I "lose the plot" in almost every game I play. But if the gameplay is great it doesn't matter too much - I can go back and play the game a second time and (hopefully) "get" the plot the second time round. I've just finished Deus Ex : Human Revolution ; at the end you are given several choices. I had to google quite a lot to understand what I was actually being asked to decide. It definitely enhances your experience of a game if you can follow its plot and absorb all the lore, but I almost always fail to do this ! This is not a complaint, by the way, I'd just like to know how other people experience games.

My PC is in the same room my dogs sleep in, and even if it wasn't my dogs tend to follow me around anyway (and sometimes the cats come along, too). What this means is that at any given moment while I'm playing, my dogs will start wrestling with each other, or bark at me because they're bored and don't understand why I'm just sitting there staring at a stupid screen, and make a huge racket and most of the dialogue will be drowned out. So yeah, I tend to miss most of what's being said and lose track of the story unless there's text that I can read and advance at my own pace.

Usually it doesn't matter, and if I miss anything really important there's always the possibility that Youtube will have whatever I needed to see.

I don't usually have any problem with that, unless a game is poorly written, or so long that I take an extended brake from it. That's where a good journal feature is important.

You wouldn't be alone with your confusion with the Deus Ex HR storyline. Bit typical of Square games, but always a mind job. Super magical/technological being wants to gain something of immense energy in order to become a living god and destroy all of mankind so that mankind can be... saved. It's like snap-in modular story writing. Change a right angle here, a subplot there, but it's the odd interpretation of the deus ex device that shows up constantly, particularly in modern films and games.

Best thing to do when your brain shuts down from contrived or bizarre story lines in a video game... just keep grinding and leveling XPs. Whether you understand it or, your comprehension of the mechanics will still help you complete it.

I wish I had such an excuse. I pay full attention to what's being said at all times, with no distractions, but sometimes it's just too fast or too technical or convoluted for me to follow it unless it is repeated or it's stored in game journal. But yes, YouTube and the internet definitely help - but that feels like cheating !

Speaking of that Deus Ex sequel, I don't remember it in detail, but what I do recall is that basically all the choices at the end were of the "whatever you pick, everything is screwed" variety?

Yes, but this was RIGHT at the end of the game. I had four choices. Throughout the whole game I had assumed (not without doubt) that a certain person was my ally and certain others were my enemies (I'm trying to avoid spoilers here !) In the end I actually went against him, but I had to google a lot first to be sure of what I was being asked to decide because the plot was so convoluted. In the end it was Hobson's choice. But this is not the first game which has had such a sophisticated plot that I lost track of the big picture.

Eh, the whole thing was a poor attempt at revelation of the method by the writing team. I remember some of that illuminati stuff appeared in the first Deus Ex, but it was more subtle and the overall story was still meaty enough that it didn't need a lot of X-files type filler. HR seemed to go a little overboard for me with all the masonic, technological AI god at the center of the all seeing eye of the central computer's soul that wants to corrupt man and blah blah blah.

One of the best ways to test yourself how impacted you were by a story is to try and recount it later in detail. As I'm having a hard time even remembering what those final choices were, I can safely say that the HR plot did not exactly rock my world.

Yes, HR was a bit "X-Files". As a Heidegger reader (I'm showing off now) I don't really believe in any of this stuff anyway, including the original Deus Ex, but I still think it was a good and plausible plot. I also think that the questions at the end were / are kind of relevant not only to the story's game, but also to the future of humanity. Love it or laothe it, science and technology are here to stay. I don't either love or loathe science and technology, but I think that it has to find a harmony with all the earlier discoveries of humankind : the great PHILOSOPHICAL truths, which STILL (and will ALWAYS) hold good. I think the Deus Ex : HR team did a great job. I went for Taggart btw, even though I thought he was a bit of a creep as an individual (but frankly all of them were !)

The plot is the first thing I'll forget, even if the story is good and even if it's compact. I can often remember minor side quests better than the main plot. The only games where I can tell you the plot from memory are the ones I've played through several times (e.g. The Secret of Monkey Island, Fate of Atlantis).
Atmosphere and gameplay are way more important to me than the plot or lore details. Stories are all made up anyway and I find it difficult to become unaware of that so it's rare that the 4th wall remains unbroken and I really get into a game for the story, Gabriel Knight was such an exception where I didn't even like the puzzles as much as in other adventures but the atmosphere and sense of mystery kept me going.

When it comes to that X-files conspiracy stuff, I think Outlast did it right. They brought the CIA's mind control experiments like MK ULTRA into the plot in an interesting way, did so very subtly, and the tone of the game was helped by the esoteric subject matter. Deus Ex HR just kind of beats the player over the head with it all. Kind of reminds of the same problem the Mass Effect games had. Too many different meandering paths and subplots. Sometimes less is more. Don't insult the player's intelligence, but don't also assume that he's an electrical engineer who graduated from MIT with a 4.0 in super villain studies.

I think my experience is pretty much the same. I've got to say, though, I do like it when a game does have a storyline / plot which I can either follow or fail to follow. I think it is possible to create an atmosphere without there being a plot, but a plot can certainly help to create an atmosphere. I bought Gabriel Knight some time ago so I'll have to try it on your recommendation.

I think that the ending of Deus EX HR warrants an exception, given that it was crap. Same old tacked on at the last minute 'push a button to get the outro of your choice' bollocks we got with Mass Effect 3. But at least these endings were more than just colour changes.

But generally though I don't really have a problem following most game storylines.

I haven't played Outlast but it's on my wishlist. As a former philosophy student and lifelong (well, since I was about 13) lover of computer games, my idea of the perfect fusion of ideas would be Planescape : Torment + Deus Ex. Science plus spirituality is, I guess, the future which humanity (in reality and not just in computer games) is heading towards anyway. The technical brilliance of the scientific mind plus the bottomless depth of spiritual truth, which, in a sense, will always outstrip any scientific insight.

I think DXHR did raise good questions regarding science and technology. I'm not saying it was necessarily a good way to end a computer game, but it was a pretty good summation of the choices open to scientific-technologic mankind. It just didn't go into actual philosophy very deeply.