​As you progress through the story, far more crimes than you can ever stop start appearing in the game world and you will lose reputation whether you intended to or not. The Hero/Menace system directs the player to do good in the game but nudges them to doing the same tasks repeatedly.

​The goal of the system redesign is to make it less of a nuisance to the player. The heroic meter ‘fill up’ will stay but will be slowed down when losing heroic points. Gaining points will be easier, just so we limit the number of times the player does these repetitive tasks while still keeping them in game. It will be harder to change people’s views, just like it is for Spider-Man in his comic books and movies.
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New events will be added. A kid could let go of a balloon and start to cry, Spider-Man can retrieve and return it to the kid. A mugger might steal a purse. You will gain more heroic points if you successfully save people from a burning building than say, a kid’s balloon.

The player does not need an unskippable cutscene animation to a burning building activity every single time when the player already made the conscious decision to get there. I would also remove the news report pop-ups. The system already responds to your choices, we do not need another confirmation.

​In the game’s story, Kingpin gives the task force Oscorp technology. When you defeat Kingpin, that defeat should reflect in the game world, and the futuristic tech used by the force should now be removed. This makes the system directly correlate to the story and makes the player feel like the world is responding to their actions.

​These changes will not constantly force the player to complete repetitive side missions, but when doing so, the player does not have to sit through pointless cutscenes. The annoyance of constantly being shot at by the task force will be limited, you will be able to web swing more freely, and the addition of environmental story telling would let the player know how New Yorkers currently view The Amazing Spider-Man.

​You can remove, replace or obtain additional traits using a gene therapy machine. This machine is always in the ‘Gene’ room, so the player knows every time a ship has one, there will be an option to alter his/her current traits.

​The trait system includes ‘negative’ as well as ‘positive’ traits and their effects lend a hand to the games dark humour and can affect moment to moment gameplay. The player could obtain one that makes you run silently, or you could begin with a trait called ‘Smoker’, where your character would give out a random cough, which in turn can give your position away to enemies. This system varies gameplay by forcing the player to strategize their decisions depending on their active traits.

​The traits system as well as its randomisation helped facilitate the success of the game. I believe its goal was to flesh out gameplay and vary it to a degree and it does exactly that. Making the player strategize their moves in situations that arise. This system in turn, also gives more depth and personality to the voiceless characters of the game. Void Bastards focuses on creative problem solving, strategy and player skill improvement. The character trait system lends a hand to those areas and improves the quality of the experience.

​With the release of Rage 2 this month, I wanted to take a trip down memory lane for a moment and look back on the original game; RAGE. I remember picking the game up in 2011, and by the middle of 2012 I had completed the single player story 3 times (I had no life (I still have no life)). Something drew me too the game, it's not the best game ever made or that I’ve played, but it is one of my favourites, nonetheless.

Rage is a first-person shooter and racing game developed by id Software and published by Bethesda Softworks released in 2011 for PC, PS3, 360 and later released on Mac as Rage: Campaign Edition. The game also has some RPG elements which include an inventory system, the ability to customise weapons, the choice of different ammo types for each weapon and of course a main story quest as well as multiple side missions. The game uses the id Tech 5 game engine, which I am very fond of, and a bit disappointed that Rage 2 isn’t using the game engine. But I get why it isn’t, id Tech isn’t made for open world games, and the developers of Rage 2; Avalanche Studios, wanted to make the world of Rage 2 bigger and with a true open world experience that Rage fell short of offering. 
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​​Rage is set in a post-apocalyptic world created by an asteroid wiping out most of the population. A crystal call Feltrite that came from the asteroid has fiddled with the DNA of some people turning them into mutated monsters. Multiple cryogenic pods were made before the asteroid impact called Arks. Your character has been woken up, everyone else inside your Ark is dead. You emerge to the outside to see what the world has become around you. You are the Ark Survivor. 

A game study on Deus Ex: Human Revolution and discussion between the end of the mission "Hunting the Hacker" and the beginning of the mission "Gaining Access to Tai Yong Medical".
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Video Examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC4q0XBwPzw - Time Code: 7:00 - End of video
​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyq5tR0wXsM - Time Code: Start of video - 6:17

​Deus Ex: Human Revolution (DXHR) is an action role-playing game (ARPG) with incorporated first-person shooter (FPS) and stealth mechanics. Players take the role of Adam Jensen, a man equipped with mechanical cybernetic implants called ‘augmentations’.

‘Deus Ex: Human Revolution immerses the player inside its cyberpunk womb from the very start.’ (Donatelli 2012). DXHR knows how to pull you in and feel the gritty, unstable world full of futuristic corporate architecture and interiors setting the mood perfectly with dark lighting and a great cyberpunk/Blade Runner inspired soundtrack.

​In DXHR, all elements of the game fit and connect to each other to produce a memorable world, a memorable experience and brilliant design. DXHR’s aesthetics seem similar, and took inspiration from Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell. The game has a yellow golden tinge for a screen effect, and goes well with the whole game, which mainly focuses on dark lighting and gold neon lights. During the gameplay in Alice Garden Pods, enemies are alarmed and begin searching for you. The background score has a very fast and frustrating effect as the playable character is in that situation. And as soon as a guard spots you and their status changes from alarmed to hostile (see figure 02), the audio track slightly changes to an action based sound with just a couple of instruments added to the already playing audio. But the two sounds; both the alarmed audio and hostile audio seem like they could still be part of the same song and both work well together as a whole. As soon as enemies lose sight of the playable character, those extra instruments fade away and the original alerted audio continues playing. Every song, and every audio track fit perfectly in the game which makes it’s that more immersive.

This section of the game is a minor one, nothing big really happens in the story, but the level design doesn’t care that this is the last time you’ll be in this area. Every object is carefully place with meaning, with the player’s choice being considered and the guards positioning being considered too. All this wrapped with the score and soundtrack of the game, and with dark black and the light gold lights (see figure 04). It becomes atmospheric.

​This section of DXHR communicates a lot of information to the player through environmental storytelling. As you ascend the first pair of stairs up to Alice Garden Pods, you are shown a place that is safe, where people live, or rent out, with the shiny gold lighting right in front of you. Even though you have a map and map marker, the light still does its job and lures you to the top centre of Alice Garden Pods to meet with the hacker.

DXHR has a RPG element to it, and because of that, you can end up having skills/augmentations that other players that played the game didn’t chose or didn’t have at the time at arriving at this place. So, the way you escape the area is going to be different from how others played that specific section. This makes every playthrough feel unique, and even more unique, if you play completely differently on your second playthrough.
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After Belltower Guards show up they start searching for the playable character. The UI and map show you the exit, and it’s the way you came in. Just like before, when you entered the Alice Garden Pods you saw the Gold neon lights in front of you. Now if you look the direction where you need to go, the lights are dim and dark indicating the Alice Garden Pods isn’t safe at this moment. The game also shows you which objects are interactable in the world; so, if you see a door with a yellow/gold outline on it, that indicates that its interactable. The playable character Adam Jensen, is an augmented human, and his eyesight is also augmented. Mechanics aren’t just put in without meaning, everything ties back to the story. Mechanics are given to you when you upgrade an augmentation, for instance, a sight augmentation upgrade can give you the ability to see an enemy’s line of sight. So, the map on the bottom left corner would show cones on enemies indicating their line of sight.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution pulls you into its world, with the great score and atmospheric levels. There isn’t any moment that takes you out of the experience and makes you think “wait, that doesn’t belong here”. Even though DXHR is a story based game first, the gameplay was not forgotten. Mechanics fit together perfectly and not one augmentation overpowered. The level design takes all augmentations you could use in consideration, it’s just up to the player to find out what works best for them. Alice Garden Pods and the missions that take place there are just a small portion of the game, and the elements talked about in this piece translate over to the rest of the games levels.