Social Enhancer Augmentation: Deus Ex Human Revolution

Whenever I play an rpg I often gravitate towards creating a charismatic, silver-tongued character who can talk their way out of situations or simply bend them to their advantage. Deus Ex: Human Revolution is no different, except where other games might have a Charisma stat or a persuasion skill, DE:HR has the Social Enhancer Augmentation.

The Social Enhancer is a Cranial augmentation that costs 2 Praxis points. I know, there’s a strong temptation to spend Praxis points as soon as you get them, but this is worth the bit of saving up you have to do. This augmentation aids Adam in certain conversations, providing more options and if done successfully more benefits at the end of the conversation.

I’m not sure whether this is the same for everyone, but I didn’t get a game manual with my copy. It wasn’t a downloaded copy either, I just didn’t get a manual with mine, so it took me several tries to figure out just how to use it.

The first thing you’ll notice after you’ve bought the social enhancer is that when you enter certain conversations your interface will look slightly different. You see a small box with Alpha, Beta and Omega, each with three little blips underneath, secondly there will be a little real-time graph running showing how close you are to persuading the person you’re talking to. You’ll also notice that a brief psychological profile will be displayed, giving an idea of who you’re dealing with, and the type of person the are.

As the conversation starts, you will be given three options of conversation, such as ‘Placate’, ‘Refocus’ and ‘Defend’. Each of these options will either bring you closer or further away from being able to persuade your conversant. If you choose correctly, you will see the real-time graph move upwards and become greener, choose incorrectly and it will go down and become more red. Depending on how the conversation goes, you may need to change tactics. Clues about how you should deal with a conversant are given in the psychological profile.

As you are spoken to you may see the alpha, beta, omega bars flash with either one,two or three bars. These give you the character type you are dealing with. You should keep a running total of how many bars were shown under each type as the  conversation continues.

At a given point in the conversation, you will be given the option of releasing pheromones from the social enhancer aug by pressing the space bar. After which you can choose from one of three conversation options which are based on the character type. For example option one may be perfect for alpha’s but should never be used for omega’s, option two may be perfect for beta’s but never used for alpha’s etc. You’ll know which type of character you’re dealing with from counting up the alpha, beta, and omega bars.

You can always save just before the conversation if it goes badly, and have another try. I had to until I got the hang of it.

That’s it really. The social enhancer is not as complicated as it might look at first.

If you want to see an example there’s a video below which I found quite useful.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOFWqhDtKpE&feature=related]