Deus Ex amounts to a sacred text for video game enthusiasts. The 2000 release designed by Warren Spector and Harvey Smith changed the way that people thought about playing through a video game story.
Playing as UN anti-terrorist agent JC Denton, you uncovered a vast and centuries-old conspiracy that threatened the geopolitical stability of the whole world. The third-person action title incorporated RPG mechanics to let players carve out a play style all their own with elements of stealth or combat chosen at your discretion, while providing a multiplicity of routes to meet an objective. Also, the player’s conversations and decisions at key points affected the way the game progressed.
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Deus Ex wasn’t quite the first game to do these things, but it wrapped them up in a cyberpunk setting that made the whole thing feel ahead of its time. It felt like you were playing the way that games were going to be in the future.
That turned out to be true. Games as varied as Mass Effect, BioShock and Bastion all picked up on the design template of Deus Ex, tweaking it in ways that made it their own. Now, Deus Ex returns after a years-long hiatus, in a new game that serves as a prequel.
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Human Revolution takes place 25 years before the first Deus Ex, and reveals the beginnings of the cybernetic augmentation technology that gave J.C. Denton his special skills. This time, players control Adam Jensen, a private security agent for Sarif Industries, a leading research company pioneering new methods of grafting man and machine together.
But Sarif headquarters gets attacked by purist militants who don’t believe that humans should use science to change the work of evolution. The terrorist strike kills Adam’s love interest Dr. Megan Reed and leaves Jensen at death’s door. But intervention by Adam’s boss David Sarif gives him state-of-the-art bionic implants making him faster and more powerful, but perhaps less human than he was before. The first order of business after Adam’s cyborg resurrection is to find out who’s behind the attack, but every clue leads him to bigger and bigger mysteries.
From a gameplay perspective, the best thing about Human Revolution is how it doesn’t penalize you for switching between stealth and combat. It feels like each tack holds its rewards and you still feel like as many possibilities lie ahead of you if one approach fails. It may not be true emergent game design—where things that aren’t scripted wind up happening on their own—but there are times where it feels close.
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One side mission has you allying with a street gang to take out their rivals to find out information about a person of interest to Jensen. When I decided to take out the my erstwhile criminal allies instead, another path—where I would have had to meet up with a police officer—closed. Turns out chatter from other characters in the world told me that he was out investigating my crime. That moment gave me chills.
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There’s a deep level of customization to Jensen’s abilities and you can tool his augmentations to make him into a completely silent bionic ghost or human weapon. Granted, some of these—like knowing an enemy’s exact zone of awareness—are things you automatically get in other games.
But the distinction with DX:HR is how much it feels like a different game when you start acquiring upgrades. Whether it’s passive abilities like threat assessment or combat skills like increased strength, suddenly you can get to places and find out things you couldn’t before.
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Augmentations draw juice off your internal power supply so you’ll need to up your battery longevity to be really flexible. It’s not all about combat, either; many missions can be completed by successful hacking. It’s as important as any other ability in the game.
Eliminating enemies tends to be an exercise in experimentation. In true Deus Ex fashion, you’re almost always given a choice as to whether to dispatch them directly in a weapons battle or to work your way around them and pick them off quietly with a tranq pistol. Going silent generally feels more gratifying but direct engagement tends to get you through a level without having to be as painstaking. You can pop in and out of cover during a gunfight, but the surprisingly clever enemy AI will work to outflank you if you hold any position too long. Or you can avoid some encounters altogether.
The Blade Runner-style aesthetic on display in Human Revolution makes you want to explore every seedy back-alley. However, I found that the game didn’t feel so much like a true open world; it felt like a series of interconnected environments. One of the things that ties it all together is the strong dialogue and story sense. Eidos Montreal delvers some of the most approachable and naturalistic conversations this side of Irrational Games or BioWare. You feel for the characters as much as you do for Adam. Adam’s struggle to hold on to his humanity informs the moral greyness of the game and at each decision point, you’re asking, “How human do I want to be?”
DX:HR is a long game, with a richly layered world that rewards exploration and trial-and-error. It’s rare that you’ll feel hemmed in by a lack of upgrades or strategy; with enough thinking, you’ll almost always find a way around a threat. This excellent design philosophy makes you want to play it over and over and see how different things wind up.
Human Revolution waves the Deus Ex flag proudly and give gamers a new milestone that’s a classic in its own right.
Official Techland Score: 9.2 out of 10.
Evan Narcisse is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @EvNarc or on Facebook at Facebook/Evan.Narcisse. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.