I had to come to prison to be a crook.

A Criminal Past is both longer and more story-driven than System Rift was. But the execution of this DLC turns those could-be-positives into some slightly-negatives.

A Criminal Past is narratively framed as a story that Adam Jensen is telling to an Interpol psychologist, who is definitely a character from Mankind Divided that I've totally forgotten about. (A mark against the main game, for how un-memorable she was.) A "present-day" conversation between her and Adam introduces the mission as a flashback; and at some plot moments during this mission, the two will provide narrative voiceovers to recap the story so far.

While I admire the ambition of this storytelling technique, its implementation just isn't that good. The dialog between Delara and Jensen is generally dry and un-engaging. And, if Adam dies during the mission, Delara will cut in with a "That's not what happened, try to remember" line -- much like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time did, but in the serious and professional context of A Criminal Past's story, it sounds very out of place.

Writing for the mission's characters is similarly ambitious, but insufficient. Key characters tend to lean on a single defining personality trait: Flossy is a dealmaker, the Fixer is neurotic. Stenger, at least, shows some signs of character complexity as the story moves forward. But other characters are too one-note to be believable or interesting.

Partially as a result of these flat characters, the back half of A Criminal Past comes across as stretched-out.

The first half is pretty exciting: Jensen is dropped into a fortress-style prison, and must figure out how to move around freely without being shot at. Sure, it bears some resemblance to System Rift's bank vault, but the presence of other prisoners - especially when you're doing favors for them - and the architecture of the cell blocks and the outdoor "yard" area, have a very different feel. I liked developing a familiarity with the cell blocks' maps as I snuck between them to carry out errands.

Remember how I said that System Rift streamlined itself by giving you a bunch of Praxis Points to start? Well, A Criminal Past doesn't; you're reset back to a baseline Adam Jensen. But I actually liked that restriction, here, because it helps encourage mechanics that are thematically appropriate for a prison break. Like hiding from guard patrols, rather than always taking them out; and tracking down keycodes and computer passwords, instead of hacking them.

Unfortunately, the second half of A Criminal Past reverts to more familiar, rote scenarios. Largely, getting past guards in otherwise-empty office floors, with no objectives other than navigating from one end to the other. These later areas felt inappropriately sprawling, and while I typically like to methodically search a floor and collect everything in it, I skipped a few areas because I was ready for the game to be over.

At its worst, though, A Criminal Past is still "more Deus Ex." And at its best, in the initial prison-break scenario, it ticks all the same boxes that I enjoyed in System Rift.

Despite its pacing problem, this is another worthy excuse to dive back into Deus Ex.

Better than: Deus Ex: Human Revolution - The Missing Link, at least as far as I can remember it.
Not as good as: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - System Rift, mostly because of the pacing.
Here's hoping that Deus Ex: can come out of "hiatus" in one piece.