Deus Ex: Human Revolution Previews, Interview and Footage

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Written by WorstUsernameEver on June 9th, 2011

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In the next room, we encountered a security guard whom we had to bribe with some credits to let us pass by him. We did so, and he was kind enough to look the other way. Then, we noticed a lab-coat-wearing scientist in the corner that we believe was silently judging us for not being man enough to use the "intimidate" option on that guard. (See, our version of hero Adam Jensen not only hates science, but he's also incredibly paranoid and self-conscious.) So we did the only thing we could do; we shouted "Why don't you judge this?" and threw a grenade right at him.

This triggered a bit of a commotion because a number of guards then started coming after us from all directions. We took them out with a high-powered revolver, but the sentry robots that arrived a moment later proved to be more challenging. For these things, we had to take cover, let our health regenerate, and roll a grenade right under their robotic undersides. This managed to do the trick quite nicely, and it was onto the next area.

How about hacking? Sometimes I like to get things by hacking.

The systems in Human Revolution will be subject to more hacking than a website with the word Sony on it. Hacking pops up a mini-game, where ... woah, hey, stay with me here. The mini-game actually looks pretty decent. From a set starting point, you have to move along open nodes, trying to reach the marked destination point in your hack. It appears that during harder hacks, you'll run a much higher risk of detection leaving you with only a limited amount of time to scramble through a clear pathway before you get locked out. Now, that looks (and probably sounds) confusing, but it's the type of system that'll be second nature after a few attempts. Honestly, it seems like it'll beat pressing a 'hack' button like in the original. The key with mini-games like this is to prevent them becoming tedious halfway through the game (Bioshock fell foul of this by accidentally switching its hacking game with a Pipemania challenge at the last minute). It's difficult to be sure if Human Revolution will suffer from this, but the hacking examples shown so far have seemed relatively varied, so that will help.

Moving from my first target things started to get a little rough. The cover system is terribly awkward. You have to hold LT to switch to a third-person view of Jensen, except for when you don't have to hold it and you're just there. I couldn't really figure out a consistent system. And switching from cover back to the first-person view is very disorienting, particularly when in confined spaces. There's a reason most games stick with one view or the other, and I think it's largely to avoid this jarring transition.

Ammo was incredibly scarce and I quickly ran out entering my first real fight. Trying to sprint away left me dead twice. I found a computer terminal, thinking I could try the hacking but was disappointed to find only unlocked emails. I had spent points on the Typhoon skill, an ability that lets the player disperse several miniature bombs from Jensen's chest, but there was never a safe opportunity to use it. This was one of the coolest looking abilities from the early trailers but now I realized that it's only been shown while Jensen falls from the ceiling. When in the real game will it ever actually make sense to use it?

After seeing how the level was supposed to be played (one potential route, anyway), I had a chance to play for myself. No sneaking around for me, though. I blasted my way through the front doors and picked off a few guards, but not before one of them tripped an alarm which sent a rather unpleasant security robot after me. Now that's the Deus Ex I remembered. Between my revolver, 10mm pistol, stun gun, sniper rifle, and EMP grenades, I had plenty of toys to play with.

With the alarm triggered, overwhelming aggression didn't look like a very winning game plan, so I decided to play a little bit more stealthily. Thankfully, Deus Ex 3 makes this easy. While the game is mostly played in a first-person camera view, you can press a button to switch to a sneaking-friendly third-person view that makes it easier to slip by guards undetected. Get close enough, and you can take the guard out with a lethal or non-lethal move by pressing a button that launches Adam into a quick cinematic attack.

A word must be said about the very interesting design of the city itself. The city is actually divided into two parts, an above-ground part as any normal urban center, but it actually also has a full living city below the surface. To put it in perspective, the underground city is itself full of skyscrapers, and has a cement ceiling. Some buildings, such as the one we were infiltrating, actually spanned from the bottom of the lower city all the way above the cement ceiling. Up here, the scenery was peaceful as natural sunlight promoted natural habitat and free architectural design. Down below, meanwhile, the setting was bleak and depressing, with no natural light or any vegetation to speak of.

Two changes to the original game have left some fans skeptical of the game's direction, and I wanted to get Dugas' thoughts on why these decisions were made. The first is the way the camera moves from first-person to third-person when you move into cover or perform a takedown move. It can be jarring in some cases feeling like it removes you from the action to some degree. He said this was a change the team was comfortable with.

"We debated it when we were in conception," Dugas told Ars. "I would say with this one there was not a huge debate. We really wanted to showcase the augmentations, and we wanted to explore the mechanical augmentations and we wanted those things to be eminent in the experience to go along with the themes. The third-person moments were built for exposing the character, and exposing the fact that he has been crippled, but he's back with these augmentations, which allow him to do these crazy things."

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