Deus Ex: Human Revolution

It has been over a decade since the first Deus Ex rolled onto our computer screens and made us think long and hard about the way we approach player choice in video games. Before and since then, only a few games have managed to come close to giving the player the illusion of free choice (namely the likes of BioShock and Fallout 3), but almost none have successfully delivered an experience where your decisions display a marked and dramatic effect on both characters and the gameplay. The first Deus Ex game may look ugly and play relatively poorly by today’s high standards, but it continues to be one of the best examples of how creative problem-solving can change the flow of a game’s experience. Its first sequel, Invisible War, was plagued with a myriad of problems; everything from small environments to long loading screens and the bizarre design decision to use a method of universal ammunition for all weapons. Thus, Invisible War was a disappointment in many people’s eyes and for a long while, the Deus Ex series sank back into semi-obscurity. Thankfully, today it is back, alive and almost fully reinvigorated. Human Revolution treads the path of player freedom which much of the same care and attention to detail which was given in the original game and thankfully does not suffer from the various problems which held Invisible War back. Although it is not without its own problems such as a slightly confusing story, patchy voice-acting and the awful boss fights, in the grand scheme of things Human Revolution is a great Deus Ex game filled with secrets, collusion and conspiracy, and that alone is worth considerable celebration.

Human Revolution is a prequel to the original game, set in the still reasonably futuristic year of 2027. In the first game, Agent J.C. Denton works for the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition (UNATCO) based out of Liberty Island, New York, and some of the events of Human Revolution lay the foundation for the establishment of that organisation. Our hero here is Adam Jensen, head of security for Detroit-based biotech corporation Sarif Industries. Headed by David Sarif, the company is primarily involved in the development of mechanical augmentations, which allow people to access super-human abilities such as night-vision, super strength and so on. Sarif Industries is making major strides towards allowing mechanical augmentations to be used by anyone who can afford it, potentially creating a new class division between those who with augmentations and those without. In the game’s prologue, the Sarif headquarters are supposedly attacked by anti-augmentation activists, who steal vital research and leave Adam barely clinging to life, whilst killing Adam’s former love interest, Dr. Megan Reed. In order to save Jensen’s life, the Sarif doctors decide to perform invasive and complex augmentation operations, thereby turning Adam overnight into one of the most augmented people in the world. From here, the plot takes numerous twists and turns, nothing of which is overly unexpected but which is certainly interesting and true to the mysterious ethos of Deus Ex. The plot is not as engaging as the original game, partly because the conspiracy is not made as overtly obvious as it is in the original, despite visiting locales depicting facilities owned by such suspicious organisations as FEMA and the World Health Organization. However, the ethical considerations of augmentation vs. purity are explored more thoroughly here than ever before, and present a number of philosophical questions with no simple answers.

Gameplay is a mixture of several elements, the main ones being stealth, shooting and talking. Deus Ex is remembered for always giving you several different methods and paths to approach a given scenario (such as in the oft-quoted Liberty Island level), and Human Revolution works hard to try and give the same freedom here. In the introductory mission Jensen is tasked with infiltrating a Sarif factory which has been overrun by terrorists, and he can either sneak in over the roof, dodge around the guards on the ground, or go for an all guns blazing frontal attack. The choice is left entirely to the player and depending on your choice, characters may interact with you differently or the flow of the plot may subtly shift. Whilst in the original game stealth was somewhat clunky, here it is much more refined and polished. Thanks to a context-sensitive cover system, Jensen can stick to objects in the environment and shimmy along behind them, popping up to either shoot bad guys or to jump-roll from one piece of cover to the next. Although the game is played primarily in first person, the camera pulls out to a third person, Gears of War/Uncharted-esque angle whenever you take cover, which makes shooting from cover a lot easier because you can see much more of what is going on. You also have augmentations which can help you get around silently, such as a cloaking device which can obscure you from potential enemies.

The shooting is perfectly solid, but not great. It feels kind of like Mass Effect 2 but has none of the precision and finesse which that game pulls off so well. You are given a variety of both lethal and non-lethal methods of taking down opponents, and ammunition for both can often be quite scarce. Sometimes the less aggressive approach can yield better results, but inevitably there will come a time when the guards are alerted to your presence, and mowing down the enemy normally isn’t too much trouble, partly because their AI can be pretty patchy in some places. Adam also has melee takedowns which he can give to characters if he is close enough, of both the lethal and non-lethal kind. These always look cool even after multiple uses, and can easily diffuse a tense situation where a guard wasn’t happy about you sneaking into that air vent.

The complicated inventory and character upgrade system of the first game has been toned down slightly, but is still here to a degree which is appropriate. There is still limited space in your inventory which means you must play a little game of Tetris to get everything to fit correctly (although you can have it auto-sorted for you), and the augmentation system has been streamlined for the better. Now you purchase Praxis points to unlock new augmentations and abilities, which are earned either by gaining 5,000XP or by buying them using Credits from LIMB Clinics placed around the world. The variety of augmentations and skills is down on that of the first game (nothing devoted purely to Swimming here), but almost every one feels useful in its own right, from the speech upgrade which will let you charm characters into giving you useful information, to hacking upgrades which will allow you to break into more complicated computer systems. Speaking of hacking, the mini-game used in Human Revolution is simple, clever and efficient, and very reminiscent of the Introversion Software game Uplink. You jump from node to node towards the computer core, but if the anti-virus software detects your intrusion a timer will click down showing the amount of time left before you are detected and kicked from the system.

Graphically Human Revolution is an extremely pretty game. The colour scheme often has a de-saturated black and gold look to it and most locations have a realistic looking feel to them which nonetheless is appropriately futuristic. Lower Hengsha especially looks great with the flashing neon lights and the upper city towing above it, shrouding the neighbourhood in permanent night time. Close up some of the textures can occasionally look rather blurry, but this is easily overlooked. Characters animate in a convincing way (although the lip syncing sometimes lets the side down), and the attention to detail in some of the environments is very impressive (I especially enjoyed the poster in Pritchard’s tech lab). When examining the sound, Human Revolution stands up well. The orchestral soundtrack doesn’t have the same punch as the original Deus Ex theme, but it works very well given the setting and subject matter. Incidental sound effects and noises are similarly effective. Voice acting is something of a mixed bag, with some stand out greats alongside downright failures. Whilst Hugh Darrow and William Taggart come across with a great deal of gravitas, David Sarif sounds rather like a used car salesman, which may or may not influence your opinion of him. Adam Jensen himself is fine and in keeping with the Deus Ex history, because he sounds exactly like JC Denton: Gravelly and emotionless, just the way we like it.

Easily Human Revolution’s worst crime however, is the boss fights. There are four of these dropped throughout the game, and they totally break flow with what Deus Ex is all about: Player choice. During the boss fights, you have to kill the enemy you are faced against, and there is no other way to get round it. In the original game, if you were inventive there were ways to get around situations where it seemed like you had to kill someone, but not so here. They are so out of place that even the achievement for getting through the whole game without killing anyone has to meekly admit this excludes the boss fights. What is even more astonishing is that these sequences were outsourced from Edios Montreal to a studio who had never before even heard of Deus Ex before being invited in. I have nothing against outsourcing (indeed, the PC version was optimised by Nixxes Entertainment, who did a great job by the way), but when it is done at the cost of sacrificing a core tenet of what a game stands for, it is inexcusable. That said, if you just grit your teeth and bear it you can push through these boss fights pretty easily, but it’s just a shame they are there at all. This is especially true given the fact that to counter-point these fights there are a number of critical verbal exchanges where Adam must convince a character to do or not to do something, and these are among the best sequences in the game.

If you look past the boss battles, Deus Ex: Human Revolution has a lot to love. It still has the mystery, conspiracy and intrigue which has always been at the series core, but it now supports that with a much stronger gameplay aspect in the form of the stealth mechanics. Coupled with plenty of dialogue, computers to hack and emails to read, it creates an interestingly detailed world which keeps the player engaged. If, in the next Deus Ex game (which I both hope for and know there will be) they cut the boss encounters and improve the shooting, I think Deus Ex will have truly entered a new renaissance.