The plot is finally starting to come together in Invisible War…  I stumbled across the Illuminati, and met JC Denton.  Wound up facing off with one of the other Tarsus students in a battle to save JC Denton’s life…

I guess that was supposed to be fairly climactic – facing off with one of your old school chums with the fate of the world in the balance.  But really, I had an easier time killing her than all the other guards I’ve been mowing down.  Not to say that the fight was easy – she had a lot of backup along with her – but I had fewer qualms about killing her.  I’ve been using the tranq gun on everyone I can…but I didn’t bother with her.

She gives a big speech about how you’ve never had to fight a friend before…  But the last time I spoke to her was back in Cairo.  She hasn’t really been developed into a terribly interesting character.  I really didn’t feel any kind of bond to her at all…

So JC wants to create some kind of “perfect democracy”…  I guess we’re supposed to sympathize with his goals since he was the hero of Deus Ex, but I’m not sure that I like his plan.  Sure, it sounds nice on paper…  But what if you don’t want to be part of this perfect democracy?  What if you don’t want Helios listening in on your every thought?  What if you don’t want to be completely equal to everyone else – not outstanding in any way, shape, or form?  He doesn’t seem to have any allowances for individuality…

I can guess how this is going to end…  When I get to Liberty Island all three factions are going to want me to advance their agenda.  JC will want me to somehow trigger his Perfect Democracy, the Templars will want me to kill JC and destroy all nanotechnology, and the Illuminati will want me to give them JC’s secret nanotechnology so they can use it to take over the world.  Frankly, none of those choices sound all that appealing…

I’ve been playing Deus Ex: Invisible War over the last few days…  My PC is still having issues.  I can’t run both Ventrilo and WoW at the same time.  None of the Orange Box games will run for more than about 10 minutes.  So I dusted off my old copy of Invisible War and decided to give it another try.

Back when it first came out I really didn’t play for long.  The demo didn’t like my computer at all at the time – very sluggish, glitchy, crashed a lot.  The storyline didn’t really catch my attention, the game mechanics were a little too console-y, and I had other things to play.  I didn’t make it much beyond the opening levels at the Tarsus Academy.  Well, my computer has been upgraded since then, so it runs much better – and I don’t really have much else to play right now…

I have to say that the storyline is considerably better than I expected it to be.  I never really experienced much of the story before, just a bit at the very beginning.  They certainly don’t start you off too well…  As soon as you get out of the Academy you’ve got a half-dozen people all asking you to do various things, and no real reason to listen to any of them.  Nobody presents a very good argument at all.  I wound up simply picking missions at random – basically doing whatever was closest to my current location.  Eventually though, the plot starts to unfold.  You start hearing more about the Dentons, learning more about the WTO and the Order.  I still haven’t played very far, but there’s some fairly juicy hints at conspiracy.

I’m pretty annoyed at how vague and direction less everything seems though, even now that I’ve gotten out of Seattle.   Nobody is really presenting a good reason why I should do what they want me to.  Everything seems mutually exclusive…one side wants me to kill someone, the other wants me to keep them alive…  But they’re all very forgiving – betray The Order in Seattle?  No Problem, they’ll let you make it up to them in Cairo.  It’s also frequently unclear who you’re working for or what the repercussions will be.  I got an Omar trader killed because I talked to a holographic pop singer.

The interface is still too simple and console-y for my tastes, especially after playing some of the stuff in the Orange Box so recently.  All the weapons take the same ammunition, and reload instantaneously.  The inventory is way too small…  I can’t carry half of what I want to.  And I don’t seem to have the same variety of customization options for the weapons.  I’d really like to put a scope on my mag rail, but that doesn’t seem to be possible.  Nor does it seem to be possible to silence my sniper rifle.  And it seems that the entire interface was designed with a console gamepad in mind…  You really can’t use the mouse for anything beyond aiming and shooting.

I’m also slightly annoyed with how narrow the scope of the gameplay seems to be…  In the original Deus Ex you really could play in virtually any way you wanted to.  It was genuinely possible to choose the right combination of mods and skills to facilitate whatever play style you wanted.  You could sneak around and stealthily assassinate people, you could hack computer systems, you could mow everyone down…  Whatever you liked.  Invisible War seems to have eliminated a lot of the possibilities.  The selection of mods is fairly unimpressive – there just isn’t that much variety to them.  I’ve got two mod slots completely empty simply because there isn’t anything interesting to put in them.  Stealth still works…mostly…but hacking seems borderline useless.  There’s precious little you can do from a hacked terminal, and you aren’t allowed to hack personal computers, and most of the terminals are placed such that it’s virtually impossible to get to them undetected.

I think the most annoying thing about Invisible War is the constant loading screens.  The world is broken up into dozens of small areas, each one requiring a loading screen prefaced by an “are you sure?” prompt.  I understand the need to swap level information in and out of memory…  Especially considering how detailed some of the environments are…  But it’s really very disruptive.  It seems like every door I click on results in “do you want to leave the area?” and a loading screen.

Still, it’s fun to be back in the world of Deus Ex, or at least something similar to it…  I’ve always enjoyed gritty cyberpunk noir settings, and there’s precious few of them in video games.