Deus Ex/Characters

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< Deus Ex
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JC Denton

Voice: Jay Anthony Franke

The player character and main protagonist of the game, an augmented agent of UNATCO tasked with defeating the NSF, only to find out that the situation is considerably more complicated than it seems..

  • Badass
    • Badass Longcoat: Lampshaded when Anna tells you you will have to do more than just scare your enemies with a coat that makes you look bigger that you really are.
    • Cool Shades
    • Iron Woobie: If you speak with Morpheus, he'll confirm to JC he was genetically engineered and that most of his life was a lie. JC's response is basically "So? Who cares?"
    • One-Man Army: What you are considered after the halfway point of the game.
  • Bio Augmentation
  • Combo-Platter Powers: The various augmentations available, from Super Speed to regeneration to bulletproof skin to completely silent movement and invisibility...
  • The Comically Serious
  • Creepy Monotone: Intended to allow the player to insert their own emotion, though even divorced from its justification, it fits JC's character design.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: JC is as dark and serious as his brother, but he's good.
  • Deadpan Snarker: JC Denton has a few witty quotes in line with such.

"What a shame."

"A bomb's a bad choice for close range combat."

"You mechs may have copper wiring to reroute your fear of pain, but I've got nerves of steel."

"I was never properly trained in its operation."

  • Genius Bruiser: While possibly and at least built to be a killing machine, at more than a few points, such as with the bartender in China and with Morpheus, is quite able to sit down and talk philosophy.
  • A God Am I: In Invisible War, after merging with extremely powerful, omniscient AI Helios.
  • Happily Adopted: Like Paul, he was fond of his adoptive parents.
  • Healing Factor: Regeneration is, unsurprisingly, the most popular augmentation amongst most players, especially since at full power you regain health faster than a roomful of enemies with assault rifles going full auto can take it away.
  • Heroic Albino: J.C. Denton can be an albino. But then, he can also be black, white,[1] vaguely Hispanic...
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: JC has a lot of space in that coat.
  • The Immune: JC is immune to the the symptoms of Gray Death.
  • Immune to Bullets: Can be depending on your difficulty setting and augs selection.
  • Jumped At the Call: "This is why I exist? Alright. Let's do this."
  • Meaningful Name: He becomes a Messianic Archetype in one of the endings.
  • Naive Newcomer: At first...
  • Nakama: This is why when JC finally decides to jump ship from his traitorous employers, so many of his senior co workers join him.
  • Nanotechnology: Is a walking test bed for the technology. Intended to be this on purpose by Bob Page and Walton Simons so they can refine their own use of nanmachines for their own goals, though this comes back to bite them on the ass later.
  • Nigh Invulnerable: It's possible to make him this to pretty much anything but long falls or explosions at point-blank range, even on realistic difficulty.
  • Phlebotinum Rebel: Oh yes indeed. From expendable prototype testbed for the real deal in the head conspirators to bane of the head conspirators' existence.
  • Properly Paranoid: JC can be this.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: JC is potentially Red to his brother Paul's Blue. He can be played as someone who thinks before he shoots, but that still doesn't get around the fact that he usually still has a far higher propensity to shoot than his brother (unless you go full Pacifist).
    • It can also work the other way, since JC is stoic and dry while his brother is much more emotional and social.
  • Sealed Good in a Can: For Invisible War.
  • Significant Monogram
  • Stealth Expert
  • The Stoic
  • Sunglasses at Night: Lampshaded by Anna, and Handwaved via JC's 'My vision is augmented' explanation. In game terms, the reason probably has something to do with the fact that the glasses conceal one of the only visible signs that JC is a nano-aug.
  • Tyke Bomb
  • Weak but Skilled: On the "Realistic" difficulty setting. It's still possible to go through the game as an One-Man Army, but you have to be extra-careful.

Paul Denton

Voice: Jay Anthony Franke

J.C.'s brother and fellow augmented agent.

Bob Page

Voice: Cliff Stephens

The richest man in the world, head of Page Industries and member of the Illuminati.

"Why contain it [Gray Death and the subsequent rioting]? Let it spill over into the schools and churches, let the bodies pile up in the streets. In the end, they'll beg us to save them."

Walton Simons

Voice: Tom Hall

The head of FEMA and Page's right-hand man.

"Denton? Walton Simons here. What an expensive mistake you turned out to be. I ordered the troops to kill you, because frankly I don't have the patience to wait for one of those damn killswitches to work."

Simons: "You take another step forward and here I am again, like your own reflection in a hall of mirrors."
JC: "Must make me one ugly son of a bitch."

ECHELON IV

Voice: Peter Marquardt

  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Daedalus turns against its creators when their methods technically classify them as a terrorist organization.
  • Big Brother Is Watching
  • Deus Est Machina
  • Evil Gloating: Icarus takes great sadistic joy in taunting you about how pathetic you are and how futile everything you do is at each step, plus going on about how much You Suck in response to any Video Game Cruelty Potential you take advantage of.
  • A God Am I: Helios
  • Gone Horribly Right: The reason why Daedalus turns on its masters is drenched in irony. Echelon IV was designed to scour all telecommunications for subversive/terrorist activity and was given the sentience to assist in interdicting terrorist operations. MJ12 very stupidly used it to make their jobs easier as means of keeping tabs on UNATCO and the NSF, and Daedalus took one look at their activities, realized they were exactly what he was built to stop, and immediately sought to help JC out and his associates out, since they had the best shot at stopping MJ12's terrorism and subversion of international law.
  • It's a Small Net After All: Daedalus is the Internet.
  • Face Heel Turn: Artificially induced on Daedalus not long after the Versalife mission. Icarus was activated, compromised Daedalus, who starts giving your orders that would help compromise your goals, and eventually Icarus takes full control. A conversation involving Bob Page can be overheard foreshadowing this shortly before it happens.
  • Mission Control: Daedalus and Helios.
  • Split Personality: Daedalus and Icarus.
  • Split Personality Merge: Helios.
  • Verbal Tic: The Helios AI, yes.
  • Voice with an Internet Connection: Icarus and Helios.

Anna Navarre and Gunther Hermann

Voice: Carolyn McCormick and Jeff Groteboer

  • Ax Crazy
  • Beta Test Baddie: Gunther especially so.
  • Blood Knight: Anna's SOP for any hostile situation is kill everything!
  • Body Count Competition: Gunther Hermann and Anna Navarre seem to have such a competition. If the Player Character is killed by Anna, she'll sometimes say "Nine hundred and ten. I'm catching up, Gunther".
  • Butt Monkey: Gunther suffers quite a few indignities of varying degrees, from getting kidnapped, to getting phased out in favor of agents with newer augmentations, to being unable to get the soda he wants.
  • Cyborg
  • Honor Before Reason: Gunther cannot be talked down from fighting you in Paris.
  • Huge Guy, Tiny Girl
  • Invisibility: Anna's augment of choice. She also runs the tutorial on stealth.
  • Jerkass: Anna. Unless you're a merciless killer, she treats you like crap. However, showing a little humility and deferring to her early on during the second mission) will delay some of her more abrasive tendencies, but still, she'll wind up treating you like shit for not being a cold blooded killer sooner or later.
    • Jerkass Woobie: Gunther. Sure he's a bloodthirsty killing machine with close to 1000 hits under his belt, but you can't help but pity him.
  • Morality Pet: Gunther truly does feel sorrow and rage after Anna Navarre dies, and it is that which is driving him to want to kill JC Deader Than Dead. That said, this trope doesn't make him any less villainous, but at least his motives are a little more sympathetic.
  • Only Sane Man: Anna is very skeptical about Gunther's conspiracy theory that the maintenance man who stocks the drink machines at UNATCO is purposely trying to screw him over. Subverted in the sequel when you find out he was right.
  • Self-Destruct Mechanism: One mechanism kills them, the other takes care of the corpse.
  • Skippable Boss
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Gunther likes orange soda. He does not feel the same way about lemon-lime.
  • Verbal Tic: Gunther seems to have a lisping problem. Most likely, given his accent, English is not his first language.

Sam Carter

Voice: Sean Hennigan

The quartermaster for UNATCO and a former general.

  • Artificial Limbs: One of his legs, according to the now defunct homepage. Not that you can tell by his character model...
  • Cool Old Guy
  • Don't You Dare Pity Me!: JC attempts to express sympathy to Sam for the loss of his family to terrorism. Sam doesn't want to hear it.
  • Internal Reformist: He eventually gives up though.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He comes off as very crotchety and hard-assed, but seriously, he's a stand up guy, and if you keep picking non lethal options and avoiding killing people, he even commends you on your humanity and restraint.
  • My Country, Right or Wrong: He refuses to leave UNATCO even after learning about the corruption, believing only by good individuals within can reform it. He is forced to leave and more fully help the player when MJ12 tightens their grip on UNATCO even more.
  • Noodle Incident: He memorably claims to have dispatched an entire platoon with a pocket knife. He also mentions taking out a group of Afghans in an unspecified war.
  • Semi-Retired Badass: He's an ex-General working as a quartermaster.

Jaime Reyes

Voice: Sean Hennigan

UNATCO's doctor and the one in charge of nanotechnology-related matters.

Alex Jacobson

Voice: Richard Zangrande Gaubert

Brian “Jock” Flanagan

Voice: John Gault

A helicopter pilot who works for UNATCO and later defects along with you.

  • Badass Driver: It takes some balls to fly into the epicenter of hostile enemy territory, which he does regularly throughout the game.
  • Drunk Driver: The only time you meet him outside of his ride, he's hanging out in a bar. You can buy him two beers. You can call him out on this, and he'll claim he can't fly the helicopter properly when he's sober.
  • Properly Paranoid: To the point he drops hefty foreshadowing on later events very early in the game.

Joseph Manderley

Voice: John Gault

  • Da Chief: Of UNATCO. Really just an MJ12 puppet, and as revealed in Human Revolution, was one for the Illuminati in general in his earlier days.
  • Obstructive Bureaucrat: He got his start as a tool of the conspiracy to suppress information.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure Seems to be at first.
  • Reassigned to Antarctica : Suffers this as a result of JC escaping...if you don't kill him yourself. If you don't, it's then later implied he's killed anyway.
  • Too Dumb to Live: After confronting him, he'll act nonchalant and let you leave. When your back is turned, he pulls a pistol on you. He's typically gibbed a few seconds later. Unless you're playing at the "Realistic" difficulty setting, where there's a 50% chance or so that he will shoot you in the back of the head, fatally.
  • Villain With Good Publicity: Is regarded as reasonable and well liked as leader of UNATCO despite criticism of UNATCO's activities, as revealed via some news articles. Was intended to be such by Walton Simons to give UNATCO a respectable looking public face, though he eventually is considered expendable by the time JC breaks out of UNATCO HQ.
  • You Have Failed Me...: Listed as dead even if you don't kill him, and he may have been killed for his failure.

Tracer Tong

Voice: John Gault

Morgan Everett

Voice: Sean Hennigan

Currently the most influential of the remaining Illuminati, and is Page's former mentor.

Gary Savage

Leader of a group of scientists who defected from Area 51 and set up in Vandenberg Air Force Base to oppose Page.

Jojo Fine

Voice: Khary Payton

A crime boss of New York who threatens to do things "lo bruto" when he doesn't get what he wants.

  • Bad Boss: Even his fellow NSF think he's an asshole.
  • Badass: Tries to come off as one, but he subverts this in every way.
    • Wannabe Badass Hispanic: Has a thuggish Hispanic accent, but it doesn't work very well at making him sound intimidating.
    • Colonel NON Badass: He'd love to be seen as a tough guy and he is a colonel in the NSF, but he's basically a Dirty Coward thug who hides behind a gun, intimidation tactics, fake augmentations, and a big title.
  • Crazy Prepared: While otherwise rather stupid, he does have the foresight to booby trap sensitive areas very carefully, though his ability to keep people from spilling about his defense setup security codes still sucks.
  • Jerkass
  • Real Men Wear Pink: Subverted. A NSF goon actually derides him (not to his face) for wearing an earring.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Connections: He has connections to the NSF, which he apparently abuses.

Smuggler

Voice: Khary Payton

As his name implies, a smuggler in Hell's Kitchen.


Gilbert Renton

Voice: Ron Tatar

Owner of the (Hil)Ton hotel, all he wants is to run a peaceful business and keep his daughter out of trouble.

Maggie Chow

Voice: Carolyn McCormick

The main antagonist of the Hong Kong area, a former actress and current business executive who is in league with Bob Page.

  1. ↑ well, he's a white guy helping the helpless black Morgan Everett, so with a little stretch...
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