Extra Punctuation: What Human Revolution Got Wrong

[cainx10a]

1. Agreed. Boss fights or no boss fights, these people could use some characterization. The three mercs seemed like they had some interesting backstories (well, except Barret). Why doesn't Fedorova speak? What did Namir mean by "Men like us never get back the things we love"? I'm led to understand that there is some kinde of extra material (comics or books or whatever) that explains this stuff, but shouldn't it be in the game?

They are just your typical cliche mercenaries/ex-soldiers who are doing this particular set of jobs for the money. Barrett is the jarhead, the amazon chick is the silent roguish/sniper type, and Namir well is the cliche action hero/villain who like Jensen lost their loved ones in a tragic accident (they got eaten by an hungry turtle during a zoo visit, that's how Namir took some major damage to his body too!) and the only thing left for them in their pitiful lives is their job. Hell, with that type of complaint though, should every single grunt in a video game have their own back-story.

Timmy was a school dropout, ran with gangs, and one day got accepted into the biggest gang in town only to end up getting his neck snapped by Adam Jensen.

But personally, I enjoyed the story, although I have this question left.

Spoiler

Was zhao really using her daughters as some sort of power cell for the Hyron project? ??

 

[Zing]

Watch me blow your mind as I accurately describe the character most of you played in Human Revolution: a bloke who started out with the intention of doing a stealthy run but had to start carrying proper guns after a few hairy moments, who by the end of the game was also an expert hacker with very good arm strength and the ability to jump over buses.

Holy fuck, he's a wizard!

 

[sleekie]

Stop complaining about shotguns in Alpha Protocol, Yahtzee. They were great.

 

[rosner1917]

Agree with everything, Yahtzee. HR could have tried to be so much more.

And if you take a look, a whole lot of generic NPCS in HR looks the same as well. And DX might had "weird" physics, but at least it is far more interesting than the "almost no physics" from HR, only used in dead bodies and the few-crates-the designers-decided-I-could-move.

Though my main critic are the dialogues. In DX1 the writing was fabulous (most of the time), inspired, thought provoking, something many book authors or screenwriters would kill to be able to write. Rememebr the dialogue with the Morpeus A.I? Brilliant.

HR dialogue is, most of the time, so trivial it barely matters. It tries to be emotional a lot of times, but for me, it never seems appealing. Sure there are good bits here and there, but they are too few IMO.

 

[Venom 3135]

I wanted orange. It gave me lemon lime! That needs to be on a shirt. Best reference ever.

 

[SnakeCL]

I actually preferred HR to the original.

Felt like Adam was more of a fleshed-out character compared to JC's walking cardboard persona.

 

[nyysjan]

I actually preferred HR to the original.

Felt like Adam was more of a fleshed-out character compared to JC's walking cardboard persona.

JC was a blank screen character in order to allow the player to decide who JC was.
Adam is a premade, but largely unexplored, character who we only play, but get little input on who he is, or what opinions he has.

It's a matter of taste, but i personally prefer JC, who, to me, came up as a badass stoic, someone who is not only capable of kicking peoples asses in a fight, but handing them their ass in a debate as well.
Where as Adam felt more like someone with abandonment issues who can't get over his ex and is obsessed with revenge to the point that any time Megan Reed comes up, his IQ is halved.

 

[m4st0d0n]

While I completely agree with You Yahtzee, the original Deus Ex was a better game than HR, there's one point in your article which doesn't stand. You mentioned it in you video review too, but I didn't take time to answer it then. So here it goes: you can beat the game without using firearms, even on bossfights. Stun gun (the melee weapon of Deus Ex: HR...) works well on bosses, actually it stunlocks them, and they are easy to kill, all I had to do is spam fire. The last boss-mech (yeah, I don't remember his name ) took some 15-20 shocks to defeat, but since it so easy to spare ammunition with take downs, that's no problem. I beat the game with killing only five people (not including bosses, since I didn't have a choice there). One in first Detroit, when I blew up the wall on the roof. Three more when I saved Malik. I used full stealth+stun gun on all the heavys there, but they were unfortunately killed when the mech exploded. The last was behind a wall in second time in Lower Hengsha sewers. Pity that punching through walls kills the guy behind the wall uncontrollably.

So this game can be played through as a stealth character, without taking any combat augmentations and apart from bosses (where you don't have a choice, as it happens in video cutscenes), you don't have to kill anybody. Not even the zombies in the end. All it takes is some experimentation, and a very little dedication. I think that's totally ok.

 

[nyysjan]

The fire arms =/= stun gun is kinda of a nit picky complaint, you are still using a ranged weapon.
And it's not a claim you must use a weapon (you can sneak past, takedown and typhoon everyone instead), just what most people will end up playing.

 

[m4st0d0n]

Actually I was replying more on Yahtzee's third point, about danged specializations. Instead of specializations, you have situations, and different solutions for every situation. You can be the locksmith guy in one, you can be the hacker guy in another, and if you're totally bored of sneaking you can go berzerk. It's the player's choice, almost every time, and that's not necessarily bad. I even had "water cooler" gaming moments with DE:HR, these choices actually make a good topic. Saying "there's no choice, you gotta carry guns" isn't correct, that's what bothers me.

Now, the game is too easy, and provides too much praxis, so by the end every useful augmentation is available, I agree with that.

 

[nyysjan]

Not sure i follow your argument then.
Yahtzees point was that there was no specialization in the game (because of both over abundance of praxis points and lack of difficulty), and you seem to agree with him with you statement of

Instead of specializations, you have situations, and different solutions for every situation. You can be the locksmith guy in one, you can be the hacker guy in another, and if you're totally bored of sneaking you can go berzerk"

Because you never specialize, never make any meaningfull choices on how to build your character (well, you could choose not to take the hacking levels, wich would be a meaningfull choice, but that pretty much demands you intentionally gimp yourself), you never get any actual game paths that are unique to your build or specialization, everything you do, is available to everyone else that plays the game (with some exceptions, someone might bypass jump aug, someone might not take strength, someone might go for typhoon/icarus combo and aoe everything they can).
There is never any time when i go "i wish i could do X, if i could i would solve this in seconds", i can just keep few praxis points in reserve and buy whatever i need, when i need.

 

[CrawlingPastaHellion]

1. You know who the danged boss characters are

I agree completely, yet the only memorable characters in DX were Gunter and Paul. The only boss I remember besides Gunter was Anna, but she had all the personality of a soda can... and empty soda can, which is befitting if you think about it since she was a can almost literally.

2. There are danged melee weapons

I don't mind FPS games not having melee, since a FPS should be about guns, but I see where you're coming from and you're right about the boxes. At least give us an option to melee outside context.

3. There's danged specialization

I agree yet again, but DXHR is good enough without it. Still a specialization would have been nice to have even without skills: just limit the available praxis and balance the augs so that each and every one of them is useful, because a lot of them aren't worth crap to be honest.

4. The danged endings actually danging mean something

I think that the whole idea of alternate endings is preposterous. A good narrative can only have one ending and one ending only, since it has to be created with an ending in mind. Whatever you do you can never achieve the same amount of weight on all the multiple endings.

5. I VONTED ORANGE IT GAIFF ME LEMON LIME

What are you talking about? DXHR is pure orange!

 

[Arren Kae]

#1
Agreed. I didn't know who the bosses were in HR and didn't care. Deus Ex's bosses were more compelling as they'd more fleshed-out motivations. However, Bob Page and Walter Simon's want to rule the world is just as shallow as, "I kill people for money, it's a living".

#2
I suspect melee weapons may've been cut for balance. In the first two DEs there were a few melee weapons then the OP nano-sword.

#3
Agreed. By the end of the game Alex can do anything. How quickly players will become able to fight-sneak-explore-hack adequately is compounded by how many upgrades are unneeded things like the ability to sprint longer.

DE 1 and 2's upgrades were much more potent affects like EMP shields and bots that converted fallen enemies to health.

#4
When you said the endings were chosen by pressing buttons in your review I thought you were making a silly scenario to emphasize how easy it was. Then I beat the game.

None of the DE games have satisfied me w/their endings. Each one's mixture of associations has always been frustrating like in DE where the Illuminati are presented as benevolent dictators and in IW where freeing people from central control turns the world into a no man's land. Sariff's ending in HR is the most satisfying the series has had so far though canonically it seems blowing up the facility's what happened.

 

[happyschnapps]

Am I the only one who didn't actually like the first Deus Ex? I found the controls wonky and the stealthy elements a royal pain in the arse to work with.

I reckon Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a much improved game and one of the best games of this year. I really enjoyed the multiple paths, the visuals and the great story.

If melee weapons were in the game, I feel it would have been way too easy. You were forced to strategically plan your takedowns and whip out the grenades or stun gun if things when tits up. Yes, it meant we had to keep throwing cardboard boxes into the walls to break them, but they didn't contain anything so I just ignored them after a while. But yeah, have to agree that the boss fights weren't the greatest - the combat rifle with the tracking made the fights way too easy and they did feel kinda unnecessary.

And what's wrong with being able to unlock ALL the abilities in the one playthrough. It meant that you could change your style of play later in the game to mix things up a bit. I like being able to try everything in the one playthrough and dislike playing games through a second time. Once I finish a game, it's time to move on to the next one...

 

[jovack22]

Agree with most of it... disagree completely with the character specialization.

I hate games that force me to choose only shotguns or only pistols. If someone is a weapons expert, they'll understand how to use each -- with the exception of soldiers not using snipers, but still we can overlook that.

HR's specializations are WAY more fun, and really make you feel like your character is changing... not just "oh, now my aim is slightly better with this pistol.

Melee was pretty fun, but I prefer the system as is with KO hits, perhaps adding hitting someone with the butt of the rifle would have been good -- again, goes back to the melee KO hits.

As someone who played the hell out of Deus Ex after I picked it up in a bargain bin at a drug store, and loved it (after it was slightly outdated). I think the changes they made to Human Revolution were made for the better with some minor exceptions.

I mean, come on... in Deus Ex, stealth is really not an option because the tranquilizer darts don't do a damn thing other than make the people cry out and come after you before they collapse. Even the stun gun, unless hit perfectly from behind, wouldn't knock the person out.

 

[Mike Fang]

A short while back, I was trying to get into Deus Ex: Human Revolution. For the most part, I was actually enjoying it. Some may not like the "pre-baked finishing moves" aspect, but I personally don't have too much of a problem with them as long as they're entertaining to watch and there's at least some variety to them. The nameless nature of your antagonists early on can be explained by the fact you're still trying to figure out who the hell they are, and they're certainly not going to flat-out tell you (apparently they didn't graduate from the Bond villain school of bad guys).

But the boss fights, ugh. Or more specifically, the first boss fight, UGH!

I'd been specializing in stealth and non-lethal takedowns whenever possible. With a tranq rifle and a tazer pistol, this was very possible, thankfully, but then came that first boss fight with the meat wall that just marches up to you and caves your head in at close range, and blows your ass in half with an arm-mounted machine gun at long range.

I didn't have a ton of high damage weapons on me, so I was trying to make do with stun grenades, sneaking around and capping at him from a distance with a revolver or trying to lure him into a land mine. Problem was, his tendency to be able to lock onto my position made me wonder what kind of augs he had (motion sensors maybe?).

It seems to me like this boss was really meant to be taken on directly by someone with augments designed for direct combat (like improved skin armor and the like) and armed with heavy ordinance. It didn't mesh with the augs I'd been going with so I was at a severe disadvantage. So I've wound up restarting the game from scratch, this time intending to go for a full lethal combat (but still stealthy) approach. But I don't like it that much; a character using lethal force when he has viable nonlethal means at his disposal seems a touch amoral and a bit bloodthirsty. I still try to use nonlethal takedowns when I can, but I don't carry a bunch of nonlethal weapons with me.

This wouldn't be such an issue with me if they didn't try to put some of the bad guys in a sympathetic light. Take the very first mission. We've got terrorists holding innocent factory personnel hostage and getting ready to set off a chemical bomb. Sounds like they're pretty much rotten to the core and deserve to get a bullet, right? But then their leader starts talking like some tragic hero who's been forced into the position he's in. And to get this guy to keep from getting his hostage killed, you have to talk him down by SYMPATHIZING with him. That smacks of insincerity to me, considering I've been gunning down his men whenever they've been in a position that isn't convenient for me to sneak up behind them and brain them with a metallic fist.

I guess it's to the game's credit for immersion when I start worrying how my in-game decisions reflect on my own moral leanings. Personally I don't have a problem with using lethal force for self-defense; when somebody's threatening you or an innocent person, you have to do what you have to do. Killing someone unsuspecting is much more questionable. In the aforementioned terrorist/hostage taker scenario, it's understandable because they're putting people in harms way. But later situations, like infiltrating gang territory, not quite so much because this time you're the aggressor.

The game puts you in so many different situations with different circumstances, no one approach is right for all of them. Sometimes it's alright to sneak in and start doing wetwork, while other times you have to be more of a cop and use lethal force only when there's no other alternative. The game shouldn't encourage specialization if it's going to toss you into situations that only have one viable solution, because you might not have chosen that particular specialization.

 

[Luca72]

I think you've got it. In the original Deus Ex you could be an unstoppable killing machine from the start, but the sympathetic characters will treat you like a jackass. That alone gives you some sense of continuity, that the game itself is aware of your actions. But with Human revolution you could kill everybody and Jensen will still act like some tortured self-righteous prick.
From what I understand the bosses can be chewed through with Jensens AoE attack, and seeing how that and the take downs got played up so heavily in the trailers I imagine that's what the developers expected you to use. HR got a lot of things right if you consider it a stand-alone title, but it managed to completely miss the point of why the first game was so good.