The original Deus Ex was a great game. The second one, Deus Ex: Invisible War, was... not. But they both shared an essential design feature, and it's made me extremely reluctant to invest a bunch of time and energy in the third one, Deus Ex: Human Revolution. And that essential feature is: All of the endings suck.

It's a bit ironic, when you consider how much press Deus Ex got back in the day for its "groundbreaking multithreaded narrative", that all of those revolutionary multiple story threads led to endings that made you feel like a chump for caring about the choices you were making in the game all along. And then Invisible War came along and did the same goddamned thing, which was even worse, since you'd been sitting there enduring the crappy environmental design, the lame weapons, and the pre-Cambrian load times thinking, Well, at least the story's engaging. When I finally realized, after playing through the major decision points four or five times and exhausting all the available endings only to find that they were all horrible, that they'd done it to me again, I nearly threw my mouse through a window.

So I've been intrigued by the art design of Human Revolution, and I must have bought it on one of those periodic insane-unannounced Steam sales or something, because it's been sitting in my library for quite a while now and I haven't ever actually been arsed to play it. I don't feel like investing all the time and energy it takes to play through a game of that kind again, only to discover that my choice of endings once again boils down to "destroy all humanity," "revert civilization to barbarism," or "destroy all humanity in a different way."

Here's the hard part. If anyone out there has played Human Revolution, will you please tell me - without spoiling any details - whether this is once more the case? Is there an ending - even one will do - that doesn't roundly mock the player for bothering to get far enough to see it? Because there wasn't in either of the first two games and I'm not doin' that again.

I realize, of course, that I'm setting myself up for a long con here if anyone cares to pull it. If there isn't, and you tell me there is, I have no way of knowing you're lying until I've wasted all the time. To quote Gordon Freeman, don't fuck me on this.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.