More to it than I expected
My general opinion of DLC is that it’s overpriced. Still, I enjoyed Deus Ex Human Revolution and wanted more, so when The Missing Link DLG was 66% off for $5 I bought it. I expected $5 to still be overpriced, but there’s actually more here than I expected.
My first surprise was that it was treated as its own game. I expected it to modify the main game and insert itself where it fits in the story, which would have been better for anyone who comes late and wants to play the whole thing. I came early though and preordered (partly for the TF2 items), so this standalone thing where you can jump right into The Missing Link even if you didn’t have a nearby save worked well for me. It also picked up my control configuration from the full game, which saved me a little time.
The premise here bothered me right away, since you start out captured. I like to think Adam Jensen is smarter than to get caught, especially since I’m the one controlling him. Later on though I overheard some guards talking about how they found Jensen and it seemed to fit better. I still noticed some bad / lazy writing though. You start out the game shackled to a chair which you’re told has an “EMP field,” which makes no sense since the P in EMP is for pulse (as in explosion, like what the EMP grenades do). You can’t be a pulse and a field at the same time. Also the back of the seat has the symbol for static-sensitive equipment, which isn’t quite right either. If you haven’t studied Electrical Engineering though maybe those things wouldn’t stand out to you, and maybe you know what an EMP is but not an electromagnetic field.
Later on I found the common placeholder lorem ipsum text on a screen:
My other major surprise was that the part where Jensen is bloody with a bare torso doesn’t last long at all. I guess I don’t mind, but why bother making the graphics for that if you’re barely going to use them?
The Missing Link plays like a long mission in hostile territory. There are a couple side quests and a weapons dealer (who also has a praxis kit for sale) to help round it out. It also has 10 of its own achivements, 8 of which are secret. Luckily the one that has you play the entire mission a certain way is much easier avoid ruining without knowing it, like the full game’s achievement for not killing anyone. Unfortunately it’s a lot less fun way to play the game, since if you unlock or upgrade any enhancements you can’t get that achivement. I recommend saving it for a second playthrough, or saving before enabling enhancements to do whatever it is you wanted to do, then loading again.
Major improvements are no lower-quality video cutscenes (or at least not as noticeably lower-quality as those in the first game) and a boss encounter more in the vein of the original Deus Ex. You don’t get the option to just run away, but at least it doesn’t force you into a cutscene where you idiotically walk into a trap and are forced into a direct confrontation. There’s even an achievement for taking out the boss in a non-direct way, and judging by its high percentage of people who unlocked it, you can tell it was a welcome change.
The biggest downside is the price. Now that the full game is down to $30, The Missing Link is half the cost for less than a fifth the content. Granted, it’s overall better quality than the full game, so maybe pick it up for $10, but definitely grab it for $5 unless you just completely weren’t into Human Revolution.
