Deus Ex: Human Revolution - How Games Explore Hard Real World Questions - Extra Credits

[Music] ah day of SE this series holds a lot of fondness for us James especially to this day the first entry remains one of the finest examples of level design in the medium right up there with portal and ikaruga it also touches on one of our favorite genres cyberpunk it has the conspiracy the aesthetic the technology it's got the Bleak vision of our dystopic disenfranchised future so naturally we were very excited to see the latest entry but sort of in that High Hopes low expectations kind of way you know that fear you get when you hear some new studio is going to reboot one of your favorite franchises so we were a bit nervous especially James but I'd say the game turned out pretty darn great all things considered in fact we were kind of surprised how much we enjoyed the experience because we couldn't precisely pin down why I mean the game is certainly nowhere nearly as groundbreaking or revolutionary as the original DSX it's Rife with minor design flaws systemically it's actually pretty broken I mean heck they even shipped the game Within ability that actually does

nothing and yet I'd still put it as one of our top games of 2011 so far keeping in mind that we're writing this before the release of Dark Souls after which all bets are off so what is it about human Revolution we liked so much well I did love the sense of Freedom the level design offered and the variety of valid play Styles the game presented but let's be honest that's the bare minimum we expect from a DSX game I also loved the consistency of the aesthetic yeah it wasn't pushing the level of Graphics a lot of other AAA games have been lately but it still had an interesting unique look that visually sets it apart from the crowd but all of that just reinforced the experience it's not what made it great I also got a kick out of the fact that someone finally gave us a game that definitively proved that dialogue bosses can be more fun and more exciting than combat bosses even if it did come at the cost of having laughably Antiquated boss fights that neither fit with the narrative or the mechanics of the game I imagine that had we only been given the option to talk or sneak our way through those bosses this game would have met a Critic even higher and the determinant for which ending you got was well let's be honest it was literally a multiple choice question at the very end kind of lazy so what was it we enjoyed

so much after trying to puzzle through this for like a month it finally clicked for me when I walked past the small Tent City in the middle of downtown Seattle where the Occupy Wall Street protesters were camped out by making this game a prequel and by bringing its setting a little closer to the world we know it served as a better lens for us to look at our own future and explore many of the questions our rapidly advancing Technologies raising and the thing that made it so satisfying to me was that conspiracy aside they really committed to this theme the game looked at transhumanism and wealth disparity using each to emphasize the importance of a examining the other but let's start by looking at them one at a time the original game was simply called deox as many of you know this is a two-fold pun on the Latin phrase deos exmachina meaning God from the machine deos X makina refers to a narrative device commonly found in Greek tragedies in which they would literally lower a god character onto the stage by use of a machine so that the God could neatly wrap up the story when it was time for the play to end today deos exmachina just means a contrived story resolution that isn't necessarily even consistent with the internal logic of the piece it appears in so of course you can find this in a ton of Ides but it's also

frequently found in today's badly written stories like the Star Wars prequels or Transformers anyone remember that crazy effective rail gun that came out of nowhere saved the day and then was never used again perfect example you can also see it a lot in games like in Final Fantasy 8 when the Ragnarok just appears out of nowhere at the most convenient time possible and yeah it happens in DSX the appearance of dius itself a reference to the mythological inventor and father of vicis is totally a deos X mock in a moment in deos X but the title runs deeper than just that it was also a pun on the actual phrase God from the machine most of the game was about Godlike machines and Powers vastly greater than ourselves it was an exploration of what happens when Humanity literally creates machine Gods but human Revolution does something different Human Revolution isn't focused on God from the machine in the sense of a machine from which God comes out but rather on a machine which will help us attain godhood if JC represented a salvific figure devoid of parents whose sole purpose was to correct our past errors then Adam represents the new man filled with complex relationships love loss and history the first step towards

something more than us but enough like us to make us understand the transition from Human to transhuman and raise the question at what cost now for those of you who don't know a whole lot about transhumanism just assume we're talking about a point when our current biological model of humanity becomes obsolete there's way more to transhumanism than that but just for right now let's think of it as the concept that at some point probably within our lifetimes we're going to find a way to improve the species or create some other form of intelligence that will fundamentally exceed the capacities of human beings as they've biologically evolved throughout DSX Human Revolution it's pointed out that Adam is something fundamentally different that he's rapidly separating from other people but his growth towards transhumanism is simply a way to look at a modern problem in its logical extreme throughout the game we continuously see the underclasses suffering from neuropen withdrawal or complaining about not being able to compete due to simply not being able to afford augmentation this is a real question and one worth asking when the kid with the rich parents can hit the ball out of the park every time at bat due to his cybernetic limbs how can the poor child even begin to compete with him throughout the game we see the level of unrest this question is causing

we see the vast stratification of society and an increasing Gap in standard of living between those who can afford the latest augmentation technology and those who can't but human revolution is genius in the fact that it puts us right in the midst of all this humans aren't totally outmoded yet people still hold down regular jobs and people are rebelling against this idea that the species as it naturally evolved is done the people we see are filled with prejudices and fears just like we would probably be this world serves as a parable because unlike the original deox this world is close enough to our own to draw parallels technology is creating a gap and that Gap is growing having access to a computer from a very young age being familiar with and having the resources to acquire the hardware and the software that Empower Our Lives defines how difficult or easy it is to get ahead of this world as technology continues to augment our capabilities more and more access to and ability with that technology will become an even greater differentiator how do we solve that problem because if we don't solve it this shift we're charging blindly towards isn't going to be pleasant for any of us even the people with all the gadgets in the world and that's the question that Human Revolution raises

and leaves open for us to answer with one of the several paths at the end that coupled with the less fleshed out questions of societal tensions media control and corporate Independence all make human Revolution a very present game did the designers totally avoid injecting their perspective no as mentioned in the propaganda Games episode this is almost impossible to do but knowing that Human Revolution gives us a good space to explore these questions by juxtaposing the awesomeness of the gameplay and Jensen's Powers with the overarching effects that pervade the setting poverty and greed social control and the increasing IR relevance of an un augmented species it's a canvas for us to explore questions from our world in a setting that divorces us from the factionalism and the biases we might bring to these questions in our everyday lives and when you put it that way that's exactly what we're asking for on this show all the time so yeah good on you idos well done so yeah check out Human Revolution if you haven't had a chance yet it looks like all this dosx talk has sent James into a Sci-Fi frenzy so uh we'll probably be back next week with more of that so see you then

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