This month: Deus Ex Human Revolution

Part Three: Pacifism and Augmentations

The driving force that propels Human Revolution forward is the sole idea of choice across multiple universes. The gameplay. The story. The power. The gameplay is quite simple, the multiple approaches stuff. The story is simply, as we covered last week, a little choice at the end. The power, however, is in something different. It is the choice of power, it is the choice of how to progress in a world full of robot-men.

I played Deus Ex Human Revolution on its hardest difficulty and decided to do a Pacifist run through. What occurred was one of the tensest and absolutely thorough gameplay experience of my life. I would check bodies, hide them in vents, try and minimize confrontation. I was a stealthy bastard and I was in love. For once I was in my element again. The days of Hitman and Thief had come back to haunt my fingers.

When I sat there, accomplished, and the little achievement popped up. I felt something. A sense of retrospection, that I should go through the titles in my collection and do it again. Not kill a single soul. New Vegas would be possible, definitely. Arkham City I’ve already done. BioShock? It would certainly be tricky but for a fifteenth playthrough, it’d be do-able and fun. Call of Duty? Halo? Gears? Nope. Systems which require me to complete specific things would stop me.

I am currently planning, yes planning, my next playthrough of Human Revolution. I may document it, I may video-it, I may do something with it. I intend, and I am being one-hundred percent serious here, to play through the entire game using (as much as I can) a vending machine. Just imagine ">this video stretched across a thirty hour game.

The main device of gameplay progress through Human Revolution, and what ties it to the story itself, is the augmentations. There are a few completely useless ones, with the ‘battery’ add-ons being a bit useless given how only one bar regenerates. Some of the lethal ones seem rather trivial at first if you’re like me, one of them being the Typhoon launcher. Capable of, quite easily, killing any boss character in seconds.

And this is where Human Revolution kinda blows. It’s said that these boss fights were outsourced but it seems quite lazy design anyway. The ‘speech bosses’ are much more exciting, thrilling, engrossing and downright ‘free’. Here, in the boss fights, a non-lethal character like me has to have half of his inventory stocked with missiles and laser beams so as to take them down. The sequences really are the low-point of the game.

There are playthrough methods that have been championed with one particular one being ‘no-augs’. That we are strictly levelling ourselves with the enemies, not playing survival of the fittest, going against the corporations. The rich kid with a bio-mechanical arm who gets the chicks over the limp poor kid. That sort of thing. Like I discussed last time, the breadth of choice in this game is mental. What is even more mental, however, is how it evolves video-games and makes them... grow up.

Next week: 2027

The Workshop is a weekly column written by Nathan Hardisty. Focusing on game design, narrative and overarching philosophy, a new title is run through the Workshop each month breaking down its formula into a 4-part series.

Catch up with these past Workshop columns:

Batman: Arkham City

Red Dead Redemption: Part 1

Heavt Rain: Part One

Batman: Arkham Asylum: Part One

L.A. Noire: Part One

Far Cry 2: Part One

Metro 2033: Part One

Bioshock: Part One