Deus Ex: Human Revolution is in the wild, and if you familiarized yourself with my review, you know I had a few words about the narrative and what it offered me. Since then, and in light of some of the opinions that have since filtered onto the Internet, I’ve felt that line of thought deserved an even greater number of words.
It’s been suggested that Deus Ex doesn’t have a story, but merely a plot; that is to say, it is a piece driven by events, not characters, whereby the actors within contribute little to the proceedings. This is a common enough ailment in the circumstance-driven videogame medium, and maybe even a reasonable assessment of Deus Ex, but perhaps not a fair criticism.
It’s curious to me that Deus Ex is the title to elicit this response among some far more serious offenders; perhaps it is that the title makes so much of its story that any supposed deficiency is more vividly felt. The condition is most apparent in the main character of Adam Jensen, a man who has no character arc, and indeed, little emotion about, opinion of, or even response to the whirlwind of events that encircles him.