Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition - 10/20 hours

I was probably a little too harsh on Deus Ex's graphics before. Now that I've gotten used to them, they're fine. Not great, but I can imagine how in the year 2000, they would have seemed incredible. Two nitpicks - I don't like the dark areas. Sure, the game gives you a flashlight, so by extension dark must exist, but it's a frustrating mechanic because I always walk into darkness from a place with light and the transition is jarring. My other complaint is that, now that I'm in Hong Kong, the world doesn't seem vertical enough. Cyberpunk, to me, is about a world of gleaming towers that cast long shadows, and the sort of desperate parasitical life that goes on in the cracks of the system. Deus Ex sort of hits that note, but there's not enough worldbuilding. The various civilians you come across don't have enough lines, and you're too caught up in the whole conspiracies-within-conspiracies plot to explore much of how the world works on a day-to-day basis.

Speaking of which, things look like they are finally coming to a head. Paul, my brother, turned out to be working with the terrorists. It's a bit of a bummer, because I thought he was urging me to use nonlethal methods out of some great compassion and sense of responsibility, but it turns out he just wanted me to spare his friends (it's possible that it's both - the game tried to present him as a softy - but in my book, when you willingly work with a group that bombs subway stations and takes hostages, you lose the ability to present yourself as a gentle peacemaker).

It's a betrayal that is a major turning point in the game, because it marks when UNATCO goes from "ominously authoritarian" to "evil to the point of incompetence." First, they tell me to kill an unarmed prisoner, despite that being against UNATCO's official policy, and totally irrespective of the fact that they have underground prison cells that could disappear a person more or less indefinitely. Then, they hit the kill switch on my brother, which, okay, maybe that's something you'd want to have, even considering the risk of an enemy hacker getting in and triggering it on your loyal agents, but then they make a big deal about telling me about it, presumably "so I won't get any ideas." If they'd just quietly killed Paul without bothering to say what they did, I would have almost certainly assumed that he escaped into the underworld and was laying low, and thus I'd have never sought him out in Hell's Kitchen, and never been persuaded to broadcast a message to the NSF (plus, it turns out that many of the terrorist organizations out there are on UNATCO's payroll, so I'm not sure where Paul thought he was running to).

Finally, I learned (though, to be fair, they more or less came out and said it in the opening cinematic) that my employers are responsible for the plague that is the driving force behind the NSF's dissent in the first place. Releasing a biological agent into the wild and then trading the cure for political favors has got to be the dumbest evil plan ever conceived. Do these people not realize that once it's out of their control, it's going to evolve, and that it's only a matter of time before it out-evolves the cure? Once that happens, it's game over for humanity, shadowy conspirators and all. I think the Grey Death is supposed to be nanomachines rather than a virus, but that just makes it worse. It will have all of the weaknesses of a biological weapon, and can also be traced to one of a small number of groups with the knowledge and resources to build such a thing. What's the damned point of having a mysterious conspiracy when you're just going to print your calling card on your weapons?

I once thought that Deus Ex would turn out to be a conflict of grey vs grey, where all sides have a compelling point that belied their brutal methods, and that I would have to carefully navigate between the factions to reach a satisfying conclusion while keeping my honor intact. Now I realize the conflict is grey vs dark black, where I'm forced to side with contemptible losers in order to preserve the human race before some idiots accidentally reduce it to unidentifiable organic sludge.

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