Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Thoughts

To say I enjoyed my time with Deus Ex: Human Revolution would be an understatement—with no hesitation do I deem it my favorite in the series, as it hones in on what makes the franchise so remarkable. Gone is the streamlining process that hamstrung Invisible War, the intrepid FPS series finally returns to the rich well of player choice its ancestor had unearthed. Yet it approaches the world of Deus Ex with a more serious tone, concerned with the diametric arguments revolving around governments vs. corporations, technology vs. nature, and traditionalism vs. progressivism. Human Revolution poses complicated questions and constructs excellent gameplay scenarios for you to tinker with; while it does have its fair share of problems, Eidos Montreal's risky debut is a resounding return to form.

I'll start by proclaiming that I really like Adam Jensen. In numerous titles nowadays, the main character serves as a somewhat emotionless vehicle for the player to steer, devoid of much personal baggage in order to ensure the dominance of their puppeteer. Jensen fulfills this to a degree, but he's visibly weighed down by the events that occur in the prologue, tormented by what he's irreversibly lost, as well as what he must regrettably become. Both JC and Alex are skeptical of their positions as pawns, but remain confident and effective at their work; Jensen on the other hand is overwhelmed by his burden, robbed of his spouse and frustrated with his employer. My fondness may be because I'm more drawn towards characters that struggle with their inner demons, but I contest that Jensen is the most fascinating protagonist yet. I found myself easily sympathizing with his struggles, eager to hunt down Megan Reed's attackers and discover the shrouded truth.

Just as the game's predecessors had, the story continues to cleverly imagine what an augmented future might hold. While Human Revolution doesn't engage with philosophy as actively as its older siblings, it utilizes dialogue far more naturally, accentuating the believability of the world. I also appreciate how subtly the conspiratorial elements are handled this time around, the game no longer beating you over the head regarding whom belongs to which faction. The plot does take an unexpected turn towards the end (that would seem even wilder without having played the DLC, a la Mass Effect 3), but everything is fleshed out so nicely with dialogue and in-game text that I walk away very pleased from my time with Human Revolution. Too often when I play a game, the story becomes either negligible or trite, so it's always a delight when I can get engrossed in a virtual narrative.

The return of emails reveals what a boon the electronic exposition is to the story, as their absence from Invisible War was sorely missed. Reading text provides frequent breathers between the tense sleuthing, and it's often interesting or sheds light on the world around you. Unfortunately hacking is probably the worst gameplay system you have to interact with, as (while it seems complicated at first) it's quickly distilled down to dull game of probability. There's no excitement or complexity of choice present here—simply click your way to the exit or restart if things go wrong. It's a shame the game has no option to swipe pocket secretaries from guards, as I would've loved a non-confrontational way to gain access to computers or skip having to hack yet another laser grid panel.

Hacking thankfully remains the only mechanical misstep, as the rest of Human Revolution plays superbly. That's not to say that the shooting is on par with Call of Duty—it clearly isn't—but it works well within the framework of the game, keeping firefights dangerous since Jensen doesn't feel like a one man army. Where the Sarif employee excels is at hand-to-hand combat, pushing the game considerably towards a silent melee focus (which worked well for me). Slipping around the seamless third person cover until you can get behind a man and punch him with both your fists is amazingly satisfying, the takedown animations keeping their luster over all 30 hours of play. My personal philosophy was to use non-lethal force unless innocents were involved, which by that point meant the blade arms would get unsheathed. Man, are those blade arms cool. Occasionally stupid, but always cool.

Complementing the excellent stealth are a variety of avenues you can walk down to complete your mission. Side quests are plentiful and the game constantly addresses multiple play styles, hitting the player with a barrage of "oh, I could've done it this way!" whilst exploring. True, Jensen can end up becoming a solid all-rounder at the end, but you still have to use your wits and inventory to work through any problems you rub up against, which is where the series flourishes best. Plus The Missing Link portion of the game is a great tabula rasa moment, letting you play around with an alternate style of play before the ending.

The game does stumble in a couple other places, most notably in forcing you to revisit the major hub cities. I like Detroit and Lower Hengsha a lot, but the amount of backtracking the game thrusts upon the player is a bit excessive (especially in one specific part of The Missing Link). There's some other iffy parts—the belligerent boss fights, that wall-busting is lethal, and how awkwardly stitched in the DLC is—but for the most part the game's highs outshine its problematic lows. For every instance where the game throws a boring backtracking segment at me it lets me do something cool like chuck a pimp off a roof, and for every headache-inducing boss I'm forced to fight I get an exhilarating moment where I make it through a floor unscathed and/or unseen.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a lot like Deus Ex, except that it's (arguably) more refined. Certain mechanics have changed and some details got lost in the transition, but the modern coating makes it far more palatable. While I appreciate a lot of what the original did, I was unequivocally more excited to sit down and play Human Revolution every time I booted it up. The game stays loyal to its roots, constructing an intriguing world that feels great to play and is ripe with spectacular scenarios. Human Revolution doesn't suffer from standing in the shadow of Deus Ex like Invisible War did—if anything, the series grows stronger for having it attached.

Now that I'm officially a fan of the franchise, I'm greatly anticipating the release of its sequel this August—here's to hoping it lives up to my high expectations!

Deus Ex: Invisible War - Thoughts

[contains minor spoilers]

Having played Deus Ex and its sequel Deus Ex: Invisible War relatively close together, one thing is certain—Invisible War gets a bit of a bum rap. Though it's not nearly as inventive as its predecessor, Invisible War makes a valiant effort to stay loyal to the classic Deus Ex formula while also trying to modernize it in some ways. Of course, the parts where it flounders stick out like a sore thumb, but its certainly not a betrayal to its namesake, nor a black mark on the series... it remains a mostly fun—albeit inferior—entry in the franchise.

Is the game a step down from the original? Yes. Streamlining is a common occurrence among renovated sequels/reboots nowadays (largely due to the necessity of being console-friendly), so it's easy to look back and see how evident the signs were in Invisible War: locations are smaller, the game-space is far more restrictive, the inventory has been simplified, and skills have been outright abandoned. Biomods still play a significant role in the game but you're reduced to only having six of them, with a good portion of the enhancements being entirely passive. And on top of that, the game is far easier to blow through since you can dispatch most humanoids with little effort and gather a squadron's worth of medkits, omni-tools, and biomod canisters.

Yet simplification is not always a bad thing. No longer do you have to meddle in bothersome inventory management or hit pause to turn on several of your biomods for a single attack. A denser environment leads to a more meaningful use of space, and a smaller pool of biomods creates tougher choices on how to augment your character (I was torn between high melee damage and stealth optimization). While I enjoy having an assortment of gameplay options available to me, I can also appreciate how Invisible War cuts straight to the point. It may be too harsh of a cut at times—there's fewer NPCs for world-building and every "alternate path" is sadly brief—but for the most part, the direction Ion Storm took here makes sense.

Again, this is not to say I loathed the unrestrictive nature of the first game; the most memorable parts of Deus Ex were where I backed myself into a corner and had to puzzle out how my melee build could survive. By contrast, most of Invisible War's problems were solved by oafishly thwacking someone over the noggin, rendering them unconscious in one or two blows. The game also slips up by making combat against some highly armored enemies mandatory in a couple of sections, forcing me to forego my nonlethal tendencies and utilize explosive ordnance. I may have been disappointed that playing the first game as a pacifist was so difficult, but Invisible War exacerbates this problem to a ludicrous degree. To add to the list of frustrations, the AI is pretty mindless, the combat feels dated, by 2003 standards, and friendlies become aggressive due to strange circumstances (like if you happen upon a random spiderbot). Never would I argue that the gameplay design of this entry trumps the first.

Invisible War is also not as long as its predecessor, clocking out to nearly half of its length. This was somewhat of a blessing since the game didn't have long enough legs to support such a grandiose adventure, though it nevertheless remains an appetizer to Deus Ex's entree. Thankfully the plot was surprisingly robust—I came out satisfied with where the story went and the direction each faction took. True, it's idiotic that Saman was far more shallow and atavistic than he first appeared to be (I thought he'd be more Marx and less Spanish Inquisition), but I felt the direction taken with JC's side was superb, since the Helios merger was clearly a questionable choice. The only downside to the narrative I can think of was that it wasn't well supported with the text found throughout the world (sure did find a lot of coffee books [and yes, I get the metaphor]), yet I still enjoyed the story just as much as the first.

After landing in Cairo, I soon came across a checkpoint in the South Medina. What was striking about this checkpoint wasn't just that the SSC guard was a woman, but on her desk was a picture of her husband, as denoted by the text hovering over it. I thought to myself, "See, this is the kind of creative flair that adds to the world and gives even the lowliest enemy some personality." One mission later, that guard (and only that guard) had been aggro'd for some reason I couldn't comprehend (did the camera above the checkpoint not like me?), so I had to avoid that spot for the rest of the game. I feel this perfectly captured the dualistic nature of Invisible War: on one hand you have a cool follow-up to one of the greatest PC games of yore, but on the other... it sure can be dumb about stuff.
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Images obtained from: visualwalkthroughs.com

Deus Ex - Thoughts

[contains spoilers]

Every now and then you may hear this sentiment: "I wish I could forget all about [certain piece of media] so I could experience it all over again." In that sense, there's an ironic fortune than one cannot appreciate when touching a revered classic for the very first time. Deus Ex is one of those well-regarded masterpieces that I had played a bit of as a teen, but never completed: the game felt clunky and aimless, while the gunplay was lackluster and getting spotted meant instant-death. I mean sure, having branching power-ups is cool and all, but this was no Half-Life... were my thoughts at the time.

So that's why it was important for me to revisit it in 2015 and go beyond the first few NYC missions; I needed to understand what made Ion Storm's dystopian cyber-future special and why people would give their left arm just to play it all over again with a fresh set of eyes.

Alright, so Deus Ex is goofy. It has a really solid foundation that actively encourages you to play to your skills, meaning that you should pick a few traits and hone those. Whereas in my first playthrough as an adolescent I went into areas with guns blazing, I decided to go for the stealthy takedown approach this time, utilizing the police baton and dart gun. Since I wanted to bring down my foes with melee combat as fast as possible, I focused on upgrading my hand-to-hand training first, and then pumped points into other abilities to help me navigate around the world (lockpicking, electronics, hacking). I tried my best to commit to a non-lethal playstyle, but the game pushed back hard against me—how are you supposed to tranq a cyborg?! So, being a stealth-amateur, I had to abandon my pacifist ways at the ocean base and unleash the might of the Dragon Claw laser sword.

Where the game gets silly is mostly during the spontaneous little moments you don't expect. The first explosive LAM I used destroyed a door and the unconscious body of a guard through a solid wall, thus ending my no-kill run quite early. When you use gas grenades on enemies, any damage you do to them will break them out of their "wiping face" animation cycle and allow them to shoot at you for a split second, before they realize their eyes hurt and return to rubbing. At Versalife I (in plain sight mind you) freed a bum and some dinosaurs from their cages, and while everyone in the entire facility panicked I stole a handful of augmentation enhancements. In Paris I asked a hobo for directions, thinking I had dodged the nearby patrolling guards, but mid-conversation a cyborg ran up to me with his guns primed, forcing me to panic-click through the rest of the dialogue before dying swiftly thereafter. And I shall never forget the glorious duel I had with the game's major antagonist Walton Simons, where I paused the game, activated my augmentations, and... defeated him in a single attack. Whose augs are outdated now?!

Oh, and you end up joining the Illuminati and fighting Roswell-looking aliens (which may or may not be enhanced apes) in Area 51.

And the stun prod animation is hilarious.

This is not to undermine the game's accomplishments—rather, they compliment them. Deus Ex is hailed as a pioneer of player choice, and nothing makes that more evident than when you're brushing up against its systems in a unique way (like with my Versalife experience). And the non-emergent aspects of the game that are comical—like the Chinese & French voice acting—don't necessarily interrupt the flow of gameplay or break the immersion either. The game is wacky at times, but you can still approach it with a serious demeanor and easily get invested in its cyber-conspiracies. It was cool that the story revolved around a world already knee-deep in augmentations, and I thought its portrayal of how the shift to industry left multitudes of the poor behind to rot was brilliant. The dialogue was also great for the gamut of topics that get covered, though occasionally weird in its delivery and brevity.

If there is one thing I can grill the game for, it's that the augmentations are bound to the horrendous function keys. I know this is before the days of weapon wheels and the like, but having to reach for F3 to dampen damage in the heat of battle never worked out in my favor; the amount damage enemies can do to you in this game is pretty insane, so being nimble on your powers is a must. While you can pause and activate your upgrades independently, this slows the gameplay down considerably and makes what should be a central mechanic to the game a chore. On the flipside, I did enjoy how useful these powers were and that the game forces you to choose between two distinct abilities for each body part.

Something else that surprised me was that the game isn't as open as I thought it was—there's only about 2-3 "routes" for each area. It's not really a grievance per se, but I didn't have the inclination to try and run through the game with a different "build" when I finished, especially since I thoroughly explored every map during my playthrough. Thankfully, the staggering amount of missions and places you'll visit provide a great sense of variation, and even as a linearly-crafted story, it remains thoroughly engaging all the way to the end. My favorite moment was in the chapel, where I read about Gunther crying all alone in the basement and festering in his anger towards me for the murder of Agent Navarre (it was self-defense!)—I actually pitied the poor lug. I mean I still wound up killing him (it was self-defense!), but it served as an effective, emotional story beat that made me detest MJ12 that much more.

While debating philosophy with the bartender you see in the screen above, I came upon the realization that Deus Ex really was doing something really unique at the time. What I failed to appreciate as a teenager wasn't just how robust and customizable the mechanics were, but how adventurous the game's spirit was. Nowadays it's easy to get spoiled by the saturation of RPG systems in FPSs and stories about government conspiracies centered on technological advancement, but it was a novel combination back in 2000 before the likes of Morrowind or Metal Gear Solid 2 were known. In that sense, that's why the droll moments of the game only add to its charm and luster—few other games were brave enough to attempt something as wild as this. And not only did Deus Ex pull it off, but its legacy can still be appreciated (and enjoyed!) by today's standards as well.

... So now with the original under my belt, Invisible War has to naturally follow, right?