This is the last of our Deus Ex: Human Revolution diaries. Yesterday, Graham scythed through computer security. Two days before, Tom killed every single person he met in the name of science. I'm focusing on a more cerebral approach, sneaking past any obstacle I can't talk my way through.
I'm surreptitiously fiddling with the lock on my co-workers office when I get the call. It's my boss, and it's clear from the tone of his voice that he's not happy. I close down the hacking interface I've been using and wheel about, trying to look as nonchalant as a man with matte black robo-arms who's just been trying to worm his way into a locked room to dig out dirt on his co-workers can. But David Sarif's not bothered about that. He's upset because I've taken too long.
My first job as Adam Jensen – after the game's introductory mission blew off my arms, legs, and ability to talk like anyone other than Batman – was to interject in a hostage situation. The victims are Sarif Industries employees, like me, and they've been taken by a group of anti-augmentation terrorists. The mission's sold as time sensitive. But I've heard that schtick before from other games. I can leave the mission hanging, leave my helicopter pilot dawdling, and leave the hostages unrescued for as long as I like while I break into offices and read the juicy gossip secreted on the computers inside. Surely?
Sarif's call says otherwise. The extra time I took made the hostage takers antsy, and they've gassed their charges. That's eight of my co-workers' deaths on my robo-hands, all because I was too busy snooping through their emails and climbing through vents to come and shoot their captors. This wasn't meant to happen. I've already spoken to others about their hostage rescuing escapades. I swear Graham never mentioned they were dead. I'd remember something like that. I offer a moment of silent sadness to the hostages' pretend memory, and get back to hacking the door. What's another twenty minutes of wandering around? It's not like the hostages are getting any more dead.
There's the vestiges of a sidequest in this earliest part of the game. Someone is pilfering Neuropozene, the medical goo that augmented types need to keep on hand to ensure their mechanical parts aren't rejected by their weak human body. I was convinced the mystery would be solvable before I packed myself off on my first mission proper, and my poking and hacking uncovered a stash of items and an incriminating note in one of the office's ventilation shafts. But there the trail ended: my hacking ability was too low to allow access to a critical office cubicle, and I was saving my Praxis points. I packed up and headed out, after rifling through one final desk for gossip fuel.
Sarif gave me the same choice in weaponry as both Tom and Graham, but I plotted a different course. Like Graham, I wanted to play non-lethal, but I was keen to try two distinct methods: talking, and hiding. The sniper-style tranquiliser rifle would be unwieldy in exactly the kind of tight spot I planned to find myself in, so I went for the stun gun instead. It's a beautiful bit of near-future design: black and yellow plastic that fires a glob of taser-like electricity and folds up to look like a particularly naff mobile phone.
Not that I had much cause to use it. I've seen Human Revolution's stealth in action before, but this was my first chance to try it in person. I was half way through the facility before I was even heard, three quarters before I was seen, the game's Rainbow 6: Vegas-esque cover system feeling consistently reliable. I halted at the facility's final open-plan office, watching the terrorists' patrol routes for a few minutes. My back to solid cover, I inched down the stairs. Human Revolution is surprisingly generous with its cover: chances are, if it's got a vertical surface, Adam can duck behind it.
I'd been holding onto my Praxis points, unwilling to spend them without genuine reason. At the foot of the stairs, I found one. I plugged my initial allotment into a stealth 'helper' aug, part of a suite of abilities designed to assist the sneaky player in their invisible travels. Now, when I moved, my minimap glowed with a circumference of sound: the noise my clunky footsteps were putting out as I bounded around the level. Perfect for me. Sneaking games get me so overwhelmingly paranoid that I spend levels in a perma-crouch, waddling in silence even with no terrorists nearby to hear my shuffles. Now I had a quantifiable value to measure my stance against. I could stay out of sight all I liked, but if those waves of sound lapped against an enemy's eardrums, it'd flip them into an alert state.
The area in front of me was rich with terrorists, their vision cones leaving few corners of the room unswept. Spying a door off to the side, I planned an exit, before rolling deftly into cover with the space bar. I opened the door in a crouch, and came face to ass with another terrorist. Panicking, I hammered the left mouse button, bringing up my most recently selected weapon. A good few thousand volts flicked from the muzzle of the stun gun into my opponent's unlucky buttocks, and he crumpled to the floor with a sad little moan. Moving quickly, I slammed the door shut behind me, rifled through the unconscious body's pockets, and grabbed his leg. Considering this excursion wasn't planned, it was going better than expected. Until his friend walked in.
He spotted me crouching over his workmate, who was slumped on his back, arms wide, one leg cradled softly in the augmented arms of a strange man. It looked worse than it was. I immediately dropped the unconscious man's leg, and raised my stun gun, firing another blurt of electricity. My rude interrupter collapsed too, but not before yelping a warning to the men outside. Sprinting over to his body, I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into the same dark corner I'd been trying to stash his colleague. Hiding bodies has a practical application, as well as letting you put one man's hand on another's crotch: should a conscious foe stumble on a sleeping one, he'll shake him awake and raise the area's suspicion level.
The sleeping terrorist's warning was more useful than expected: the region's bad-men were all drawn to the same point, and while they fussed over their spooning friends, I was able to slip through to level's final confrontation with Zeke and his lady hostage. After my fairly successful infiltration, I was comfortable with my current level of sneaking ability. I resolved to jam my next Praxis points into the speech centre of my brain, and upgrade Adam's social augs. With that in mind, I tried to talk Zeke down from the edge.
No matter how saintly you play, it's tough to ignore a dialogue option labelled 'CRUSH.' Rarely a lunchtime goes past that I don't ache to CRUSH the self-service checkout machines in Boots. Selecting it here made Adam launch into a systematic takedown of all anti-augmentation terrorist Zeke held dear. He didn't react well to me calling his eyepatch stupid, waving his weapon around and hugging his hostage harder. I backed off from that avenue of verbal attack, and chose instead to 'reason' with him. Look, I said, spreading my terrifying robo-arms to look less threatening. I knew he was a noble man, caught up and betrayed by forces bigger than he. A few back and forths, and I'd convinced him of his folly. But still, Zeke was certain he needed to keep his hostage to avoid the firing squad waiting outside. I had one chance to dissuade him of this, and gambled it on another 'reason' dialogue tree.
It worked. Zeke saw sense, and jabbed the hostage forward. I let him disappear off into the night, and gained the jeers of the SWAT team who had been forced to wait for my arrival. In their eyes, I'd turned up late, huffing and puffing, before letting the orchestrator of a terrible massacre go. When they put it like that, I sound fucking useless. But I've got giant robo-arms and sunglasses that flip onto my eyes when I think about sunglasses. What have they got? Big stupid faces, all of them. Let them jeer. Sure, eight people are dead, but I finished the mission without firing a bullet, and I used my words to defuse an execution. Who needs guns when I've got a silver tongue?
As soon as I could, I upgraded that tongue. There's only one dedicated social augmentation in the game, and I'd managed to earn the Praxis to activate it after completing a few sidequests. I'd been pottering around the streets of Detroit since installing it, chatting to prostitutes with the enthusiasm of a schoolchild who doesn’t understand why the nice ladies are standing on a street corner. They professed their cheap rates, but none of them offered any extra dialogue options. In my haste to experience all of the game, I'd already mined out a chunk of the city's meatier conversations before awakening my new ability, and the aug only comes into play during important chats.
Walking sadly away from the hookers, I spied an open door. On the other side was an ex-cop turned security guard, a friendly fellow who I'd leant on earlier. He ended up handing out some useful information – letting me know where to look for vital evidence in working out how my ex-girlfriend died in the assault that blew off my arms. But helpfulness wasn't enough. He'd also mentioned he knew the code for a secure lockbox full of goodies. Problem was, he was the only one who did, outside of the shadowy bad dudes covering up Megan's murder. If anyone were to access the box, those same bad dudes would do bad dude things to my security guard chum. Never, he swore, would he give up that information. It might kill him.
That sounded like a challenge made for my new “convince people to do things they said they'd never do because it might kill them” aug. I wasn't sure what I expected it to do – maybe let Adam talk so fast he shatters the skull of his conversational adversary? Instead, it made smells. Pheromones, to be exact.
Mid-chat, I was prompted to 'press Z to activate pheromones.' I duly pressed the button, and released my gas. A meter appeared in the top left, three pips next to gauges marked 'alpha', 'beta', and 'omega'. The standard dialogue options were gone, replaced by a set of conversational principles more abstract: things like the 'CRUSH' I'd used against Zeke, each annotated with a small description of their effectiveness against certain personality types. As my mark talked, the meter's pips filled up with light: two in alpha flashed on as he talked about his duty, replaced by one in omega as he warned me against pressuring him any further on the topic of the stash.
Our conversation was pockmarked with these little blips, enough that it was difficult to keep up. I'd expected the social aug to allow an auto-win in dialogue, but it goes beyond that, creating a mini-game in itself. After the security guard had finished nattering, I chose an option. Broadly, Alphas are strongmen, confident and bullish. Betas are more reserved, and unsure of themselves. Omegas are insecure, but hide it with bluster and threats. I’d lost track of the pips, but I still had my human ability to read a personality. The security guard had once been a cop, and was still doing the right thing in aiding me: I figured he’d respond well to some alpha ego-stroking.
“Don’t try that shit on me, Jensen, I can see right through it.” I backtracked quickly, trying to extricate the code from him. No dice. Even with the social sectors of Adam’s brain whirring at triple normal speed, conversations were still fluid affairs that could be ‘lost.’ I briefly toyed with an approach more in line with Tom’s, but had neither the strength, nor a fridge in hand to hurl full-force at the security guard’s face. I let him keep his secret, and trudged out into the Detroit night.
I was keen to use my newfound talky powers again, and didn’t have to wait long. After the hostage rescue mission, Jensen’s charged with making his way into a police station. There’s a range of entry points: a vent on the roof, a ladder in the sewers, a side-alley. I chose a simpler route, and waltzed straight in the front door. It was guarded by one man only, but moving past him unauthorised would bring the full force of the Detroit PD down on my augmented ears. I had to talk my way past. Time to get gassy.
I released my pheromones early in the conversation with the cop behind the desk, but I didn’t have to. Turns out he was an old colleague of Jensen - who himself spent his earlier life as a SWAT team member in the motor city - and both had been involved in an operation that went horribly wrong. Players without the social aug can read the scenario using their pathetic, unaugmented human brains and still talk their way in, but my mental additions made the process simpler. As well as the return of the alpha/beta/omega pips, initiating the conversation also brought up a wavering line on a graph. When I selected options the cop chimed with, the line would go up; when I pissed him off, it would drop, giving me constant feedback on how my vocal gambits were paying off.
It started badly. It becomes apparent that Jensen’s SWAT team had killed an augmented kid during a job, and the man behind the desk had pulled the trigger. My opening line was too vicious, excoriating the man for his stupidity, and had I mentioned how ugly his face and wife both were? He didn’t like that, and his meter dropped. Quickly, I changed tack, offering soothing platitudes. That went down better, but he’d heard hollow sympathy before. My third approach worked best. From the dialogue, I’d got an overview on the man: he didn’t want support or abuse, he wanted to be able to justify what he’d done to himself. I reasoned with him, suggesting that the augmented kid he’d shot was a genuine threat, arguing he did the job he was trained for. Absolved of some guilt by an ex-superior officer, his wavering brain-line shot up to the top of the meter, and he let me in. I didn’t necessarily agree with what I’d said, but the social aug had let me genuinely manipulate the poor guy. I’d have told him that his hair was beautiful and we should run away together and have little robo-babies if it got me what I wanted. Feeling equal parts cruel and cool, I sauntered onto the police station’s open-plan floor.
As great as the social aug is - and trust me when I say it’s great - it’s somewhat of a Praxis point dead-end. Once I’d unlocked the pheromones, I didn’t have another step in the tree to take. But by the preview build’s final mission, I still had some Praxis points floating around in my augmento-sack. Which powers to choose? Hacking had been covered by Graham, being an insane multi-murderer by Tom. That left stealth, but it was a broad church. The helper aug I mentioned before had a host of add-ons - things that show vision cones, or dampen footstep sound. But they were too passive. I wanted something I could use in a panic, an ejector switch to get me out of trouble. I wanted something suitably futuristic. I wanted something that let me turn absolutely invisible at will, so I could rise from thin air like some kind of mad land-shark with metal arm-teeth. I wanted the cloak.
I’d finally cobbled together enough Praxis to afford it by the preview build’s final mission. Deus Ex’s full-fledged MISSIONS (capitals for distinction between the hub’s side-missions) take place in bespoke areas. They’re closer to a standard shooter’s levels - there’s a beginning and an end - but there’s still a quadrabajillion ways to approach them.
The job opened out into a small, dusty courtyard. It was late evening, and the guards posted in front of my Jensen were upgrades on the basic grunts I’d met earlier. They had assault rifles, body armour, and mean looks. But that was fine. I could disappear from reality.
Problem was, I’m not much for reading the fine print on things. When I’d selected the cloak, my mind had filled in the blanks I couldn’t be bothered to skim. Probably shouldn’t have done that. My first trip across the courtyard was taken at a gentle jog after engaging my cloak. The sound of invisible feet on floor attracted the ears of every guard in the vicinity, but not quite to the same extent as Adam’s sudden burst back into visibility in the centre of the courtyard.
It turns out the cloak last a scant few seconds at its basic level. Even the Praxis upgrades only provide a slight extension to its lifespan. I found out the hard way. With bullets, in my face.
Reloading and starting the stage again, I started to use the cloak as a last-gasp saviour instead of a constant crutch. Towards the end of the stage, the facility - I won’t spoil what it’s facilitating - opens out into a huge office floor, studded with cubicles. I started moving methodically, stunning guards and dragging them into dark corners. But the room made for long sight lines, and the stun gun’s ball of electricity had a limited travel distance. I broke out my tranquiliser rifle - purchased from a helpful arms dealer in one of Detroit’s apartment tenements - and loosed off a few darts at distant targets.
One guy slumped to his knees, alone off in a corner. Except, he wasn’t alone. A friend, previously hidden by a crate, came jogging up to his unconscious body. In a panic, I fired a second dart. It missed, high and to the right, and the nearby guards flipped into an alert state. In groups, they began sweeping the upper floor I was residing on. To take the sniper shots, I’d holed up in a small control room. I had doors to my left and right, both about to be occupied with the bulky frames of heavily armoured guards. In front, beyond a window, the edge of a balcony that dropped ten feet to the comparatively safe ground below. Earlier in my travels, I’d used some extra Praxis to glue the fancy-sounding Icarus Landing System to Adam’s feet, an aug that slowed falls from any height with a halo of light that looks like a shuttle re-entering the atmosphere. If I could make it to that balcony and leap off, I’d be safe.
Augs are classified into two major categories: passive, and active. Passive ones, like the noise detector I’d installed earlier, were always-on. Active ones drain power reserves. These reserves can themselves be beefed up with Praxis points, but I’d been neglecting that branch of the upgrade tree. I had two blips of battery to put toward my cloak, which equated to around five seconds of invisibility.
Both guards were set to burst into my hidey-hole at the same time. I waited in a crouch, one finger hovering over F1, watching the door. The one on the right twitched first, and I flipped on my cloak. I had but a few seconds to make it past him and launch headlong into the void, but were I to sprint, Adam’s robo-footsteps would give away my position. I shuffled slowly past the suspicious guard. Once behind his back, I stood up, still invisible, and ran for the lip of the walkway. I rematerialised in the visible light spectrum a millisecond before I began my jump. Any guards looking my way would’ve seen a man appear out of thin air, fall a few feet, then turn into a shimmering human fireball and drift slowly to the ground.
But none did. Once on the ground, I was able to squirrel into a nearby vent and wait out their extended patrol routes. Human Revolution’s augmentations had yanked me out of a spot almost impossibly tight.
It’s that rarest of games: it rewards both meticulous planning and split-second reaction calls. To experience everything Human Revolution has, I should plot an entirely different Adam come the full game’s launch. But I don’t want to. I want to make exactly the same character. In ten hours, I know my Adam Jensen. I know he can get out of trouble with his head or his hands. I want to get to know him better.
