https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/82130401

I hate the new direction the deus ex games went in, I loved the comic booky characters of deus ex 1 (and 2, kind of) and the story revolving around the question "how do imperfect humans create a government that is as fair and balanced as (humanly) possible". The new games leaned more on "cool, i'm a robot and cyberpunk is cool and augmentations give rich people an edge over poor people, and also you're reliant on drugs or something if you get augs", the messages and overarching themes got completely changed and took a massive fucking backseat to the 'cool cyberpunk look'.

So you had this original game, right? Filled with world building, lots of dialogue about governments, opinions and thoughts about groups and the way humans organize themselves according to power, culture... buddy, the topics were never not interesting. Amazing level design and janky but fun gameplay that has that old game charm. And the questions that deus ex were asking were currently haunting the world, the ILOVEYOU virus had just inflicted 5.5-8.7 billion dollars in damages, Y2K is going on, the cold war was a massive culture war and yadda yadda yadda deus ex predicted 9/11 or something. Good game, everybody should play the first and maybe play the second if you have the time. Maybe. The second was worse, but it was short, fun and the plot was dumb but entertaining.

So then deus ex human revolution comes along and it's just barely apart of the same franchise. Ion storm (the developers) were absorbed into the gluttonous maw of eidos, and instead of focusing real hard on these massive questions on the human condition, of power structures, governments and corporations and how liberty can be slowly taken from people; nahhh nigga have you heard of the story of ICARUS? Mother fucker flew too close to the SUN! Also everything looks pretty, oooohhh ahhhhh. You can't sprint for more than 2 second bursts, the first half of the game forces you to play it like a stealth game, the story's not awful truth be told, but the side quests are timesinks that vary between pretty good to time wastes, which ruins the pacing of the main story. Every NPC has something to say but 99% of the words they say have little substance. Level design sucks, gameplay boring.

I just wish that human revolution/mankind divided was its own IP, and deus ex 1 and 2 was left a sleeping dog. Probably would have given the plot of HR/MD more room to breath (but then it wouldn't have been as successful as it was, thank you eidos very cool) and would have tempered my gameplay expectations more. It was just too much of a departure to really stand up to what the first game was.
"God was a dream of a good government."

Base +9

jesus christ denton

Base +6