I cannot forgive Ion Storm for what they did to JC in Invisible War.
*spoilers*
In Deus Ex I made a point of staying loyal to Tracer Tong and Paul. I went for the Dark Age scenario. Obviously that was undone by having JC merged with Helios come Invisible War. But fair enough; I had the imagination to presume Helios re-routed its systems before the A-51 'incident' and somehow convinced JC to merge. This also meant JC had miraculously escaped to the surface.
So, as Alex D(enton), in order to fulfil my vision of the original and see it come to fruition I would have to join Al Qaeda.....I mean the Templars. There was no way I was going to do that, so I allied myself with Chad, traitorous bastard, belieiving this to be the best way.
Come the final act in Invisible War. Whatever you think of that game, if you truly loved Deus Ex you can't have helped but have been moved to be back on Liberty Island. Going through the decrepit ruins of UNATCO was particularly haunting for me. I felt like a ghost. I heard echoes in my own mind from the original; conversations, friendships forged and lost, the harrowing escape, watching Gunther explode ('I asked for lemon lime....it gave me orange'), and so forth.
Then wiping out the Templars was extremely satisfying.
But I was ultimately left with the most emotional experience I've had in gaming. I had to kill my 'big brother'. The bionic super being I'd created in the original, whose actions were pissed on by Ion Storm. The final face-off with him and Paul made me feel sick, but there was no way I was going to allow their vision for humanity come to pass. So, with this feckless half-wit Alex, who I had no affection for, I went on to kill JC, Paul and the greys....who were all goodness itself (whose goal I just couldn't subscribe to), to get the Illuminati ending.
Sure, if they made a sequel to IW it would likely use that ending (JC's doesn't seem doable), but it left my fabulous experience with the initial Deus Ex utterly degraded.
I will get HR but only to play it out. Regardless of how that one ends, ultimately it doesn't change the fact I killed JC. JC, the man who went against the ethos I'd given him (or maybe vice-versa). Kind of reminded me of the journey you went through with Ripley in Aliens, only for them to kill off her crew at the start of the third.