DDL on 29/11/2011 at 13:22

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It's also worth noting that the whole 'jack of all trades' aspect was apparent in DX as well (albeit to a lesser degree): by the end, you had enough skillpoints and aug upgrades to be optimised for your chosen 'build' but also pretty close to optimised for every other possible approach, unless you really made the effort to distribute them crazily.

It also shared the fact that some of the augs were plainly better than others, and some of the augs were pretty much useless as a whole.

Still, HR is obviously not the same game as DX, which I guess skinner's pigeon was hoping for...but we're in a whole different era of gaming now, so a hope like that would be unrealistic anyway. What HR does do, I feel, is make a lot of steps in a positive direction (and has managed to be relatively successful while doing so). So I'd tend to commend it for even getting close, rather than rage about it not getting close enough.

Also,



If that was 30 hours of expository cutscenes*, you might have an argument.
As it is, it's 30(ish) hours of game, which is
A) an entirely different medium to convey messages in, and
B) timed based on playstyle too: my first playthrough was nearer 75 hours..does that mean my identical copy of the game was two and a half times less effective at examining themes than your copy?

Plus one's experiences of 'depth' are somewhat subjective. If you're the kind of person that needs information thrust upon you, then you might feel the game is shallow, whereas if you read every email, talk to people, read posters, listen to broadcasts, soak up the atmosphere etc etc, then it's a hell of a lot deeper than you give it credit for, while also being a playable game.


*but we don't want to see more cutscenes, oh holy fuck no. You are at least spot on, there.

Matthew on 29/11/2011 at 14:25

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Why not? If they were selling bionic eyes I'd buy a pair tomorrow. Instant better-than-perfect vision? Yes please.

DDL on 29/11/2011 at 14:34

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Oh please...GitS has action sections, but also has long sections of massively navel-gazing discussion. You can get away with that in a movie, because the protagonist is not also the player, hoping this interminable fucking cutscene will be over soon. They're wholly different media.

Plus..we're not really comparing HR to ghost in the shell here anyway, not only for the reasons I've listed, but also because...HR isn't trying to be ghost in the shell. I might as well call it out for doing far less to convey social injustice in its 30hour playtime than the shawshank redemption did in under two hours. We're (sort of) trying to compare it to DX, since that is at least a slightly more sensible comparison.


As for 'why is augmentation bad for humanity'..surely that's up to you to decide? That is, after all, the point of letting you decide. If you can't come up with a non-stupid reason to be anti-aug, then maybe there are no good reasons. Why does it have to be bad at all (drug dependency aside)?

The ludicrous prevalence of augs, and the constant theme of augsaugsaugsaugs in every fucking conversation, is certainly a fault in the game, I feel ("gotta get auged to get ahead in this world" -"really? You work in fucking data entry..."), but I'm not sure that really comes under the heading of "insufficient depth" so much as "overly focussed depth".

They put so much effort into fleshing out the whole aug-theme that they made that theme itself seem somewhat artificial, and forgot to add much to the wider world (which is a shame). It's stupid, and there is no explanation for why every fucker and his uncle has augs (plus how the fuck do gang members afford all that shit?), or for why the augs really make no fucking difference (tranq a guy in his metal arm, he goes down! :confused::confused:). They went down the "haves vs have-nots" road, rather than the "holy shit dude has a metal arm fuuuuck run run run" road, which is annoying, plus a fairly jarring departure from the suggested attitudes in DX. I wish they'd made augmented people rarer, and the reactions to augmentations more extreme, like it seemed they were considering doing at an early stage...but hey.

Still, given this admittedly silly conceit, they do explore that particular theme in a pretty extensive fashion, plus they actually had the balls to outright give the player a clearly stupid stupid mission objective that tied into the whole augmentation theme, which I thought was great.

So it's swings and roundabouts. Plus I'm a glass half full person anyway.

Thirith on 29/11/2011 at 14:52

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First adopters are rarely perfectly rational. Is the issue presented in an exaggerated way in Human Revolution? No doubt - but hyperbole is a valid stylistic means. Is HR always smart about its themes? Definitely not, but IMO you're mixing valid criticism too much with personal taste. A lot of what you're saying doesn't seem to be addressing weaknesses in the game's narrative so much as stylistic choices that are a matter of taste.

Edit: Skinner's pigeon, I'd agree with you that Human Revolution is less deep than it thinks it is and I also dislike the "Pretty good storytelling... for a game" excuse, although I don't think it's as bad as you say. When it comes to characterisation, there's a lot of pretty subtle stuff going on in the game, which I appreciate. At the same time, I think that most criticism of Human Revolution's story, while valid, isn't any less valid when it comes to the original Deus Ex. That game wasn't exactly deep either. It's got a competently told story, but quotes from philosophers do not make a game narrative profound.

Skinner's pigeon on 29/11/2011 at 15:14

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I'm pretty sure that the time devoted to navel-gazing is a fraction of the movie, but you're right, arguing the merits of GitS has no place here. But since you bring up Deus Ex, you have to admit that there's little by way of deep discussion in DX:HR by comparison. Where's the counterpart to the Aussie bartender, or Morpheus?


The fact that a theme isn't examined in depth is not proof that the theme is inherently shallow. It only means that the examination is. I'm surprised that you would defend the writing by assuming that there are no actual arguments to be made. And if that's indeed the case (I don't at all think it is), why choose a theme that's so morally and philosophically unambiguous for a game in which this is a bitterly contested issue?

This is what passes for good writing in games.


I don't know what you mean by this. I'm sorry, but I'm going to bring up GitS again, but only for the backstory and universe. Just about everyone has cybernetic implants in that universe, but the only ones who have prosthetics are the ones who actually need it, such as people with medical problems (like Kusanagi when she was a child) and military-type operatives. Would it really have been that difficult to have that level of believability in a 2011 AAA game?


And fight crime!

Right? I mean, I don't see the point otherwise, unless they're already in a sorry state.

Edit:



It seems that an unfortunate amount of DX:HR's writing is contingent on people behaving foolishly. The public choose to be enslaved to drug dependence although they don't need prosthetics. Jensen's stupidity during cutscenes prevents us from nipping Zhao in the bud. Darrow's a psychopathic manchild (he could've just broadcasted his prepared message; after all, Eliza says that it will have the exact effect on the world that he wants).