I met the producers of Far Cry 2 a couple of months before the game's launch and they were burned out wrecks – they'd spent months designing the plot and its attendant cut-scenes and webs of causation, so that the player couldn't stumble upon inaccuracies or discrepancies by trying missions in the 'wrong order'. Providing choice within a functioning narrative is complex, because player choices often clash with pre-prepared plot sequences. They are effectively creating two interconnected, but essentially separate gaming experiences. The designers are supporting freedom only by dislocating it from the main narrative. Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption work in a similar way. For example, in Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim there will be a 30-40 hour main quest, but then another 200 hours of side-missions and non-essential activities. In that respect, studios often like to hedge their bets. Would Black Ops have been a better game if the player had been able to run off and take side-missions in Vietnam or Cuba? Or do we need to think about it as a totally different form of entertainment?
But at the same time, titles like Grand Theft Auto and Fallout have prospered by offering players a certain amount of autonomy in the game world. There remains an unsolved problem at the core of game design: how much freedom do players really want? Corridor shooters like Call of Duty have evolved because there is a large audience out there for very controlled, linear cinematic experiences. And as a Triple A release, it is rather lonely.
Through the augmentation system, lead character Adam Jensen can be gradually transmogrified into a stealth assassin or a heavily armed juggernaut, with dozens of variations inbetween.Īlthough hundreds of games since Deux Ex have attempted to offer this choice, few have really allowed the player's selection to make a genuine impact on the story, and on the ramifications of each mission. As with the original Deus Ex, released way back in 2000, it offers an intriguing conspiracy-led cyberpunk narrative and a structure that gives the player huge amounts of room to explore their own gameplay impulses.
Launching this Friday, Deus Ex: Human Revolution could well be the most interesting mainstream video game for a decade.
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