You know, I was fairly positive about Deus Ex: Human Revolution during our Spoiler Warning run. I was really impressed with how large and opened-ended it was by the standards of the day. But then I spent this evening watching a Deus Ex speedrun and I was reminded just how staggeringly massive the original was, and just how many ways you could accomplish something. Human Revolution was proud of itself when it gave you two ways into a base, but the original game often had half a dozen, some of which were impacted by decisions you’d made earlier in the game.
I always love a good speed run. Here it is, the entire game in 43 minutes! That’s amazing. I think I usually spend longer than that doing the first mission.
Lots of deliberate glitching and other shenanigans. My favorite is how he skips the entire first mission. If you’ve never played the game:
You’re supposed to cut through the NSF terrorists that have taken control of the Statue of Liberty. You make your way in, rescue a fellow agent in the basement, then fight or sneak to the top and arrest or kill the terrorist leader. Once that’s over, you go back down and visit your headquarters, which is near the statue.
In this run, totally ignores the mission and tosses a gas grenade over the wall so that it lands beside headquarters. The cloud reaches INTO the lobby, where it injures one of your fellow soldiers. He gets pissed off and comes out to get you. In doing so, he opens the door that’s supposed to stay locked until the first mission is over. The player then runs him over and enters headquarters, where all the scripts behave as if the first mission was complete.
Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.
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