Finished the new Deus-Ex from Eidos Montreal today. As someone who was a huge fan of the original game I had high expectations. Even accounting for some of the proverbial rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, I was hoping that they had captured the open ended nature of the original title.
Thankfully, I was very happy to find that the spirit of the original game was very much alive and well. For me, one of the strongest elements that games can add to their storytelling is allowing players to craft a story that is unique to them. Deus-Ex Human Revolution has not only realized this, but treasured and nurtured it. The game has a great narrative drive, and even though events are pretty much linear, and while we will all go through the same story roughly speaking, where the game excels is in supporting so many different approaches and tactics so that it genuinely feels like your story. It is a fantastic example of where you can still have a relatively linear narrative, but also allow the player to craft their own version of it.
The game will play very differently depending on your progression choices, not just in terms of the key dialog sections, that you fully expect to dictate the narrative, but also in terms of game-play. The team at Eidos have done a tremendous job at making all of the available augmentations useful and powerful..indeed some of them can almost totally neutralize the threat in certain sections of game-play, but the beauty is that you can can't choose them all. This means that you will find the game feels different for you, depending on your choices. What is a difficult section for some, will be a walk in the park for others. Essentially each player has the power to craft their own version of what is a very linear narrative. It is a great example of how you need not feel 'restricted' by a linear narrative as a game designer...and I just hope we don't have to wait another ten years for a triple-A title to do it this well...
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