Square Enix shows Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Deus Ex: Human Revolution, published by Square Enix and developed by Eidos Montreal, will be the third part in the popular Deus Ex series. Rather than being a sequel it is perhaps best described as a reboot, according to game producer David Anfossi. In order to understand the Deus Ex universe and characters, and to get a gist of the recipe that makes Deus Ex what it is, the development team played through the two original games several times. After all, the game is met with high expectations and rightfully so: the earlier games were more than well-received and the Human Revolution trailer shown at E3 looked very promising. Making this Deus Ex feel like the previous games and fit in the series was an objective of critical importance. A development team of roughly 135 people from Eidos started to work on Human Revolution back in March 2007. Eidos Montreal and Square Enix constantly communicated and traded ideas during development. Although they act mainly as publisher, Square Enix is much more involved in the development process of the game.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution’s visual style is very distinctive. Anfossi explains the main influences are both the renaissance and cyberpunk. Another influence was Blade Runner. The renaissance relation might not be clear immediately, but is certainly there. Picture a painting in renaissance style and imagine the effect candle-light has on the depicted scene. The gold motif that is so remarkably present in the game’s art style is a representation of this kind of lighting. This is contrasted by the heavy use of black both to represent the cyberpunk influence and the renaissance once again. The original trailer started with a medical dissection of a corpse somewhere in the 1600′s. The people attending this dissection all wear traditional black as often seen in clothing from this period. The room is illuminated with golden candle-light and creates a contrast between both colors that feature so prominently in Deus Ex’s art style. Besides this, the game features many other aspects that can be related to the renaissance; the study of anatomy is reflected in augmenting the human body and the high collar and shoulder motifs of main character Adam Jensen’s coat resemble renaissance fashion in a modern style.  The effects maybe subtle but are really there, and once you are aware of them they really start to make sense. The 16oo’s era the game takes after may not actually really be the renaissance but that doesn’t make it any less impressive.

Creating a game the size of Deus Ex: Human Revolution isn’t easy. The player has to complete  a lot of missions and completing just the main mission directly should take up to twenty hours. However, the game is supposed to provide enough content to add up to about 35 hours. Anfossi explained the team heavily underestimated the writing of the game. With so many news items for the players to read or listen to, including newspapers, e-mails and television broadcasts, the writing process proved to be a more difficult process than originally perceived. Another aspect of the game that gave the developers quite probably their biggest challenge was balancing out all the different play styles and approaches: whether you choose to solve your problem using stealth, combat, social interaction or technical skill, the result should be equally fun and each approach should be viable. The people from Eidos are currently still working on this aspect.

A lot of Deus Ex fans have complained about the Health Regeneration system (similar to the ones used in Gears of War, Uncharted etc.). David Anfossi assured us this change wasn’t made to make the game more accessible, but rather give it a more constant flow of action. Typical Deus Ex situations would involve the need for backtracking when the player engaged in a firefight while on low health. This would break the flow of the game, so rather than constantly scrounge for med-packs it was decided to implement the regeneration system instead.

The first person shooter element of the game is prominent in combat situations, but the game is clearly much more than that. The player can complete the entire gaming killing only boss characters, instead opting to sneak by or talk to characters, giving the game elements of both stealth action games and role playing games. The game will resort to a third person view occasionally, specifically when in cover or during takedowns. These takedowns come in many different forms and will be a pleasure to watch and perform, especially if the player combines multiple augmentations for some killer maneuvres.

Art Director Jonathan Jacques-Belletête and level-designer Frank McCann were present at the 2010 Gamescom to demonstrate the Deus Ex gameplay. The demo showed a single mission. It revolved around  a group of anti-augmentation activists that had a single augmented member. This man died with the neural chip still implanted in his brain. Special Security agent Adam Jensen is sent to get into the police station’s morgue and retrieve the neural implant. McCann would play this same mission three times in a row, each time demonstrating a different approach. The first playthrough made heavy use of combat: McCann would have the Jensen character enter the police station and run directly into a restricted area, resulting in a firefight that lasted until every cop that stood in the way was down and Jensen arrived safely at the required destination.
The second time, Jensen used conversational skills to persuade one of the cops to let him in. The cop behind the counter was an acquaintance of Jensen, and using emotional leverage and facts from the cop’s past, Jensen was able to convince his old pal to grant him free access to the morgue. Last but not least, McCann went with the stealthy approach. Using his hacking skills to enter a backdoor entrance, Jensen needed to carefully evade both patrolling cops and security camera’s  in order to remain undetected. McCann got Jensen accidentally detected by a cop that wasn’t even looking in the right direction, proving the fact that it was still a game under heavy development.

The demo showed several different weapons, including a revolver, a non-lethal energy weapon and several types of grenades and explosives. Each of these weapons will have several upgrades, around 3 or 4 per weapon. There are also around 20 different augmentations in the game, each of which can be upgraded through their own sub-skill trees as well. With both weapon upgrades and augmentations, the level of customization is high. The graphics took some getting used to, and especially some effects were a bit on the bland side, but it is likely Eidos will improve the graphical quality before the final release. Despite this early stage of development, the game looked far from bad.

The game will be slated for a 2011 release on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

Reminder of something awesome: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

More likely than not you have probably heard of the legendary game Deus Ex. Chances are you also never gave it a try yourself.

For the new Deus Ex they made an outstanding CGI trailer which will surely lure in many of us that never tried Deus Ex before.

This trailer must be the most impressive CGI animation i’ve seen this year!
Can you spot the Ghost In The Shell and Blade Runner references?

The game is up for pre-order right now on www.deusex.com but no release date has been set.
Gamespot reckons it will be released by Q4 2010. Who knows.

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Thoughts on E3 2010

E3 2010 is now over and now that I’ve recuperated from all the news and announcements, it’s time to make up the balance. It’s a shame I couldn’t witness it first-hand, but luckily we live in the age of internet, so I got my daily updates of game trailers, interviews and what not. And from what I saw, the E3 didn’t disappoint as much as I initially feared: in fact, I’m quite satisfied. My expectations before hand weren’t especially high, but I crossed my fingers and hoped Nintendo would redeem itself and make up for the lost years. And for me, they did. Nintendo stole the show. I’ve seen so many good things from them this E3 I don’t know where to start. I got the feeling Microsoft really wanted their Kinect thing to be a big deal, but from what I saw, it’s pretty dull. You’d almost fear they follow in Nintendo’s footsteps and try to be popular with all target audiences except gamers (I don’t think they will, fortunately). Read more