Cassandra De Vries is the CEO of the dataDyne corporation and one of the antagonists of Perfect Dark.
Biography[]
Perfect Dark[]
Cassandra De Vries helps the undercover Skedar in what she believes is an attempt to raise the Cetan ship from the Pacific Ocean floor, in exchange for vast amounts of alien technology to make dataDyne become the biggest corporation in the face of the Earth. To this end, she has dataDyne create the AI Dr. Caroll. She also enlists the help of NSA Director Trent Easton, who continuously tries to persuade the U.S. President into lending dataDyne the deep sea vessel Pelagic II.
Trent is unable to convince the President, dataDyne soon stole the Pelagic II, and used it to descend to the sunken Cetan Ship. Joanna Dark and Elvis follows, and discovers that the Skedar actually intended on betraying dataDyne; Their real intention was to fire a superweapon stored on the ship, meant to destroy Earth as a test before doing the same for the Maians. Joanna foils their plans and destroys the ship.
The Skedar, particularly Mr. Blonde, seen in the bonus mission Mr. Blonde's Revenge, soon decided to abduct Cassandra, seeking justice for her failures in helping them (and likely betrayal). In the end, she and Joanna are imprisoned in the Skedar assault ship, where she ultimately sacrifices herself to allow Joanna to escape, because this is her "best chance for revenge" and claims the Skedar simply used her.
Personality[]
As the head of dataDyne, Cassandra is highly addicted to power and dislikes being anybody's underling (as seen with Mr. Blonde). She hates it when she loses the initiative, and is prepared to do extremely unscrupulous things in order to get ahead of her competition, to discourage Daniel Carrington, whom she loathes. Cassandra and Carrington themselves were once lovers, exchanged information and together created the flying vehicles. Cassandra made them safe, in order to avoid incidents, like the one which killed his seven-year-old brother.
As they once had a relationship, Cassandra has been deeply affected by Carrington's betrayal in Perfect Dark Zero when he used her to locate Joanna Dark in Hong Kong, claiming Jo to be a bounty hunter who, according to Carrington, knows whether her predecessor Zhang Li (the founder of dataDyne) is still alive.
Trivia[]
- In dataDyne Central: Extraction, during the surprise assault by her bodyguards, Cassandra can be seen wearing a Shield. If the player is fast enough to reach her before she walks off and disappears, she will remain near the helipad and it is possible to continue to shoot her after destroying her Shield. She cannot be killed, but can appear wounded for a humorous effect in the ending cutscene, especially if one uses Combat Knives or the Crossbow (though this requires cheats).
- Cassandra wears a necklace that serves as an important tool for Joanna's missions in dataDyne's headquarters, as is in fact a key used to open the elevator to enter the underground labs. It is also linked to her life source; if she dies, it will cease to function (and fails the mission). In the Attack Ship mission, she has a replacement of her original necklace, which this can also be taken on Perfect Agent difficulty although it has no purpose whatsoever.
- When running full speed, as seen in Mr. Blonde's Revenge, Cassandra shares the same animation as Natalya Simonova from GoldenEye 007.
- According to Hacker Central about her biography, Cassandra De Vries is 39 years old. Her previous relationship with Daniel Carrington is questionable, as the Institute's CEO is 62 years of age. However, it is possible that Cassandra was supposed to be older and the age itself is an oversight, as Joanna taunted her in the ending cutscene of dataDyne Central: Extraction saying "old woman". Her character model strongly implies her to be middle-aged.
- De Vries is taller than average compared to most other human characters in the game, with only Mr. Blonde being in a greater height.
- Cassandra's sacrificing death by the Skedar, in Attack Ship: Convert Assault, appears to be herself being scared to death, as after her first scream in the intro, she can be seen running for a brief period, before shrieking again and then suddenly dies, often before a Skedar Warrior reaches her location. The scream heard is actually a stock sound effect from The Generals Series 6000 Sound Effects Library. Also, it is possible to shoot and kill Cassandra as she runs, though weaponry cheats are required to perform and must be done quickly by the player. If the Enemy Shields cheat is enabled, De Vries will still scream but remain standing (though loses her Shield) until she is killed by the player, a Co-Op Perfect Buddy, or Elvis. Surprisingly, the Skedar Warriors will ignore her.