Deus Ex voice actor Elias Toufexis bids goodbye to Adam Jensen and calls the games industry "a disaster zone"

Elias Toufexis, voice actor for Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Mankind Divided's cyborg protagonist Adam Jensen, has bid a formal "goodbye, but hopefully not farewell" to the character, expressing hopes that somebody with a lot of money will buy the license and restore poor moody Adam to our screens. Toufexis also shared a few parting speculations about the unannounced Deus Ex sequel from Eidos Montreal that was reported cancelled last week. Toufexis wasn't involved with this one, and according to him, it likely wasn't a continuation of Jensen's story from Mankind Divided.

All that's from a Reddit thread in which Toufexis expressed gratitude to fans of his signature rasp and (by his own account) extravagant track record of getting killed in movies. "As for Jensen, we say goodbye, but hopefully not farewell," he added. "Maybe someone else will buy the license. Maybe we'll make an animated series or finish the game. Elon Musk is a big fan, I think he has some money. Someone ask him!" (Please don't.)

"As you guys all know, Jensen is one of the characters I've played who is near and dear to my heart," Toufexis went on. "It seems I will always be associated with him and that's just fine with me.

"Alas, his story seems done. I'm relatively certain the game that was cancelled was not an Adam Jensen story, so the cancellation angers me more than anything else because friends at Eidos got laid off. Videogame companies right now are in a weird place. I hope it gets straightened out."

Toufexis also revealed on TwiX that another game he's been working on has been cancelled, while a third project has been rebooted. He also touched on the industry's on-going mass layoffs - an estimated 5900 developers have already lost their jobs this year, as publishers trim their books after spending big during the boom period created by pandemic lockdown conditions. "It's the firing of hundreds that's hitting hard these days," Toufexis wrote. "Over and over."

Eidos Montreal's unannounced Deus Ex game was apparently in the works for two years. Reports of the cancellation landed alongside news that the studio would lay off 97 people as part of on-going "restructuring" at debt-ridden Embracer, who bought Eidos Montreal in 2022. At the time, Embracer said they saw potential for Deus Ex sequels, remakes and spinoffs, but that was during the lockdown boom and before the reported collapse of a $2 billion investment deal with Savvy Games. Embracer deleted 900 jobs last year and seem hell-bent on beating their record this year.

I hadn't quite realised till reading Toufexis's thread above how much I miss Adam Jensen, with his razor-sharp goatee, artfully panelled jackets and bevy of pop-out appliances. Do you remember doing your first Typhoon cluster bomb multikill in Human Revolution? Embracer appear to be doing much the same to all the studios under their watch - walking through the door and spraying pink slips in all directions.