All that is old is new again

It’s 2011 [2000], and I have to admit that I’m a bit giddy. It’s a childish reaction for a 30 [19] year old, but I haven’t seen a game with this much potential since the first Deus Ex [System Shock 2]. Finally, a game that offers real freedom to choose our own path through a complex and very dark world.

I just unlocked my copy on Steam [picked up my copy from CompUSA] and taken my first few steps into a very big and complicated world. Already, I’ve made mistakes, I want to play this game as pacifistically as possible, and I screwed up my stealth in the first mission, forcing an ugly firefight [and I screwed up infiltrating liberty island, forcing a running gun battle with an armored robot]. I’ll have to go back and do that again, but I’m too busy exploring to be a perfectionist right now.

It doesn’t take me long to finish the “tutorial” area, which finishes up with a brutal beatdown by some enhanced soldiers [which ends with a philosophical debate between me and a terrorist]. I’m surprised by what happens next, the lengthy intro sequence drops me back into the world as a shiny new super soldier, and confronts me with some interesting quandaries. Quandaries, in a shooter. There are people who resent me for my augmentations [nanorobots], and people who lack confidence in my abilities as a security analist [UNATCO agent].

It’s clear that I’ve been dropped into a very complicated world, and now I’m on the metro [waiting for my ride], and writing these thoughts down on my netbook [aging Pentium 90 laptop], and all that’s old is new again.