Caltrops - Deus Ex 3





	[quote name="fabio"][quote name="Worm"]It becomes obvious from the start that Adam is magic, but the game goes on as if you don't know. [/quote] I totally forgot about that plot point. A brief mention in some e-mail and one obscure side quest is all the attention it gets. Here's a much better story born from 15 seconds of brainstorming: <b>Better pacing-</b> Remember how the original Deus Ex had actual escalation in the story? You start off a cop working for a seemingly normal law enforcement agency combating violent terrorists. On your second assignment you learn there's something sinister about them and spend an entire mission hub just on the run trying to shake their influence. You then progress to finding allies. Then you begin taking the fight to them by infiltrating one of their bases. The bad guys wise up and directly assault your allies and you have to stop them. Finally a showdown at their headquarters. Here's how HR progressed: No matter how serious the scope of the conspiracy got, you never shake the role of security guard lap dog investigating an attack like it was an act of industrial espionage. Hop from hub to hub with no escalation. The first area has FEMA and Homeland Security as puppets to a larger conspiracy to cover up acts of terrorism, and you want me to believe that 10 hours later it's a bigger deal to discover that Chinese companies don't give a crap about quality control? The protagonist doesn't even react when you finally found out that your boss turned you into a quadruple amputee on a whim? Whatever, keep traveling across the globe based on nothing but the dying words of the previous boss who could have just been fucking with you. <b>Better antagonist goals-</b> Why bother with the Illuminati anymore when much scarier groups like ALEC have become publicly known? It's an outdated holdout from the 90s when X-Files' UFO coverups muscled out Robocop as the worst thing people in power were capable of. They could have run with the theme of runaway consumerism enslaving people with forced demand. The (easy to miss) street conversation asking if augmentation is <i>really</i> a choice when conglomerate employers start favoring it, eventually making it mandatory if you want to work? Better than anything in the main plot. I thought for sure the attack was meant to derail the research into curing the need for the drugs, showcasing how this dystopian future uses deadly force to maintain de facto indentured servitude. Nah, we'll just stick with kidnapped girlfriend and vague Illuminati invisible hand mentions. Speaking of which, if the point was just to kidnap the scientists for research, why not just use the super commandos to abduct them quietly from their homes? Why the high profile bloodbath? The same vast coverup apparatus couldn't make it look like a burglary? <b>Better antagonists-</b> This week marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. So much material to draw on for the kind of needle dicked psychopaths who sign up for Blackwater and they come up with ZERO background info on the bosses? The A writing team came up with those great little news articles showing the media spinning the fact that private armies now enforce economic hegemony. The B team scratched all that for Foghorn Leghorn. Imagine how much better a story it would have been if Australia was one of the hubs. Fuck it I'm tired. SquareEnix is the only game company with employees worse than Blizzard when it comes to people who should never be let anyway near a story.[/quote]