Deus Ex Human Revolution EP41: Did We Ask For This?

By Josh Posted Friday Mar 23, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 164 comments


Link (YouTube)

And so we have come to the end of Human Revolution. So naturally, Adobe Premiere threw a fit and I had to re-encode the video and upload it super late. Because nothing can go off without a hitch when Reginald Cuftbert’s at the helm!

It does really seem strange when I look back at this season. As I mentioned in the video, most of the time, when we’re approaching the end of a season, I just can’t wait until it’s over. There’s always a palpable urge in the back of my mind to just get on with it, because we’ve all worn ourselves out by fixating on the same flaws ad nauseum. It’s easy to stay level headed while talking about a game’s flaws for an hour or two; Try analyzing a game for twenty hours and you’ll probably want to hit someone before the end. Do that all while recording yourself on camera and you might just become marginally famous on the internet for being a massive meta-troll that shoves lit dynamite down people’s pants.

But that didn’t really happen in Human Revolution. Not just the pants dynamite, but also that we never really got to the point where the game had worn out its welcome with us. Well, except at the very end when everything went completely insane. Maybe it’s because the game was short enough that we didn’t end up spending as much time on it as with other games; this season is a good 25% shorter than our Fallout: New Vegas run. But, at least for me, I think there’s something more to it.

I mentioned at the end of our New Vegas run that I couldn’t bring myself to care about any of the characters or factions that we’d encountered in the game. I felt as if the entire setting of New Vegas was just filled with caricatures that exist only for some narrative or humorous purposes. None of them ever felt real to me, and I didn’t see why I should even care about what happens to New Vegas at all. And that’s coming from someone who lives in Las Vegas!

Human Revolution, on the other hand, has a much smaller ensemble of characters, and most of them have their own nuances. Sarif isn’t just a generic cyberpunk bad boss – or even just a good boss. He’s got a lot of subtle (and more importantly, consistent!) traits – his love of baseball, the almost child-like idealism with which he views augmentations, the way he seemed to prioritize saving the lives of his staff when Darrow sprung his mustache-twirling evil-but-somehow-not plan; so much so that the first words out of his mouth when you find him are “Adam?! Oh thank god, you came! I’ve got wounded here. We’ll have to move them first.”

Well, when he’s not complaining about you holding a stun-gun, anyway.

And Pritchard isn’t a token insufferable teammate, Malik isn’t a generic second love interest, and Sandoval isn’t a run-of-the-mill bad-guy. The character writing in this game is really strong, so much so that when a character does end up being a generic, undeveloped caricature, like Hugh Darrow, or just completely underdeveloped in general, like Megan, it really sticks out. But even with those issues, the rest of the cast had me genuinely interested enough to want to see the game to the end twice in a row.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution has a lot of intriguing elements, and it gets a lot of things right. The plotting may be haphazard – and there’s really no excuse for that ending. And the boss fights are completely inexcusable. But the subtleties of the characters, the excellent dialogue, and the unique approach to how the player interacts with other characters; these are all elements that not only have merit, but were executed very well. They are elements that other game developers would do well to incorporate into their own games in the future.

 


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164 thoughts on “Deus Ex Human Revolution EP41: Did We Ask For This?

  1. Thomas says:

    My argument for the ending, because I was getting a bit bored of this game (too much gameplay) until this ending and then I loved it and had to reload four times before I was happy leaving my savefile with the choice I wanted.

    If you look, this ending isn’t about what happens at all. It’s not an ending but an appendix, or a summary. The narration never mentions what happens in the world, never shows what happens in the world. You don’t get to choose that, instead you get to choose how Jensen wants the world to be. It’s look at the world, what do you actually think of it?

    This would have been fine if there was a cutscene after the boss fight to show that that was the ending and this was something different. This is a philosophical choice, and it’s interesting. The right answer for me was Darrow’s but however that went the Illuminati would take control. And I didn’t feel I had the right to choose how the path of the world went, but I didn’t have the right to take the lives of Darrow and Sarif to achieve that. So ideally the truth is what would come out, but the truth involves Taggarts message. In the end the only person I trusted was Sarif and his was the one choice I couldn’t support.

    And the dialogue looks over your past, it actually draws influence from how you played the game, if you’re violent that’s part of the story, if not you were strong enough to fight. I loved this because I didn’t feel like it was about the story, instead it was about the wider world you’d experienced instead of being told about. This is where DX:HR stopped being just a rubbish story and started being something almost no game has even tried to be

    This was an awesome series of spoiler warning, thank you so much for giving it to us. And Chris has been really fun, any worries that he might never actually talk, completely gone. I hope he does this again and thanks Josh for putting in all this work!

    1. Jarenth says:

      You know what? I’m going to second that last paragraph. Chris, you were a blast to have around. Thanks for joining this season of Spoiler Warning and providing even more free entertainment for us.

      1. Destrustor says:

        Especially once you put your funny hat on and started making jokes.
        That was a lot of fun.

        1. Mathias says:

          I second this as well.

          Though, to be fair, I also miss Mumbles. Hopefully next season the trollfest resumes with Skyrim.

          1. Chuck says:

            The one time putting points IN Energy Weapons would be the trolling :)

          2. Thomas says:

            I miss Mumbles too :(

            How about a 5 person spoiler warning? :D Think of the interrupts

            1. Ramsus says:

              What? You mean like Mumbles punching out Chris? =P

            2. bit says:

              Ruts; So about- Sorry, Shamus, you go first.
              Shamus; Please, you.
              Ruts; Nah.
              Shamus; Okay, so- Mumbles?
              Mumbles; I don’t have anything to say.
              Shamus; I forget.

              Josh; On the topic- Sorry, Chris.
              Chris; Huh?

            3. Loonyyy says:

              Renegade interrupt time?

      2. Dmatix says:

        It was really nice to have you Chris. You bring a sometimes needed seriousness and careful analysis and play off the others well when it isn’t. This season, like the others, was a pleasure to watch. Thank you guys.

  2. McNutcase says:

    Called it.

    And, now I’m finished watching: I’m feeling a lot better about this game than I did when it first came out and RAR UNSKIPPABLE BOSSFIGHTS. There is still excrement, but it’s a better experience than many, I can see.

    VERY glad to hear the original main theme at the end. I’ve been using that as my cellphone ringtone since cellphones had customisable ringtones, going from bleeble-o-phonic to the current far-more-advanced-than-anything-in-Deus-Ex smartphone with a section of the theme as mp3.

  3. George says:

    Very sad to see it go, and I concur with Thomas, Chris has been fantastic, hopefully he might return soon (or be a regular). One of the few series where you’ve had ample opportunities to criticise the game and praise it for its merits.

  4. Gruhunchously says:

    So Jensen defeated the final boss by blasting her in the face with a laser rifle while piss drunk. Trying to envision that right now.

    1. Dovius says:

      So at least the final boss was beaten in a distinctly Cuftburtian way.

  5. guy says:

    That bossfight was actually a pretty good one. There are literally four semi-distinct ways to win it.

    -laser rifle skip
    -destroy all the turrets
    -there are three consoles you can hack to kill the wetware processors
    -master level five console, which you can hack or use Darrow’s password on.

    It was actually a bossfight that fit with the rest of the game!

    I picked Sarif’s ending because I hate Taggert. I actually prefer regulated augmentations in the abstract, but TAGGERT!

    1. guy says:

      Agh, post-credits cutscene. Totally out of nowhere! WHY DID SHE DO THAT? I mean, I’ve never played the original (I depend on other people for credit cards and they’re not into the whole digital distribution model so purchasing things that way is a pain) but it was still staggeringly bizarre and crazy.

    2. Deadyawn says:

      Wait wait wait. WHAT?
      What?
      I…What?
      Seriously? I didn’t even realise there was more than one way to do that boss fight. I didn’t know you could do any of those things. What the hell?
      Everytime I got there all I could figure out to do was shoot all the chicks in the computer and then blow up the robots that come out to kill you and then avoid the electric floors which were complete instakill bullshit and finally kill Zhao.
      I hated that fight. Where are the consoles that you can hack? I never saw them. I geuss it says something about the ending when those “options” can be completely missed.
      Maybe I’m just dumb, I don’t know.

      1. guy says:

        IIRC, the master console is near the base of the central structure, while the secondary consoles are scattered somewhere around the layer that has the breakable walls (hence why they exist) or one level above or below. I can’t recall exactly, it’s been a while.

        I think they’re level 4 for the secondaries and 5 for the master, but if you win the Darrow conversation you don’t need to actually hack the master because you’ve got the password for it.

  6. Mantergeistmann says:

    I chose Sarif’s ending out of personal loyalty to him. I wasn’t going to choose Taggart, I couldn’t just kill all those innocent people left in Panchaea… Darrow’s was possible, but I didn’t like the whole “Science is bad” spin he wanted to put on it, especially given that he’s the one who caused all this. I would have liked it if there was a “No lies, just screw the Illuminati” ending, but out of the choices, I just couldn’t turn my back on Sarif. Well done, in my opinion in terms of getting me to want to help him.

    1. Tohron says:

      Yeah, that’s basically the ending I wanted – and I also ended up going with Sarif’s since that wasn’t available.

      Also, did anyone else find it funny that Jensen’s narration talked about him “not just taking the expedient option” after he Typhooned all those crazy workers?

    2. Nick says:

      Yeah, I went Sarif too for being the least evil option, more or less. Also, I think it’s the way I come down on this issue – more freedom is better, even despite the risks

    3. FalseProphet says:

      Also went with Sarif’s. It was the only really sensible choice to me. The only technology that’s ever been successfully regulated and restrained once it was introduced was the atomic bomb, and even then, far from perfectly. And augmentation is far from being as apocalyptic as that. So it’s going to get used, the only question is how.

      1. Thomas says:

        Lots of stuff gets successfully regulated all the time. It’s just because it’s successful its boring and you don’t hear about it. Lots of medicines and food additives can do cool stuff but are regulated for the risks. Airplanes are regulated to keep pollution down, nuclear power is regulated to make it safer. Lots and lots of weapons have been banned (with varying success, Churchill wasn’t above ignoring treaties to get to use his toxic gasses). Steroids are kept out of sport and out of a lot of people’s lives. GM crops are hugely regulated. Stem cell research. Car manufacture has limits on emissions and safety etc. Guns themselves don’t make an appearance very often in the UK. Heroine use is less than it would be if non-banned

        I think it’s fair to say that it would be much harder to find an industry that isn’t regulated. It’s just not many things are story-worthy fundamental. Technology is more subtle and gradual, putting addictive substances into food is dangerous but non-controversial.

        And augs aren’t like alcohol, you can’t create a robotic limb in your shed

        1. Phoenix says:

          Actually isn’t true. Huge part (if I remember correctly 97%) of substances (in meds, foods etc..) used aren’t tested that much. Present day is already cyberpunk, just a bit early.

          1. Adam Fuller says:

            You don’t have to test everything in order to sucessfully regulate, though, as the generally high quality of all those mostly untested items attests to.

  7. George says:

    Josh got the evil ending (there’s technically 12, but it’s really just the narration differs). Depends how many people you kill.

    I got the neutral ending I think, he said he always strived to not use augmentation, keeping in mind what my objective was.

  8. Sozac says:

    Good ending! For you guys, not the game. I’m guessing you guys are gonna do Mass Effect 3 next even though it has lost a lot of its RPGness. Maybe you guys can finish Half life first though?

    1. Gamer says:

      They said ME3 won’t be next, but it will be the season after the next one.

      I think they’ll be doing Skyrim.

      1. krellen says:

        What, New Vegas wasn’t long enough?

        1. Sydney says:

          Not for me =( I really wanted to see what would happen to Reginald in Lonesome Road. Though that might not have been released yet, come to think of it.

          Oh, well.

          1. acronix says:

            Obviously, he would have allied with Ulysses and nuked everyone. And then he would have slipped some dynamite in his pants.

      2. Tim Van den Langenbergh says:

        I’m still hoping for Vampire – the Masquerade Bloodlines. I can already picture Josh joining the Sabbath.

  9. littlefinger says:

    Really, you quit there? I feel like you guys could have gone on for about another hour or so … and I’d listen to ALL OF IT!

    In all seriousness, this is probably the best Spoiler Warning season ending. On topic, not filled with rage or bile, analytical, and those other qualities that make Spoiler warning the show I like

    1. X2Eliah says:

      Yup, strongly agreed.

  10. Lame Duck says:

    Well I for one liked Mirror’s Edge.

    1. Gamer says:

      I liked Mirror’s Edge until they threw me into rooms I had to fight through. Even then, it still had enough charm for me to go through the rest of the game.

    2. Adam P says:

      I felt that Mirror’s Edge was too much DIAS with really bad checkpoints. There was one fight where a helicopter drops some guys off on a rooftop, and. Running through that area, you’ve got all this momentum and you can beat the heli to the drop off and thus avoid combat entirely. On my first run through that area, I had to slow down and figure out how to get by, at which point the heli dropped guys on me and prevented me from really moving forward; there’s a pipe you MUST climb and getting shot makes you fall off pipes. So I died! And had to reload!

      After reloading, you have ZERO momentum and the heli is ALREADY DROPPING GUYS OFF. You fuck that area up and you’re forced to do combat EVERY SINGLE TIME. It ruined the game for me and I never finished it.

      So I totally agree with Josh’s assessment that combat was bad in theory and horrible in practice. It absolutely ruined the game.

    3. Packie says:

      I loved Mirror’s Edge. Except for the awful story, forced combat and non-intuitive puzzles. :(

    4. Darkness says:

      Mirror’s Edge is my favorite unfinished game. Why finish it when guards with automatic weapons shoot an unarmed girl in the back, repeatedly. If they had lost the guards and the lousy story it would have been perfect. EA has stated the sequel will happen when they figure a way to market it. Just like Dead Space 2.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        “You will have nausea,your sister will have an epilepsy attack,and your dog will puke on the carpet!”

  11. AbruptDemise says:

    On the subject of the endings: but where’s the ending that lets you turn everyone into orange juice?

  12. Dave B says:

    I don’t remember Trigun having a particularly bad ending; I just remember that it acted like everything made perfect sense, even though they never explained how Vash planned to solve his basic idealogical conflict with Knives.

    1. Chris says:

      It’s pretty clear they ran out of money about halfway through; the animation budget goes down several notches ( I recall one scene where Vash is in the distance but is drawn as if he’s twenty feet from the guy, and in perspective makes Vash appear like a two story giant).

      That said, it’s still an awesome show. I’d love to see it remade in a way where they could present the pragmatism versus idealism as a central theme without some of the pacing issues, budgetary constraints, and weirdly unexplained-yet-overly-emphasized Project SEEDS stuff that gives Vash/Knives superpowers.

      1. Avatar says:

        Trigun didn’t run out of money, it ran out of plot – it caught up to where Nightow was in the series, which is what happens to a lot of manga-to-anime conversions where the manga is still running.

        The manga ending was rather more extensive and much, much weirder…

      2. Ramsus says:

        I’ve always just hated Trigun’s plot. In my viewpoint Vash was the real villain of the series. When you can solve all of the world’s problems with little to no effort and don’t because you don’t want to, for whatever reason, you’re not a good person. I just can’t find enjoyment in a story about a god-like being letting people die because he decided to be completely irresponsible.

        Edit: apparently I’ve forgotten how to do spoilers here, well, I’ll just hope nobody here was reading a conversation about Trigun and not wanting them.

        1. Peter H. Coffin says:

          That’s okay; the whole thing can be summed up as “with great power comes great you know the rest”.

  13. MatthewH says:

    I’d like to see mirror’s edge. But just because Chris’s review made it sound pretty interesting.

    The elevator was when my eyes rolled. Hyron just made me go “oh, good grief.” The 4 endings were fine -this is DX, after all. Three switches is just part of the mass (though DX1 did them better). I watched the credits for the stinger (thanks Chris!) and my response was basically the same as his from the review -but more colorful. I was still slack-jawed when the original menu music started. But eventually came around.

    I’ll briefly flack my theory that the endings of Mass Effect and DXHR got switched in the mail from the ME3 ending thread.

    As for Spoiler Warning itself, I also could have listened to you guys go on a bit. I’ll stop now before I become too much of a fanboy.

  14. Deadyawn says:

    That music is really awesome. I especially like the lyrical version.

    1. Johan says:

      I like the title screen music and all, but for me the top music in the game will always be the music as you break out of UNATCO, if only for the segment that starts around the 1 minute mark
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0IsK2C8SNo&feature=related

      1. Deadyawn says:

        My favorite music from that game had to be the Unatco music.
        The whole game had really good music. Thematic and memorable.

    2. Jarenth says:

      Fun fact: I did play Deus Ex 1, long ago, once, so I wouldn’t have recognized this musical cue offhand. No, I recognized it because my stupid subconscious starting overlaying Yathzee’s lyrics on it.

      1. Zombie says:

        So, We put on a trench coat, and fought some conspiracies, we got experience, and leveled up abilities? Did we pick rifles or computers? we didnt pick swimming because its fairly useless!

  15. Johan says:

    Well put Josh, I felt all of that too.

    To an extent I even liked this one more than DX original, in the character department at least it seemed a cut above. But true, there’s really no excuse for these ending plotholes.

    And I went for Taggart. I loved Sarif and all, and Taggart did NOTHING to make a good point at any earlier junction, but at the end on Panchea when he talks about “we don’t want to ban it, we want to regulate it” and “absolute freedom is no different than anarchy” I found myself agreeing more and more with him.

    I just wish the anti-aug people had brought up this argument instead of the luddite “human body is sacred” argument

    Although I will say this about the Taggart ending, Jenson’s narration with the pictures seemed to have been either
    tailor made to be provocative or
    really ironic
    There’s a line where he goes something like “these people are smart, won’t they steer us in the right direction?” just as a picture of Tony Blair goes on screen.

    Now, I don’t want to get into a political discussion, but honestly there were a lot of better options there.

    And finally, why again is Eliza here? What does she gain from this? why is she the caretaker of our endotron 3000?

    And as to Chris’ comment that the ending is meaningless because they all lead to Deus Ex’s begining, I thought only 1 of them did? I was under the impression that only the Illuminati (aka Taggart’s) ending led to Deus Ex. More control for the Old Order, augments can still go forward but they are under a lot of control

    And even if that’s untrue I’d prefer to think it so. Even though this is a “prequel,” I like to think that it isn’t made in the mind of “no matter what you do DX1 happens just as it did.” I like to think that it was made with the “you CAN change the past” in mind.

    1. Thomas says:

      To be fair Taggert does mention it a couple of times and in the background you can pick up a lot of pro-regulation stuff. And a lot of the don’t-just-tell-you reasons were this. With the gangs, the prostitutes, the neuropozyne, humans getting ahead of others, all that sort of stuff was often pro-regulation as opposed to anti-aug.

      The problem I had with this ending, it Taggart is lying to you, he’s putting a nice spin again on personal power and the narration drives that home. Regulation is the right answer but the Deus Ex world that just means the Illuminati taking more power. I think my choice of endings went Taggart-Blank-Taggart-Taggart-Darrow. I just hoped humanity would ignore Darrows message but be shocked enough to consider what they were doing instead of diving recklessly in

  16. RTBones says:

    Given the games you’ve played, I think it speaks volumes for the title that the cast of Spoiler Warning is not rabidly clamoring for the end of the season when you reach the end. I am sorry to see it go.

    I can say, this is the first game in a while that I actually enjoyed the characters. As Josh mentions, the overall cast in the game is small, but most of who are there do get fleshed out well (in general). The characters have depth which is something some books don’t even do right. The first time I played through the fight to save Malik, I was on a non-violent playthrough. When I saw what was happening, I immediately tried to get at everybody to protect her, which meant I got at nobody and lost her, at which point I screamed at my monitor. Then I reloaded (several times – some of which I picked up random weapons and shot at everything) to get my non-violent-and-save-Malik credit. This was a battle I was not going to lose. That emotional tie in doesn’t happen often – and is a credit to the game.

    (Hey Mass Effect 3, are you listening? You’ve done a good job if players get attached to your characters. Because they are attached, when you dont give the players closure with the your characters at the end of a trilogy, it ticks them off – a lot. Reason #142 of why Mass Effect 3 ending suck.)

    I should also say, as a viewer, its been a pleasure having Chris along for the ride. With a little luck and a good tailwind, our paths will cross again.

    Job well done.

  17. anaphysik says:

    “Do that all while recording yourself on camera and you might just become marginally famous on the internet for being a massive meta-troll that shoves lit dynamite down people's pants.”

    Ah yes, we must all remember how Josh is the answer to the age old question of ‘who trolls the trolls?’

    1. Deadyawn says:

      “But josh, how can you troll the monsters if they can instantly kill you?”
      I still smile a bit everytime I think of Amnesia. That was hilarious.

      1. anaphysik says:

        That was indeed hilarious. Riding the monster!
        Insightful comments and analysis are great, but truth be told I get the most enjoyment out of Josh, though Rutskarn’s tumor-inducing puns do make a nice second.

  18. Dante says:

    So now what are we going to do for the next couple of weeks?

    1. Dave B says:

      I plan to make Spoiler Warning sock puppets and do the voices and everything while watching random Let’s Plays on Youtube.

      What!?

      1. Hitch says:

        Well, you could just fire up your copy of Trainz Simulator 2010, or listen to Rutskarn sing “Older.”

      2. Peter H. Coffin says:

        Little paper cut-out silhouettes to tape to the bottom edge of the monitor, for the proper MST3K feel?

    2. krellen says:

      Look forward to the exploits of Oda Nobunaga?

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Yes,Josh needs to do a week of shogun 2,to make up for no spoiler warning.

      2. X2Eliah says:

        Seems like that campaign is about to end in one or two posts, actually.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          But then Josh gets to play it again,with the expansion.That haas to happen.

          1. X2Eliah says:

            You sure have a wayne of words there, sir.

            1. Irridium says:

              I never asked for this.

              1. tjtheman5 says:

                Yes you did. I used my armpit farts to convince you to ask for it.

    3. Dude says:

      You could have another run through ME3 knowing nothing you do in game matters. :D

  19. Gamer says:

    I’m very sad to see this season end. This had to be one of your best, if not the best, season of Spoiler Warning. The game had enough good to be praised and enough bad for you to not gush over it. The perfect balance for a show like Spoiler Warning.

    And Chris was an excellent co-commenter this season. I hope he comes back every once and awhile as a guest. Still, I’ll be glad to have Mumbles back on the cast next season. We all need a little cannibalism in our lives.

    Cheers to another great season of Spoiler Warning (and another alcohol binge on Josh’s part)!

    1. Sydney says:

      This season definitely had a lot of my favourite moments in it. Josh grenading himself, falling off things, wandering into mines and getting mocked by Shamus…falling off more things…okay, mostly it was Josh dying hilariously and entirely by his own fault.

      I still don’t think the C-4 stunt with the Omertas will ever be topped, though. In-game, that is – “This would be a good time to do Honest Hearts” is the apex of even theoretical trolling.

    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

      What this ending needed was,in the end when they start talking about random guys in starwars,Mumbles yelling “NEEEEEEEEEEEEERDSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!”

  20. Z-Ri says:

    I’m curious, was anyone else positive Rutskarn was going to say “I AM BATMAN” at the very beginning of the episode?

    (Also awesome Dr.Claw impression Shamus)

  21. GiantRaven says:

    I think Human Revolution came quite close to the idea that Deus Ex should be like Final Fantasy. It’s tonally similar to the first in terms of it’s plot progression and ideas, whilst the tie-ins aren’t particularly overt. You could easily cut those out and it would still feel like a Deus Ex game.

    1. Thomas says:

      I think it could really work as a Final Fantasy style series. If a Deus Ex game meant you’d play a vaguely sci-fish game with excellent characterisation, stealthy gameplay and multiple paths and then they created new worlds, new plots, new characters, even slightly new game types each time, that would be an awesome thing. It doesn’t even need the new game types so much, if instead having a new philosophical theme was something they did instead.

      Human Revolution wasn’t quite there, but it’d be awesome if that’s what they started doing

    1. anaphysik says:

      Wow. It’ll hard to look at GLaDOS the same way again…
      The personification is both /really/ uncanny and really unsettling.

  22. Matt K says:

    This was definitely my sentiment at the end of the game. DX3 was flawed but in the end it was a pretty good game (the 2nd best AAA game I played in years, #1 being Portal 2).

  23. Johan says:

    You know, Jensen getting blitzed and then killing Zhao makes me nostalgic for Deux Ex just a teensy bit. When I was down on health but didn’t want to use medkits. And so fortunate! There was a bar in Hell’s Kitchen with like 40 drinks in it, just sitting around! So I’d just chug them by the 10-pack and then have to just stand there for minutes while the effects wore off.

    Ah, good times.

    1. Phoenix says:

      I never asked for this.

  24. CalDazar says:

    In the ending-o-matic room why is the roof made from from old computer boxes?
    I thought I would have some thoughts to share, but you guys really said just about everything I wanted to throughout the series.

  25. burningdragoon says:

    *siggghhhhhh* knowing you can beat the boss like that would have been plenty helpful.

  26. Grampy_Bone says:

    Well, I still think it was cool that Bob mentions the Morpheus AI. That was a really cool and neat hidden thing in Deus Ex that was totally under developed.

  27. Eric says:

    Regarding New Vegas vs. Human Revolution: apples to oranges. Deus Ex is a 20-30 hour game with lots of recurring characters and all events take place on a relatively small stage. There’s a lot of detail and subtlety in them, but only because it’s possible to given the scope. And, for the record, it still has some bad characters – either because they’re annoying, underdeveloped, have unclear motives, or are racial caricatures. Sarif, Malik and Pritchard don’t totally make up for a lot of the other minor characters.

    New Vegas, meanwhile, is an open-world game with hundreds of characters (most of which exist to advance the plot or give out quests), and you just can’t put the same effort into everyone. I think Doc Mitchell, for instance, was actually pretty good because it’s clear they gave him a lot of backstory and he had some personality, but it’s hard to do that for everyone. The original Fallout, with its 20-odd talking heads, had much more memorable because everyone had a unique voice actor and appearance, and because so much more effort was poured into them. That’s just how things roll.

    I think it also, to a degree, speaks to Obsidian’s old-school mentality. In older CRPGs, personality was largely implied rather than explicitly stated, because a text blurb or suggestion in a voice clip was all you had to go on. It left a lot to the imagination, and while we might have strong memories of X or Y, they’re not necessarily deep characters – but we necessarily internalize them and they stick with us as a result. When you drag that “characters are basically plot or gameplay devices with implied personality” into modern-day production values that demand every line be animated and voiced, well, you are obviously going to run into problems.

    That’s why, say, Age of Decadence is so awesome for me. The game is probably 90% text but it gets away with so much because of it. It can do more than just about any other RPG in the last ten years because it’s not constrained by graphics, and you can connect to characters and situations because you quickly come up with a mental image of what’s going on that is far more compelling than any shiny, non-interactive cutscenes.

    Human Revolution might have some truly lifelike characters, but it can’t even approach Planescape or similar titles because it’s always limited by what it can show players – all the tech, animation, polygons, and dollars in the world and we’re still *just* starting to approach “hey, I’m almost convinced this might be some semblance of a human being.”

    1. Eric says:

      Also, next game had better be Deus Ex, dammit. So many good things need to be said, so many rants about Human Revolution’s failures in comparison await!

      1. Mantergeistmann says:

        But if they play Deus Ex, we’ll have to listen to Satan whispering through Shamus’s video card!

        1. Eric says:

          Oh come on, I can record Deus Ex just fine. Install one of the newer enhanced D3D9 or D3D10 renderers and use Fraps or something else. Surely they can figure it out.

      2. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Did you watch what happened last time they tried it?Granted,it would be interesting to see it again,but for the whole season?Ughhh…

        EDIT:What the….?Shamus,you broke the replies again…

      3. Dovius says:

        Didn’t they try that at the start of the season? Ya know, when cyber-Satan took control of Shamus’ graphics card.

        1. Gamer says:

          “…through his fucking haunted audio card!”

        2. anaphysik says:

          Actually, I dunno. A whole season of that and them suffering through it might be entertaining…
          Just think of the lengths of puns and trolling they’d go to in order to escape the madness!

    2. Thomas says:

      This a lot. I wouldn’t pay for a Planescape 2 sequel so much as I’d pay for Obsidian to just forget everything for one game and make a text-based CRPG again.

  28. Sydney says:

    I can’t hear the Deus Ex theme without automatically playing Yahtzee’s lyrics over it inside my head.

    Some might say that’s ruined it for me. I say it’s improved it. Judge for yourself.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j8jMn2Kcgs

    1. Jarenth says:

      Like I said earlier: that’s the only reason I even recognized it.

  29. McNutcase says:

    Something I just noticed on the Spoiler Warning archive page: there’s a bad regex scraping the episode titles. Anything with a colon in the title is only getting whatever’s after the last colon (examples, from the Mass Effect 2 run, CSI: Ilium and Next Stop: Cloud City appear as Ilium and Cloud City respectively.) as a title. I think this is caused by the regex searching back from the end of the post title for a colon, and assuming the part in front of the colon is the “Spoiler Warning SfooEbar” string.

    If I knew regexes better, I’d offer a regex that would fix it, but I only know enough to be dangerous with them.

    1. Nick says:

      [^:]+ will get a string of any number of characters up to the first instance of a colon- square brackets being a set, carat at the start of a set meaning the inverse of what follows – so the set of everything except colon – and + meaning one or more of the previous thing, which is the set.

      Regexes are one of those things where you can just type what looks like complete gibberish…

  30. ClearWater says:

    When everyone was doing the Jensen voice I kept expecting someone to say “I’m Batman” but it never happened. :(

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Hence why we need Mumbles.

  31. tengokujin says:

    ::applause::
    Congratulations, Shinj- I mean, Shamus, Chris, Josh, and Rutskarn.

    1. FalseProphet says:

      …I feel sick.

  32. Varewulf says:

    Nevermind, someone already posted it. :)

  33. Museli says:

    I loved playing through this game, and I’m really pleased with how this season worked out – praise where it’s due, and thorough kickings for the bits that deserved it, all served up in SW’s trademark mix of analysis and insanity. I eagerly await the next series, whatever the game may be.

    I’d be delighted to see more of Chris in future SW’s too – he’s a perfect fit for this type of show. Anyone who hasn’t done so already should check out his Errant Signal show on Youtube – it’s great to see in-depth, intelligent analysis of the hobby we love.

  34. Tuck says:

    In the photos during the end credits, almost all the designs on the clothing people are wearing is blurred out. CONSPIRACY.

    (discuss)

    1. modus0 says:

      Did you also notice that they blurred out the Xbox 360 and PS3 controllers?

    2. krellen says:

      Nah, just stupid modern copyright/trademark laws.

      1. X2Eliah says:

        That’s what the Illuminati want you to think.

        1. Thanatos Crows says:

          That’s what THEY want you to think!

      2. Zukhramm says:

        Which is kind of odd. You’d think companies would love to have their stuff visible without even having to pay for it.

  35. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Wait,you all just picked one ending?I cant be the only one who saved after elizas speech,and then picked all four endings in succession.

    Great show you guys.Looking forward to you finishing half life,raging on mass effect 3,and whatever you will do in between.Hey,I know,do duke nukem forever.After a good one,you need a bad one,right?And its fairly short,and really linear.

    Nah,just kidding.Thats what Rutskarn has to do alone.Collectively,I hope you guys do prince of persia.

    1. X2Eliah says:

      Yeah, ofc, I also checked out all the endings just to see what they offered. BUT. The first one, I made it as if it were the only one I’d get to see. I mean, that is my personal ‘canonical’ ending. I feel that you really should have that to get a sense of proper closure for the game’s story, if you have become invested in it (as I did with DX:HR).

      I could see them doing prince of persia, I guess. Do you mean the “no subtitle, 2008” PoP, or a newer one, or an older one? I don’t know if sands of time would run on their system, seems like the older a game is, the more problems it gives.

      Alternatively, BATMAN: ARKHAM ASYLUM. Because that is a game that’s just pretty to watch, if nothing else, and Mumbles could go all apeshit batman nerd ham on it.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Well sands of time is just a bit older than hl2,so it should run fine.On the other hand,hl2 is by valve,and they always make it so that their games are really well optimized for almost every computer.

        But it doesnt matter really,all the games from the new series are good,and they can talk about all the games despite which one they play.

        Yes batman would also be a good game for them to play.Or,maybe far cry 1,just to show how that old juggernaut is running on todays machines.

        1. Nick says:

          I’m pretty sure the SW crew said they wouldn’t do AA because there wouldn’t be enough to say about it

          1. krellen says:

            “This is a good game, though Joker Hulk is pretty silly.”

            Oops, I just spoiled the entire season.

            1. Daemian Lucifer says:

              Ah,but what about the all:

              “Come on,kill him already!Man,this batman is such a pussy,he is nothing like the one in the comics.That one would kill these guys in a second”

            2. Shamus says:

              Yep.

              Also, Mumbles didn’t want to cover the game. (I won’t speak for her, you can needle her if you like.) And I wouldn’t want to cover the game without her.

              1. Peter H. Coffin says:

                Commenting for my own opinion on the thing, not for Mumbles, but I can see how someone with a deep knowledge of the lore would find not a lot to say about AA. There’s a huge load of references to hundreds and hundreds of points about Batman, but almost none of it is ever explored more than with a wave and a nod. Joker (and is nouveau sidekick Harley) is the only villain that matters in the whole thing; everyone else is a set piece. And Batman’s usual introspection and crazy level of preparedness never gets to play out, because that’s just not how the story plays. It’s a fantastic game, but it’s not really even George Clooney-level *Batman*, if you get the distinction. You could reskin the whole thing, change around a few things, and make just as enjoyable a Spiderman game out of it, or replace a few stages, make it full of Nazis and run it as Captain America.

                1. FalseProphet says:

                  I wouldn’t completely agree with that. The exchange with Oracle where he says he’s going to his backup Batcave on Arkham Island was a pretty good illustration of Batman’s crazy-preparedness.

                  ORACLE: Bruce, how did you build a backup Batcave under Arkham?
                  BATMAN: It’s me, remember?

                2. Mumbles says:

                  This. Thank you for reading my mind. Ruts would be in the middle of one of his stupid jokes and I’d be sitting there brewing as I resist from telling everyone about Black fucking Mask.

                  1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                    Ah,but look at this season.They can still like a game,and even say positive stuff about it.And arkham asylum is a good game,and you guys all mostly liked it.Plus,whenever Rutskarn goes out of line,you can just shut him up using the f-word.

              2. Daemian Lucifer says:

                Its because theres not enough guns,right?

              3. X2Eliah says:

                Hm. If I recall, it was because she didn’t want to ruin the game for herself (like with bioshock)? If so, then that’s …. Completely understandable.

                1. Thomas says:

                  I guess that makes since*, if till this season they’ve had a pretty much 100% hate this game more rate, I wouldn’t want to do one of my favourite games.

                  *sense (left it due to ridiculousness of typo)

  36. Piflik says:

    Am I the only one who wanted to jump/Icarus down to the bottom of the ocean?

    1. Nick says:

      Yeah, I was thinking that would be a total timesaver :D

  37. Venalitor says:

    Now to watch Satan Ex again.
    rockin’ season. best so far.
    I don’t think blowing Panchea up could lead to Deus Ex though. Sarif would be dead, yes?
    EDIT: yeah… comments definitely broken

  38. Infinitron says:

    Four words: Scouring of the Shire.

  39. jdaubenb says:

    This season was great fun – Thanks!

  40. Jarenth says:

    So yeah, that was great. Thanks, Josh, Shamus, Rutskarn and Chris; I had fun watching, and I still like Deus Ex 3 now. Quite the achievement.

    As a side note: the final boss is basically you smashing the Hyron Project, right? At least one of the ways to beat it is to kill the female drones. But the Hyron Project’s main purpose was to keep Panchaea up: the vast, ever-shifting water pressure needed massive computational power to counterbalance.

    So what I’m saying is, that ‘blow everything up’ ending? I’m pretty convinced that’s what happens anyway, regardless of what you pick.

    EDIT: It’s possible, I admit, this was actually said in the last minute of the video, where I already stopped paying attention. Personally, I like to think Josh just uploaded a new video to spite me.

  41. Destrustor says:

    I hope next season has Shamus, Josh, Rutskarn, Chris AND mumbles as commenters, just to make sure we all go irredeemably insane.
    The sound of them all talking at once would destroy everyone’s speakers, and then Josh would have to work twice as hard because he’d have to put subtitles in the videos.

  42. Gamer says:

    BTW, I think the way that the ending worked out was that Zhao was trying to fix what Darrow was doing by interfacing with the Hyron Project. But, it rejected her biochip and began malfunctioning even more. Jensen killed her in order to stop the project from going even farther downhill.

  43. Mathias says:

    Right, because this is the last time I’ll catch Chris on this website, something about your Bastion review from a while back:

    On the surface, it looks like the two endings to Bastion are equally valid, but the game designers pulled a rather clever trick with the New Game+. When you actually play it, Rucks will occasionally experience deva vu and say stuff like: “It feels like I’ve told this part a thousand times”, or “..Wait, haven’t I said this before?” In reality, Rucks is absolutely correct, history just repeats itself. In fact, when you do the Reconstruction ending, Rucks says that “it’s possible we’re all going to forget this. Not likely, though, given the things we’ve been through”, which explains his deja vu experiences in the NG+. On top of that, the achievement you get for beating the NG+ is called “Calamity Kid”, which might be a vague allusion to the fact that the Kid’s survived two Calamities. The Calamity happens no matter what, no matter how many times you reconstruct the world, things will go bad again. Literally the only way to prevent history repeating itself is with the Evacuate ending.

    Just thought that was a clever use of mechanics and worth highlighting.

    1. Ringwraith says:

      It’s a New Game+ which is actually written into the plot.
      It is very clever, and I actually picked that ending precisely for that reason, so my next playthrough would make narrative sense.

  44. Irridium says:

    They kind of backed themselves into a corner with these endings. Either they could A) make just one for everyone, which kind of goes against the spirit of Deus ex, which is choice (we can see this with the boss fights). Or B) have you choose your endings. But then they’d have to make each one not do much so that they could all plausibly lead into Deus Ex 1.

    So yeah, kind of a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” sort of thing.

    One thing they could do, though, is if they make another Deus Ex (probably will happen, since this game was one of the few profitable ones for Square Enix last year), is let you import your save, and have to deal with Jenson’s choice of ending there. That’d be pretty neat.

    And I think that whole Bob Page thing at the end was supposed to be more like fan-service than anything else. At least, that’s what I saw it as. And I liked it for that.

  45. Alex the Too Old says:

    Regarding the running animations for the “zombies” in the last level: I dunno, maybe it’s the amount of time I’ve spent around people with neurological problems, but that run animation is simultaneously genuinely funny and kinda heartbreaking to me; it sells me completely on the idea that something is badly wrong with these people’s brains, and on the horror of what Darrow did.

  46. Zombie says:

    So, DX:HR, worth $7-8 on Steam? or wait for other stuff to come out?

    1. Irridium says:

      Oh yeah. At that price, it’s a steal.

    2. Jamfalcon says:

      It’s one of the few games I’ve bought at full price in the last two years, and I don’t regret it one bit. Absolutely worth it. From what I’ve heard, Missing Link for $2.50 is also a worth having, although I haven’t played it yet myself.

    3. X2Eliah says:

      It is fully worth the full retail price, frankly. It really is a good, pretty much a great game.

  47. “the way he seemed to prioritize saving the lives of his staff”

    Seems someone’s forgetting their first mission:

    “Keep your eyes open for hostages. Free ’em if you can, but the Typhoon is your number one priority.”

    1. Dovius says:

      You could rationalize this as Sarif trying to keep the Typhoon from falling into the wrong hands, and simply assuming that as hostages, they haven’t been harmed.
      The fact that he put his staff before him while there’s a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE happening still says a lot about the guy.

      1. Thomas says:

        I think Sarif would put people before himself, but might put his business before people (with provisos). That might be another reason why he rejected the instant power rocket of the Illuminati

  48. Astor says:

    This is the first season I watch in its entirety. It was quite fun, may Chris return for future seasons! May the next game chosen be one that draws me in again!

    1. Blake says:

      All of this applies to me also.

      Thanks guys for an enjoyable however many hours it was, and for all the work you put into making it.

  49. Noble Bear says:

    Congratulations, Shinji!

    1. anaphysik says:

      I know it’s not the delivery they used at the end of NGE, but I cannot help but imagine ‘Congratulations!’ read in any way other than how the Super Smash Bros. announcers reads it. Someone should totally dub it over.

  50. Rariow says:

    I’d say that I actually disliked the ending more than ME3. Whilst I will agree that ME3’s was a lot worse written, it just didn’t impact me. I was having an excellent experience, and the awfullness came in suddenly, without giving me any sort of warning. I didn’t “process” it. Here, the constantly declining quality of the plot (I’d argue that after the second Detroit section the plot was a constantly falling line) made me actually feel how this amazing world was falling open. Plus, ME3’s at least had good music over it, which gave it a slight bit of feeling.

    Overall, this is probably my favourite season of Spoiler Warning so far. The game has also probably been the best one. Because of this, the crew didn’t wear out, and had good and interesting commentary throughout. Plus, some of the puns made by Rutskarn were actually… good?

    I really enjoyed Chris’s presence in this season. He didn’t speak much compared to the others, even at the end, but everything he said was pure gold. I really hope he comes back, but I’m still missing Mumbles’s presence.

    Now, let the wild speculation about the next season begin! (Or, I guess it already has begun. I, indeed, didn’t read all 103 comments before posting my own).

    1. Simon Buchan says:

      I actually, even reflecting on it, MUCH prefer ME3’s ending to HR’s: to me ME3’s Ending-o-tron actually having somewhat meaningful differences in it’s choices (even if the effects of it don’t have the same difference) outweighs the complete stupidity of the whole thing. ME shot high and completely fumbled it – HR didn’t seem to try at all.

      1. Sumanai says:

        “Shot high” – With the ending? No it didn’t. It tried to explain the Reapers’ motivation, and shot the story of the whole series in the foot. It tried to give choice, and gave three that ranged from complete nonsense (green and blue) to not very sensible (red). All basically dismissing the series overall themes.

        That said, I still don’t see why attempts that completely fail should be put above not attempting at all or going for what you know you can do. It only seems to happen in regards to stories. You try that in electrical engineering? Have fun job hunting.

        Inability to recognise what you can and can’t pull off shouldn’t be a positive sign in a writer.

    2. X2Eliah says:

      Well, the music thing is subjective. I felt the ME3 music throughout the citadel epilogue section was so utterly cliche and unpolished…

  51. Jamfalcon says:

    How much you guys liked this game really showed. Not only did doing it make you guys not hate it, it didn’t make me hate it either. I think I even appreciate it more, and am more likely to go back soon for another playthrough.

    Considering how much you lot influenced my opinion on Mass Effect 2 and Assassin’s Creed II (games I really liked, which I still enjoy but now have a lot more issues with the plot and such) and Bioshock (I already wasn’t fond of it, but Spoiler Warning turned that into outright dislike), I’d say increasing my opinion of a game makes for a pretty successful season.

  52. Peracto says:

    Did anyone have the realization during the credits that the pictures of the Edios offices looks almost exactly like the Picus headquarters?

    1. Ringwraith says:

      They are based in Montreal after all.

  53. silentlambda says:

    My hat’s off to this more upbeat, though still analytic season. I agree that it should be balanced out with some more chaotic misadventures and rage. Skyrim and Mass Effect 3 seem like the ideal candidates.

  54. Rasha says:

    I didn’t ask for this… ending.The story used to be good, then it took this ending to the knee.

  55. noahpocalypse says:

    Skyrim! We must DO ALL THE QUESTS!

  56. Destrustor says:

    When he says pop-up shooter, I imagine whack-a-mole with guns.

  57. Mailbox says:

    Great season guys.

  58. KremlinLaptop says:

    I know I’m late to the party but I really love Chris’ introduction. That made my day.

    Good season guys. Really good season. Hope Chris is back next season, although I want Mumbles around too. Could we maybe stick Mumbles and Rustkarn into a collider sort of thing to make them one person to keep the four person cast structure?

  59. Thanks for one’s marvelous posting! I definitely enjoyed reading it, you could be a great author.I will make certain to bookmark your blog and will eventually come back in the foreseeable future. I want to encourage one to continue your great posts, have a nice weekend!

  60. TMC_Sherpa says:

    OK I know I’m bringing this thing back from the dead and all but…. how did Megan get to Bobs place? The last time we saw her she and the other scientists were running to the chopperoid.

    *Shrug* I didn’t even think about it until watching these excellent vids.

  61. MichaelGC says:

    Josh does do a truly excellent Jensen impression. Assuming that’s not Jensen doing a truly excellent Josh impression.

  62. Mick Russom says:

    We all want deus ex GOTY faithfully remade with the Unreal engine 4 or something modern. Most of the new DX content is kinda crappy compared to GOTY year 2000.

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