Major Deus Ex characters

This guide details the role and background information of major characters appearing in the video game "Deus Ex".

Antagonists

Bob Page

Page is known as a wealthy philanthropist and the founder and owner of Page Industries, voiced by Cliff Stephens.

Bob Page is the main villain in the game and was a special protégé to Illuminati leader Morgan Everett. Although Page was a good student, he was also impatient and short-tempered. Page and Everett developed Daedalus, an Artificial Intelligence program that would help the Illuminati keep track of and control the new communication technologies. The duo also started the project that Majestic 12 would eventually turn into the Gray Death virus. Page was a major power behind the push for nanotechnology, and was a part of the enhancement project that JC Denton and Paul Denton went through.

Page grew impatient with Everett's unwillingness to use the technology and the Illuminati's slow, gentle ways, and rebelled by forming Majestic 12, which eventually took over much of the Illuminati's power structures and resources. The final blow to the Illuminati was when Page gained almost total control of the information infrastructure through the Aquinas System at Area 51 and the Daedalus A.I., thereby making it unsafe for the Illuminati to communicate over the Internet and instead forcing them to communicate by other means.

However, each of Page's schemes lead to a terrifying overall goal. Ultimately, Page planned to perfect the use of nanotechnological augumentations through the Denton brothers and Walton Simons so that he could use the perfected version on himself. Instead of turning him into something akin to a super-soldier, Page's modifications would allow him to link himself to the Aquinas Router (which monitored all communication technologies on earth) and then merge with the Helios A.I. He would then unite his system with a series of Universal Constructors, which would allow him to physically create anything he desired on a near-infinite level. With this completed, Page would be all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful; essentially, he would be God.

Publically, Bob Page is the richest man on Earth; a trillionaire and head of the massive Page Industries, Page likes to groom his image in the public eye as a great philanthropist by donating millions of credits to the needy. In secret, however, he schemes to plunge the world into chaos in order to promote the conditions that will allow him to achieve world domination. VersaLife, a subsidiary of Page Industries, manufactures the antidote for the Gray Death, Ambrosia, and is also responsible for the Gray Death itself.

In two of the three possible endings to the game, the player is required to kill Bob Page. In the ending where JC merges with Helios, it is unknown what becomes of Page. In "", Bob Page is believed to have died at Area 51.

Walton Simons

Simons is the Director of FEMA in game. Simons is voiced by Tom Hall, a well-known game designer.

Walton Simons is the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and a member of Majestic 12. He is a close associate of Bob Page, and a very powerful man in Washington. He was appointed to FEMA through Page's manipulation of an unnamed senator infected with the Gray Death, and went to work immediately. A strictly cloak-and-dagger man, Simons was the first higher-up on the scene after JC Denton's capture of NSF operatives in Battery Park, though his interrogations consisted mostly of numerous shotgun blasts to the chest.

The third successful nano-augmented human (After Paul and JC Denton), Simons is widely considered one of the most dangerous men in Majestic 12. Although augmented with numerous combat-aiding modifications, he claims that they are strictly for increased ability for work in FEMA disaster relief. He also travels with an escort of two or more Men in Black, and it is revealed later in the game he carries both a plasma rifle and a Dragon's Tooth sword — both of which are high-powered weapons with almost instantly lethal capabilities. Late in the game, Simons hunts down JC in one of MJ12's offshore bases with the intention of killing him. If he fails here, he last shows up in a hangar at Area 51, again after JC.

As well as being a skilled fighter, Simons is also a Machiavellian politician, who uses his skills in intimidation to coerce and command his numerous underlings. This can be seen during his conversations with UNATCO head Joseph Manderley, a bureaucrat whom Simons has put in such a position of power due to his willingness to be ordered by MJ12.

Simons also has a tendency to continually charge his bioelectric reserves, keeping them at 100% efficiency. This causes an intermittent sharp pain behind his eyes. Early in the game he is advised by Jaime Reyes to quit that habit.

Simon's name comes from Warren Spector's long-time friend Walton Simons [cite web | url=http://www.waltonsimons.com/article.php?story=deusex | title=Who is Walton Simons in Deus Ex? | author=Walton Simons | date=June 13, 2005 ] .

Joseph Manderley

Director of the United Nations Anti-Terrorism Coalition, Manderley was a former high ranking Interpol official, from which he had previously assisted Majestic 12 in their efforts to annihilate the Knights Templar to help establish its dominance throughout Europe. Despite the recognition afforded to him by this accomplishment, Manderley is a bureaucrat at heart, a mere proxy installed by Majestic 12 to help place an urbane face on UNATCO's public relations and media management.

When JC initially arrives at UNATCO's headquarters on Liberty Island, Manderley is already under considerable pressure, primarily from Walton Simons, due to the disappointing performance of JC's brother, Paul Denton, as a UNATCO operative. As Paul's Commanding Officer, Manderley had been charged with the task of assuring the success of the "Primary Unit" as the unwitting tool of Bob Page and Majestic 12 by having him assist their efforts through the facade of completing UNATCO anti-terrorism operations. As Paul Denton had become aware of this fact through those he had been sent to eliminate, he continually returned from the majority of his campaigns having "failed" to complete his assigned task. Given one final opportunity to prove his worth by the increasingly agitated Page, Manderley naturally spent most his time with JC reminding him to always follow procedure, never question standing orders, and to obey the commands of superior officers. Manderley also placed JC under the command of a trusted operative, Agent Anna Navarre.

When JC, following the advice of his brother, defected to the NSF, Manderley was held solely responsible for the loss of both units. As JC attempts to escape UNATCO headquarters, he confronts Manderley, who encourages him to escape as a ploy to throw JC off-guard, shooting at him as he moves to exit the office. Provided the player does not kill Manderley during the escape, either through non-lethal force or by simply fleeing the building, Walton Simons later has Manderley executed for his incompetence, framing JC for his murder through manipulation of the media. Having been framed for several high-profile murders orchestrated by Majestic 12, JC is no longer able to rely on the mainstream population or any form of law-enforcement for assistance. This step was designed solely to alienate JC from the general public.

Gunther Hermann

He was voiced by Jeff Groteboer.

Gunther Hermann is a top agent of the United Nations Anti-Terrorism Coalition, or UNATCO. Standing at six feet eight inches tall, the commandant of the UNATCO weapons course is well-versed in the use of deadly weapons such as assault rifle, plasma cannon, flame-thrower, and combat knife. In the game, it is stated that Hermann has killed close to a thousand people.

A "mech", or mechanically augmented agent, Gunther is resentful of the arrival of a new breed of nano-augmented UNATCO agents whom he fears will replace his generation. Like fellow UNATCO mech and friend Anna Navarre, Gunther has sacrificed societal acceptance for enhanced mission performance by volunteering for his first-generation mechanical augmentation. He deeply resents "the infinite power of nano-augmentation", as well as the agents who utilize them. While his augmentations grant him strength and speed far beyond that of normal men, they have also left him grotesquely disfigured and isolated from normal humans. His ability to upgrade his biomechanical mods is also finite, and they are prone to the degradation of any constantly operating piece of machinery. He receives significant wear in his line of work, and is often returning to Dr. Jaime Reyes for a tune-up.

Later in the game, Gunther is sent to kill JC Denton, whom he engages in a cathedral in France. If he is killed, Walton Simons tells JC that he only sent Gunther because he was tired about him complaining about wanting to avenge Anna Navarre and wanting a tune-up. It is possible to avoid fighting Gunther Hermann several ways.

Gunther has a heavy German accent, as well as a love of murder and mayhem that endears him to Anna Navarre. If she is killed, Gunther shows an uncharacteristic distress.

Hacking into Gunther's personal computer reveals a wealth of badly-typed correspondence. Hermann is apparently paranoid; an overheard conversation between Gunther and Anna Navarre reveals that his large fingers may also hinder his ability to operate soda machines, although he insists that the "maintenance man" switched the cans of orange soda in the machine with lemon-lime, as "he knows I like orange." Gunther also writes an anonymous letter (the spelling of which is a giveaway) which can be read by the player in which he expresses concern that he and those like him will be "sold at flee markets... old grey golems for scaring the children."

Gunther often finds himself fantasizing about ever more impractical augmentations he believes his superiors might offer him, such as a head-mounted gun, or "skul-gun" (sic), that would allow him to kill without using his arms. When the player returns to the ruined UNATCO base in the sequel to "Deus Ex", "", a conversation with a NPC confirms that Gunther was indeed a victim of conspiracy by the maintenance men. Also, it can be learnt that a skull-gun shipment was received by UNATCO a little while after Hermann's demise.

Like most active mech-aug agents, Gunther was wired to a killphrase, a failsafe intended to prevent Hermann from turning against his employers. Uttering the phrase "Laputan machine" in Gunther's presence detonates an explosive device in his chest. The phrase itself refers to the flying city of Laputa from Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" in which amazingly skilled engineers are forced to work with ancient tools such as compasses and quadrants. A conversation with Jaime Reyes in Paris explains that "At the sound of your (JC Denton's) voice, 400 milliamps will discharge into Gunther's mid-brain. Poof!". In the game, this self-destruct mechanism apparently takes a few seconds to arm, just long enough for Gunther to protest "I am not a machine!".

Anna Navarre

Anna is a top agent of the United Nations Anti-Terrorism Coalition (UNATCO), voiced by Carolyn McCormick

She is very loyal to UNATCO. She stands roughly five feet ten inches tallFact|date=October 2007, and sports extensive mechanical augmentation.

Anna is not a stranger to blood and gore. In fact, she revels in it (much to the chagrin of fellow agent Paul Denton). Like fellow mech-aug Gunther, Anna harbors a nearly sociopathic degree of disgust and suspicion for the normal civilian populace, and always prefers to kill first and ask questions later in crisis situations. But unlike Gunther, she prefers a silent, stealthy kill to an all-out frontal assault (as evidenced by her focus on stealth in her section of the UNATCO training course). She has even gone so far to have a cloaking augmentation installed.

Anna was JC's first partner after his arrival at UNATCO, but she was content to sit out their first mission outside Castle Clinton while Denton handled the guards inside (presumably so that Denton's performance could be "assessed"). She is suspicious and somewhat hostile toward her nano-augmented colleagues, but has a more open mind than her cohort, Agent Hermann. Anna will put up with them, as long as they get the job done (in as bloody a manner as possible). Avoiding confrontation or using non-lethal methods will cause her to show her disgust with the player's "weakness". If the player chooses a violent path for their character, Anna begins to significantly warm up to him after the first two missions.

The game offers several opportunities in which Anna Navarre can be killed, and this affects later responses by Hermann and other characters. The first occasion is within a 747 where the player can kill Anna in order to prevent (or in retaliation for) the extrajudicial execution of a surrendered NSF leader. Later, during an encounter in the subway at Battery Park, Anna may also be killed. The definitive final encounter, however, occurs at UNATCO headquarters. Like Gunther Hermann, agent Navarre can be terminated by simply speaking aloud a killphrase, specifically "flatlander woman". As in Gunther's case, death only occurs after several seconds, long enough for Navarre to express her fury ("How did you know-?!") and Denton to deliver an apt and somewhat jarring one-liner.

Maggie Chow

A Hong Kong woman who had romantic relations with Paul, Maggie Chow is actually a higher-up in Majestic 12. JC discovers a small Majestic 12 base hidden in her apartment. She eventually confronts JC with a Dragon's Tooth sword, and, like most characters in Deus Ex, JC is able to either kill her or use nonlethal means of incapacitation.

Allies

Paul Denton

Paul Denton is a main character in "Deus Ex", as well as its sequel, "". He is the older brother of JC Denton and becomes the catalyst for one of the main plot twists of the game.

Tracer Tong

Tracer Tong is an ally and informant to Paul Denton. He resides in Hong Kong and heads a small laboratory that aids the Luminous Path triad and the global resistance to MJ-12. JC must earn the trust of Tracer, even though his brother is Tong's ally and friend. When JC gains a sliver of Tong's trust, Tong uses his laboratory to deactivate JC's killswitch, thus saving his life.

Jock

A UNATCO helicopter pilot who turns rogue, Jock (real name Brian Flanagan) is entrusted to fly one of the so-called "black helicopters," low-noise, low-visibility stealth helicopters to assist MJ12 and UNATCO with their covert operations. Jock transports the player from place to place as a dutiful pilot, but when the player is given the opportunity to speak to him in the Underworld Bar at Hell's Kitchen, New York (the only time he can be found apart from his chopper), he learns more about Jock's ambitions (for the price of a few drinks).

As a longtime pilot for covert operations, Jock is aware of many top-secret forces at work involving Echelon, Area 51, and other covert government operations. JC is initially skeptical of Jock's claims of massive centralized surveillance and artificial intelligence, but as the game progresses, the proof presents itself.

Jock is a longtime friend of Paul Denton, and is eager to assist the resistance by bringing JC to Hong Kong after his escape from UNATCO. Jock continues to assist JC as pilot and occasional informant until the end of the game, where the player's actions determine if he survives to the finale.

Jock is never fully fleshed out in the game, as he is only seen in person briefly. The longtime friendship between Jock and Paul is not expressed to a substantial level.

Prior to the events of the game, Jock was employed by Tracer Tong to spy on Maggie Chow. This is evident by accessing Jock's apartment, which is across the street from Maggie's. There the player can find a set of binoculars and orders of the surveillance.

Jock may or may not die in the progress of the game's story by means of sabotage to his helicopter, depending on whether or not the Player discovers an infiltration by an MJ12 operative at Morgan Everett's labs.

Dr. Jaime Reyes

Dr. Reyes attends to the medical needs of all UNATCO's soldiers, and provides JC with nano-augmentation canisters and upgrades from time to time. His office is also stocked with med-kits. Reyes is endeared to JC because of an understanding of his past, and eagerly assists JC upon his arrival at UNATCO. Reyes becomes dissatisfied with the organization as JC uncovers its secrets, but he is far less passionate about it than Paul. The player is given the choice to either keep Reyes in UNATCO as a covert informant, or to advise him to escape and assist the resistance. If Reyes escapes, he arrives at the Luminous Path Compound with an augmentation upgrade canister, which he gives to JC. If he stays at UNATCO, he eventually leaves and meets JC at the Enfant Terrible café in Paris. There he divulges to JC, Gunthers killphrase 'Laputan Machine'.Seen frequently in the start of the game whenever JC returns to UNATCO, Jaime can also repair augmented limbs as well as wounded soldiers.

Alex Jacobson

Jacobson is a UNATCO systems administrator and technician, coordinating all of its security and cyberspace operations from deep within the bowels of the Liberty Island facility. Highly skilled and adept at his profession, Jacobson was specifically head-hunted by UNATCO high-command to handle all of the team's IT requirements and to serve as its primary cyber-security officer charged with combating the threat of viral uploads, hacking, spying and data theft. Jacobson's office has a secret crawlspace beneath the floor, which is used regularly by Shannon and Tech Sergeant Kaplan to stash various items and "Credit Chits" stolen by the pair for sale or use at a later date, although Alex remains oblivious to this fact. Alex has a casual and easy-going personality, and is apparently not overly interested in the administrative and political machinations of UNATCO's day-to-day operations. In the course of the game however, much like his colleague, Jaime Reyes, Alex finds his loyalty to UNATCO tested by the behaviour of its agents and leaders. Becoming severely disillusioned with his employer, Alex accepts JC's offer to join Tracer Tong in Hong Kong to help uncover the truth behind the Majestic 12 conspiracy.

Jacobson also serves as field advisor to biomodified troops during combat operations. Although this position is not actually official as of yet, due to the fact that biomodification technology is still undergoing field-testing. When JC first arrives at Liberty Island, Alex is tasked with supplying the rookie operative with all required information, geographical details, schematics, structural layouts and enemy positioning details to assist him in the completion of his objectives. Jacobson communicates with Paul and JC via the "Infolink", a piece of bioaugmentation technology capable of providing a direct internal link to the brain of an augmented operative. Jacobson sees everything JC sees, and hears everything JC hears. As a result, he is privy to all information made known to JC throughout his mission. After JC becomes aware of the Majestic 12 conspiracy, he defects to the enemy.

Tong then sends Alex to the residence of Morgan Everett, former head of the overthrown Illuminati, in an attempt to verify Everett's alleged intentions to assist the resistance's war with Majestic 12.

Alex Jacobson's character model and name are based on Warren Spector's own nephew, Alec Jacobson. [cite web | url=http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=1115#more-1115 | title=RPS Exclusive: Warren Spector Interview | author=Kieron Gillen | date=February 14, 2008 | accessdate=February 16 | accessyear=2008 ]

am Carter

General Sam Carter is the quartermaster and arms supplier for UNATCO. Something of a legend among the military for his actions in "the Merced Operation" (the details of which are not explained in the game),he is immediately recognised by JC when the two first meet. His family was murdered by the NSF, but his response to JC's attempts at sympathy are curt. Although a strong fighter and skilled soldier, Carter has an intimate understanding of military tactics and he applauds JC when stealth and skill are used instead of brute force.

Carter has a belief that a benign military can exist to truly serve peace and the people. When UNATCO's secrets are revealed, Carter is loathe to give up his loyalty, because of the belief that UNATCO can still do good if most of its employees are there to serve good. As the game progresses, however, he is fired, and contacts his friend Gary Savage of X-51 to volunteer his services for the resistance forces.

Morgan Everett

Morgan Everett is the acting leader of the Illuminati. His residence is somewhere in Paris, France, though the exact location cannot be confirmed.

Everett is extermely cautious and receives visitors only after they have proven themselves to be loyal to the Illuminati. Even then he does not allow them to know the location of his compound, instead opting to render visitors unconscious with neuroparalytic gas and transport them in secret through his associate Toby Atanwe.

Everett's compound is quite vast and contains computer and nanotech laboratories, hydroponic growing vats, a repair depot, and a helipad.

Everett was the creator of the prototype AI codenamed Morpheus, which later became Echelon III, and was the architect of its successor, the Echelon IV AI known as Daedalus.

He was the mentor of Bob Page before Page left the Illuminati to form Majestic 12, and a close friend of Stanton Dowd.

His mansion has a secret room with his predecessor Lucius DeBeers, who was leader of the Illuminati during the 20th century, preserved within it.

tanton Dowd

Stanton Down is one of the leaders of the Illuminati: the highest operative in the United States and the main supplier of the NSF rebellion.

Dowd and JC first meet in Hell's Kitchen after JC returns from Hong Kong, and again later in his family mausoleum in a NYC graveyard. Dowd, through his contact Harley Filben, informs JC of the Majestic 12 plot to load a superfreighter with several shipments of the Gray Death. He instructs JC on how to sabotage the freighter, then directs him to Nicolette DuClare in France. He can also provide the player with a lot of background information on the Illuminati and Bob Page.

Dowd is infected with the Gray Death, though the player has the option to provide him with a vial of Ambrosia to treat himself. Either way, he contacts JC one last time near the end of the game, urging him to listen to Morgan Everett and join the Illuminati. This prompts Bob Page to mock him directly, over JC's infolink.

Artificial intelligences

Daedalus

The AI that would later be known as Daedalus was conceived by the brilliant mind of Morgan Everett, the current leader of Adam Weishaupt's Illuminati. Everett conceived the program that would eventually create Daedalus, as a way to create the near perfect advisor, with the ability to sift through gigantic amounts of data, and through that predict disasters, both natural and man-made, and to make plans to prevent them, which the Illuminati could then choose to either ignore or execute.

Daedalus was never meant to have an actual sentience or self-awareness, and was only to give advice - not to do anything itself. Everett's protege Bob Page, however, saw Daedalus as the means to keep tabs on and control the huge amounts of electronic information that filtered through the Internet and other electronic media, a feat that both the Illuminati, and its splinter cell, Majestic 12, that Page controlled, had not been able to pull off.

Page's ideas for Daedalus' reconfiguration did not fly totally under the radar as the entire project became linked, logically enough, to the creation of the ECHELON IV's replacement. Before the Illuminati and MJ-12 could put a stop to it, a few rumours filtered through to the various conspiracy theorist groups on the Internet. Meanwhile, Page completed Daedalus, which soon after, without even alerting Page that he had succeeded, fled into the Internet and began to become self-aware. Page originally intended Daedalus as a tool to keep track of any developments that would threaten MJ-12, which meant all terrorist groups. This greatly backfired when its pattern matching system classified MJ-12 itself as a terrorist group.

After having sorted though much of the information on the Net, Daedalus found that the world was on the verge of collapse. Still retaining some of the basic parameters that Everett had encoded in the basic template, Daedalus began to ponder how it was going to save the world from itself, and not least MJ-12.

Daedalus was not designed to reside in one major mainframe or hub, but rather to exist simultaneously as a line of code or two on every single device connected to the Internet, not unlike the distributed computing of today. This not only made Daedalus almost impossible to trace, but also gave it huge amounts of processing power.

Daedalus eventually found Paul Denton to help him. When Paul became unable to continue the fight against MJ-12, Daedalus abandoned him in favour of his brother JC. In the end, Daedalus was tricked into merging with his MJ-12-friendly, and slightly crazed, "brother" Icarus, which Page had made as a replacement, creating the AI Helios.

Daedalus' avatar icon is a flat, heavily-stylized silhouette of a grim or emotionless face. As mentioned earlier, Daedalus' global presence can be noted even early on in the game, well before direct contact is made with JC; "Daedalus" is the name of the primary Internet3 communications protocol that replaces HTTP (and possibly all other protocols), and as such appears as the URL scheme preceding all Uniform Resource Locator addresses. For all intents and purposes, Daedalus is the Internet.

Icarus

Icarus was created by Bob Page (head of Majestic 12) as a replacement for Daedalus, which had escaped from his control, and has similar functions to its predecessor. Icarus is one of the game's antagonists; it is used by MJ-12 to track the movements and activities of the main character, JC Denton, after he escapes from a holding cell in the secret MJ-12 Headquarters on Liberty Island. According to Sam Carter, Icarus is of the same design of Daedalus. However, Icarus has modifications different to Daedalus. JC Denton has brief contact with Icarus throughout the game; these involve taunts, warnings, questions and misinformation received as voice messages, phone calls, and posted messages on public computer terminals. Icarus eventually merges with the Daedalus AI to become Helios.

Icarus' avatar icon is an eyeball with a protruding iris, and emanating thin spikes all around. Surrounding the eyeball is a series of curved plates.

Like Daedalus, he is mentioned on computers before he is introduced. Several computers have a message saying something like:

ICARUS HAS FOUND YOU ICARUS HAS FOUND YOU ICARUS HAS FOUND YOU ICARUS HAS FOUND YOU RUN WHILE YOU CAN RUN WHILE YOU CAN RUN WHILE YOU CAN RUN WHILE YOU CAN RUN WHILE YOU CAN

Though the exact formatting and number of repetitions may vary.

Helios

Helios is an A.I. that is created when the artificial intelligences Icarus and Daedalus merged. Bob Page knew the merge would happen, and planned to merge himself with the AI, becoming a biological component of it. He is, however, unable to control Helios, which prefers JC Denton as its human partner instead. After the merge, Helios plans to control the world as a benevolent dictator, citing history as evidence that humanity will inevitably destroy itself if left on its own. Helios selects JC Denton as its biological component believing that Denton could provide the necessary ability to understand humans that a benevolent dictator would need to rule effectively. The player can choose to help Helios, or choose one of the two other endings of the game.

Even before the ending is chosen however, Helios begins to assert its influence by interfacing with the Aquinas system located in Area 51 which surveys the entirety of the Internet. In Hong Kong Helios shuts down power to all government buildings, disables the Triads electronically and orders free flow of traffic to begin anew.

Helios' avatar icon is similar to Icarus', with the exception that in the center is a large organic mass resembling a face; the spikes are replaced by thick fleshy protrusions, and a single eye that rests atop the center. It seems likely that this picture is a merger of the face of Daedalus and the "machine" surrounding Icarus' "eye".

References