A decade has passed and Deus Ex still receives no shortage of praise. Some people, including myself, consider it gaming royalty. It transformed my perception of video gaming’s capabilities. I became more than my avatar’s puppeteer. My fond memories were not the result of dramatic events or plot twists laid out by the developers, but rather, my manipulations of the world and the ability to shape my own path. Only a select few RPGs, namely those of Black Isle Studios, had achieved such expansive levels of free will, while still delivering a powerful narrative.
The project is in the hands of Creative Director Jean-Francois Dugas, whose credits are limited to racing titles, design and creative work for the Far Cry Instincts series, and a “Special Thanks” from Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas. Human Revolution will also be the flagship title for Eidos Montreal. Is anyone else feeling concerned? Warren Spector picked a fine time to busy himself with Epic Mickey.
Dugas has been very vocal about his assessment of Deus Ex and what made the game so endearing, immersive, and downright evolutionary. According to Dugas, the secret ingredients are, “Options.” Players in Human Revolution will not be limited to one path, and will be presented with options for advancement that are separated into four categories; combat, hacking, social, and stealth. Dugas may have already missed the point.
Warren Spector said it best in his post-mortem at GamaSutra, “It’s all about how you interact with a relatively complex environment in ways that you find interesting (rather than in ways the developers think are interesting), and in ways that move you closer to accomplishing your goals (not the developers’ goals).”
When dissecting the formula of Deus Ex, options are part of the equation, but not the solution. The solution is the creativity of the player. I recall a time in Hell’s Kitchen when I stacked debris to hop over a fence and ended up in a dead-end alley and no way back. I had to load a previous save, but I wasn’t mad. I was awestruck. I had been given a mix of tools and freedom so powerful that not even the developer could predict every outcome. On a side note, that alley was modified into a full-fledged path in the console edition.
Modern games have plenty of options. Red Faction: Guerrilla gave me the freedom to tackle enemy bases with everything from mechs to a sledgehammer. I made my own combos with plasmids in BioShock 2. In Mass Effect 2, I charted a course of morality across the galaxy and sent more than one friend to a heroic death. It was the ambiguity of said options that instilled Deus Ex with emotional resonance. I didn’t always know if my plan would work, or even if I was barking up the right tree. I was working on hunches, just as J.C. Denton would have. And, when they were correct, it was a miraculous feeling.
One such instance occurred while trying to break into the high-rise apartment of Maggie Chow. There were more obvious possibilities for gaining access; working social contacts, combat, and hacking security systems. I was standing in the street, looking up at the skyline when an idea struck. After a series of treacherous jumps and near misses, I had scaled the side of an adjacent building. I ran as fast as I could, leaped across street and down two stories, and shot out her window just in time to casually land in her living room. I don’t know if that was meant to be possible, and I have yet to meet anyone who entered the apartment by the same method.
I took a risk and it paid off, but that element is being stripped (at least partially) from Human Revolution with the introduction of regenerating health. It seems that everyone who played the original has a story about a plan backfiring horribly, forcing them to improvise and fight for survival. Regenerating health removes the need to switch gears and act quickly in the face of tension. Instead, you simply have to find a place to curl up and whimper for a few moments before stubbornly plowing ahead a second, third, or tenth time.
Regenerating health works in shooters such as Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, because those games are about forward momentum through maximum levels of danger. Human Revolution is not that type of shooter. At least, that’s the idea being presented by Eidos Montreal.
By no means am I already claiming the failure of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I want the game to be a success more than you might realize, and I hope that Eidos Montreal understands my concerns, and those of the fanboy-army at my back. In fact, with Dugas’ history with Far Cry Instincts, I believe Eidos Montreal is perfectly capable of producing an excellent shooter. Whether or not it can produce a good Deus Ex game is another issue entirely.
