The fact that the ending is decided by a mere button press is actually a statement on how technology, and dependence on it, has enabled a few powerful people to have great leverage over the whole world. It also shows how the equivalent of Fox News or CNN can have massive effects on society.
Having a LIMB clinic in a geoengineering facility in the middle of the Arctic Ocean looks like Gameplay and Story Segregation at its finest until you remember that Panchaea's construction involved heavy use of augmented workers and thus having an on-site clinic is quite logical. Why there are still ads in the bathrooms, however...
Because they want everyone to blow their paychecks as soon as they get them. See also: American military bases.
For some reason major corporations seem to always fill their employee-only areas with advertisments, as well.
Eliza starts doubting her masters and fixating on Adam Jensen after being ordered to disrupt satellite communications temporarily over Detroit. Eliza facilitates and manipulates global communications; being ordered to block a signal, to not just transmit altered information but to deliberately deny the intended recipient any information, went directly against what she was created to do. Of course she starts doubting at that point.
Jensen recharges his augs with energy bars(and the occasional jar of high-energy paste available from LIMB clinics). However, they aren't available from any of the ever-present vending machines, and merchants don't stock them either. He has to swipe every one - gameplay-wise, this is so he can't spam energy-draining augs, especially the undodgeable takedown moves. The Brilliance is that Brand Name Cyberboost Proenergy Bars, "an artificial food energy source, packed with proteins and carbohydrates... 90% fat free with no sugar added" are most likely prescription-only, and may in fact contain small amounts of Neuropozyne. This theory also explains why Jensen can't overcharge his augmentations with conventional food.
Doesn't the energy aug in the Praxis menu mention you can recharge with regular food? It's a stretch to suggest that power bars would be sold as a prescription. LIMB sells them because it's a support item for their augments. Especially since Jensen doesn't need Neuropozyne.
Food can recharge Jensen's augs - one cell worth. Overcharge requires Cyberboost.
The chaos caused by Darrow's signal would be the perfect catalyst for all the horrible things that happened in the background of the original Deus Ex. In the wake of that level of destruction and violence, it would make perfect sense for the tensions leading toward the Northwest War to break out and for Pakistan and India to start tossing nukes back and forth. Those really just needed a proper spark to set off, and Darrow gave them a freaking flamethrower.
The fact that the endgame involves fighting/evading groups of zombie-like madmen is actually quite brilliant when one considers that Deus Ex has always been a series about adapting to new circumstances and fighting intelligently. The opponents on Panchaea require a complete shift in your fighting strategy to adapt to. Those who get stuck in their previous rut will have a hard time adapting to the changing circumstances, while those who have been adaptable, flexible, or simply prepared for anything will easily be able to make the shift to dealing with a totally different kind of enemy. Thus, the game rewards either preparation or intelligent flexibility in the final level by tossing out previous gameplay conventions. It's actually quite brilliant.
David Sarif was born in 1970 according to the Deus Ex Wiki, making him 57 years old at the time of HR. He's also augmented. Which means that the Sarif ending is Electronic Old Men, Running the World. A New Age.
On a more serious note in this game, the Illuminati turn out to be a bunch of rich and influential people who use the Illuminati name as little more than a means to gain funding and whose plan for world domination is brought crashing down by a single dissenting voice. In other words, perhaps Bob Page wasn't being entirely facetious by calling them "A bunch of pretentious old men playing at running the world"...
David is actually brighter than one would expect. After all, when Darrow triggers his madness-inducing signal, Sarif is just about the only augment on Panachaea apparently unaffected - which means he didn't get the biochip upgrade either, and probably has his augs custom-engineered to dodge anyone trying to muck around with them remotely. Sarif is clearly as Genre Savvy as Jensen.
Same with Malik and Pritchard. The latter even mentions he'd "check something out" before heading for a LIMB Clinic for the upgrade. Clearly he knew something was fishy.
Doesn't stop him from sending Jensen off to get one, though. Gee, thanks Pritchard.
Well Pritchard does mention he couldn't get to a LIMB clinic due to the riots.
And, in all fairness, Adam is currently out in the field, with people gunning for him. It's not nearly as pressing for Pritchard or Sarif to get one, let alone a chip from their largest competitor. Adam could always get the chip swapped later, if necessary, but right now he can't exactly afford to suddenly lose all his augmentations in the middle of a firefight. Which, unfortunately, is exactly what happens, but Pritchard couldn't have known that.
The Yellow/Black color palette most inner-city street-lights are geared towards the yellow-red end of the spectrum because it's cheaper to make lights that won't attract insects that way than to push the light into the more natural-looking blue-green spectrum.
There's also the fact that Adam is wearing yellow-tinted shades the whole game.
The reason why Adam was acting like he did first time he encountered Zhao is because she used a CASIE mod on him.
As if Adam didn't need more reasons for hating Hong Lee beyond his callous murder of the pregnant Evelyn Carmichael over his family's threats of disinheritance, there is the final nail in the coffin that is the murder weapon. Who else but an amateur clockmaker like Jensen could possibly despise more someone who would commit murder using an antique clock?
The hidden ending after the credits shows Bob Page talking about how whatever choice you did doesn't matter. But then, Megan Reed shows up to join them. Now go back and watch the entry cinematic. The whole plot of the game just a sideshow to getting Megan to work for them. No consequences to which choice you made, no real stopping of plans. The whole game was a Shaggy Dog Story, and no one even realized.
Having purchased the game soundtrack and listened to it more closely, it struck me how sad and mournful many of the themes are and now that I've thought about it, it makes perfect sense. As the events in the game are the first steps towards the dystopian society of DX, the soundtrack is essentially one to the fall of human civilization.
It always seemed strange that you could find so many important passwords and details in lost Pocket Secretaries, but when you visit TYM headquarters it starts to make some sense. If a large number of corporations in the 2020s start demanding insane limits to how many emails one account can have of course employees are going to desperately transfer all of the vital information they have onto more convenient (if less secure) hand held machines.
Opening email inboxes to find a maximum message capacity of four... only to have two of those messages be warnings not to expect your maximum message capacity? Truth in Television for a lot of people whose work email is handled through Microsoft Outlook who will gleefully spam your inbox with reminders that you're almost out of space.
Want yet another subtle clue about how bad the world is? The widespread use of land mines by just about everyone. Normally you'd think of them as just another weapon common to shooting games, but considering that the world has apparently gone from mostly banning them to street gangs, terrorists and private military companies casually using them it's a sign that things have gotten really bad.
It seems odd that many human revolution augmentations are move advanced than their nanotech counterparts, until you remember than Jensen has half of his body replaced/upgraded with a serious amount of hardware, while the Denton brothers only had to endure a series of injections for their augmentations. Consider the difference between a desktop computer and a smart phone, one has more power but the other has several other advantages.
The information Eliza gives Adam is largely limited to confirming things Adam already suspects or knows ('I initially jammed the GPL signals', 'Zhao Yun Ru is one of the Illuminati', and 'Jaron Namir led the attack on Sarif Industries') and telling Adam who to ask for find more information ('David Sarif knows why Sarif Industries was really attacked'). The one significant new data point she gives him ('Isaias Sandoval is the surgeon who removed the GPL implants') is something that she's very unlikely to have been ordered specifically to keep silent about, at least not when speaking to someone who already knows the truth about Dr. Reed and her team's survival. In other words, while Eliza's slowly developing a sense of morality her loyalty programming is still entirely in force; this is why she cannot help you any more than she has, because her orders only allow for very small loopholes.
The Hyron Project is Nightmare Fuel on its own but there's something that makes it even worse: noticed how the captive women keep screaming that "it's cold"? If you used the social aug at the end of Corporate Warfare, you learn that Hyron was (on paper at least) designed to monitor Panchaea's structural integrity against the shifting pressures of the Arctic Ocean. Are these women literally FEELING the ocean crushing the facility?
Speaking of Hyron, did you happen to find some of the Panchaea employees' computer passwords? "MSSINGHME", "LSTFORVR", "IWNTLOVE", "FRGOTTN", "YYYYYY". None of the employees chose those passwords. The system assigned them automatically. There are emails from the staff double checking that these passwords are legit and remarking on how creepy they are.
One just hit me after finishing the game a few days ago. Panchaea is a giant station in the Arctic designed to help improve the effects of global warming through iron seeding. Whether it is truely just a massive front for Darrow's plot is not truely seen, but it isn't too far of a stretch to assume that it is a dual-purpose facility given Darrow's somewhat condescending need to "better humanity". Now, assume you go with the Destroy Panchaea ending. Panchaea is probably one of the most advanced projects helping to reverse global warming, at the very least the biggest. And Adam just destroyed it completely. The entire facility is crushed under the extreme pressures of the Arctic ocean. Not only does everyone on board (including a ton of innocent workers and both Serif and Taggart with their entourages) drown in the freezing waters of the Arctic, but the foremost attempt to keep the polar caps from melting has just been destroyed. Way to flood the rest of the world, Jensen.
According to NPC chatter, Panchaea alone won't cut it anyway. They need five or six more installations like it around the world for the desired effect to come to pass. So it's not absolutely critical factor either way.
Confirmed in The Missing Link: you can find a map showing all the necessary Panchea facilities, the one Jensen visits being the only completed one.
Expanding on a thread from above: Panchaea is huge. It has a significantly large circumference and stretches from sea level all the way down to the sea bed. If you choose Jensen's ending and destroy Panchaea, you've not only screwed humanity in the long run but more than likely you've created ideal conditions for a huge tsunami. While it's not outright stated, Panchaea is presumably on the edge of the Pacific ocean, so this tsunami will probably cause incredible destruction to some of the most populated areas in the world, killing thousands if not millions.
So what if it was? How would a massive structure crashing down into the sea somehow be less likely to create a tsunami just because it was made of iron?.
Well, that I knew. It's just that the possibility of the ruins of Panchaea being used for iron seeding doesn't negate the fact that the collapsing structure would directly cause massive loss of life, and I doubt Adam is thinking as far ahead as 'maybe this thing is made of iron' if he decides to destroy it. Adam's intent is obviously not to end the lives of millions of people (just, you know, the hundreds or so stuck in Panchaea with him), so it's still Nice Job Breaking It, Hero.
Yeah, but look at where the Arctic Ocean is on the world map as opposed to California. If Southern California decided to go scuba diving all by its lonesome, nothing that happened in the Arctic Ocean had anything to do with it.
The news crawl in the game suggests there's going to be a major earthquake in California in the 2030s.
In The Missing Link, Doctor Kavanagh mentions that Megan's research provided a "mutagenic gene combination" that dramatically improves the processes of creating O-C-M "components" (read: Hyron drones). Now remember whose genetic structure Megan was researching. That's right. Adam Jensen helped contribute to the Hyron project.
One passing email you can find in Sarif Industries mentions that "new tissue samples from Patient X have recently become available." Of course, Adam is Patient X, and it seems that the "new samples" came from when Adam was getting augmented. That means that all those hunks of tissue that were removed during Adam's augmentation, including his arms and legs and eyes were handed over to Sarif's science team for experimentation.
Arguably this is a good thing, horrifying from a "creepy to feel like being used as a guinea pig" perspective aside. Since Adam's genetic modification means he doesn't need the drug to accept augmentation, with Sarif working on those samples it means that their goal of eliminating the public need for the drug is within their grasp.