Deus Ex: Human Revolution Previews

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Written by WorstUsernameEver on June 4th, 2011

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Upgrading in any RPG is always about tailoring your character to how you want to play -- in terms of how strong you are or what spells you can cast -- but the Deus Ex system of augmentations is classic opportunity-cost. You need to ask yourself: "do I need a rebreather? Do I want to lift heavier boxes, or jump higher? Do I want more health, or to heal faster?" This is most evident in the hacking system which is completely overhauled and a far cry from the hacking tool of the original. A certain level of security is required before you can gain access for a hack attempt, a mini-game of capturing nodes with detection based on probability. If you're detected hacking you have a limited time to complete the hack and override security or the system temporarily locks down and the difficulty increases the less attempts you have. Upgrading your augmentations can make you faster, or stealthier; but more than that, the hacks expand into wider networks of difficulty -- offering opportunities for bonuses if you can reach them undetected. Even if you are detected you can work to slow the trace, increasing the time you have. Overall the hacking system now requires a combination of skill and luck and has been a long time coming for the Deus Ex series and it suits the new menu and HUD system.

Much of what appears in Human Revolution could be characterised as a new approach to traditional Deus Ex concepts. Much is overhauled but the underlining intricacies remain or are expanded. Conversations remain an integral part of the experience as you build relationships through conversation trees, and opinion of you is swayed by your actions. The hub itself is dynamic: throw a trash can at the wrong person and you could end up in a gunfight, but if you do and end up inadvertently killing somebody at the wrong time, the game adapts, conversations change and life goes on.

The interesting difference between this and the original game is the concept of investment. In Deus Ex, you almost never spent anything on augs - most were found, or given as mission rewards, and provided only one choice: which of these two predefined options do you want?

In Human Revolution, every aug in the game is available to 'buy' from the start. They have varying costs, and you'll need a lot of experience to get some of the more effective ones, but you have much more freedom about how to build your character. Where Invisible War simply scrapped the original game's skill system, Human Revolution is going in the opposite direction by expanding it - under the guise of augs.

Anfossi gives me some examples of different ways to build Jensen: "You can decide to be this stealthy guy, who's all about subtle augs like getting cloak, even just managing the sound you produce, things like that. You can become more combat orientated, with augmentations to stabilise your aiming, to be able to do more take-downs.

All kinds of augmentations that make you kind of a tank. You can decide to be a Jack-of-all-trades, by getting a bit of everything but not necessarily an expert in any field. So you have a lot of options in every situation. If you're the exploration guy, you might decide to max out your strength to not only be able to do take-downs and break through walls, but also so you can move objects around or things like that, to let you access places that would be harder to reach.

Let's move on to the police station, with its multiple entry points. There's a vent in the roof that leads to the top floor, a hackable fire exit that goes to the second floor, or you could just walk in through the front door. I did that first, and you can have a good chat with an ex-colleague of yours from the force who isn't masquerading as a prostitute. This one however has some bad memories of your last case, and has the keys to the dead body in the morgue you need access to. Some careful persuasion is called for, which I inevitably fucked up.

No matter, I prefer the sneaky sneaky option anyway. This is probably the hardest and most satisfying place to sneak into, because this isn't some combat zone, it's a place of work. Imagine trying to sneak into your office building, during business hours, with most of your co-workers carrying guns which they'll shoot at you if they spot you. There's many ways to approach sneaking, even ignoring the multiple building entries. For example I totally failed to notice a vent behind a box that would've allowed me to avoid a camera entirely, even though I used the box to hide from that camera in the middle of the hallway (Solid Snake ain't got nothin' on me).

After a fair few close calls and more-than-close calls, ignoring the occasional urge to Terminator my way through (I look the part after all), I made it to the morgue and a few revelations which I'm not going to spoil. Getting back to my apartment, while taking a detour to hack into my landlady's terminal and finding that she really hates me, my investigation lead me to a FEMA camp on the edge of the city. Malik flies me out, but not until I spent absolutely hours exploring every nook and cranny of Detroit. I could spend a dozen more previews just listing everything that impressed me, but I'll leave you to discover those things for yourselves.

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