Unfortunately, immersive sims are defined primarily by their atmosphere and their gameplay systems. It stands in stark contrast to the game’s typical gold palette and may be interpreted in many ways, but it immediately reminded me of Frank Jackson’s “ Mary in the black and white room” thought experiment. A late-game area that serves as a prison for a scientist is rendered entirely in black and white, for example. They include subtle, easily missed touches, like a set of decorative spheres in Sarif’s office, which can later be seen, fuzzy and distorted, in the glass panes of a rival company.Īnd they use color and lighting to underscore fascinating narrative themes. The environments pack everything from the baroque furniture and Blade Runner-esque clutter in Jensen’s apartment to the sleek modernism of Tai Yong Medical. Here Human Revolution unequivocally surpasses the original. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided did a good job of expanding its predecessor’s systems and level design, but it also relied on a convoluted, unevenly paced story with an abrupt ending, dialed up the melodrama, and introduced a multiplayer, DLC, and micro-transaction plan that eventually put the franchise back on hiatus. No doubt some of the blame rests with Eidos Montréal’s follow-up.
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Meanwhile, other immersive sims from the era ( Dishonored, BioShock) are still frequently discussed and top various lists and replay recommendations. Developed by Eidos Montréal, a studio that hadn’t shipped a single game and didn’t have Ion Storm’s Looking Glass Studios heritage, it nonetheless released to widespread community and critical acclaim, aggregating the same Metacritic score as the original.Īnd yet a decade later, while Human Revolution often features in digital sales and tracks well in recent Steam reviews, it rarely comes up in critics’ recommendations, features, or best-of lists. As if to prove the point, several Deus Ex projects were canceled, Ion Storm Austin folded, and the game’s leads moved on.įast forward to 2011 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution defied expectations. It may have been because both games were developed by Ion Storm Austin, or because Invisible War was still passable when judged purely on its own merits, but the fan base became convinced that a worthy sequel to Deus Ex was impossible. Its 2003 successor, Invisible War, was just as quickly reviled as one of the worst sequels ever made (though it was critically well received). Robot-fingers crossed that Mankind Divided does the same, expanded budget and scope or not.The original Deus Ex, released in 2000, quickly cemented a lasting reputation for its level design, plot, and complex systems that encouraged player choice.
It's in doing a lot with a relative little that Human Revolution best mimics the success of the original game. Human Revolution offers me choices in how I play, gives me enough options to feel as if I can inhabit Jensen as a character as well as a pair of fist-chisels and faceshades, and does so consistently across plot and side missions alike. Yet again, despite dreaming of how this might be better, I do not mind. There are options available to you that do not feel well rewarded - rescuing Malik, for example - and the ending is still determined by a multiple choice question. Depending on your chosen upgrades and playstyle, you can traverse its terrain from the street or the rooftops, enter every building from multiple angles, and each new approach is rewarded with story and character and detail.ĭeus Ex has a reputation for offering you meaningful choices, but there are all kinds of ways in which, again, Human Revolution feels hamstrung. The city isn't large or bustling, but it's layered. In fact, Detroit contains everything I like about Deus Ex. Except the engine and budget wouldn't stretch to a city as we've seen them today in open world games, and so you're time is mostly spent wandering a few backalleys, talking to a few loitering NPCs, and looking at the dropped leaflets on the ground which represent a riot that happened before you arrived. The clearest example is in the game's first 'hub' area, Detroit, which functions as ground zero for both the creation of augmentations and the social economic tensions that arise from their use and misuse.
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Square Enix Montreal's first crack at replicating Deus Ex is a perfect example of how the right creative decisions can make up for any number of constraints. Human Revolution has myriad faults, but they hardly matter to me. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time. Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives.
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