Deus Ex: Human Revolution

[Exoduso]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziLfH...nk&feature=sub

Thoughts?

[BRP]

I remember there being a thread for this already and I think it might have had more than a youtube link. I could be getting it mixed up with another forum though.

[Atreides]

for someone who hasn't played any of the Deus Ex games but would like to, should I try to play both on the PC? Have the games aged well over time? Are the console versions (I think one is available for ps2, and a different one for xbox, but I can't be sure) decent ports or should I stick to PC?

[OzzofAsura]

for someone who hasn't played any of the Deus Ex games but would like to, should I try to play both on the PC? Have the games aged well over time? Are the console versions (I think one is available for ps2, and a different one for xbox, but I can't be sure) decent ports or should I stick to PC?

I was wondering this too. I heard the first is very good, and the second is not... but I have a problem with retro graphics that don't hold any nostalgia for me. Same problem with Half-life... (don't hit me)

[Kaisha]

There are texture packs for Deus Ex 1/2, but they don't help the low poly counts much.

PC version is superior in both situations at any rate, although the interface on Deus Ex 2 will make you want to throttle a bull at times since it was built around being fancy looking for d-pad input. You guys should have grabbed them off Steam when it was on sale a month ago for $2 each. ;/

Honestly, as far as the series go, I don't think they'll ever recapture the feelings I had when I played Deus Ex 1 for the first time way back when it came out. It blended so many gameplay elements into a single title (granted, some of them not as well done as they could have been, most of it partly due to dumb AI), but it was a first for me and fresh because of that.


Also, yay for FMV teasers. >.>
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...GAMES/deus.jpg

[Atreides]

is that Hootie?

[Colenzo]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziLfH...nk&feature=sub

Thoughts?

ruined

[Kyo]

Q&Afor the game, sounds like its going to be awesome.

Cant wait till E3, hoping this will be playable.

[BRP]

Alright, lets fix this thread up then... A fuck-ton of information:

http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=86841

Personally looking forward to playing the child of Keanu Reeves and Jax from Mortal Kombat.

EDIT: I'll quote some of the most need-to-know parts

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.

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.

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.

(No more blowing up children into piles of gore I guess)

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.

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 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.

The shooting is being made to be less dependent on stats. If you didn't like it in Deus Ex 1 or Alpha Protocol you have something to be happy about.

EDIT: Speaking of which, as for health regen, I think Alpha Protocol did it right. You recover armor, but not health. In hard mode you lost armor quickly enough to always be in danger of losing health or dying.

[BRP]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/ei...ugas-interview

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/de...article?page=1

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/de...preview?page=1

Eurogamer: Was there also an advert for the lemon-lime soft drink that Gunther Hermann prefers to the orange?

Jean-François Dugas: [Baffled silence] Erm. Okay?

Eurogamer: Well, maybe not.

hehehe

[BRP]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=398572

Two different "previews" talking about the demo. Man, I want to play it!

Unsurprisingly, this game will share some similarities with Alpha Protocol.

EDIT: Also "Tong." Related to our friend Tracer Tong?

[BRP]

Also the trailer's music... its awesome

http://www.deusex.com/data/extension...0//podcast.mp3

[Kurp]

Leaked footage! Thanks to screw attack I think. It got taken down pretty quickly.

Both of those files were removed. I'd love a chance to see them if they get uploaded somewhere else. I searched around and it seems like they've been thorough.

The music is great.

[Insanecyclone]

I'm not sure which thread to bump.

Gameplay trailer
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/gc-10-deus-ex/702812

sigh

[Kyo]

I'm not sure which thread to bump.

Gameplay trailer
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/gc-10-deus-ex/702812

sigh

Why are you sighing, the game looks fantastic.

[Insanecyclone]

Why are you sighing, the game looks fantastic.

Black and gold, health regen, and it has that ME2 vibe to it.

[Kyo]

I can agree on the health regen being kinda a downer, but I like the look. But we've also known for a while what the game is going to look like.

[Riposte]

http://www.vg247.com/2010/10/01/euro...es-of-footage/

Nothing too new, but still interesting.

[Insanecyclone]

.

[Riposte]

SE let a lot of dudes play some of the game.

Quinns: Well, I was thrilled to find out that we’d be playing the first couple of hours of the game, rather than a couple of disjointed levels. That was a relief. But when we got to playing, what I found most striking is that the game’s flavour- the art design, the dialogue, the characters, the architecture and fashion- is even better than I hoped. And I was hoping for a lot.

Quinns: Oh my god the stealth.
Alec: That’s something I found immediately rewarding, even though Jensen is without any superpowers at this point. It’s not a darkometer or guards with radars above their heads. It’s hiding, watching, waiting, timing, running. Totally organic, based on observation and caution.
Quinns: It’s some of the most satisfying stealth I’ve ever encountered. Again, I’ll use the word believable. Peering over desks, going lurching from hiding place to hiding place. It’s like you say- no darkometer, no mechanics. Just the simple act of a man trying not be seen, with the player given enough spatial awareness to do it well. (Or balls it up amazingly.)

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011...n-impressions/

http://www.destructoid.com/you-begin...n-192888.phtml

http://kotaku.com/5750411/learning-h...he-new-deus-ex

The first scene of Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a familiar one. Among the many, many legendary qualities of the original Deus Ex was its pre-credits introduction, which featured two of the game's major characters in full-on Dr Evil mode, choosing history's least subtle secret meeting place (underneath a gigantic, creepy stone hand, of all places) and scattering ominous plot-bombs all over the shop. Human Revolution has a lot to live up to, but also a little bit to live down - so it's warmly reassuring to see it kick off with a similar setup but a little more finesse. Blatant conspiracy this may be, but at least it's had to good grace to not immediately show us who the power-crazed conspirators in question are.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ution-hands-on

In case there was any way I could be more excited, the difficulty selection screen goes out of its way to make me grin:

* Casual
* Normal
* Deus Ex

Whether you play stealthily, aggressively or both, combat in Human Revolution is all about cover. If you’re trying to avoid being spotted, you stick to cover as much as possible. If you’ve been spotted and you’re trying to avoid being shot to death, you stick to cover as much as possible. The two play styles require a different pattern of thought, but they’re driven by the same neat system.

Pressing the cover button makes you hug the nearest wall or barrier, and switches to third person to let you see what you’re hiding from. The switch of perspective isn’t jarring in itself: when you know what wall you’re gluing yourself to, it feels natural and useful to be able to see exactly where you are and beyond. But the sections I played were intricate and full of little corners, and on several occasions I stuck to a bit of cover I didn’t plan to. When your perspective changes to show you in a place you didn’t think you were going, that is confusing. Whether it’ll still be a problem when playing with the speed and precision of a mouse I don’t know. I can say the same system works perfectly in Rainbow Six Vegas, but that may be because Vegas’s levels are simpler geometrically.

The good news is that you’re never stuck in cover longer than you want to be: you have to hold the button to stay hidden, so the moment you release it you’re back in the action. Edging out and moving to new cover is handled beautifully too – move to the edge and keep pressing the direction you want to lean out, and you don’t have to worry about accidentally rounding the corner into fire. If you do want to do that, you hold the jump button to slide smoothly around. If there’s another piece of cover in action-movie-commando-roll range, tapping jump makes you dive to it and come up in a perfect crouch behind it. And not just at preset points – even if the cover is an object you moved there yourself, Jensen executes the just the right move to reach it exactly.

In fights, that looks cool. When you’re sneaking, it’s cooler still. Doing a forward roll from one desk to the next in the split second a guard looks away is thrilling. There’s a little tolerance to their detection: if someone does turn suddenly and catches a glimpse of you, they don’t open fire or call other guards, they just wander over to investigate in their own time. You can usually creep quietly away and be on the other side of the room by the time they get there.

That’s appreciated. On Deus Ex difficulty, you die almost instantly under fire. If a bullet only scrapes you, it takes around thirty seconds to recover from the hit. Even on Normal, which I eventually resorted to at one difficulty spike towards the end of my time, health doesn’t regenerate for a significant time after you’re shot. It feels much more serious than a Call of Duty gunshot wound, despite the fact that no-one throws jelly in your eyes to obscure your vision.

Almost everywhere you fight is a multi-layered space: there’s always some vertical variation, whether it’s stairs or a sheer drop. The open spaces are littered with things to hide behind: tables, cabinets, and our eternal friend the crate. It makes the strategy of how you deal with the enemies in these areas more interesting than in, say, Mass Effect 2 – another cover-based action RPG.

Your enemies roam that space with admirable moxy. Unless you’re going for an unusually shooty approach, you spend most of your time crouched behind stuff watching them patrol, and they do it in a rather interesting way. There don’t seem to be set routes to learn, they explore of their own accord and often vary their behaviour – particularly once they’re alerted.

My first fight was also my first death – I crouched behind a house plant while two attackers crept down some steps, waited until I was level with one and attempted to knock him out with a non-lethal takedown. The button did nothing, and the two gunned me down in a second. Turns out you can’t actually do melee takedowns until you get your robot arms at the end of this intro sequence. So next time, I crouched behind that same plant and waited for the guard to come close enough to catch a faceful of blind fire from my assault rifle. But this time, both guards turned right at the bottom of the stairs and searched the room in a different pattern. Luckily, that new pattern took them both past a conspicuously green canister, so I shot that instead and scampered up the stairs while they both choked on toxic gas.

If they do catch sight of you, the way guards behave depends on what they know. If they’re not sure where you are, they search the area cautiously and tell their friends to stay alert. If they’ve seen you clearly or heard you fire, they all move to cover and shoot to suppress you. Once when I tried to take potshots from a high vantage point, two of them split off without my noticing, circled around me, found a door to my hiding spot and came in from behind.

That stuff is the payoff for an AI system that’s clearly dynamic and adventurous in the way it navigates the levels. The cost, right now, is that they sometimes behave stupidly under pressure. Enemies sometimes bunched up at doorways without going through. Another time, on Normal, a guard failed to kill me as I fumbled ineptly with the controller trying to melee, gave up, then went through a door. As soon as it shut behind me, the guard blurted “Where did he go?” The cupboard, dude, you just watched me shut myself in a cupboard.

It’s too soon to call, but I wouldn’t be surprised if these behavioural anomalies were still around in the finished game. On balance, I don’t have a problem with it. I’d rather have experimental AI that can surprise me in good ways and bad than AI that doesn’t surprise at all. The first Deus Ex’s guards were hardly convincing, the important thing was that their inadequacies left openings for creative tactics and tense moments. Human Revolution’s may well do the same.

At the end of the opening half hour, the credits roll over a montage of Jensen getting his augmentations – a sequence extremely similar to the opening of Mass Effect 2, but exciting nonetheless. What I played afterwards was the next two and a half hours of the game, with free choice of any of the game’s 27 augmentations, a social hub and exploration area, and one large, open-ended level with optional objectives, secrets, and a showdown with multiple endings. And I can’t tell you about any of it until the 25th of February, because all that stuff is embargoed until then.

What I can tell you is that I left slightly shellshocked by how punishing it feels, heartened by how like the original it is, and more excited than ever to play it on PC, where it clearly belongs.

* Played on a large 1080p television a few feet away, the lovely art style is marred slightly by some jaggedness. Presumably we’ll be able to fix that by cranking up the anti-aliasing on PC.
* The assault rifle feels fine – certainly better than the first game’s. But if this were a straight cover shooter, the feel of the combat alone wouldn’t be enough to interest me.
* The levels are littered with datapads (useful information), pocket secretaries (vital information like keypad codes), and e-zines (nicely designed news journals with lots of info on current affairs and local colour). There’s masses to read in this game.
* You type in codes and security logins manually – kind of tedious on a console, but perfect for that hacker feel on PC.
* It’s one of those games where you can use almost everything – turn on taps, flush urinals, pick up plants and throw them at people. NPCs don’t react to stuff hitting them in the head, unless of course it’s big enough to maim them.
* Some of the hard parts, and the process of experimenting with the game, were made more frustrating by a savegame corruption problem with this early code. After losing my progress about 12 times, I finished the demo a little less giddy than I would have been from the game alone. That’s pretty normal from early code, it doesn’t suggest any problems with the final game.
* We’ve also just received a new trailer – check it out.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/02/03/de...irst-hands-on/