HR was one of the few games I replayed multiple times and the level of design and atmosphere was one of the main reasons for going back, just to spend some more time in it's moody world. Can't wait for the next one either! Looks very impressive from the small peaks they have given: https://community.eidosmontreal.com/blog/dawn-engine
I'm hoping that they address one of the main letdowns of Human Revolution, that the hub environments were a bit sparse and lacking more NPCs to make them feel like real locations. I listened to the game commentary and apparently that was simple a limitation of the engine they used.
The hubs weren't too bad. I think that both Detroit and Hengsha were pretty fleshed in, and felt pretty lively.
My biggest complaint was that the central high-brow concept they pushed--"is augmented man not man", "are we playing god", et al.--was just woefully underexecuted. I felt more empathy for poor Gunther in the first Deus Ex worried about being phased out than I did for anyone with or without augs in DX:HR.
As presented, for example, augs were strictly the better option if you could afford them. There wasn't any downside to piling them on, nobody in the game gave two shits whether or not you were man or machine. No quests really changed if you were really chopped up. It just felt phoned in and handwaved.
Even the gameplay and combat itself didn't support this--there was no real "Oh no, they've got augs, ruh roh" to speak of, except maybe the boss fights. In the first game, for example, you go up against a fellow with augs as blinged out as yours, and it really really shows. The somewhat augmented humans are a bit harder to fight.
However, in this one, augmented humans or not can all be effectively one-shotted during stealth. There's no real feeling of "Oh, watch out, some of these troops are notably better"--contrast with, say, how in Dishonored or Bioshock you could run into enemies with similar abilities to yours.
> There wasn't any downside to piling them on, nobody in the game gave two shits whether or not you were man or machine. No quests really changed if you were really chopped up. It just felt phoned in and handwaved.
I agree with the rest of your post, but this was pretty much explained by saying that ALL the augs Jensen has are already installed in him at the beginning of the game. Them being unlocked as the game goes on had more to do with Jensen getting used to controlling them (as opposed to having them installed and being able to use them then and there).
Which is still kind of a cop-out from a writing standpoint. Hell, the clinics were where you went to activate everything, so that could've been a good place to do that.
When so much is being made of that difference, it's sad that the player is given so little agency in the matter. There's not even much being done in the way of reactions from NPCs about the augs.
Well the writing had some weak spots for sure, I was mostly talking about how the slick cyberpunk atmosphere, visuals and soundtrack were so appealing to me that I wanted to go back to experience and explore it.
Also, I did feel there was a bit of an enemy progression throughout the game (cloaking troops, bigger bots), but it was mostly just more complex level design, which in a way I prefer to just "tougher" enemies. I think this was kind of necessary for supporting a pacifist play style.
I actually never managed to get past a boss fight (against "the gunther" of dx:hr) where my mods got disabled. They got disabled because I got greedy and installed a free mod that got advertised to me. So there was that. Whether it actually made a difference or if I just really suck is up in the air.
I'm hoping that they address one of the main letdowns of Human Revolution, that the hub environments were a bit sparse and lacking more NPCs to make them feel like real locations. I listened to the game commentary and apparently that was simple a limitation of the engine they used.