Just finished the game. Edit: there are spoilers.
The game was... mehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Don't get me wrong, I'm the biggest Deus Ex fan ever. Well, that's hyperbole. But I love the stuff out of Deus Ex. That said, this game did everything so very very well, but it just didn't live up to the first game. If the first game was 10/10, I'd say this game was 9.5/10. First of all, let me talk about what this game does well.
The gameplay mechanics were solid. Though I was initially wary of the cover system, it never felt clunky or unhelpful, and it really nicely gave me the chance to do a good amount of stealthing, which although it was an integral part of the first game, in the first game it didn't always feel like the "logical" thing to do, whereas in HR it just seemed like sneaking was the easiest thing to do, but it wouldn't be impossible to just kill everyone to accomplish a goal.
The characters are so solid. I love just about every character, as they did a bang-up job of making every character just as dynamic as necessary. The exceptionally flat characters are confined to obscure mentions and the main characters that I absolutely loved, Jensen, Sarif, Meagan, they all were quite dynamic and changing, very lifelike.
I also have a love/hate relation to the larger cities. I like the prospect of there being much much more to discover than what I found on my first playthrough, along with the prospect of more side quests, but after flipping through the achievements it looks like I did all but 1 or 2 sidequests on my first playthrough. Frankly, if the size of Detroit and Hengsha only ultimately serve to make quests take a lot long as I have to run back and forth, that would just really suck.
So what didn't I like about HR?
First of all, although it wasn't even close to as bad as the second game, I felt that there were a few mechanics that were "dumbed down" or just really illogically changed from the first game. I was disappointed to see that they had ditched separate systems of skills and augs, it bummed me out that both keypads and doors were opened illegally with hacking, as I enjoyed the resource management in the first game with lockpicks and keypad crackers. There is also no swimming, but I'm guessing some people will be happy to see that go.
All those things are excusable though, what I really didn't like about the game was, well, the story.
First of all, allow me to drop a confusing contradiction on you; the story kicked ass. The second game's story kicked ass. But the first game's story invented ass kicking, perfected it, and then kicked all the asses so that everything that kicked ass afterwards was kicking already kicked, sore ass. In Human Revolution after you get back from Montreal, and Sarif tells you that he thinks the Illuminati are behind, well honestly, everything, I'm like "Yes! Illuminati! Finally, the story is picking up! Let's do this! Turn everything I believe about every person and organization on its side, Deus Ex! And then I talked to some people about finding my girlfriend, ended up at my girlfriend's lab, didn't resolve THAT plot thread, then I went to Panchea and ended the game.
The endings were good, but of course like most rational human beings I saved right before I decided which button to press and then watched all the endings. It was a little bit frustrating that the ending you chose was as simple as pressing a button, I remember in the first game you had to run all over the damn place. Second of all, all the endings, while they were interesting as hell, weren't, satisfying, somehow. I loved how in Fallout New Vegas, when you ended the game, it spent time detailing what happened to every single major group of people that you interacted with. In the HR endings, Jensen just kind of rambles on about why his fake character picked that ending and what it might mean for mankind. Bleh.
And as for the story itself, it just feels like it never got moving. I mean sure, plenty of stuff happened, but the first 3/4 of the game felt essentially like errands for Sarif with a few side quests peppered here and there, and then the last quarter of the game felt like a pseudo mysterious revelation of something that I was already kind of expecting. In the beginning of the game, I knew that Meagan was alive. I just knew that that's too big of a "Oh my God! They said that it was this way, but they were actually wrong! I never saw this coming!" moment to pass up, and I didn't know how or why, but I knew Meagan was still alive.
Secondly, while the game did bring up a lot of interesting points, it never really surprised me as far as story development goes. It was interesting to see the details fleshed out, and Hugh Darrow's actions towards the end were fairly surprising, but it just felt like every "shocker" moment was tired and expected. In the first game, I distinctly remember the mission to Lebedev airfield where you see your brother there working for the NSF, and that was a huge what the forget moment! And then Deus Ex managed to consistently make a game out of blowing my mind, and then questioning whether it was the right choice. In Human Revolution, everything just seems to be laid out in front of you. Now, obviously, it was like that in the first game just by merit of how a video game has to be made, but the story seemed straightforward in the first game and then I was diverted from that ideal path onto like, a thousand different paths at different points in the game, and on Human Revolution, the path was laid and I ambled on along on it. I mean, I was fully expecting and almost hoping that I'd have to fight my way out of Sarif industries at some point.
And overall, more than any one thing I can or cannot point to, I just didn't think the feel of the whole thing was well constructed. Deus Ex was quirky but still serious, it had its wild characters, strange moments, and consistently amazing. It had so many plot threads, characters, organizations, alliances, and intracices that I felt like I needed to take notes, Human Revolution just seemed, amazingly well done, but lacking that sublime element that just made Deus Ex one of the greatest games ever.
On an entirely unrelated note, did anyone else think that David Sarif was way way younger than 57?
