Deus Ex: Human Revolution

[TheCorpulent1]

Trailer's out and I'm officially excited.



Discuss.

 

[AnorexicBatman]

The original Deus Ex was a true game of the millennium and it is a great shame that I only started playing it about a month back. Holy **** balls it is AWESOME!!!

I can't believe this was made in 2000. Why don't they make games like this anymore?
I mean holy ****! I hope those DaVinci's of game design at Ion Storm found themselves jobs at good companies like Bioware or something

Screw Halo and all other ******** FPS games man. Except for Modern Warfare and every other CoD game before. We need more of this.

Deus Ex 3 will blow your mind!

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I never actually played beyond the demo of the original Deus Ex. But this trailer actually prompted me to buy Deus Ex and Deus Ex: Invisible War off of Steam, so I'll finally get around to playing them long before Human Revolution is out. I'm looking forward to them.

 

[Soapy]

The first Deus Ex is one of my favorite games ever. After the first screenshots and concept art for this game were released several months ago I said that this game is too dissimilar from the original for me to get excited based on the name alone. That still stands. I'm going to need to see some gameplay to sell me on it.

 

[Phaser]

The original Deus Ex is truly a landmark title in gaming. I saw people rave on about Bioshock's open-ended gameplay but even then it wasn't even half as complex or enormous as its spiritual predecessor from 2000. The art design is stunning, the number of options the game throws at you are staggering, the augmentations are amazingly cool, your choice of skills and abilities truly does make a massive difference in how you play and the contemporary conspiracy-theory riddled plot has more substance than you can imagine. And there are some very, very intriguing insights you can get from the NPCs in the game through optional conversations in which they talk about democracy, freedom, civil liberties and abuses of power. If Half-Life was the 'thinking man's shooter', then the original Deus Ex is the 'intellectual's playground'.

In fact, I'm playing it right now as we speak, just finished the Vanderberg level. I've completed this game more times than I can care to remember and still I find something new.

 

[Addendum]

Deus Ex is such a fun game. However, I have never been able to do a "speed run" in the game, as I always get sucked into the story. Doesn't matter that I've played it several times in the past 7 years (when a friend told me about it). I don't consider that to be a knock against the game, but rather a testament to the strength of the story.

As for Invisible War, I like it in the same way that I like The Godfather III: What's good is overshadowed by the bad because it has to follow excellence.

I'm still looking forward to playing this third Deus Ex game, but I do have a bit of reluctance since none of the developers from the first 2 are involved.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

The trailer looks pretty impressive. I liked all of the allusions to Greek myth and the literal pun on the franchise's title. Makes me think the devs are at least a bit clever.

 

[Flash Facts]

Gamespot interveiw:
[YT]_8o1izAq7ig[/YT]
It's write up: Link

 

[Flash Facts]

Here is the DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION FAQ. I'm enclosing it in spoiler tags to avoid taking up a lot of space/walls of text.

Spoiler

WHAT IS DEUS EX?
Deus Ex (pronounced as day-uss ex) is a cyberpunk-themed action role-playing game which combines gameplay elements of first-person shooters with those of role playing games. The first game in the series received almost universal critical and industry acclaim, including being named "Best PC Game of All Time" in a 2007 poll carried out by UK gaming magazine PC Zone, and after its release was a frequent candidate for and winner of numerous 'Game of the Year' awards.


WHO IS DEVELOPING DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION?
Deus Ex: Human Revolution is in development by Eidos Montréal. The studio is composed of industry veterans who have worked on projects such as Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six and the Myst series, as well as individual titles like Saboteur and Far Cry 2.


WHO ARE THE WRITERS?
Great effort is being put into the story and the characters are a major focus of the entire project, with the resources and skilled people being put behind it. The Eidos Montréal team is lead by Mary DeMarle with at least 1-2 more writers internally, plus contractors like James Swallow and who have written for other games, tv shows, and had novels published.

Additionally, Deus Ex 1 & 2 writer Sheldon Pacotti has been enlisted as story consultant and has been working with the EM team, and original creators Warren Spector & Harvey Smith have been spoken to.


ARE THERE ANY MEMBERS OF THE ORIGINAL DEUS EX WORKING ON HR?
No, but Sheldon Pacotti, Lead Writer on Deus Ex 1 and 2, is consulting on the story.


HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN IN DEVELOPMENT FOR?
Development officially started in June 2007.


WHO IS DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION'S PROTAGONIST?
The lead character is Adam Jensen, a security response specialist who's been handpicked to oversee the defensive needs of one of America's most experimental biotechnology firms. You, playing as Adam, are all-human, all organic.... for now, that is. You start pure, but as the story unfolds you are forced to augment yourself in order to survive and achieve objectives. Adam has a history leading up to the events that start the game, so his background is well fleshed out and we will learn more about him and his past, and his future, as the game progresses.


WHAT IS THE GENERAL STORY INTRODUCTION/PLOTLINE OF DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION?
Deus Ex: HR is a prequel and set in the year 2027 (before the events of DX1). One day, the path of Jensen's life is unexpectedly changed as a team of Black-Ops commandos break into his company's headquarters and (using a security plan from Jensen's own hand) a mass slaughter ensues. From there on out, Jensen is caught up in a conspiracy that's going to see him struggling for his life. The story and conspiracy elements are every bit a Deus Ex game and it will take the player around the globe. It's huge and the conspiracies are multi-layered.


WHAT IS THE SETTING?
The aesthetics of the world are interesting - a fusion of near-future Cyberpunk trappings with Renaissance period styles. In DX:HR you will travel to many real world locations. Shanghai, for example, is envisioned as a city extended above on stilts, with a whole new street level layered on top of the old city, leaving it in wretched gloom. The levels will be large and hub-based - they will be as large or larger than those in the original game. The player will experience both day and night, to establish some variety in time and atmosphere, but the general tone of the game will remain brooding and dark. When it comes to map sizes, think DX1 - not DX:IW.


RENAISSANCE? WHAT'S THAT ALL ABOUT?
The setting and feel of the game is still Cyberpunk but with a Renaissance twist. The Renaissance aspects do not overshadow the near-future setting but complement certain aesthetics. One of the reasons it was chosen is related to one of Deus Ex HR's core story elements: in the game, humans are really starting to utilise mechanical augmentations - everything from having your personal information implanted in a chip beneath your skin to completely replacing limbs with all-mechanical parts (prosthetics). At this point in human evolution, we are starting to really understand the body and improve it in terms of functionality, quality and longevity which mirrors what happened during the Renaissance when people like DaVinci started dissecting humans and learning about the inner workings of the body for the first time.


IS THERE REALISM & ELEMENTS OF SOCIOLOGY?
Deus Ex: HR will have blood and realism but gore will remain limited - it is not a game about butchery. There won't be any over-the-top extreme content either, like dueling chainsaws. Mature content will remain realistic.

Sociology is touched upon in the game, particularly in relation to the augmentations. Essentially, DX: HR explores the beginnings of human augmentation and the transhumanism movement is a major influence in the game. There are people who think it's "playing God" to modify the body whatsoever and there are people (Transhumanists) who think it's the natural evolution of the human species to utilise technology. You're caught in the middle of this storm and must decide which path you take. The visual stigma augmentated people bear adds fuel to the huge societal rift between them and natural humans that's at the centre of Deus Ex: HR's vision of the future. Consider, for example, the endemic racism of 1950s/60s America for imagery, attitudes and problems augmented people face in DX:HR.


WILL THERE BE CHOICE & CONSEQUENCE/SOCIAL & CHARACTER INTERACTION?
Certainly, choice and consequence is at the heart of the experience. It won't be trivial choice either - your decisions will have a big impact on the game. If they're aren't consequences, then you're not really making a choice at all.

The social aspect of the game is extremely important and you play with your own ethics, your own morality. There will be chance encounters and certain experiences that the player may or may not choose to interact with, and you can't undo a choice you have made. Engaging other characters in dialogue is where you find much of the heart and emotion of the game. Having one-to-one conversations, advancing the plot, learning new things and questioning people will offer an immersive experience. The dialogue system in DX:HR is very unique and the team is focusing on having characters emote and react far more realistically than other games of late. Reading body language and social psychology will come into play.


IS DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION AN RPG/FPS/TPS?
Deus Ex: HR is FIRST person, but switches to third person for some contextual elements, after which it quickly returns to first person. DX:HR still has a component of action, a component of RPG, and a component of open-ended gameplay. You can play it the way you want - just as in the original game. If you want to be a stealth agent, or if you prefer to be a John Rambo, the choice is yours. You can play the entire game using combat... or you can play using stealth. Or, you can play the entire game going back and forth between both. The key is CHOICE. As the player, you are able to play the game the way you want to play it.

It’s an RPG and a shooter, with different ways to solve an objective, different people to talk to and lots of extra little things to do beyond the main path - just like Deus Ex 1. There is no one way to play; there are multiple ways depending on your style. DX:HR will not lack RPG elements because of a couple other game design choices - it remains an action/RPG like the first game even with the changed aspects. It's still based around making decisions which have consequences, selecting from a multi-path, multi-solution approach in a non-linear space.


AUGMENTATIONS/SPECIAL ABILITIES
JC Denton won't be born for two years and there are no known cases of human nano-augmentation, only mechs like Gunther Hermann and Anna Navarre. In Deus Ex: HR, you'll get full-blown, heavy-duty body part replacements, rather than clean and invisible sub-dermal nano-tech. These upgradeable implants don't look quite like the clunky 'Roboscopian' attachments that we saw on Gunther and Anna, they've been visually redesigned to be closer to modern-day prosthetics: smooth skintone plastic plates cladding a steel endoskeleton. Since each aug you install can visibly alter your character (but not all of them do), your choices customise your appearance at the same time as your abilities. Some of the mechanical augmentations passively improve your abilities, and can also take the form of special combat moves. As you use some of these special moves, the camera pulls back to show you doing it. It will also switch to third person when you make use of the game's new cover system. This should allow for more tactical combat as you will be using it in combat for the tactical aspect, but also when you're stealthy, because the camera allows you to see more what the enemies are doing.

Augmentations will span several categories and capabilities. Among others, there will be augs for strength, jumping, sight enhancement, and defense.


DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION TAKES PLACE LESS THAN 2O YEARS FROM NOW - SO HOW REALISTIC ARE THE AUGMENTATIONS?
The DX:HR team is working with multiple specialists in the field of neural sciences to ensure augmentations are scientifically feasible. Although this is of course a game so it must be entertaining, all of the augmentations in the game are rooted in scientific fact.


HOW DOES EXPERIENCE & SKILL POINTS FIT IN?
DX:HR will use experience gained through completing objectives, exploration, or other means to "upgrade" or "learn better use of" purchased augmentations. There is some versatility in character build; you aren't forced to use your skill points in the same manner at the beginning of the game, you can use other configurations and clear the levels of the game. You can modify yourself and your weapons to be able to do different things and also in the physical world there are different ways to complete an objective. It's about multi-path and multi-solution - it depends on your own personal style of play. But you won't be able to get every augmentation or weapon in one playthrough - as mentioned already, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is about choice and consequences, so multiple playthroughs will be required to find and use everything.

Experience Points accumulated during the game experience are spent to gain new, or improve upon, already possessed talents conferred by augmentation. As an example: everyone can shoot a gun, simple point and shoot. Only practice and experience will make you a better shot. Same applies to hacking: everyone can use a low level hacking software to help out, but skilled and experienced hackers will be faster, better, and have less risk of getting noticed while on their endeavor. You can spend skill points on augs. Weapons are upgraded by other means, such as with money or if you find an upgrade in the environment (i.e. searching off the beaten path). But your handling of the weapons are "upgraded" via augmentation (recoil and accuracy) which are basically "arm augment" related.


WHAT ABOUT COMBAT/COVER/STEALTH & WEAPONS?
The game's main focus is not on combat - it's on you choosing how you want to play. The dev team wants to make combat and the actual mechanics of firing a gun better than it was in DX. Not more frequent, not more important, just better in the instances in which you will use it.

Deus Ex had boss fights - Walton Simons, Gunther Hermann, etc., but they weren't the Zelda "hit the boss in the eye three times to kill it" kind of boss fight, and neither is Deus Ex: HR's.

The weapons in DX:HR will be similar to those of our own time, based on real life models so that they have credibility. In addition, there will be some prototype weapons that are a bit more futuristic. Weapons will be upgradeable and will face the same difficult choices as your cybernetic innards. There will be unique upgrades and customisation that might change the behaviour of certain weapons. There is going to be a mix.

In DX:HR, stats have been removed from the act of shooting and instead relies on your ability to target with your mouse and keyboard. However stats have not been removed from you building your character or modifying weapons. There may be other examples of stats/simulation like this in the game, but it must be restated: combat is not more frequent than DX1, not more important, just better in the instances in which you will use it.

The design has been updated to utilise a cover system should you choose to engage it. As the game is first person, it is only if you press a key when up against a wall that the view changes to third person perspective. As soon as you move away from the wall, the game returns to first person. You don't have to engage the cover system if you don't want to. You can just easily walk up to that same wall in first person and never see the third person cover. It remains your choice... an option if you wish to see the way Adam looks with augmentations you've chosen throughout the game.

Stealth in DX:HR is based on light and sound; shadows are no longer used as the primary stealth element - it will be line-of-sight and sound propagation. You can hide anywhere you see fit as long as you're hidden by an obstacle and don't produce too much noise.


WHY CHANGES TO HEALTH REGENERATION?
DX:HR takes place about 20 years from now and various militaries are currently experimenting with the beginning of new technology in terms of patching-up wounded soldiers on the battlefield of limiting how much pain they feel when wounded. How far will it advance in 20 years and what will be more realistic at that time? A suit having some kind of repairing ability or morphine injection, or running around looking for a medic or health kit in a bathroom? We already know Adam works for a very advanced firm so who knows what kind of tech they'll have access to.

The dev team wants players to focus on the gameplay challenges and on how they will tackle them. Going with the classic health pack system still forces players to retreat from confrontations and break the flow of the game to look for health packs when they run out of them. Instead of retreating to a previous location to grab/grind/harvest more med packs, the system keeps you in the action. The player is now forced to retreat in a tactical manner if he's in trouble, but he doesn't have to leave the whole area and start over because he was too low on health and stuck somewhere due to that fact. Its purpose is to increase the level of enjoyment of a player and remove all the down-time of back and forth induced by a "get medpack" philosophy. Overall, the team wants the player to stay in the events surrounding him and experience the tension indefinitely.

Additionally, the regen system works hand in hand with the cover system for creating and maintaining tension in the game experience. The cover system allows the player to take a few moments to rest and heal, but also to form a strategy before going back into action. This creates a trial and error system which is beneficiary to the player and doesn't require a frustrating reload (from death). So instead of running out of medpacks from trying different strategies, the player can move back and take cover, regroup, and go at it again until he finds a suitable solution.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution like its predecessors is about choice and consequences, and the health regen situation, of course, only occurs during combat. In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, you can have multiple ways to complete an objective, so avoiding combat altogether is often an option to advancing in the game.

What triggers the healing and how quickly health is replenished are still being tweaked, but it’s not like CoD4 where the very second you stop getting shot you start to cure. And as said above, combat is effectively optional; it’s only one of four approaches to the world. Somebody who only sticks to the combative side of DX:HR will enjoy a nice shooter, but will miss out on a huge amount of the game, just like anybody who played DX 1 by sticking exclusively to the main path and never went exploring, missed out on the world around them.


WHAT ABOUT MULTIPLE ENDINGS & REPLAYABILITY?
Several endings are confirmed for Deus Ex: Human Revolution - each the climax of a substantial campaign. You won't be able to experience all the augmentations or weapons on the first play through - economy will come into play. Just like in real life - you can't have it all. You can play again and have new abilities, new weapons and these will affect your game experience, opening new areas. You can't have everything at once, since some decisions will mean that you choose to forfeit something else.


HACKING & LOCKPICKING
Hacking is a major pillar of gameplay in DX:HR and is certainly not a mini-game feature like we saw in Bioshock 1. We don't have too much information right now but think of hacking DX:HR as almost a Real Time Strategy game where you have your territory that must be defended against the CPU. Again, it remains an option which you can modify with augmentations if that is the way you choose to develop your character. You can spice things up with using your hacking skills and/or your social skills to unlock new possibilities, but you never have to do it if you don't want to.

Unlike Deus Ex 1, which took you out of the game world and presented you with a new screen and the progress bar, hacking in DX:HR keeps you in the world. Everything is rendered in-engine so as you're hacking at a terminal, you can still look around, up, down, left, and right as things are happening. You have to keep an eye out for guard patrols as you're trying to hack.

There are different levels of hacking software or only different levels of augmentation that effect hacking.
This means that your arm aug, for example, can receive a wall punch talent and an EMP punch talent depending on how many XP you spend on it and in which path you put that XP. So if you decide you want to go all wall punch talent, you can do that, but if you decide to go all EMP punch you can do that as well.

 

[Flash Facts]

Part Deux... hehe. Get it..... nevermind

Spoiler

WHICH ENGINE & PLATFORM?
Deus Ex: Human Revolution will be as cutting edge as possible. The Tomb Raider Underworld engine is the basic platform, but it will be unrecognizable - the dev team is making significant upgrades to it. The DX:HR dev team, plus a team of dedicated engineers are working on the engine and its tools, plus there is a team of engineers in Crystal making improvements. DX:HR will not resemble TRU at all.

Windows, Xbox 360, and PS3 have been confirmed as supported platforms. There are no Mac or Wii versions planned.


WHAT ABOUT CINEMATICS?
DX:HR cutscenes:
-> Engine rendered
-> Made by EM
-> No other kind of cut-scenes

DX:HR trailers
-> Made by Square Enix
-> Based on EM art

The GDC 2010 CGI Teaser's assets, visual design, and aesthetics are taken directly from the game.


WHAT AGE RATING WILL THE GAME GET?
It's unknown for certain right now, but the game is being designed for a mature audience and is being targeted for a 'Mature' rating by the ESRB in North America and '18+' by PEGI in Europe.


WILL THERE BE ANY MULTIPLAYER?
Since a Deus Ex game is primarily a single player experience, DX: Human Revolution will not have a multiplayer component. The dev team wants to focus 100% on delivering the best single player game possible. But that doesn't rule out some kind of online component or future expansions and content, although nothing has been confirmed.


WHAT IS THE RELEASE DATE?
When it's done!


WHEN WILL MORE INFO BE RELEASED?
A full trailer and more information has been confirmed for E3 2010.


**

DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION GAME SUMMARY:
A huge cyberpunk story with conspiracies.
Non-linear, multi-path, multi-solution gameplay.
Different ways to solve any objective depending on your play style (social, hacking, stealth or action).
Character and weapon customisation.
Action/RPG just like the first game.
Choices and consequences.
A semi-open world approach to levels and missions.
Different characters to meet and interact with.
An inventory system similar to DX1.
It's not a sandbox. It's not totally linear. It's like the best of both of those approaches.
Random explorable elements with earned experience points.
Global travel.


MISCELLANEOUS

There is no "Wii" development of any sort taking place at Eidos Montréal on Deus Ex: Human Revolution (or Thief 4).
You play a male character throughout the game, there is no option to change to a female profile.
Elias Toufexis is the voice of Adam Jensen.
Steve Szczepkowski is known to be involved in the audio production.

 

[zenith16]

GDC 10: Prequel Interview

Mar 16, 2010
Learn how Deus Ex Human Revolution fits into the world of Deus Ex in this interview from GDC 2010.

 

[The Squirrel]

I only ever played the first one. I think we skipped the second one due to negative reviews at the time. So, I'm not sure about this third one.

 

[Soapy]

That FAQ makes the game sound promising, but I'm still going to wait for E3 to see some gameplay footage.

 

[Tron Bonne]

I remember thinking whenever Square bought out Eidos that this would be the game they'd end up fast tracking. I only played the first, never got around to the second for some reason, but the first is about as top tier as you get. I think I still have it somewhere, need to start digging and bust it out for a new playthrough. Might have given it away, though. If I can't find it, may buy it off Steam since it's only $9.99.

I'll remain cautious to this title, but I'll keep my eye on it.

The original Deus Ex is truly a landmark title in gaming. I saw people rave on about Bioshock's open-ended gameplay but even then it wasn't even half as complex or enormous as its spiritual predecessor from 2000. The art design is stunning, the number of options the game throws at you are staggering, the augmentations are amazingly cool, your choice of skills and abilities truly does make a massive difference in how you play and the contemporary conspiracy-theory riddled plot has more substance than you can imagine. And there are some very, very intriguing insights you can get from the NPCs in the game through optional conversations in which they talk about democracy, freedom, civil liberties and abuses of power. If Half-Life was the 'thinking man's shooter', then the original Deus Ex is the 'intellectual's playground'.

In fact, I'm playing it right now as we speak, just finished the Vanderberg level. I've completed this game more times than I can care to remember and still I find something new.

Pretty sure System Shock & System Shock 2 (released in 1994 & 1999, respectively) are more considered the spiritual predecessor to Bioshock than Dues Ex.

 

[Addendum]

The System Shock games are the spiritual predecessors to Bioshock, however the creators of the first Deus Ex were influenced by the first one, and Warren Spector worked on it as well.

 

[Coca Cola Duracell Franklin.]

Originally, Warren Spector wanted to make a "real world" RPG with the gameplay elements of System Shock and the stealth system from Thief.

The setting of the game moved into the future to accommodate how a player needs to "level up" being an RPG, but you can see the influences.

Hopefully this game lives up to the first Deus Ex, but being as no game has ever accomplished that, I don't hold much hope.

 

[Soapy]

Yeah, I think Deus Ex was really the pinnacle of games in that era. Since then, games have steadily been moving in a different direction. I'm hopeful that at least some developers are trying pick up where Deus Ex left off.

 

[Why Are You Crouching Spock?]

I think it's probably going to be streamlined in a similar manner to Bioshock regardless of what they are saying. About the closest thing you can get to System Shock/Dues Ex at the moment is stalker and that's unpolished as hell.

 

[Fading]

I really can't say anything you guys haven't, but I loved the first Deus Ex (never played the sequel). It was the first game of that type I remember playing, where your actions influenced the game that much. Combined with the way you could build your character. I restarted and played it many times before I finally finished it just to try various routes.

After the first tho I didn't follow up on any extra info, so didn't even know there was a sequel to be honest. So many games are coming out anymore that give you game altering decisions, but Deus Ex definitely deserves a lion's share of the credit in pushing that type of game. I think this is a game I'll pick up eventually, but it really depends on when it comes out and what else is coming out at the time (same with a lot of titles anymore with so many games coming out back to back).

Plus it doesn't hurt to wait and see more info before I get too invested in wanting it. Plenty of what seemed like stellar games have turned to crap by the time of release. So I guess I'll just subscribe and occasionally check out the info you guys post.

 

[Flash Facts]

Just found this preview.

Not much new but I found this part interesting:

As for the gameplay, we know it should be a smooth, dynamic FPS with convincing RPG elements and really, the progression is up to you. They even say you can make it through the entire game without killing a single solitary soul and if you’d rather not augment your body, so be it.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Sounds good. Whether they'll actually be able to implement that level of choice in the form of satisfying gameplay is the big test, though.

 

[Flash Facts]

Deus Ex Human Revolution trailer analysis:
[YT]DJ-388aRwSw[/YT]

The user that made this video also has a few more analysis videos from much older information for those that are interested. Link

 

[Soapy]

Awesome new trailer. No gameplay, but really cool nonetheless.

[YT]4FRWYRqaGFE[/YT]

*reinstalls Deus Ex*

 

[guitarsingerguy]

New trailer definitely has me pumped.

 

[Soapy]

In-game screenshots.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler