in the shell

Allright I know some of you have played the masterpiece that is 'Deus Ex'. If not then go play it after beating yourself with a stick running through the centre of town as punishment. It is every bit the 'required viewing' that GitS is.

Once you reach the endgame after slaughtering hordes of opponents and former allies(or knocking them unconcious and creeping past if you're a wuss ) and uncovering conspiracies all round, you don't simply shoot the big badass in the head and run away down a corridor being chased by an explosion. Instead you are offered a threeway choice.But it was a deep moral choice that required much consideration, personally I had to go away and make a cup of tea while contemplating it. SO I was wondering which of the three options did the enlightened gamers of the in the shell forums choose and why? it seems to come down to how much freedom you are willing to give up for a better quality of life..

SPOILERS WILL FOLLOW

Option 1) THE MERGE - The protagonist JC Denton merges with the AI Helios, puppetmaster style. With access to every piece of electronic information in the world, JC's insight into what humans want/need and access to a universal constructor able to manipulate all physical matter; you essentially create God, the ultimate benevolent dictator.

"God was a dream of good government."
"You will soon have your God, and you will make it with your own hands."

PRO
Every individual is treated equally by an unambitious, logical and systematic government.

CON
Freedom, Free will and privacy are all redundant. Helios keeps on saying 'yes' at the end of all his sentences which as signs of evil go is right up there with moustache twirling.. ..yes...

also If you have played other games by the same people like 'system shock2' you will know that strange AIs with speech impediments who want to play god are not to be trusted ..yes ..ultrawhite. yes...

option 2) Illuminati - spare the facility and the AI so you can keep government-classic with democracy putting a superficially appealing puppet in charge who is controlled by the same corperate stakeholders regardless of their own ideological background. Pretty much what we have now.

PRO
seems to work alright with a few problems at the moment and noone has to die.

CON
Limited freedom and privacy for the individual. Leadership has human ambitions and is thus open to corruption.

option 3) NEW DARK AGE - by destroying the global communications hub you can bring about an age of anarchy in city-states, an age of craftsmen, government on a local scale comprehensible to its citizens.

PRO
privacy freedom and power to the people, no more corruption - open governemnt.

CON
healthcare would suck, probably small wars, no more 'in the shell' discussion forum.

I think there were some things needed to be done for each option to be availible, and I also remember there being four options (but let's not rely on that memory). In any case, I remember paving the road to all options (more gameplay for me), and then trying them out one by one, just to satisfy my curiosity.

My first and 'real' option was probably to merge, because hey, it's something new which we haven't tried yet. Communications dark age seems like it'd eventually lead back to modern/futuristic society, and the futuristic society seemed to eventually lead to a super AI being created which would then eventually take over the world by merging with some guy. So why not be that guy?

oh yes, there is a fourth hidden ending in which there's a party and everyone dances ..probably the most sensible choice really..

I like the new dark age ending because it fits in with my anarchistic views on government and it's the only ending in which you get to blow sh*t up.

But the AI merging; become god ending is probably the right choice in that it could potentially lead to a utopia-like world sans disease, hunger, poverty, suffering etc. which is probably worth a shot, also it's what Motoko kusanagi would do(WWMKD? ) and i am very much like a god anyway.. I still don't like it though because it's such a large concentration of power. There should be balance, a unity of opposites only possible on an individual level. It would be a different matter if everyone merged with the AI; a self aware group mind but as they give it to you I'd rather blow it all up and live in a tent eating nettle soup with tracer tong

I saved right when I entered Page's area so that I could get all three endingw without having to replay the game (which I did anyways). I suppose I liked the "Merge with Helios" ending best, mainly because it was king of like the ending of the first GITS.

The creaters of the game apparently decided that all three endings took place, because in the fairly reprehensible Deus Ex 2, JC merged with helios, the collapse occured, and the Illuminati took over governing the world.

Plus the hero of Deus Ex 2 was an obnoxious metrosexual skater punk.

I choose the anarchy option because I believe that true freedom and inlusive democracy is something worth killing and creating the chaos of a revolution over. I didn't trust that creepy bastard helios any more than I liked the idea of replacing Page with his equally power-hungry, lying, self-serving former allies. You may have a point in that humanity may inevitably go back to square one and recreate a situation where a dictator will arise, but that just means you'll need another revolution... As Jefferson said, a revolution once in awhile is not a bad thing...liberty needs to be replenished with the blood on a periodic basis.

Besides, wars and violent uprisings as part of shifts in power and reigning ideologies have been a fact of human history, even before the thirteen colonies won their independence.

lol, i'm getting the impression that the sequel may not have lived up to the hype then...

I don't remember which ending I chose first, but I think it was the Communications Dark Age one. I don't think I liked any of the three that much, but that was the one I settled with.

I think I chose it because it seemed like something that hadn't been tried before. Also, at the time I had a political Yahoo chat friend who was an anarchist, so that influenced me. "Status quo" ending was too boring, and "dictator" ending well um... had a dictator ;P Then again, I might have chosen the dictator ending simply because it made *me* the part of the dictator. Sweet.

If I really had an ending to choose, it would've been what JC Denton did in Deus Ex 2: The Invisible War. It seemed more humanist and stuff, and I like that.

I read in a Warren Spector interview that origionally there was only going to be one ending and that was the merging with Helios one because he'd been watching ghost in the shell none stop.

...meh the important thing is it's a kickass bit o' storytelling. The only shooter in which i got emotionally attached to NPCs. (only using teargas and tranquilizers on UN troops because it's not their fault really and feeling really bad about wasting poor Gunter) and you've got to give some props to a shooter where you can finish the game without killing anyone. Ghandi would be proud!

Do you absolutely have to play it on PC or was the PS2 port tolerable?

PC is better, but the PS 2 Port isn't bad, although it is a lot easier.

Yay for old threads

I chose the black-out. I flipped a coin between that and the dictatorship.

It was a truly excellent game. The sequel wasn't bad either but it wasn't anywhere near as good as the original.

Deus Ex 3 is on it's way now, probably a prequel. Shame the film got scrapped, it was about the only videogame film that sounded promising.

Hmmm, interesting. I'll be sure to check that out if it ever appears. Hopefully they'll stick to their tradition of using the latest Unreal engine - the graphics ought to look pretty sweet if they do