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| “ | Can't believe you f-cked up so badly Kilo, what happened to you man? | „ |
| ~ Agent Merit questioning Miles Kilo why he screwed up so bad and wondering why he failed the mission. |
Jules Merit is the secondary antagonist of the 2012 video game Syndicate. Although he initially takes the role of a supporting protagonist, he was always portrayed as a villainous teammate and was sent to kill Miles Kilo after he betrayed EuroCorp.
He was voiced by Michael Wincott, who is known for his many villainous roles including Top Dollar in The Crow, Philo Gant in Strange Days, Michael Korda in Metro, Guy of Gisbourne in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and Scroop in Treasure Planet. In video games, he voiced the Prophet of Truth in Halo 2, and Mr. Big in NARC.
Biography[]
Background[]
Merit was found by EuroCorp on the streets of New Jersey in the year 2046, and was recovered to become a future asset to the corporation, a mega-corporation known as a Syndicate, that distributed data chips that cybernetically enhance the user and allow access to the Dataverse, rendering all electronic devices obsolete. He was noted to be more feral due to his life on the streets, and was believed to be a promising agent due to his high measures of psychopathic deviations that were estimated to be necessary for a successful agent. He officially became an agent in 2057, a pawn in serving the interests of EuroCorp in corporate warfare among other Syndicates. Half of the global population were "chipped" with data chips, which granted access to the Dataverse that replaced the Internet.
Presumably ten years after becoming an agent involved in corporate warfare between Syndicates, involving sabotage, espionage, and violence, he became the right-hand man to CEO Jack Denham. He possessed extreme loyalty to Denham, and a thirst for blood. During this time, Miles Kilo became a new agent for EuroCorp in 2064, and was stated to have a bright future by Denham. Merit had faith that Kilo wouldn't be so useless, and became his captain. The difference between them was that Kilo wasn't an orphan, and new, experimental technology would be used on Kilo.
Syndicate[]
Mission 1: Wakeup Call[]
After Agent Miles Kilo passes a simulation with excellent marks, Denham and Merit arrive to take Kilo out of lead engineer Lily Drawl's custody. Dr. Drawl is the creator of EuroCorp's newest bio-chip, the DART-6, and after seeing Kilo's success, Denham believes that the new technology is ready for mass implementation. Merit believes that Kilo is ready to accompany him, and calls him "a real prodigy". Merit becomes Kilo’s captain and orders Kilo to follow him and prove how useful he really is on their newest assignment.
Mission 2: Assault on Aspari[]
The CEO noted that a rival syndicate named Aspari is developing a new bio-chip that is too similar to the DART-6. Merit leads Kilo to assassinate Aspari lead engineer Gary Chang. While aboard the dropship, Merit preps Kilo to assassinate Chang and steal his chip, while he tries to access the mainframe to find out what information they have. After the dropship lands, Merit heads to the elevator in front of them and kills two workers with his pistol in an instant. Shortly after, he contacts Kilo and claims that he already disabled the alarms. Chang commits suicide at the sight of Kilo, and their mission becomes a success. However, they both must find a way to get back to the dropship, and by then security was alerted to their presence. The dropship was destroyed and they had to find another way to escape.
Mission 3: Aspari Extraction[]
Merit tells Kilo to come to the train station so that they can finally leave. On the way, he hears from an encrypted conversation that Lily Drawl was the one who had leaked information to Aspari, the one who also developed the DART-6. Before they escape, they now know what their next mission is going to be after they escape.
Mission 4: A Train to Catch[]
After Kilo arrives at the train station, the two agents eliminate the onslaught of hostiles until the train arrives. When Merit attempts to hijack it, a rival agent appears and stuns Merit. The agent fights Kilo and loses. Once Tatsuo was defeated, Kilo pried the heavy train doors open with his hands and finds Merit sitting on the ground waiting for him. Merit then tells him that Tatsuo fried his chip, and was disappointed in himself for allowing a low-grade agent to get the jump on him. Nevertheless, he showed great skill in murdering the helpless people on the train, headshotting every single passenger with his pistol as he casually walked past them all. He knocks on the door of the train's locomotive and pretends to be an Aspari security officer, and then kills the man who answers the door. After that, Kilo employs hacking to change the train's destination.
Misson 5: Escape From Los Angeles[]
Merit does not appear in this mission, as he is resting while Kilo takes care of the Aspari counter-forces both inside and outside the train.
Mission 6: EuroCorp[]
Finally back home at EuroCorp headquarters, Denham has a polite conversation with Kilo while Dr. Drawl and Dr. Calico repair Merit's chip functionality and resuscitate him with a giant syringe to the chest. Denham orders Merit and Kilo to keep Lily under surveillance, while he prepares a "package" to convince Drawl to stay, since she is the lead engineer and too valuable to eliminate.
Mission 7: Voyeur Central[]
Kilo observes Lily in her apartment while Merit surveys the surroundings, ready to act if anything goes wrong. The two of them unlawfully spy on her as she talks on the phone with a friend named Symonne, and then has an argument with her ex-boyfriend, Kris. She is then suddenly kidnapped by the rival syndicate Cayman-Global for unknown reasons. Merit launches a zipline from the building they're on to Lily's apartment room window, and orders Kilo to get on it and follow Cayman back to their dropship. Merit supports from a sniping position as Kilo works on retrieving Lily at all cost.
Betrayal[]
At the Downzone, where Lily takes Kilo after she unexpectedly rescues him from Ramón Rios at Cayman Global's HQ, Lily betrays Kilo and sends him into a trap by activating multiple EMP bombs on a bridge he crosses. He falls from a great height and is greeted by forces of Kris Delaney's resistance. After killing Kris and being confronted by Lily who asks Kilo to kill her too if he really is a cyperpsychotic sentient weapon, she is relieved when Kilo defies his programming to be used as a tool for murder, and doesn't pull the trigger. Merit finally arrives on a ship and presumably sees Kilo defy his orders to either kill or capture her, and stuns them both with a grenade. Merit and his crew successfully capture Lily and Kilo.
Death[]
Back at EuroCorp HQ, Agent Merit and CEO Denham believe Kilo to be brain dead, and asks Dr. Calico to reboot him. Lily had been restrained and was being tortured by Merit until Dr. Calico arrives. After Kilo wakes up from his procedure, he breaks his restraints and chokes Dr. Calico, but doesn't kill him. He then hacks the security cameras and watches Merit harass Lily, and breaks her out of her restraints once Merit left. Seeing that Kilo is not the agent he was hoping he'd be, and that Lily is having a conflict of interests, Denham decides to activate the kill switch on Lily and Kilo to terminate them. Meanwhile, Cayman Global are launching an assault on EuroCorp, and Denham decides to spend the time in his office for unknown reasons.
When Lily and Kilo go to prevent Denham from activating their kill switch, Merit arrives with heavy armor and a minigun, with help from twin agents Webb and Strong. He destroys the platform Kilo is standing on and shoots Kilo from a distance while the twins attempt to dispose of Kilo. Kilo manipulates the collapsible cover to his advantage and outperforms the twins in combat, prompting Merit to come down and take care of him himself. Kilo was able to hack his Reactive Armor enough times to deactivate its invulnerability shields, and take advantage of the cover surrounding him to defeat Merit. Before he is able to take his chip, Merit grabs his arm and begins to brutally assault him and push Kilo through a wall and punch him repeatedly. Due to not being at full strength anymore, Kilo manages to push him away and knock him to the ground, and repeatedly punch him in the face with enough force to kill him.
Personality[]
Data log entries strongly hint that Merit is a high-functioning psychopath. He is a high-ranking agent of EuroCorp and reportedly an expert at leading operations against rival syndicate Aspari. From the player's perspective, Merit is a calm man that talks in a deep, raspy voice, who does things without a consideration for morals. He is an experienced killer who shows no hesitation whatsoever in murdering men, women, and children alike when necessitated. He is even seen casually killing innocent people on missions even though they are not significant targets. He enjoys killing people and causing unnecessary collateral damage.
Dataverse Information[]
Psychopathic deviations seemed to feed well into the basic training, making him highly competitive and intensely task focused; he was rapidly elevated to the Advanced Agent Training crèche in Geneva as a result. Field trials at age fourteen - London and Budapest - confirmed him as well ahead of the psychopathy/competence curve necessary for successful Agent status.
Merit's enduring diamond-focus psychopathic tendencies and childhood lack of a father figure, have engendered a close bond with the director Denham. careful tending of this bond should yield a samurai-like willingness to obey without question and regardless of outcome; put simply, Merit will already cheerfully kill men, women or children on Denham's order; with a little extra psychological management, he should be prepared equally cheerfully to die for him.
Quotes[]
| “ | Well well Dr. Famous Lily Drawl. | „ |
| ~ Agent Merit's first quote in the game. |
| “ | It's showtime. | „ |
| ~ When Agent Merit and Kilo got off the helicopter. |
| “ | Sorry Kilo, like the man says, gotta get with the program. | „ |
| ~ Agent Merit betraying Kilo. |
| “ | You're just a pile of meat with a crappy chip. | „ |
| ~ When Kilo defeated The Twins and his final quote of the game before his defeat. |
Powers and Abilities[]
Like half the global population, Merit is cybernetically enhanced by a neurally implanted chip, allowing him access to the Dataverse. The Dataverse is an unexplained cyperpunk concept that is presumably a replacement for the Internet that "chipped" people can always access. Agents such as Merit know how to hack the Dataverse, which is presumably the link to all electronics. As an agent, Merit is able to hack electronic devices as well as other people with neurally implanted chips that are not agent. He is an expert cracker who was competent enough to hack the mainframe of Aspari's headquarters, something that even the precocious protagonist would likely not be able to do.
Not much is known about his abilities as an agent, other than that he is adept with firearms and his expert hacking skills. He is seen to be capable at both sniping, aiming and headshotting a dozen people with a pistol with inhuman speed and accuracy, and even employing a minigun in a gunfight. These feats prove how proficient he is with firearms, but he has no feats that demonstrate any notable agility. Not much is known about his abilities as an agent other than that. Ironically, even though Merit is supposed to be a high-ranking agent, other low-grade agents prove to be just as dangerous as him, and he was bested by a low-grade agent named Tatsuo. Since he was also defeated by Kilo, it is likely that even as a high-ranking agent, his technology may be dated. However, Denham treats Merit as one of his most important personnel, so it is still unknown how powerful he is compared to the average agent.
[]
 Villains
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EuroCorp Cayman Global Aspari Others | ||
External Link[]
- Jules Merit on the Syndicate Wiki
- Jules Merit on the Heroes Wiki