In a fractured America ruled by mega-corporations and government combines, Deus Ex: Human Revolution asks one question: What does it mean to be more than human?
The hacking function is actually the best of the three games (the less said of DE: Invisible War the better), adding an element of interactivity and timing challenge, whereas a finite number of marketable lockpicks were previously used to essentially break through tricky areas. Eidos Montreal has decided to streamline the method of entry to doors and computers into one mini-game, with an opportunity to find bonus credits, for those with the time. There are ways to break these locks in a brute force manner, with relatively few essential hacks necessary to complete the game. However, there are hundreds of such minigames, many of which require deviating from the obvious path.
The people of Detroit, Shanghai, Singapore, and the many guards of different scenarios, are excellently modelled and have a great deal to say for themselves. Dialogue is mostly of an incidental, overheard nature and often rewards a player’s discretion in potentially hostile situations. Street life, from the belligerent businessmen to the augmentation-sick and homeless drunks, adds much to the background text found on datapads scattered throughout the world. Monofilament free sheets seem an elegant solution for the newspapers of tomorrow, just as widespread media monopolisation and corporate pressures seem not to. The breadth of reading material doesn’t quite hit the heights of Thomases Paine and Pynchon, but there are enough tidbits and flirting foreshadows of the original Deus Ex to satisfy. One man on a derelict street, whistling the original’s main theme, was a particular joy.
One Deus Ex legacy that does irk is the varying quality of the hostile AI. Having seen the protagonist, raised the alarm, and fired a few shots at him, sentries, turrets and cameras take only a few minutes to “cool off” from their hostile state and cease looking for Denton. As welcome as this is in the default difficulty setting, the guard behaviour grates with the rapidity and lethality of their armed response on first seeing the player. During one encounter, where I didn’t have the skill or patience to sneak through a police station to recover a dead man’s brain implant, I triggered the alarm system several times and began a sequence of hiding in an air vent between two toilets. I could see the feet and legs of a dozen police at each exit, who soon became convinced I was no longer there. This would have been well and good, were it not for their refusal to leave the toilets and go back to work. For every “memorable” moment of AI interaction, however, there are several setpieces which are on a par with hide-em-up high watermarks, like Metal Gear Solid, Splinter Cell and Thief.Box-nicking exerciseJust as there is a small but partisan crowd online who fell in love with the charming Companion Cube from Portal, there will certainly be a few enamoured with Jensen’s best friend: the domestic box. Augmentations to his strength allow the lifting and transport of ever larger boxes, which allows the player to trap characters in their rooms and toilets, knock out guards, and in at least one instance, hide. The ubiquity of the box, the larger box and the freezer is such that I couldn’t imagine DE:HE without it. Despite there being other items to pick up and throw, such as the fire extinguishers and bins, I formed a loyal connection to the humble box.In conclusion, DE:HE covers the tropes of stealth and science fiction action games very well, especially in those areas its antecedent was first in its field. The sidequests, which fill out Jensen’s character in more ways than one, are reminiscent of Vampire: Bloodlines (2004) of all things, which set the standard for character interaction. While I have some qualms about the AI and the necessity of at least four deaths to progress the story, DE:HE is an able action game, a lovingly detailed parable and a great way to spend two or more days sneaking around in dystopia, without wearing your own knees out.
2027: Security specialist and former policeman Adam Jensen is mortally wounded in a terrorist attack on his employer, bioengineering firm Sarif Industries. Invoking a contractual clause, his boss revives and refits Jensen with cutting-edge mechanical augmentations.
While there are advantages to his fresh limbs and the superhuman abilities they confer, there are downsides to harnessing such nascent technology: Massive rejection of implants by the body can be managed by the controlled drug Neuropozyne, but Jensen must decide how he will handle being rejected by society, and whether he feels relieved or angered at having his freedom of choice removed, along with his original arms.
A standby for cyberpunk’s biggest critics is that it’s dated, as we live in a time in which humanity’s achievements are roughly equal to those of that genre’s fiction, to the point where its trailblazing concepts are now considered clich. Developer Eidos Montreal’s decision to stick with the near future as its basis for the game is therefore prescient, as today’s faltering attempts at genetic/cosmetic furtherance seem a short hop away from DE:HE’s tomorrow.
Framed by a what-if scenario in which biotechnology’s promises are leapfrogged for short-term gains in mechanical prosthetics or augmentations, the player often can’t help but feel the entire story is about failure. As superior as Jensen is to the average Joe, his advantages are presently limited, now useless, soon to be superseded in moments. Nothing works all that well: Conversations with evasive characters, using a rudimentary social archetyping implant that would make Jung blush, end up being a hash of near-hits and missed opportunities. Much like some real first impressions, I didn’t emerge from a single conversation with the impression all was well.
This sense of failure is borne out by the game’s action mechanic, where the protagonist is at the mercy of stored fuel, and reloading saves becomes a learned activity rather than a chore. Guzzling a kilogram jar of soy protein in order to replenish enough energy to judo chop two guards seems a little far-fetched, but dietary management was one of my favourite (unintended) sub-games, appealing to a stomach that must digest irony as efficiently as whey.
A more impatient player will find themselves begging for ammunition, but I found the game’s distribution of ammo, food and cool toys to be on just the right side of a challenge. With only a little play, the game tells the player not to use weapons as they do in other games. And a learning curve comes no easier than that. The learning concept is central to the player’s chances of success. Even on lower difficulty levels, unrelenting atavism gets the (surprisingly brittle) character nowhere but a visit to the F6 morgue.
Like a fine platformer, learning how not to fail in similar situations grants the character an abandon and adroitness more befitting the augmented hero. Given several hours, the player is crouching to avoid security cameras, running to knock a guard out while his back is turned, and downing his accomplice with a stun gun during a five-second window. For the first couple of hours, the console controls often recast Jensen as a hurdy-gurdy man. A beneficial by-product of this is that the player may tend towards the more secretive approach, and stick with it.Gadget kneesMuch has been made of DE:HE’s allowances for getting through the game without being seen (bosses must be despatched), although this is hardly new. I found the best approach to be a mix of the bellicose and the timid, if only for the empathic realisation that Denton’s knees don’t seem to be augmented. Expediency and adaptivity allow for long sections of hiding interspersed with adrenalin-fuelled bursts of close combat, silent takedowns and grenade tosses.
Extra points for completing a mission without being seen? Non-lethal weapons? These are present, but the promise of a “better” ending (of which there seem to be a few) will probably be enough to influence the player’s choices. Should Jensen be disingenuous, post-human in all the morally detestable ways, or proto-human despite the alienating nature of the junk welded to his failing body?
One of the first instalment’s triumphs was the introduction of pacing, one of the prerequisites for drama, to the first person shooter. Action sequences were no more protracted than a back story segment. And what a story: Gravity’s Rainbow and Last and First Men were sampled heavily, more so than William Gibson’s futurespeak. Arthurian legends and Greek myths were thrown around and out with dizzying tempo. The fuggy atmosphere of a Philip Dick short story continues to dominate DE:HE, but there are fewer library items and the overlong middle action section defies all notion of pacing.
Inventory manipulation, the secret joy of RPG raincoaters everywhere, is still an important part of the game but there are comparatively few cache points/shops to wheel and deal with in a very satisfying way. Many players will recognise the stacking larder system from Resident Evil titles. However, an armed to the teeth Jensen presents a more sophisticated game of Tetris. Graverobbing has never been so picky.
Continued…