Summary
Game studios performing necromancy on legendary licenses commonly end up with a product deemed, often legitimately, unfaithful and unworthy of wearing its name by a nostalgic fanbase. A recent playthrough of the latest Deux Ex title made me reflect on several things, like what can be considered a successful sequel to a revered GOATY from two decades ago, how the same team managed to bounce from a very mid proposition to a good AAA game, how everything beside graphics seems to evolve slowly, why cyberpunk is shit when it’s not incidental, etc. Thinking emoji.
I initially intended to cover all of that but I settled on simply explaining why it’s worth playing.
Introduction
Trying to revive household names is obviously not something new nor exclusive to video games. I’m just more sensible to it because my interest in cinema as an entertainment and artistic vessel is more limited than in video game. Examples of license being exhumed and revived to cater to a broader crowd, or displaying a significant difference in artistic vision and game design abound in the short history of video games.
As I’m writing this [late 2023?], Baldur's Gate 3 greatly divides it’s early access buyers (beta testers) on weither the romance simulator is up to the standards set by the two previous titles by early Bioware. Thief’s 2014 reboot got harshly received by its fanbase for being sloppy and significantly departing from the overall design and core mechanics of the previous titles. Troika’s Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines successor by Paradox Interactive is not out yet but already the source of a much noise regarding the discrepancy between this revival and the original, not to mention its development and management history. Later Fallout installments also divide greatly regarding writing, role-playing features and gameplay. Hating on Deus Ex 2 for how much it got dumbed down for because of the console release is almost a running gag at this point.
New attempt
The decision to revive Deus Ex with Human Revolution resulted on something that was sadly not quite their despite some real qualities. The video review from Ross's Game Dungeon thoroughly explores the different aspects in which Eidos-Montréal’s first attempt failed to met the standards set by the first title. His view regarding the game is interesting: The team has some talented people, but are held back by the realism of the license, while trying to push as many scifi elements as they could.
The symbolic evocation of Renaissance and cybernetics associated with the overwhelming golden yellow tint is completely overdo by permeating every square meters of this world. It’s a glaring dud in an otherwise decent artistic direction, but the main problems of the game stem in its writing. Science-fiction and cyberpunk features are strangely exaggerated in a timeline just years before a much more contemporary Deus Ex. More importantly, there’s a general lack of depth in the way it explores the few themes it hammers on: Augmentations and media control. The gist of the story is based on the wide and rapid adoption of functional and cosmetics cybernetics augmentations by humanity.
A strong disbelief is to be suspended in order to accept those premises when installation of said augmentations involves getting ride of the biological parts to replace them with synthetic parts, that are not only expensive to maintain but also rejected by the host body unless a rare drug is consumed. A technological revolution only believable for edge cases and niche industries is the main plot device to drive the story. This causes all kind of problems when it comes to the credibility of dialogue and situations, even more when it is never really explained how or why exactly those augmentations modify society to lead to growing division and social unrest. Decent core mechanics and art direction where dragged down by shallow writing. On several levels Human Revolution was hardly grounded in reality, let alone a believable one given the timeline it’s supposed to take place in.
Deus Ex still shines today in the multitude of themes it managed to bake in its worldbuilding, giving more depth to an enthralling story of conspiracies. Random NPCs casually infodumping alternative takes on politics and economy is not subtle but entertaining, highly memorable and effective in tying things together. In the same fashion, popular conspiracies like men in black, Area 41 or FEMA camps are mixed in with situations that are more than ever relevant to this day : Emergency state, global pandemy (cough cough), the promiscuous relationships between governments and corporations, class struggles, artificial intelligence, etc. The game gives you plenty to think about without forgetting to be fun to play. Ghost in The Shell and The Matrix are obvious influences that are easily notified thorough the game, but I still think it is incidentally cyberpunk because its themes happens to overlap with what define this genre. Human Revolution wants to be a scifi and cyberpunk, but forget about the Deus Ex part. It has one central theme, but doesn’t manage to exploit it correctly.
Maturing
Mankind Divided still inherits from a lot of those shortcomings. The obsession on cybernetic implants is still going full blast but sometime manages to bring a little more light as to why it’s such a big things. It’s rather light, and the main interrogation still remains: Why is it such a big thing? I think the music is not bad, but forgettable in both installments. Both have sloppy rushed endings, only a bit more imaginative in the latest one.
Few things regarding what has been said about Human Revolution here have been corrected, yet almost everything improved in some way, and a few design decision contributed in making it a very good game, and rendering the question Is this a good Deus Ex? kind of moot for me. To rephrase that: The game is good enough that I don’t care much about how it holds up against the original.
The game benefited from a general overhaul regarding its design choices and presentation. They got ride of the golden fever filter for more realistic lighting and color palette. Cookie cutter cyberpunk neon aesthetic is ugly, but they still managed to capitalize on what they done on their first game to offer something futuristic but a bit more grounded in reality, safe for a few bits like the VR conference room. The character design also benefit from both technical improvements and refined design choice: Clothing are now more obviously taping into real world fashion, Jensen sporting an ACRONYM coat while gangsters and common folks have the signature techwear look without looking like modern Instagram Goretex clowns.
General decisions about the game world and level design also greatly improved the experience. The single most important choice was to limit the scope of the game to a single big area, Prague, navigable through the subway network and partly through the sewers if you want to LARP as a shunned Nosferatu. The capital is to be explored over the course of several days and nights. The secret operation center as well as Jensen’s personal flat are also located in the city. The pace is only interrupted by a few offshore missions related to the main story. Keeping Prague as the main playground has the consequence to introduce a form of familiarity and makes the game world feel more alive and credible, even if it’s still technically NPC walking around and the player accessing places during different times of the same day.
The quality of writing evolved less significantly but the efforts are noticeable. There is an tentative to partially why cybernetic implants are a revolution through an optional mission revolving around mind control. Pretty early into the game, the introduction of a double agent situation brings its share of tension and ambiguity. Interaction between characters, be it through text exchanges or in person conversation, are still punctually wild and uncanny, but are generally much more believable. I’m finishing this post more than a year after completing the game, and nothing really stuck in my mind safe for the quests related to the bank, because they involve defeating security measures and retrieving compromising data from high tech safes, rather a joker-tier plot to destroy the rich or some shit. The optional quests are enjoyable, with frequent foray into the seedy underworld of the capital, with some bits akin to how one could solve a case with their augmented senses like Gerald from The Witcher, hot on the trail sniffing the clues with his kin hound nose.
Conclusion
There is none. All things considered, it’s a really good game. A modern game for a modern audience. Cyberpunk is now, blah blah blah.
Maybe there is something to say about how gameplay and game design recipes barely evolved over the course of 15 years while presentation is getting more and more uncanny as time goes by. This a common trope but it’s hard to deny. Almost photorealistic scenery while getting from A to B still involves stacking and climbing conveniently placed crates or crawling aeration vents designed like highways.
The same idea could apply regarding how the dialogues were delivered, and how high poly count and rich animation don’t necessarily help in making them more enjoyable. Think about how that low poly Australian barista working at a Honk Kong nightclub arguing with JC in favor of “strong governments” VS plutocracies.
While fully aware of what It would entail to except a Ubisoft studio to release a game where nightclubbers are quoting Ted Kaczynski or the cafe’s lady paint the EU as a globalist project in an age where disinformation is a prime political weapon, more than it ever was, you can’t make up of for liberty of tone, depth of discourse, and creativity with motion capture and raytracing.
I’m also aware of the importance of shorter sentences and proper spellchecking.