Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Deus Ex: Human Revolution (released in 2011 by Eidos Montreal) is a bold re-imagining of the genre defining mix of first person shooting, stealth, hacking, exploration and decision making that the original PC game was known for. I recently decided to play HR in anticipation for the sequel Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. This is my first Deus Ex game but I’m intimately aware of the effect the original had on the gaming landscape over time. The ability to approach takes any way you like in a sandbox environment and face the consequences of you actions is something games have been influenced by for a long time now, including titles like Bioshock and Dishonored among many others. Even if you haven’t played a Deus Ex game before, you really have. The open approach to level design and gameplay choice is just as important as your decisions having weight and having consequences for your actions. It’s clear that Eidos took these core aspects that the original was known for to heart when designing the first game in the franchise in over half a decade.

The most noticeable thing about the ‘reboot’ is it’s the art style. Gone is the original’s deep fried, matrix era black & blue colour scheme, all dark glasses and leather coats. That look feels outdated so it’s good that they discarded it and made something utterly unique. Luxurious style is evident in everything from the renaissance France influenced costume design to the design of ordinary household items. The unrelenting gold makes its way into every inch of the game, providing a cohesive aesthetic that bridges different areas of the game from Detroit to Hengsha. They’ve managed to create a lot of variety within the ‘monogold’ colour palette. I can’t say my eyes were ever tired due primarily to the world being jam packed with detail, no corner seems the same. Offices aren’t blank boxes, instead brimming with personality, scrapped notes, pens and pencils strewn, computer terminals, coffee stains and signs of abandonment. This level of detail is remarkably consistent throughout although obviously more prominent in the populated cities than military bases.

So what’s the story with Deus Ex? The game takes place in the year 2027, 20 odd years before the first game where political confrontations and riots regarding human augmentations are freshly explored from an earlier date than the original, at the same rate as our protagonist Adam Jenson. Adam is ex-S.W.A.T. with a nebulous past, now working as a private contractor for augmentation company Sarif Industries. When the Sarif Industries is attacked by pro-human radicals, Adam is severely wounded, requiring some serious Robocop type augmentation to get him up and running again. My first impression of Adam was negative (Oh no, not another gruff voiced military white dude with no personality!). Well, despite the fact that he sounds like he smokes 50 a day, I grew to like him over the course of them game, maybe because he’s me following my choices and actions, maybe because what little depth is later revealed about him added much needed backstory to his character. The most memorable character moments for me were from Adam’s relationship with his pilot Malik and his boss David Sarif. They seemed to have genuinely interesting motivations, not merely there to move the story along or serve you but have their own business separate from you and the plot. The first moral question asked of you is whether your boss was right to make the decision to augment you to save you, whether there was any other way, whether he went too far by implementing some seriously deadly weaponry. It sets your way of thinking for the rest of the game.

Moral choices make this game and they’re some of the best I’ve seen, putting Bioshock’s binary save or harvest the little sisters’ choice to shame. Discussions with the social enhancer augmentation provide the most compelling conversations since L.A. Noire, focusing on great direction, solid voice acting from the secondary cast and a careful balance of dialogue choices and consequences just obvious enough not to be unfair whilst feeling fluid and unpredictable. Upon entering certain conversations you will automatically detect aspects of their personality, giving you important information about whether they’re likely to respond to pressure, for example. You’re told whether they’re more of an alpha, beta or omega personality type which informs how you can use special pheromones to influence them.

An early conversation on with a demoted policeman, ex-S.W.A.T., now working as a pencil pusher at the police station was one of the most memorable conversational moments and one even the developers are especially proud of. He was demoted after an incident both he and Adam were involved with but he took all the blame which makes him feel understandable frustrated when you confront him about illegally allowing you into the morgue to continue one of your investigations.

I messed this one up, made him too angry by making it feel like I was dragging up his past. I thought I was done for but then heard him mention that he takes drugs to deal with his stress, some are visible in the bin in the background. Bingo, I feel a like an asshole when I use his medication to blackmail him into letting me by, but what are you going to do? There’s even a moment later in the game when he confronts you again and depending on your actions, condemns or compliments you. It’s a small moment but combined with all the others it makes for a more overall involving world. The conversations have somuch depth that I wish there were more of them instead of the myriad of similar e-mails you gain access to from the hundreds of hackable terminals designed to bulk out the lore of the world. It gets tiring having story delivered via e-mails, PDAs and eBooks most of the time, even if a lot of that stuff is interesting.

The game will often react in interesting ways depending on how you prod it. I tried to use pheromones to affect a conversation with my pilot Malik but was quickly shut down when she realised my trick, of course she would, I’m a private contractor, ex-S.W.A.T., highly augmented and working for an aug company! Another example of the game exhibiting dynamic situations where others wouldn’t bother is an early sequence where you are free to explore Sarif’s offices before flying off to solve a hostage situation in the factory. However, you are continuously pressured by your boss David Sarif to hurry up or the situation will worsen. I, trained by many games to perceive this as mere scripted dialogue used to create a fake sense of tension, assumed there wouldn’t be consequences and that the game was putting up a facade. I was dead wrong as I realised when I arrived in the factory to find that I was too late to save a bunch of hostages from a chemical bomb. As annoyed as I was, I couldn’t help but hand it to them for having the balls to really commit to the Deus Ex method of giving you logical consequences for your actions.

But aside from these stand out moments of “oh, look I really do affect the world!” the core gameplay loop is a little more familiar. The game is structured by combining hub areas like the cities of Detroit and Hengsha with mission specific contained areas. This confused me at first. It’s not a consistent open world, rather a series of sandbox environments which cannot be returned to once you move on. The size of the tighter missions means that they aren’t as compelling in terms of exploration and freedom but there’s enough sandbox content here to please fans of the original. Depending on your play style you’ll be sneaking through pipes and tranquilising guards, hacking robots to turn on your enemies or just shooting your way through the game. Although there’s no one way to play, there are clearly more ‘optimal’ and more enjoyable ways to go about it. Pure shooting is the weakest method, there’s nothing wrong with it but it doesn’t make you approach levels in a thoughtful manner (what’s behind this grate? can I sneak in through the roof? if only I were to hack that terminal to turn off the cameras), instead rushing you quickly by all of the interesting stuff. There are a variety of weapons at your disposal from stun guns and tranquiliser rifles to crossbows and machine guns. A hybrid cover system is used, as you approach cover in first person you can snap to cover, transitioning to third person. It works smoothly and elevates it slightly from being just and average shooter as well as giving you a much needed perspective for stealth.

It’s most rewarding to play stealthily in my opinion. Utilising the myriad of vents and secret areas is fun, especially when combined with the computer terminals which can be hacked to allow turrets, cameras and robots to be messed with or reveal both e-mails regarding anything from people braking into offices to codes for locked doors.

A problem many have encountered with the hacking gameplay loop is that it’s self-serving and clearly the optimal way to earn XP. When you hack a computer and discover a code for a locked door you think to yourself, why would I use the code? I hacked this terminal which means I’ve invested in hacking praxis kits (points used to upgrade and unlock augmentations) to increase my hacking level, plus hacking grants me more XP and therefore praxis kits. It’s a good thing that the hacking mini-game is fun then! Mixing speed with multitasking to capture nodes within a time limit to reach the round thing, which I’m sure is how hacking works in the real world. There are other ways to go about unlocking things including rare auto-hack devices and codes hidden in PDAs in the environment (people are seriously forgetful and disorganised in Deus Ex). It stays true to the open ended method of game design but I just wish the balancing was fairer to support all the methods of play on offer.

The most unbalanced aspect of gameplay is undoubtedly the boss fights. The game encourages you to play how you like, sneak, hack or shoot throughout the game but then hits you with a bullet sponge boss in a small room with no methods for taking them down except one on one combat. A great shame as there are plenty of ways they could have worked your desired play style into each fight. Vents leading to higher ground, hackable security bots, weak spots and so on. There’s even some evidence of cut content from a boss fight against an augmented lady, it’s hinted at in a pre-rendered cut-scene that you can choose to spare her yet when you return to gameplay, lies there dead. You’re forced to kill bosses even if you’re on a pacifist playthrough. There’s a lot of potential for the sequel to improve upon.

It’s clear that with all the time and effort put into envisioning the game and world from the ground up, some things had to be cut. Things like a large sequence in the game when Jenson is captured, which was later sold as the DLC The Missing Link and included in the Director’s cut edition. Without the sequence some events are a little confusing but its integration into the main story in the Director’s cut feels disjointed due to its slow pace and diversion from the main story (presumably designed so that it could be played separately as DLC). It reminds me of the cut chapter from the first Gears of War involving a brumack and transportation of a bomb which was later included in the PC version of the game. It felt odd with it missing but its inclusion made it clear that it was added later.

All the decision making and freedom within sandbox gameplay pays off as you are rewarded with several different endings depending on your actions. Unfortunately it’s a binary choice providing you with one of several ending cut scenes instead of a complex footer to your story offering call-backs to every choice you made like Fallout: New Vegas. It’s disappointing that you can’t bring Human Revolution game saves into Mankind Divided to carry your choices over although understandable as the ending are strikingly different, some impossible to continue.

It’s a game that wears its ambition (and its flaws) on its sleeve, for better or for worse. The scars of what could have been are visible within the lackluster boss fights and more restrictive sequences and features of the game but they don’t prevent Human Revolution from being the best re-imagining of the dormant series that could have been hoped for, it’s in good hands now.