Agency only becomes an impediment once that fantasy is broken (1). The relation can in fact be as simple as calling player agency a fantasy. The key is Smith's use of the word "fantasy" and how it relates to player agency. In my opinion, Deus Ex: IW breaks this fantasy in a myriad of seemingly innocent ways. As Smith puts it, even though this consolidation process makes no difference on a mechanical level, it does curb a player's fantasy that he is exercising his own authority in choosing how to develop his character and how those choices are reflected in the game world. While his example is technically a theoretical exercise (there is no swimming in Deus Ex: IW), it applies to many of the design decisions made for Deus Ex: IW and provides an interesting vantage point on what I believe to be one of its largest flaws. He specifically mentions the consolidation (console-idation? I kill me!) of the swimming skill and aqualung augmention in the first game into a single biomod in the second. It first struck me when watching this post-mortem on Deus Ex: IW by its creative director, Harvey Smith.
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