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Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Social Paths @ Silicon Era

Silicon Era reports on the social or diplomatic opportunities in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. You'll have to excuse the poor English but here's an example (light spoilers):

Quote:

Dugas gave an example of the social mechanics can by detailing an unseen part of Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution has a mission set in Detroit where Adam needs to go into a police station to recover information. Adam can fight his way in or sneaking in through the roof or sewers. If you want to take a non-violent route, Adam can walk through the main lobby and talk to the desk sergeant. “By talking to him you’ll discover there is a background story between your character and his character,” Dugas highlighted. “If you try to convince him to go inside he says ‘I’ll lose my job’, that type of thing. If you pursue that route and win you can access the entire police station.” Pick this path and you won’t have to resort to stealth or fighting.
Later on in the game, Adam may run into the desk sergeant again in civilian clothes. After letting Adam into the building he lost his job and is upset with Adam. Again, you’re not forced to fight. You can try to calm down the enraged desk sergeant with words.

More information.

That sounds quite promising. Actually, it sounds like Fallout 1 and 2 - action boy, stealth boy, and diplomatic paths to the goal. The delayed consequences are great too, one thing Dues Ex did quite well was reactivity, people would show up or not as a result of past actions.

The one thing I'm not so hot on is:

"By talking to him you’ll discover there is a background story between your character and his character,”

DX1 more or less gave you a blank slate. I don't like finding things out about my character in an RPG, it detracts from the player's ownership of the character, which I think is just as important as things like 'player agency' and reactivity.

Yeah, there is no excuse to not to be able to make our own character at the game start male/female, among other things.

One of the things ME got right was calling the PC by the last name. They obviously would have had the budget for a female voice as this is a potential AAA material, as far as design goes we will have to wait and see.