Eilde]

There IS a way to save both the prisoners and the scientists but it requires time to move some crates or the jumping upgrade :)

[Hamlet Au]

Wow really? Can you explain with a SPOILER WARNING up front?

[Billards]

SPOILERS ETC.
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In the central room there's a vent on the ground floor, west side, that has a large crate covering it. After getting the message from your contact, instead of pressing a button to vent, run out of the control room and head to the vent. Once inside, there's a pipe you can use to jump up. Go through there, and you'll be in a maintenance room. There's a pipe with the gas flowing through; put a bullet in it, and everyone lives. As a bonus, you'll get an achievement and two weapon mods. Hope that helps!

[Dizzy Banjo]

Great! Now even more is on my list of games to catch up with! ;-)