Saturday, September 3, 2016

Deus Ex: Black Light Novel Summary

Want to play the new Deus Ex: Mankind Divided video game? Well you may be both happy and sad to hear that there's actually a lot more to this game's story, but it's actually told in a prequel novel. Rather than beginning right after the previous game, Human Revolution, ended, Mankind Divided picks up many months later and leaves a massive gap in the story leaving many people confused -- this is where the novel comes in. Why is Jensen where he is? Who are these people he is with? Just how does he plan on taking down the Illuminati? How did he survive the ending of Human Revolution? All of this and more was answered in Black Light, and today I'm going to help all of you who haven't read it get up to speed. The following is a full novel summary of Black Light, and it will cover all of the major moments in the novel. So, let's begin. (Spoilers for the full novel, and possibly Human Revolution follow, so read at your own risk.)

Deus Ex: Black Light - 

The story starts with Jensen waking up in some sort of "medical center" for augs. After the incident this sort of thing was set up for augmented people, and basically acts as a jail. Their augs are locked, they basicallu live in cells, and so on. Jensen was fished out of the water, and was told his augs kept him at a state where they were still able to bring him back. Unsure of who he is, Jensen takes the time to remember what had just happened to him (HRs ending), and keeps his mouth shut. He doesn't know who runs he place, and he trusts no one.

During his stay there he befriends an augmented man called Stacks, he's questioned by some sort of "government" official (a woman named Thorne), and he hatches a plan to escape. Taking Stacks with him, Jensen takes out some guards, destroys the device blocking his augs, and gets ahold of Prichard. After calling Prichard a p***k to prove he is the real Jensen, Prichard helps him and stacks secure a car and they make their way to Detroit.

Meeting Prichard in Detroit, Jensen learns TYM took Sarif after it has closed down, much of Detroit is now lawless and filled with gangs, and he himself has gone back to being a hacker doing shady things/whatever he had to do to get by. He's living in an old theater, paying off gang members, and hardly getting by. Most of the other workers from Sarif are gone from the area, but at least a few of Jensen's ex security team has joined up with the gangsters.

After seeing Stacks freak out from not getting his drugs for his augs, Jensen and Prichard break into Sarif. Inside Stacks freaks out once again at the sight of seeing augmented parts laying around, but Jensen is able to calm him down. Using some security systems set in place by Prichard, they get the doors open to the different rooms, get the drugs, and escape -- all while giving the remaining drugs to other augs in need.

Next Jensen heads out to the facility from the start of HR. Here are said to be some experimental augs that were left behind, and Jensen sets out to stop the gangsters there to steal it. Stacks comes along, and the two set a bomb to destroy the place, but things go bad, Stacks goes crazy again thanks to his PTSD (it's implied during the incident he tore his own family to shreds), and is shot. Lying on the ground dying, he tells Jensen to escape while he sets off the bomb -- which he does. Stacks dies, Jensen runs, and then comes face to face with the task force. The task force is currently tracking down an illegal aug operation, and their leads had lead them to this building. They hold Jensen at gun point, but Jensen shoots his way through the ground and escapes.

Back at Prichards place he finds Prichard being held at gunpoint by the Juggernaut collective. They offer Jensen a position working with them to take down the Illuminati, but he turns it down and follows his own leads. These leads take him to his old security staff who apparently have a part in the deal of these illegal augs. Sadly the first guy he meets in the bar is killed, so he sets out to track down the man who ordered the hit -- yet another one of his ex staff. This also had a bad outcome. Rather than finding answers, Jensen is knocked out, and the cops are called to pick him up.


The guys who pick Jensen up aren't the cops, but rather the task force. While Jensen doesn't trust them, he realizes he could use them, and that he didn't have much of a choice but to go along with them. The gangsters escaped Sarif with the experimental augs, and the task force wants to stop them just the same as he does. So, Jensen heads to the air port with the team, and they interrupt the deal. Things do go bad of course, and many are killed, but Jensen is able to establish contact with Prichard once again, and he helps him stop a jet from taking off with the augs. Jensen also saves one of the task team members, making the others trust him a little more.

Rather than joining the task force, Jensen heads back home to find more leads on the Illuminati, but instead learns the man who knocked him out has been found dead and is scheduled to be burned as soon as possible. Once again with Prichard help to disrupt traffic, Jensen hijacks the ambulance with the body, and begins work studying the body. Using his cyber eyes, Jensen relives the moments of his death only to find Thorne, the agent who questioned him at the medical center was the one who killed him. He also reads her lips and finds out that the train the task force is on with the augs will be attacked.

Teaming up with juggernaut, Jensen gets on the train and finds it a complete mess. Almost everyone is dead, and Thorne is getting close to getting the augs. After a long battle however, and with the help of one of the lead task force members, Jensen is able to stop some of them, set the train into high gear so that it would crash, and then faces off with Thorne. On his last leg, Jensen uses the Typhoon system to finish her off, and finally escape the train before it crashes -- destroying the augs with it.

At the end of the book Jensen decided to join juggernaut because he's out of options. He has no leads on where the Illuminati are, and he realized the task force may be compromised. The Illuminati (Thorne was an agent) was always a step ahead of the task force, and they even knew about the train. Someone was on the inside, and both Jensen and Juggernaut wanted to find out who.

After Novel Events -
  • Juggernaut asks Jensen to join him. Jensen wants to have nothing to do with them, but since he is out of leads on where to go he decides to accept.
  • Juggernaut has Jensen join the Task Force. Both of them know that someone within the Task Force is dirty, and Jensen becoming a part of it is the only way to flush them out.
  • In the comic (spoilers) Jensen is now a part of the Task Force, but the overseas branch and not the American branch he helped in the game -- although most of them are dead anyway. In this short story, Jensen helps uncover the plans of a group that was kidnapping kids and turning them into human bombs. The leader turns out to be the son of a a man on TV who is completely against augs and is trying to start a revolution against them. The reason for his hate? During the incident his augmented son, who they only augmented to save his life, went crazy and killed his wife. During the final moments of the comic, his son kidnaps him, is about to set off a bomb killing both of them, but is then shot in the head and killed. Afterwards his dad goes back on TV, continues his aug hate, and the story ends -- not so much of a happy ending.

Ending Notes -

Just a few more notes to help you understand the story and what's going on with Jensen.
  • The man the Task Force is hunting down at the start of Mankind Divided (it's intro mission) is the same man who was leading the smuggling ring. He escapes on the plane at the air port when Jensen detaches the augs he was attempting to fly away with.
  • The leader from the American Task Force Unit leaves Jensen an email on his PC in Mankind Divided stating he wished he was a part of his unit and wasn't sure why he was with the overseas branch.
  • The death of characters like Stacks really got to Jensen and further helped drive him to taking down the Illuminati. He's lost too many people because of them, and he will now stop at nothing to bring them down.
  • Prichard left Detroit at the end of the novel, and is not seen in the Mankind Divided base game. While he doesn't exactly say where he'll be going in the novel, he does return in the first DLC released for the game.