Why deus ex is great

And in that sense, the aesthetic is a crucial part of our game. Set in , 25 years before the first game, the prequel begins with Adam Jensen, head of security for Sarif Industries, being critically wounded in a terrorist attack.

On the brink of death, Jensen is saved by his boss, David Sarif, who reconstructs his body with experimental cybernetic augmentations.

An upgrade he, famously, never asked for, but that gives him the power to hunt the people responsible down. While JC Denton was trained from an early age as a counter-terrorism agent and fitted with advanced, discrete nanoaugs, Jensen is thrust into the events of Human Revolution against his will, and his body is constantly fighting against his new implants.

He, and other augmented humans in this dystopian world, need a steady supply of an expensive drug called Neuropozyne to prevent their bodies from rejecting the augmentations and killing them.

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.

Fast forward to and Deus Ex: Human Revolution defied expectations. Meanwhile, other immersive sims from the era Dishonored , BioShock are still frequently discussed and top various lists and replay recommendations. But I think the core issue is the design of Human Revolution itself.

It followed a subtle, carefully crafted, but ultimately conservative approach to the franchise: Rather than try to innovate on the setting and systems of the first game, in many ways it simply gave them a new coat of paint for a new generation of hardware.

As a prequel, Human Revolution was able to sidestep the legacy of Invisible War and shrewdly position itself as its antithesis. But this approach also ensured that with time it would be forgotten in the shadow of the original. Human Revolution even found a narrative excuse to replicate the permanent darkness of the original: Jensen visits Detroit at night, and Hengsha is built on two levels, with the upper occluding most light to the lower.

Adam Jenson is the main protagonist of Human Revolution , being a security officer for a cybernetic company. He gets his limbs destroyed in the intro and has his girlfriend stolen, setting the story up for the whole game.

It sounds cliche, but Adam is rebuilt using experimental cybernetics to test their effectiveness and show the world how much good they can do. Depending on the player's actions, Adam can be conflicted about this or completely accepting of his new body. Besides that, his dry humor and demeanor make him a good inflection for the player yet doesn't make the character boring or absurd like JC Denton in the original Deus Ex could be at times.

Explaining Deus Ex's story to those who haven't played it will make you sound insane. In essence, the game takes place in a world where every absurd conspiracy theory you can think of is real. Terrorist attacks are commonplace but make you question the morality of what you're doing as a government agent. FEMA seems to be intentionally spreading a virus on American soil and using it as a ploy to rise in power.

Things get out of control quickly and its a fight for control of free thought, information, and the powers that control the world, public or otherwise. Yet the NPCs and writing in this game is so well-thought-out that it makes the world feel plausible, despite being rooted in dozens of conspiracy theories. Unlike the original game, Human Revolution essentially shifted the skills system into a perk tree that players could pick and choose what they wanted.

While this sounds like dumbing down in a bad sense, it was exactly what the series needed. Skills in the original Deus Ex could range from better weapon accuracy to swimming faster. It gave marginal benefits consistently, while the perks in Human Revolution completely change the game. You can learn to hack machines to fight with you, fall from any height without taking damage, or launch explosives out of your cybernetic body to take out hordes of enemies.

Terrorists have taken over the island, and you have to deal with them. But how you go about this is truly up to you. There are dozens of entry points into the statue, some more dangerous than others. If you want to waltz in through the front door, you can. Or you can stack crates to climb up to the statue and avoid the security systems altogether, but will have to deal with a group of terrorists in an open area without much cover.

In New York you witness the devastating effects of the mysterious Grey Death virus, while in Hong Kong you team up with Tracer Tong and the Triads to investigate an Illuminati presence there. There are so many secrets hidden in these city hubs—and overwrought philosophical debates to be had with talkative NPCs — that a thorough playthrough of the game could easily take 50 hours.

This was another thing Ion Storm outlined in their design document as being important. Its levels are filled with things to prod, poke, switch on, and mess with—from incidental details like flushing toilets to intricate security systems that can be manipulated to help you sneak through the level.