Back toward the beginning of January, the Deus Ex: Human Revolution main theme came up in one of my Spotify daylists; I promptly added it to my gym playlist, then proceeded to forget about it. A week or so later, it played on shuffle during my workout, and I was like, you know what, I really need to actually play this game.
Because no, I’d somehow never played it before.
I’ve been familiar with it practically since its release, just due to Secondhand Internet Knowledge™, and I’ve owned a copy since like 2013. Plus I love Elias Toufexis as a voice actor. In fact, this passage from Fracture was a low-key Adam Jensen homage (and at least one of my beta readers caught it while reading). So I finally decided to install and play it over a long weekend.
Obviously this is a 15-year-old game and chances are if you’re reading this, you’ve already played it. But just in case, spoilers abound below.
TL;DR
The short version is I very much enjoyed it. If the Mass Effect trilogy is the paragon (lol) of games and 5/5, this was a very solid 4/5. Despite being a different developer and studio, it reminded me a lot of some of the OG Assassin’s Creed games in terms of style and graphics, just because it’s from that same era. As with any new-to-me game, it took me a little while to get a feel for it, but once I did, I found it very immersive. “Atmospheric and gritty” seems like an apt description for the overall tone.
STORY
When it comes to sci-fi, cyberpunk has never been a sub-genre I really gravitate toward, so this was kind of a new experience. I really enjoyed the blend of political intrigue and corporate espionage within the aforementioned gritty environment. Obviously we haven’t reached a point of being on par technologically with what’s depicted in the game, despite the story being set only a year from now, but I still found so many aspects of it to be…applicable to current events. You’ve got this massive corporation selling a product (augmentations), and when that product causes problems (bodily rejections), the same company provides a “solution” (Neuropozyne) that people are then forced to rely upon. The same people selling the sickness are selling the cure.
I wasn’t particularly surprised when it turned out Megan and the other scientists were still alive; I was like okay, we never actually saw them die, plus at some point when I was creeping around in various offices at Sarif headquarters, I found an email where someone was speculating whether they were still alive. I felt like the whole storyline surrounding their kidnapping was left a little open-ended (“you rescued them and they escaped on the chopper, kthxbye”), but maybe there will be more about them in Mankind Divided.
I wasn’t expecting there to be so much player choice toward the end. I found it interesting that the three ending choices were almost a Control/Destroy/Synthesis setup, complete with a Refusal option. I ended up opting to broadcast Hugh Darrow’s confession; Bill Taggert’s “let corporations control people” and David Sarif’s “let corporations continue operating completely unchecked” both seemed very unappealing, so “let people decide for themselves” was the only reasonable response. I spent most of the game convinced David Sarif would turn out to be evil, and though that wasn’t really the case, I still don’t particularly trust him.
GAMEPLAY
I despised the fact that the whole intro sequence had no map/radar for spotting enemies. I died so many times during the tutorial LOL. But once I got the hang of things, it went a lot smoother. I liked that you could choose and upgrade augmentations to reflect your preferred style of gameplay (and, having started playing Mankind Divided by now, I like that your chosen augmentations carry over—I mean, why wouldn’t they?). The augs I enjoyed most or found most useful were the Icarus Landing System (which I prioritized after yeeting myself off a high surface a couple of times and plunging to my death), and the ability to control robots and turrets.
My play style with any shooter is typically, “maintain as much distance as possible for as long as possible (sniper rifle), then when that’s not an option anymore, close in and make it personal (shotgun).” But I actually spent 80% of this game using only a suppressed 10mm pistol with multiple capacity, damage, and rate of fire mods applied (headshots were my friend), switching to a similarly modded combat rifle the remainder of the time.
Perhaps my two biggest gripes were 1) the long, unskippable cutscenes before (almost) every boss fight, and 2) the inventory system. The latter is mostly just because I’m used to Fallout where I shamelessly hoard items and/or have companions to carry extra stuff; I did appreciate that the Deus Ex system forced you to be somewhat strategic in what you chose to use, pick up, etc. The former is because, despite enjoying video games, I’m actually not very good at them, and major fights always take me multiple tries as I get my bearings and figure out what works. I actually found the final fight of the game the easiest out of all of them and was grateful that it autosaved right before combat started.
I’m not sure how many hours I ended up logging, but it felt like a relatively short game. Still, I’m sure it took me longer than average to finish, partly because I’m a fanatical completionist and wanted to explore every vent, alleyway, office, etc. and partly because I reloaded a bunch of times in order to complete a mission without being detected or try a different strategy.
TONE
I already described the overall feel of the game as “atmospheric and gritty.” The environments and their corresponding ambience (distant shouts, car horns, screaming) really made you feel like you were there, and the dark, yellow palettes used for most of those environments (with TYM headquarters as the primary exception) really lent to the almost dystopian mood of the story.
But the music also played a huge part in all of that. LOVED the score. It all had kind of a futuristic/techy sound while still being kind of melancholy to match the overall vibe. I would often launch the game a few minutes before I was actually ready to play and then just let the main menu music play on a loop. I am absolutely OBSESSED with the main “Icarus” theme that plays during the end credits and in the game’s cinematic trailer, which I remember watching yearssss ago. The Icarus theme is what I added to my gym playlist, and whenever it comes on, I immediately enter beast mode.
I will definitely be playing again sometime. I don’t know if this has as much replay value as something like Mass Effect, but it’ll be cool to replay it and perhaps avoid some moments of frustration since I have a much better handle on the gameplay and how everything works. And I might make some different choices, like picking a different ending and, you know, NOT getting the new biochip in Hengsha…🙃
