Originally Posted by
TAS_MAJ0R_K0NG
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I am not totally enamored by "New York Collapse' but that has more to do with the game than any errors committed in the book.
One thing about the book that they got right, and something Massive would do well to learn from, is the way the info is presented to the reader. "New York Collapse" presents a lot of info to the reader in a disconnected fashion and doesn't actually claim that any of the info is authoritative. The result is a very conspiratorial tone that could give Deus Ex a run for its money.
The benefit to the reader and players is that it leaves almost everything open-ended, so we can sit and wonder amongst ourselves how it all happened and why. And probably do a better job of it than Massive did. Part of my issue with Massive's treatment was in the last mission "Lost Signal". It was totally unconvincing and in my view if Massive wasn't going to put decent effort into making it all believable then they should have left it open-ended so we could add our own ending.
Some issues that I had with Massive's treatment of the story is the narrow focus that they took. They want you to believe that one person with a 3D printer could retro engineer a virus to kill a billion people. First off, geneitic engineering is still in it's infancy. To achieve the outcome portrayed in the game would have required a whole team of brilliant people with an enormous budget to fund the research. There are many other issues with the game's story such as;
1. The initial release of the money into a single tip jar. Much better if a whole stack of money was put in an ATM at an airport or shopping mall.
2. NYC? If the stated goal is to thin the world population I would have done it in a much larger city. NYC isn't even in the top ten. Beijing, Shanghai, Mumbai, Delhi, Mexico City, would have all been more impactful choices.
3. Eco-terrorism, really? Massive couldn't find a good villain with a decent motive? "New York Collapse' hints at much better motives.
This is an interesting topic and I don't want to derail it further.