Eidos has taken the wraps off Deus Ex: Human Revolution at GDC, unveiling the next installment in the action/RPG series as a prequel in development at Eidos Montreal, and confirming the "Human Revolution" subtitle noticed earlier this year. A CGI trailer from the game is available on the Deus Ex Website along with some screenshots. There's an article on the game on Gamasutra where art director Jonathan Jacques-Belletete discusses the "credible" but not "super photorealistic" feel of the game's graphics and there's an interview on IGN speaking with game director Jean-Francois Dugas who explains the reasons this will be a prequel, confirms there will be no multiplayer support, and answers some questions about what's seen in the trailer. Word is: "The writers and development team have been working closely with the lead writer of the first two games, Sheldon Pacotti, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution segues nicely into the start of the first game, meeting some familiar characters along the way…" They say to expect more details at E3. The embedded version of the trailer follows.
I laughed out loud a few times I got forced through a "deep" sociopolitical NPC conversation.
Much of that was part of the game's charm. How many games let you have such debates with random bartenders?
Another part of the game's appeal were the moral choices. Do you stick with your brother and try to fight off the Men in Black or do you abandon him? Do you kill the French terrorist leader or your UNATCO partner? The moral ambiguity was a key appeal of the game.
Then there were the little details. Almost everything you did, no matter how seemingly insignificant, was acknowledged in some way. Leaving Gunther in his cell on Liberty Island, kill the terrorist leader on the island, hanging out in the women's bathroom at UNATCO base. Very few games pay such attention to detail.
Then there was the open-ended gameplay. Don't like that little chinese kid talking trash? Blow him up with a LAM and dump his body in the river. Need to get inside that enemy base? Go through the sewers or the kill the guards at the front gate or use your strength augmentation to pile up a bunch of crates, then use your jump augmentation to climb up and over the perimeter wall. Stuck on the roof of a building filled with enemies? Turn on your stealth augmentation and sneak your way down or go in guns blazing or just jump off the roof. There were so many creative ways to deal with any given situation.
It's the little things that made DX so great and sadly, games these days forsake such things in favor of cinematic presentations and mainstream appeal.
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