Deus Ex Alpha

A Comparison of Parallels:
Invisible War as an allegory to post 9/11 political climates
(Spoiler Warning)

Demographics evolve with the current events. Inspiration is something that occurs out of reality to conceive a deeper fable. The hidden poignancy of these fables is for the sake of perceived originality, unique setting, but also evocative allegory.

Invisible War demonstrates a dystopian society which, in comparison to the world as it was during the game's publication, is a comparable exageration of moods primarily driven by cynical historians and conspiracists. Afterall, those that go for the sci fi cyberpunk politically charged conspiracy games like Deus Ex, which are the definitive series of the style, this is where its players can draw conclusions or seemingly unique insights by what the content of the plot may or lay not imply, thus furthering the suggested intricacy of the story's writing.

The game came out almost a year after the infamous terrorist attack in NY. Within the game's opening, there is portrayed a suicide bomb detonated by a cultist. This attack obliterates Chicago and the protagonist is moved to Seattle. Here there is a follow up attack by what appears the same organization: a new world church known as the Order.

Through the course of the game, given your personal choice and attitudes towards factions such as the Order, you discover that there is a splinter faction within the church being orchestrated by another far more secret and powerful zealot army known as the Templars.

The Templars, it is revealed, were responsible for the initial Chicago attack. The Templar cell that was running a splinter chapter of the Order church was involved in the followup attack.

Even deeper still there is a military force called the WTO (World Trade Org) which attempts to uphold law in the reconstructed fragments of society known as enclaves: which is perhaps a representation of first world society as we know it, with menial jobs for those in the undercity, and private protection of commercial and governmental zones (all taxed by WTO regulation).

Those living outside of enclaves live in the crime infested ruins of the collapsed civilization that once existed that represents the failing of our current reality. Here the black market and gangs and aerial disease and reproducing mutant organisms are running rampant and the only protection is from private security hired by only who can afford it. They are second rate and neutral and are essentially mercenaries for whoever pays them. In this sense they are in certain parts of the world the existent mafia.

Throughout all the factions is still the pervasive corruption overlapping every positional ideaology every group would stand for, thus showing how profit is still the most driving force in human nature. In this future wars are fought between bidders of armies with weapons sold to every individual soldier from the same illicit purveyor through layers of indirect proxies of a single manufacturer (who also create the universal ammunition that powers these weapons). This company is called Mako.

Now the church and the WTO government are posed as conflicting forces in the political dichotemy of this dystopia. The Order with a metaphysical, altruistic approach to appealing to the lower class non-enclave citizens while the WTO govt appeals to the well off upper middle class enclave citizens that willingly pay taxes to live in clean air policed technological city structures.

Deepest into the game you learn that the Order and the WTO are in fact two sides of the same coin being run by the ancient secret society known as the Illuminati. The Illuminati controlled the media, talk shows, and bulletins that informed citizens and non-citizens around the world of current events, painting catastrophic events or key figures the way they wished the people to perceive them. This included how they characterized the clash between the Order and the Government, a two side political diversion in fact being run by a singular system that sought both Government and Order for civilization.

The Templars are the true conservative power that contests the progressive collectivist State that is the Illuminati society. When the Templars begin to draw more power toward their cause, thus escalating alternative ideologies and radical movements against the enclave system, this is when the media focuses on a "summit" portraying the leaders of the Order and the WTO negotiating a parley of unification into a better system all the while labelling the Templars a terrorist organization (the same way the Order was portrayed at the beginning).

Then you meet JC Denton, the protagonist of the first game. He is painted as an omnipotent, subversive, cybernetic, revolutionary demigod. He is villified by every group but its own as a highly dangerous superpower with the intelligence and supernatural power that could destabilize the entire civilized world as we know it.

Denton was merged with a utilitarian AI that sought total cultural convergence between the races and with technology and the planet and its resources. It was a unifying totalitarian pursuit of oneness between all consciousnesses in the world. It sought to abolish poverty, disease, starvation, corruption, egocentricity, and petty ambition and shift mankind to a state of confluent purpose through merging all thought to a single system, essentially constructing a mental internet global political system that met the needs of the collective individual instantaneously.

This type of society would completely replace the systems and causes and trivial aims of all the existant conflicting groups of the world. Money would become meaningless, seperation of class, distinguishment of race or creed or financial background became irrelevant, and all nobilities and hierachies of power would become irrelevant to the new posterity of the major merger that would become the new system, the new generation, the new era of all subsistance.

This movement, like all the others, was villified as being too extreme, too radical, too dogmatic and short sighted to its own romantic, unrealistic views to be implemented practically. And so there was an invisible war between ideologies, between faiths, between the very substrates of humanity and classes and the artificial and natural created cells of the body, cells of the system, of the mind, of the entire species.

And in the divine choice of one individual in the middle of it all does the destiny of all existence and its next evolutionary step in the infinite progression of time... become decided.

The start of the Invisible War is not determined. In the game intro it is implied that it has been going on between a known enemy probably the Illuminati, and that after the nanite detonator attack in Chicago, the ApostleCorp clone director said "perhaps we meet a new enemy". This was when the Templars entered the invisible war.

At the start of the game, not long after you find the quasi Templars are active and recruiting young, poor, unaugged misfits and zealots do you also find out that ApostleCorp is the parent company of Mako(?) and Tarsus and a "network of scientists" specializing in gene sequencing that were educated privately in the enclave Tarsus programs (probably with the preserved knowledge and resource of the underground hacker and scientist Tracer Tong).

If you are working with the WTO you will not so clearly get these answers right away. Working for the WTO you are well compensated but you are kept in the dark to be an instrument of their agenda.

HERE'S THE INTERESTING PART! Upon infiltrating the Mako weapons lab HQ compound you find that Tarsus trained ApostleCorp funded scientists that are working in secret within the laboratories of Mako HQ. This would explain how the manufacturers had the intellectual capacity to make such advanced weapons that use the plasma energy which fuels the universal ammo. Aside from the Omar, who manage the black market and design and sell mods and augs of their own and can make weapons even more awesome and lethal (e.g. the Spiderbomb SMG)

BUT DO TELL ME IF YOU'VE NOTICED THIS OF THE STORY:
That the Mag Rail is technologically the work of the research and capacity of Tracer Tong (a dangerous mind that may have tricked JC into triggering the collapse so that Tong and Paul could make ApostleCorp and have an edge on technology over most of the post-Collapse world) MUST have designed the Mag Rail for Mako to manufacture.

>>And when they did, they sold large unit quantities of the guns to the Templars.<<

As a corporate union, perhaps they needed the profits. But that begs the question of who funded the initial corps? Was it fabricated credit? Was it graft from the Russian black market (Omar)? Or was it from some plundered fortunes gotten by one of the key members before or during the Collapse?\

The Templars, it is established, got their money from the gold bullion reserves of the Knights' Cathedral in Paris. This assumes that the money was not confiscated by Everett or MJ12 after JC storms it.

The Illuminati, of course, got their money from the wealthy "families" implied throughout the game that have gone underground but are still funding the WTO from their fortunes. I would assume this would be the fortunes of the Vatican gold reserves which would have funded the Order if not the Templars. There is some kind of implied holy war going on throughout the game, and an inference of religion infiltration/sedition like that of the real world Judeo-Christian and Islamic religious bases that have diverging sects formed over the course of history (we'll talk about that in another thread if you like).


Anyway, it is a huge irony played thru the story of DX2 that at the beginnings of the most significant events of the invisible war (when the Templars and Alex Denton at last become active equations in the conflict) that the advanced weaponry and the funding of the Templars was indirectly given to them by JC and his followers. If you want to go into it on all fronts, JC also helped the Illuminati gain ascension again by unlocking the global network they were locked out of by Echelon 3 (because of it, all Illuminatists had to access the Net thru elaborate proxy {IIS} and discreet avatars else be triangulated by Daedalus-Aquinas).

But if ApostleCorp already had credit, was it just Mako operating on its own in selling the Mag Rail in such large quantities to the Templars? Assuming you did not assassinate the Mag Rail project lead, the WTO would have stolen the intellectual property through your data interface with their Net. In this contingency, the weapon would have been strategically distributed thru the black market and perhaps eventually WTO trade union regs to be available without direct purchase from the manufacturer.

So perhaps this is the reason Mako had to make a move to sell the large unit request to the Templars who were absolutely good for the money (you should even say their credit was gold, harr harr).

This seems more plausible because it seems ApostleCorp already has money. And if they had access to credit, and they had no use for gold (assuming the real invisible war isn't a crusade but actually a shell game to get all the world's gold) ApostleCorp would not want to arm its enemies so blatantly and extensively, creating an enemy force that already knows they exist when they (the templars) used Billie Adams as a spy to steal the company secrets at the beginning of the game.

Just a side note, I feel there is also irony in how these intolerant Luddites still use nanotechnology they vie to destroy as a means to combat it (e.g. the Mag Rail, plasma fueled ballistic weapons, and augmented spies). Though if you end the game for the templars you will find (spoiler) that Billie and Alex are lynched and the world is plunged to a new feudal era where those left who have any knowledge or wealth or technological resource (the pseudo Illuminati) are forced into hiding and biding their time and trying not to be discovered by the priory.

If you choose the ApostleCorp ending... you will be abolishing hierarchy, privacy, and time.

From this comes evolution in real-time. There will be collective oneness, thus, the total integration and arguably the elimination of individuality. There will be no standalone being (if you do not factor in natural anomaly resisting the nanite mutation).


If the ghost in the shell is nothing more than the ideas of culminated experiences, memories, inspirations... then, though the greatest ideas and theories can be explored and achieved perhaps instantly... eventually there would no longer be a basis for unique experience and so there would be only groupthink mentality. A singular perspective; the third eye becomes "cyclops". At this point there is no new frontier for consciousness... and meaning, which was before derived of needs and perception, would be satisfied by self-assuring ego. Essentially, it would result in the self-proclamation of God, but with no other evincing proof of it other than the Helios synchrony, the breakdown of having no secrecy would eliminate the concept of God... leaving only "good government" as the Morpheus prototype explained.

But through all the merging JC and Motoko still managed to retain themselves amidst the archetypes and the information.
Yes, I do realize I am arriving at the point that this is just artificial... just fictional stories. But it is fascinating to think of the limitation of man set by Nature. If the mind was not meant to coalesce or if it's destined to....

Check this, though.

Luminan Saman was an Illuminatus, but from all the influence he had amassed for his particular beliefs, he was in a position to make a grab for power.

Dumier and DuClair were heirs to the last remaining families of the business cabals that represented the corpocrats in the last industrio capitilist society.

JC Denton was the truly Illuminated One; the truly enlightened. The Illuminati may have lived on in practice and in name beyond 1789, but the meaning and cause of human enlightenment went beyond the distinctions of the Bavarian sect descendants in Munich, Paris, Buckingham, and the District of Columbia.

Satanism is its own school of supposed Enlightenment like any other ideology perceived as absolute.
\
But the only most selfless ending that exists for Invisible War is the Denton Helios convergence.

Every other ending is done for the sake of Alex's personal beliefs or personal gain. But the Denton Helios convergence is eternally generational if not immortalizing. There is no indication whether it was the true Nirvana or if it would descend to chaos. It is not our to know what is the Absolute, otherwise, what would be the point in playing?

This game is of the question of the merits of privacy and individuality, and whether these qualities are inseparable or existent within a society that is based on complete communal scrutiny, complete knowing, or only total privacy.

This game, like the others, is about a modified human that can be watched at all times by judges who can be masters of its mind, a tool of another's aims.

The player, the one looking in on the life experiences of this cyborg, is the Soul, it is this alone which makes the choices, that and the Fates of the world in which It is born.

Deus Ex

I can't say I've read everything, but I have enjoyed your analysis.

Thanks. Altho it may just be personal intrigue, I do find the game to be underrated for its subtlety.

As with every DX plot, one can just fall back on the deepest conspiracy that all the factions and conflicting ideals are just charades of power centralization of ambitious individual capitalist illuminatists trying to amass the largest reserve of bullion than every other capitalist illuminists. Thus to become the Supreme Enlightened, the opener of the Way. The Grandmaster Despot. Etc

Every DX game, as well as our current real world, may be of conflicting statists being manipulated by competing illuminati capitalists playing the ultimate proverbial chessgame, a war of minds that uses bodies of man and resource as the pieces to territorial, centralized supremacy.

The Grand Masquerade, as it were, would be the posing of religions as charades of gnostic pagan astrology (like Mao's Luminous Path or the Golden Dawn) or just plain oldworld fashioned cult fraternity Satanism; the race of temporal might.

In such case, it all comes down to who controls the bullion, and who rations the resource. Such things are real wealth the an intrinsic value that does not diminish no matter the circumstance of the market. The backbones of nations are in their industry, in their true wealth stockpile, and in their ability of conduct effective war.

Power is in essence every form of conceivable influence.

Wealth, knowledge, and military might. These are what makes any syndicate thrive.

To clarify, I am aware the Bavarian Illuminati in its original form has not existed since the Roman Catholics ran them out of Bavaria in 1786. Adam Weishaupt had amassed an underground symposium of intellectual Jesuits from Germany, France, and Italy. These secret members opposed the growing Vatican but upon being discovered, and no longer secret, they ceased to be.

Thenceforth the Free Mason fraternities founded on the philosophy of Illuminism were subjected to more extreme athiests that did not necessarily share the views of Weishaupt. More often these sects are fraternal, cheuvanist or else solidly set on genetic purity, natural divinity and astrological science (still relying on the measurement of time and financial quarters to the Gregorian calander).

However, all associations with Masonic lodges have dedication to tbe occult and the arcane. From this is the consideration of the philosophic religion of Illuminism or Paganism or Gnosticism. Im ignorant of the primary beliefs and how these are specifically different. Im still researching.

In some way these beliefs must be practiced for the result of something demonstrative, since these are supposed to be rationalist types that oppose theoretical religion and anything that can't be proven, yet like any religion there is a hierarchy based solely on belief, which is ironic, but often followed for the granting of power (knowledge and wealth).

These exclusive rites are an induction to credible power base for those selected, usually by some discreet lineage, and promoted through a Columbia University through the Cecil Rhodes scholarship (e.g. Bill Taggert i.e. Bill Clinton).

"We do not have permanent allies. We only have permanent interests." - Henry Kissinger

Then again the Helios was nothing more than an enlightened despot. And if all creation as we know it was the design of some mastermind_alien your purpose would feel predestined and not your own right? Like deterministic fatalism.

Well, that must be what any creation with consciousness would feel having discovered its makers' intended purpose. Alex must have felt the romantic sway of destiny yes, but she must have felt defiance toward the people that cloned her for their whims.

And so now I see the Templar ending, as unseemly as it is, as Alex's personal sacrifice to save mankind from the irrevocable precipice of total technological autocracy. And so she resisted the temptations of power the other Illuminatists wanted and let her death be the martydom that purified the human race of all its imperfection. Absolve the sin of man, and make him pure in Nature's image once more.

Of course, the lost civilization would be buried by pogroms, and humanity plunged into the feudalistic dark ages with the Luminaries as the ordained kings ruling with the power of secret, arcane knowledge of the biblical times and the end times.

Like the Phoenix, humanity would be born anew amidst a new hierarchy, and the technology, with Aquinas quarantined in Munich, would be controlled by the lords of truth and knowledge.

Considering an Ayn Rand argument of what collectivism means to individuality and the ego:

The Denton Helios merger did not so much want to obliterate individuality thru collectivism than to elevate the individual traits and talents inherent of each person without the encumbering limitation of externalized societal roles which would otherwise seek to generalize groups of people to a role of social constructs designed for another's benefit as much or moreso as themselves.

An Ayn Rand reference! Atlas Shrugged is one of my favorite books, and since you mention it, ties in well with this analysis.

For this example, Im citing her epic poem "Anthem" that depicts a collectivist society so tyrannized by communal obligation that self identity is conditioned out and the ego diminished.

In this story the main character refers to himself as "we". However, if the Denton vision held true it would be a collective consciousness yet somehow each unique capability of the individual would be augmented and unconstrained by physical or societal limitation.

Edit: The Dentons show us how even clones invariably become completely different people via their individual experience.

Alexander the Great was an individual who conquered many & had many theigns & servants & soldiers who died for him or were executed by his order in huge numbers. Somehow I feel Jesus channeled him in a diametric inverse, signifying how the individual was already sacrificed or resigned to the eminence of royal empires. He sacrificed himself for the sake of mankind. He was more like an Alexander than the eponymous legend.

We are still within an Aristolian reign of a materialist zeitgiest that has conquered liberal thinking such as the concepts of syncretism & antipositivism.

Alexander was a mighty child. Aristotle was Ayn Rand's main influence. His name means defender of man. But he is called King of Kings, reminiscent of Jesus whom he predated & who channeled him 300 years later.