The DX:HR Narrative - getting it right

[Graeme]

This is a thread about DX:HR, but I'm prefacing my point by referring to the original game in detail.

When I played the original game the first time through...I was fairly young and naive, you might say. What I got out of it was: work with UNATCO killing terrorists...then, discover that MJ-12 have base beneath UNATCO HQ and its just a front for guys trying to take over the world. Then...do a bunch of missions, blahblah Illuminati blahblah AI blahblah tube where JC Denton was made? Alex Denton too? blahblah BOOM, "The net's going...the net's going black...JC!"

Since then, I've played it through a bit more and found there was much more to discover...in particular that MJ-12, which was an offshoot of the Illuminati, was formed by Bob Page. They went where others wouldn't go with their research (the augmentation project? Amongst other things...). They control the UN and created the Gray Death virus, a Triad War and probably bombed the statue to justify creating UNATCO, a militant branch of the UN to deal with all these problems. They used UNATCO to supervise their latest projects: Paul and JC (as well as indiscrimanantly kill some 'terrorists').

But the two figured out something was wrong...and unraveled the conspiracy, while Icarus - Bob Page's AI buddy merged with the old MJ-12 AI (Daedelus), creating Helios. This was so powerful because the UN had centralized all surveillance, all everything, basically (in terms of the internet), in the constructor at A-51 (you can learn this in the early levels by buying Jock a few beers). Anyway, you work with the Illuminati to stop MJ-12 and are faced with the choice: bring the Illuminati back to power? merge with Helios to create a perfect government? blow-up everything and start over?

Another playthrough opened my eyes to a whole new philosophical angle on things...the Echelon conversation for example and just in general, the more you play through the game you get more and more of the plot depth (as well as more and more level design intricacies...like the hidden floor, or those upgrades on the billboard ledge in Hong Kong and that sort of thing).

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THE POINT IS, that you could go through DX 'getting it' or 'not getting it' depending on how inquisitive you wanted to be. Part of this was do the linear nature of the main plot which kept pulling you along and if you wanted to know what was going on, then you actually had to pay attention. I think what they're going for in DX:HR, is making it 'cool' enough to the masses that play it, that they can go through without learning too much about the plot and still enjoy it...but also have enough depth for those who want to pursue it. I'm not sure how that will turn out. Trying to please everyone can be a dangerous game to play.

What were your experiences playing the original game in terms of 'getting it' or 'not getting it'?

Do you think DX:HR will be able to balance depth and 'sexiness'? Will that detract from the depth that we want?

[Pinky_Powers]

If the depth is there, then the sexiness cannot detract from that. It can only detract from the weak-minded's perception of depth; as a sexy woman can be brilliant and thought-provoking if you can see past her beauty. But would you not rather have both qualities in a lady?

As for my experience with the original game... I was an inquisitive seventeen year-old when I first played Deus Ex. I got an awful lot of it the first time I played. But there was certainly a lot more to be uncovered and found and understood in subsequent play-throughs.

[FrankCSIS]

One part of what was fantastic about the narrative is that the more I searched, the more answers I found, everywhere, and all the time. The game always had an answer, another layer of narrative for me to uncover. There was more to bite than I could possibly chew, even for an insatiable teen fond of mysteries and ridiculously fanatic about the X-Files and other such shows. Interractivity, in its truest form, was ever present in the narrative, for the simple reason mentionned by the OP. The story was very basically presented to you, everything else you would uncover by your own actions, in-game. This is so very much better than aimless, storyless sandboxes and their so-called interractivity.