Deus Ex: Human Revolution as a Cyberpsychosis Simulator

[theclevermonkey]

I played some Deus Ex: Human Revolution this past weekend. The game is doing a pretty decent job of pointing out all the downsides and upsides of "human augmentation" (cybernetics and bionics), mostly through overheard conversation

Comments

[anonymous]

Every significant new technology initiates the same sort of soul-searching. What makes us human? I'm actually a bit disappointed that it's still mostly about what physically makes us human, when the next frontier is the mind. They touch on that a bit. Reality can be extremely plastic when viewed through technology - the faked footage the media uses. What if we lived in a world where we our memories were stored digitally, and they differed from our real memories (our real memories being proven unreliable and highly biased). Which would you trust? What if those digital memories could be manipulated. Still enjoying the game though.

[theclevermonkey]

I do think that this game plays on the mental frontier a bit, though it's mostly about the feedback the body provides to the mind, and how the mind reacts to sort of information; Generally, about knowledge that you wouldn't normally have access to, and how that changes the way the mind reacts.

You're right that it would be interesting to play on the ideas of memory. It might be interesting to highlight the contrast between our organic memory storage and digital storage during similar experiences.

I don't think such a game would be impossible, either: One could build the idea into the game that it's useful to lose certain memories, say traumatic ones, and perhaps limit dialogue responses and the like based on which memories are lost, then present the player with situations where those memories would have come into play. It might be difficult to do, but it could be an interesting experience to simulate.

And yes, I do certainly enjoy the game.