A weapon of choice.
The hype machine behind big games often mirrors the precarious Icarus myth - fly too close to the sun, promise too much, and you're just as likely to tumble out of the sky as deliver on your potential. Eidos Montreal have promised so much with Deus Ex: Human Revolution that it's hard to see how they could succeed, how they couldn't burn up in the harsh heat of audience expectation - of the potential assigned to a predecessor now more than a decade past. That heat already turned on one Deus Ex sequel, scourging it beyond all rhyme or reason. Playing the part of a better Daedalus, Eidos Montreal has given Human Revolution the wings to fly true - with just a few scorch marks to show for it.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution takes place in a future you can see from here through half-lidded eyes. The world of Human Revolution meets somewhere between Blade Runner and Robocop - caught between the utopia of revolutionary scientific discovery and the dystopia of the people inevitably left behind. Protagonist Adam Jensen becomes swept up in a globe-spanning conspiracy hinging on powerful - and dangerous - augmentation technology. Adam's employers sit on the cusp of a breakthrough that might fully "unlock" human potential, courtesy of a love interest from his past, Megan Reed. But before you can say "Alex Murphy," Reed is dead, and Jensen lays mortally wounded on an operating table, receiving an involuntarily hands - and legs, and lungs, and eyes - on crash course in humanity's future in the post-human era.
The majority of Human Revolution involves Jensen's quest to unravel that conspiracy through missions spinning off of main city hubs all over the world. While each hub has a central plot thread carrying through Jensen's investigation, side missions populate each locale. These aren't the maligned fetch-quests of other RPGs. Each mission has several layers to it, several angles to be explored or not, several perspectives to consider, and several possible outcomes that often tie into the greater mission at hand in unexpected ways. This creates a well-realized sense of choice and consequence throughout Human Revolution.
The most obvious choices you'll make involve your augmentations. As you play, you'll earn Praxis points, which allow you to unlock and upgrade new abilities. Augmentations are responsible for the biggest differences in moment-to-moment play between one player and another - the wide variety of abilities force you to pick and choose what you want to do. Do you want to hack terminals and discover the hidden secrets of some random guy's apartment? Then you might not be upgrading your sight to see through walls, or jumping ten feet straight up, any time soon.
Eidos Montreal's prequel quickly establishes what the world of Human Revolution allows. There's a vocabulary of play that you'll learn quickly, and once you speak Human Revolution's language, if you can think of a solution, it's probably an option. There's room for stealth, there's room for guns blazing, and there's plenty of middle ground too.
I never felt like the game punished me for particular choices in augmentation, or in my play style. There were advantages and disadvantages to my selections, but I was always given avenues to success - and I always, always felt like a badass. Eidos Montral brilliantly coaxes players into a space where experimentation is comfortable. It's fun to feel like you're outsmarting a game's rules. But Human Revolution provides a particular kind of satisfaction as it rewards you for it. Human Revolution incentivizes everything, as everything you do yields a reward, more or less. Whether that means playing the part of cold cyborg or tortured, empathetic ex-cop, or choosing between stealth and direct action, your choices define your experience.
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