![]() I purchased the most formidable, lethal, personal augmentation, the Typhoon, and immediately, ruthlessly obliterated a large gang of enemy drones. These brutal strangers were fucking with my life, and those of my Sarif colleagues. It is highly unusual for me to find any real affect in game stories, but when I finally encountered the "main" enemies, my restraint was dissolved. And it did so entirely within its narrative. And anyway, I am not necessarily the luddite who prefers base displays of gore and fire over subtlety.Īnd that was where the game proved me wrong. I should too, I thought, so that we could compare similar experiences. They were going to be taking the route of concussion blasts and knockouts. I have to admit that I wanted to conform to the way I knew John, Alec, and Kieron were playing the game. Maybe something else would show up later. Wasn't Sarif going to tell me that the company looked bad? Weren't people in Sarif HQ going to say "I heard he likes to stab men in the groin!" I was ready to be made to feel guilty, but the hit wasn't there. I had been ready for at least some barbed earpiece comments about my ultra-violence, but nothing was forthcoming. Nevermind, I thought, I'll skewer and shoot my way through this level and then enjoy the horrified indignation of the other characters who are tracking my progress.Įxcept not. I was pretty surprised, as I'd not done that before. In my enthusiasm to put one of the buggers back down I stabbed him the groin. Despite opting for the tranquilliser darts on my foray into the early parts of the game, and being careful to punch (rather than impale) the first few folks I encountered, my situation suddenly got out of hand when fighting and shouting and mistakes woke some guards I'd previously knocked out. What it doesn't do, however, is judge you in the way that the original game did. ![]() It's not vastly more, but enough to build up and make a difference to the powers you manage to unlock across the entire game. ![]() The game certainly incentivises non-violent approaches, because you get more XP. Initially I too was lured by the promise of doing things differently. You can take the tools of non-violent man-defeating into the game pretty much from the outset, and that remains mostly consistent throughout what is a huge, sprawling game. The point is that DXHR, from the outset, is keen to offer a choice. Only the quick thinking of a nearby PC games journalist with a fire-extinguisher stopped the indignant Mr Walker from detonating into a crater where his desk should have been, and instead he was able to walk away, calm down, and vent his frustrations by attacking exploitative game distribution practices. It's also an interestingly different challenge.ĭXHR pulls it off so well that John almost exploded when the non-murderous approach was forcible over-written by the bosses. It's ethically okay and it's gameologically refreshing. You get to be the guy who doesn't murder hapless goons (thus neatly sidestepping the "think of the Goon's family" guilt-joke from Austin Powers) and instead drags their unconscious forms into airducts, traumatising them forever. The role-playing ramifications of that are pretty profound, especially when set against the backdrop of most of the games we play. Getting them to lie down and have a nap, via a range of persuasive implements, also becomes an option. They are combat games, really, but since they are based around infiltration, rather than direct confrontation, there's considerable scope for activities other than shooting men to death. It seems reasonable to argue that the finest achievement of the Deus Ex games is to offer some choice about how you handle combat situations. (Mild mechanical and narrative spoilers.) Most people I know felt that to be true to the game, and to themselves, they had to defer to a non-lethal route. ![]() Whether you relied on knockout punches, tranquiliser darts and stunguns, or whether you stabbed people in the dick. And to talk about how is to say whether you approached it lethally, or non-lethally. The first line of discussion I seem to have had with anyone who has played DXHR (which is a considerable fraction of the people I know) concerns how we played it.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |