nan | 楠木

I never thought I would actually start writing reviews on video-games, but now that my day-job involves making one, I guess it’s fitting that I spend more time thinking and critiquing them. (To some people, especially those who don’t play video-games at all or just treat them as a form of casual recreation, the notion of treating video-games as serious subjects to ponder and review may be strange. But the same could be said of movies to some folks. Ultimately, video-games are another form of artistic expression.)

Deus Ex: Human Revolution (DXHR) is the first full-blown RPG I’ve played in a while. (The previous one I played was Red Dead Redemption on the Xbox 360, which created a lively and highly interactive world set in turn-of-the-century American wild west.) DXHR‘s world is easily labeled as a cyberpunk  dystopia (akin to that of Blade Runner), a not-too-distant future where people in society are suffering despite radical technological advances (or rather, due to those advances). The main technological culprit is “human augmentation,” which is a broad set of biotech development that outfits humans with advanced microchips and artificial limbs / organs.

You play the role of Adam Jensen, chief of security for Sarif Industries, one of the leading corporations in the human augmentation field. Jensen starts out as an unaugmented human, but dramatic events in the opening act of the game soon cause Jensen to be heavily augmented. This leads to two developments – one, these augmentations form a core part of the RPG gameplay experience, as you can dictate what augmentations you get (think about it as skills in different fields you can develop your character in); two, from a narrative standpoint this makes the entire plot around augmentation much more personal and something that the player should be able to directly relate to.

The plot mainly follows Jensen as he tries to uncover the truth behind an attack on Sarif Industries, and to stop a global conspiracy in the forming. The game is primarily staged in cities, which the player is not able to travel back and forth between openly (so the main narrative is quite linear, and almost feels like levels). Within each city (mainly Detroit and Hengsha, a fictional city in China right around the Shanghai area), the player is free to explore and develop the story in a non-linear fashion – you can be wandering around and doing things that are actually part of later narratives.

The main gameplay is stealth based, i.e. while you can straight up shoot your way through things, you are rewarded for taking discretion and doing things quietly. The stealth component is not as hardcore as the Tom Clancy: Splinter Cell franchise (as far as I can remember), but is still difficult enough if you’re aiming for the stealth achievements (e.g. not setting off alarms and stuff).

Besides commenting on the mechanics, what I’d really like to talk about is the metaphysical discussion that happens within DXHR. The entire game is centered around a thread of mankind’s relationship with technology – how we view technology, how we use it, and what are the boundaries of morality / social justice that arise because of technology issues. The game raises the question of “what happens if we play God in terms of bio evolution?” and tries to create a vivid envisioning of society under such circumstances.

I also particularly enjoyed the climatic act where (spoilers!) the game makes a strong reference to the zombie genre of films / games. Zombies are of course themselves a strong metaphor / form of social commentary (read the wikipedia article on zombies if you’re interested…).

Other philosophical threads that bubble up over the course of the game include the timeless debate of “does the end justify the means?”, which is of course a cornerstone debate in the various schools of ethics and morality. The game offers contrasting characters that embody those different schools of thought, and even more thought-provokingly, gives the player the choice to decide at the very end what the ending should be. The different ending choices directly embody those sharply contrasting philosophical stand-points, so when you as the player pick an ending, you are explicitly stating which world-view you align with. And obviously, none of the choices are clear black and white / right or wrong, which gives the ending particular impact and a strong sense of realism – in real life, we make tradeoffs all the time and we have to live with the consequences of our choices.

This is the ending I picked:

And here are the 3 other possible endings:

Bill Taggart’s Ending: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkj4b7-r4MA
David Sarif’s Ending: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdHLJ92aSto
Hugh Darrow’s Ending: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZI-aDLxfgA

Contagion, the latest film from director Steven Soderbergh, is both a thriller and a social study. The film follows the outbreak of a fictional deadly pandemic, and tracks an ensemble of characters impacted by it – the staff at the CDC and the WHO, on-the-ground doctors, opportunistic profit-seekers, and victims and survivors. Sometimes a character bridges several types of those roles.

The most haunting aspect of the film is the realization that all this could actually happen. Indeed, similar events (of lesser impact) have happened in the past, with SARS being the most notable in recent memory. In the film, the pandemic causes widespread anarchy, and scenes reminiscent of The Road and 28 Days Later – you get the image. It feels over-dramatic, but none-the-less the thriller part of the film works.

The character study portion, is mixed. A blogger who is trying to manipulate public opinion for his own profit is one of the more interesting and original characters, while there are plenty of characters who show humanity’s better side via mostly selfless and courageous acts. Some of the plot doesn’t really hold against logic, but the film’s style (sometimes almost documentary-like) makes them feel subtle enough.

Contagion is definitely not a feel-good film. It is also not a conventional thriller which you can sit back and enjoy. It has many moments which make you cringe, and lots of scenes where the more you reflect the more multi-dimensional they become. Recommended.

(8/10)