Deus Ex: Human Revolution Design Analysis

GameBanshee’s own Eric Schwarz has once again turned his attention to Eidos Montreal’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and this time it’s for a design analysis on Gamasutra that takes a closer look at the game’s strengths and weaknesses, particularly when compared to the original Deus Ex.

In Deus Ex, levels weren’t so much corridors to crawl through as they were large open hubs or spaces to navigate, featuring multiple zones, levels of elevation, indoor and outdoor areas, multiple floors within buildings, alternate routes from all angles, etc.  To visualize a Deus Ex level, one has to think of it more as a maze with a central objective point in the middle and dozens of potential routes in reaching it, open-ended rather than predetermined and fixed.  Consider one example from early in the game, the NSF warehouse break-in:

1) Arrive on a rooftop elevator and hop along rooftops and fire escapes to reach the warehouse, then infiltrate from the top-down.

1b) Same as above, but climb down the fire escapes and ladders near the warehouse to find an alternate point of entry via a window on the side of the building, leading straight to one of the objectives.

1c) Same as above, but instead sneak through the apartment buildings along the way, which themselves provide ways to both the roofs and city streets.

2) Climb over alley fences on the city streets, bypass explosive charges set and guard dogs, and eventually make it to the front door for a first-floor infiltration.

2b) Same as above, but sneak around to the back door and go in that way.

2c) Same as above, but get through a hatch to the basement and navigate through a complex maze of tripwires and sentry turrets to reach the main warehouse floor.

2d) Same as above, but find a sewer entrance and swim to the warehouse (dependent on Aqualung augment or a rebreather item).

Of course, there are probably far more options that I’ve missed out on, and exponentially more depending on how the player might combine these approaches and explore further.  While all of these options include two basic points of entry, they can deviate in radical ways very quickly.  I still find new things when playing this part of the game ten years after I originally did, and that’s true for just about every other environment in the game.

One might say “well, Human Revolution also offers lots of opportunities in a similar vein”, but I find myself strongly disagreeing.  If you examine the options above, you’ll likely notice that few of the choices provide clear advantages or disadvantages for certain characters – while you might choose to take the rooftops or the streets, there’s nothing about these routes that favors a stealthy character over an action-oriented character, or a hacker over a bruiser.  While some might suit your specific play-style, there’s nothing about them that says “this is the route you want to take if you are sneaking” or “this is where snipers want to go”.  The level design provides choices, but they aren’t choices between absolutes – only degrees of freedom in what is effectively a sandbox for the player to operate inside.