Deus Ex's story....

[Ragsnstitches]

I love the games, but whoever fed you this idea that it was some sort of amazing narrative experience was most certainly deluded.

The Guardian: "Story-wise, Human Revolution is unimpeachable"

My point still stands?

Enjoying the story and praising it for being enjoyable, that's fine and a good basis for a review.

But...

Stating that it's "Unimpeachable" is just pure hyperbole. It reeks of someone having an incredibly poor pool of experience to draw that conclusion from. And that word should NEVER be used in review either. It's completely vapid without a standardised, objective metric to make that call on and that simply doesn't exist.

Lesson, I guess, is on you to filter the words that have no real meaning in the context of review. A breakdown of what works and doesn't work, based on opinion more often then not, is a review to take in since its closer to an objective breakdown. Expressions that are clearly pumped up by an emotional attachment shouldn't be taken quite so seriously. It spoils the experience for the reader, since they will go in expecting something similar to that deeply personal reaction the author had, and that just isn't possible (our experiences are our own, it can't be replicated). This is what results in "Hype" having a damaging affect on a person first reception, since they go in expecting one thing but receive something different and that doesn't jive for many.

To be honest, I thought you might have picked it up based on the crap people say on forums or by a friend who doesn't know how to moderate his emotional attachment. The fact that it's a reputable news source is kind of surprising and very disappointing.

 

[endtherapture]

snip

Well I picked the game up cheap in a Steam sale.

All I knew was that Deus Ex was a story based game back in 2000, with a very high score, back when games weren't as story based. HR had a difficulty mode saying "tell me a story", implying the story is a good feature since people might want to make the gameplay easy to experience it, similar to Mass Effect (where the story IS the draw of the seiries. What with the dialogue battles, and reviews praising it's story like that, I came into the game expecting a decent story which I think is a fair assumption.

 

[Thedutchjelle]

I thought it was fairly well done. I'm a big fan of the original Deus Ex, so maybe that helps as I could see all the references and connections between DX and DXHR. All the little snippets of story told in the environment and emails also helped quite a bit.

Darrow's motive? I believe he

Spoiler

didn't want the TY Medical/Illuminati to use the augmentations to control humanity and rather had it all destroyed in the end than allow the Illuminati to succeed

.

If you watch the begin cinematic again after a first playthrough and you remember the scene after the credits, you'll realize that

Spoiler

the whole chain of events was masterminded by Bob Page to get Reed to work on the Gray Death

.

The first Deus Ex had a plot that was more sensationalist than good. It involved the Illuminati, the Triads, Area 51 and other such crazy conspiracies. What made it good was the amount of depth invested into the world.

You shouldn't expect Bioshock-level twists out of a Deus Ex plot though.

I disagree, the first time I played the original Deus Ex I was quite shocked to see UNATCO worked for the MJ12 and that the NSF are the good guys.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

snip

Well I picked the game up cheap in a Steam sale.

All I knew was that Deus Ex was a story based game back in 2000, with a very high score, back when games weren't as story based. HR had a difficulty mode saying "tell me a story", implying the story is a good feature since people might want to make the gameplay easy to experience it, similar to Mass Effect (where the story IS the draw of the seiries. What with the dialogue battles, and reviews praising it's story like that, I came into the game expecting a decent story which I think is a fair assumption.

But, it is a good story, quite unanimously (edit: hyperbole... so easy to write). It's not the pinnacle of storytelling or "unimpeachable" but it IS a good story... It's just your standards that don't match what it offers.

Subjectivity works like that.

 

[5-0]

Let's be honest, the vast majority of games out there have terrible stories. So you have to salute any game which at least attempts to go beyond that. I think DE: HR made a valid attempt and, like many said, succeeded for the first two thirds or so. It certainly stood out for me as one of the best story-based games I played that year. Not a patch on the original though, but considering I class that as one of the greatest games of all time, it would be an impossible standard to reach.