Gamer’s Guide To Deus Ex Stealth Only

I never asked for this.

Actually, I did. In another one of my GamerScore Whore tendencies I decided to go for three of the most difficult achievements in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. They are: Complete the game on Hard difficulty, Don’t trigger ANY alarms and, Don’t kill anyone. Basically I had to be a sneaky bastard the entire game and suffer through the (atrocious) boss fights on the hardest difficulty. It wasn’t all that hard. Step 1: Denial.

I started it up, all geared up and ready to sneak past some shit. I did my first playthrough on Normal difficulty just doing things like I would usually. Basically, I just played a guy shooting a gun and occasionally sneaking by some guys that looked too menacing. I cleared a room in a few minutes with my pistol and just went forward with the mission. It was great fun. Until I discovered the stealth.

Stealth in games are very subject to context. In a Call of Duty game, for example, you just follow the orders of your superior and run past a few enemies taking a piss and playing SwordFight. In a game such as Deus Ex it’s very different. You have to develop paths yourself and sometimes improvise your way past enemies. It felt extremely gratifying when you snuck by an entire enemy encampment full of dudes with massive ass machine guns without making so much as a peep. It does have a degree of trial-and-error and I’m almost too afraid to count the number of times I had to save my game, get caught accidentally and reload to try it all over again.

On my first playthrough I ploughed through the enemies and went forward, but in my all stealth playthrough, that was very different. I crawled into vents I’ve never seen before and found different paths to an objective that I would have never figured out when I just went Rambo. I found items that were insanely useful and the various XP bonuses you get from only using stealth were more than welcome as well.

I was challenged furiously. Some sections that would have taken about 5 minutes with a pistol took about an hour of constant saving and loading with a hint of “Ah that fucker might see me”. As soon as I invested all my Praxis kits into stealth skills it became significantly easier. I could just turn invisible and walk by everyone. Bear in mind that this was in the later stages of the game where you couldn’t have survived at all if you didn’t have it.

It wasn’t all sunshine and daisies, however. At the end of my gratifying, amazing, humbling, challenging playthrough, I didn’t unlock the achievement for not killing anyone. I have no fucking clue how I did not get it because I specifically made sure I didn’t kill anyone at all. Maybe a glitch or just the universe hating me for being a paedophile bad person. At first I just stared at the screen with an unblinking wide-eyed stare and the next I was screaming all the colorful cuss words in the English and Afrikaans dictionaries. If I didn’t have to do that achievement the game would have been a breeze because I could still kill people without setting off alarms, but no I had to sleep-dart every guy that was standing in front of a door.

Barring that fuck up, it was one of the most gratifying and rewarding experiences I’ve ever had in my gaming life with regards to challenge. I didn’t have to do it, but I wanted to. For achievements, but still.

If you want to have a go at it here are some of the famous Thabo Tips:

• Invest your Praxis points into the following: Invisibility, Hacking and Energy. With those 3 you won’t have any problem whatsoever. Don’t invest points into the insanely useless “Oh look there’s some cash in this node” upgrade or any of the other useless things. Getting the stealth augmentations can be useful, but most of them you can live without if you have keen observation and scouting abilities. Make sure you get the strength power-up, punch through walls, jump higher and Icarus landing system augmentations as well because they are almost required in some paths you have to take.
• Invisibility can be a life saver. If there is a door with 7 enemies just chilling there then you can just activate the augmentation and walk past them without any worries. Use your energy bars wisely and don’t use your entire stock in one go because you might need it later on.
• Boss  fights I could only have one tip for (because they’re atrocious). Have at least one powerful weapon in your inventory and save all the ammo for it. On the actual boss fights you will find power weapons that can help you and grenades thrown all over.
• This tip might be the most useful one. Sell your guns, because you won’t use them obviously. It takes some time, but you can sell a 9 mm gun that you got after knocking out a guy for full price and then pick another one up and sell it for full price as well. Also sell your attachments and ammo if you’re not using that gun for boss fights. The result being you will have tons of money to spend on Praxis kits and energy Bar Ones.
• Stay in cover at all times. Don’t be an idiot and strut around waving your shiny ass for everyone to see. Be in crouch position at all times when in the presence of enemies and DON’T go near them at all because they will detect you.
• Look for vents and secret entrances at all times. It later becomes a habit of sorts to recon a room before infiltrating to scope out the vents and side paths.

Deus Ex: HR was a brilliant game and one that has been forgotten by many gamers, which is sad, and it never asked for that. Every gamer needs to play this game at least once in their life. If you haven’t, please do. I’ll wait. Or not, but still.