Deus Ex: Human Revolution Previews and Interview

A couple more hands-on previews of Deus Ex: Human Revolution have trickled in, including a highly detailed piece on PC Gamer:

Meg’s discovery was made during tests on a Patient X, someone whose identity Meg is terrified of ever revealing to the outside world. X appears to be a human whose physiology suggests he’s a few steps further down the evolutionary chain than the rest of us, and studying him led Meg and her team to a way to get the human body to accept artificial augmentation more readily. Augs are already rife in the world of Human Revolution, but those with the money and time to undergo the drastic surgery eventually find their bodies reject the implants. Expensive anti-rejection drugs are required for the rest of their lives any way to bypass that consequence would be the last step in making augmentation mainstream. That’s the human revolution of the title.

Obviously you’re attacked it wouldn’t be much of a set up to the game if you weren’t. But while there are strong anti-augmentation movements in the story, the leaders of the assault are augmented themselves. Something else is going on here.

The attackers are systematically slaughtering all of Sarif’s scientists, and you’re sent down with the elevator code 0451, familiar to any Deus Ex or System Shock fan to stop them. While you do play this section, it’s best seen as backstory: you pull out an assault rifle whether you like it or not, and since you’re not yet augmented, that’s essentially your only combat option in the few sequences ahead.

A much shorter piece can be found on Destructoid:

You are now in control, and this first section of the game is more or less a tutorial level where you’re taught some very basic controls as you rush through the different laboratories. You’re still just a regular human at this point, so you’ll be able to pick up on the controls pretty quickly — it’s all pretty straightforward. The major thing that you’re really introduced to is the cover system. Simply holding down the cover button will throw Adam behind cover, and the camera pulls out into a third-person view to give a better angle of the room. You can move in their cover pretty freely until you reach a corner, where you’ll have to double-tap A to maneuver around the corner for a different cover position. You can easily pop up or pop out to the side of cover to fire. You can also fire blindly, which obviously isn’t as effective, but keeps you safe from enemy fire.

I found it a tad cumbersome to maneuver behind cover. It wasn’t a big deal in this section, but it was a little annoying later in the game, where enemies aren’t afraid of just charging in on your position. Third-person shooting was also difficult — I couldn’t tell if my sights were on the target until I started shooting. I noticed that I was correcting my aim after I’d already pulled the trigger in most cases.

A similarly worded piece is up at RPGFan:

From a visual standpoint, the game is looking stellar. The development team has created a sort of future-Renaissance aesthetic for wealthy upper-class locales and their occupants, but has placed the denizens of the lower parts of the world in a dingy, dystopian conglomeration heavily reminiscent of sci-fi classic film Blade Runner. The game’s attention to detail is evident in videos and screenshots this is a world that feels dark and lived-in. To add to this sense of realism, the development team has reportedly fabricated at least a hundred in-game product brands, but there’s no word yet as to whether classic soda brands like “BURN!” and “ZAP!” will make a return from the original game.

It has also been confirmed that the game will make use of not only a system of mechanical augmentations for protagonist Adam Jensen (voiced gravelly and Batman-like by Elias Toufexis), but also a set of upgradeable skills like the original. From a gameplay standpoint, the team is working hard to keep the all-important sense of player agency from the classic titles will you murder everyone indiscriminately or knock foes out with a well-planned stealth takedown? Will you sneak in quietly through the vents or blow the doors off the front gates? It appears that all of these options will be viable, in addition to a conversation system in which Jensen can intimidate, persuade, and otherwise mine NPCs (all of whom can reportedly be spoken to) for their valuable information. The game is primarily played from a first-person perspective, although it utilizes the industry-standard third-person cover system for shootouts and hallway sneaking.

1UP does their thing:

There are other little tweaks that make Deus Ex’s gunplay feel solid. During cover, you can tap face buttons to either dart from cover-to-cover (such as crossing an open doorway or moving between pillars) or slide around the corner. There’s a room full of conveniently scattered barrels filled with some sort of toxic gas — a nice touch is that even if you destroy the barrel to unleash said gas, the enemy soldiers who are not immediately affected actually go around seeking cover elsewhere. Heck, they even attempt to flank you at times. Flanking and use of grenades might sound like a typical FPS game trope by now, but that kind of behavior is an improvement over the occasionally braindead A.I. of the first game.

As you race through the lab and take out these mysterious mercenaries, you get glimpses of something more sinister. There’s an augmented lady who goes around stabbing scientists with her arm blades and slinks away while using an advanced cloaking augmentation. A dude with transforming arms kicks the crap out of you. And then, the tutorial ends — with a transition to the opening credits sequence that details how Adam goes from a normal human duder into a heavily augmented super-soldier.

And then Rock, Paper, Shotgun comes at us with an interview with lead writer Mary DeMarle:

RPS: So, Jensen’s augmentations are really quite severe, and the introductory sequence that shows him receiving them sees him suffering through terrible pain. Are they a physical manifestation of the weight of his mistake?

MD: I know that from my standpoint with Jensen (and this gets complicated what with the player experience, and the player deciding for themselves what’s right and wrong), we definitely did start with Jensen as somebody who wasn’t sure yet if he wanted to get augmented or not. He hadn’t made the decision, and the fact that it’s taken from him in the beginning is a defining part of his character. He lost control at one point and now he can’t ever go back, and the only decision that’s left for him is to decide how he feels about [his augmentations].

RPS: How do you write a character who has all of his big decisions left up to the player? Is it just up to you to give him a starting point and let the player move onwards from there?

MD: Pretty much. We create a strong, defined personality and backstory, but the present and future are in flux. What we have to do from a writing standpoint is give the player his choice, and whatever he decides we make sure it’s executed in a (Jensen) way. So instead of being, I don’t know, this Duke Nukem asshole, he’s an Adam Jensen asshole.