God bless Future Publishing’s bizarre self-cannibalisation. PC Zone might be currently carrying the world exclusive first Deus Ex 3 preview, but CVG has kindly summarised the most important bits for everyone to see. Hooway!
As widely speculated, it’s a prequel, which may mean the arguably over-exposed Denton lineage is left well alone. Or alternatively that its backstory is further filled in, as the protagonist’s forename ‘Adam’ is unlikely to have been one chosen lightly. Here’s the basic plot setup:
You’re cast as average joe Adam Jensen, who works as a private security officer at a technology lab specialising in biomechanical augmentations, a forerunner to the sort of nanotechnology shown in the original Deus Ex. One day the path of his life is unexpectedly altered as a team of black ops commandos break into his company’s HQ, and using a security plan from Jensen’s own hand, a mass slaughter ensues and the conspiracy begins.
Sure to start shouting matches and AIM accusations of “dumbed down” are the revelations that there’ll be a Halo-esque auto-heal system and that your combat prowess is more about marksmanship than stats. However, in a clarification email to Voodoo Extreme, Eidos Montreal confirmed the game’s definitely an RPG, replete with experience points. “The gameplay takes the form of a consequence-driven multi-path, multi-solution approach in a non-linear space” apparently, which seems to be a faintly tedious newspeak way of saying exactly what we do want to hear.
More details in the CVG story, but to see the screenshots (very pretty, apparently – a meld of renaissance and cyberpunk) you’ll need to pick up PC Zone.
Related Stories:
Why average Joe? I hate Average Joe, Average Joe does bugger all, he’s not special, why would they choose Average Joe to augment – when he is Average Joe? Why not Average Jane… Why not a choice between Joe and Jane? Oh wait, that might be taking it too far right?
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Just so everyone is aware, there was a certain amount of confusion about 1st/3rd person perspect, apparently the game is primarily 1st person but does briefly switch to 3rd person to show off ‘cool stuff’ like punching someone through a wall.
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lol, yeah, that sounds like an amazing mechanic… When will they get the idea that we don’t want to be shown cool moves, but to perform them! Its not a bleedin’ movie.
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I hear they’ll also be a sex scene – the option of romance marking a Blue Shift away from the previous games in the series.
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hur hur
Go Go Average Joe! I wonder if they explore the possibilities of augmented sex… hur hur – Mechanical Tentacles!! You know you’re all thinking it… I can read your minds!
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I’ve got the full article at it mentions, briefly, that there are skills but that they don’t affect combat…….
Also Hacking is described as a RTS style mini-game pitting the player against the mainframe. While it occurs you can still see the environment around you and watch for approaching guards.
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Le Sigh… mini-games eh?
I’m replaying the original atm. Its hella fun : ) Tranq Darts are cool.
“So… you’re a security guard in a covert lab, and something goes wrong and you have to escape with black ops teams and other nasties trying to stop you escaping?”
I think it’s a lot more likely that this would only describe the first level.
OK, so that’s the first episode. The second one will no doubt involve uncovering and defeating conspiracies led by shadowy figures who live in skyscrapers, no doubt featuring aliens and OK so you get where this was going.
Well guys, at least it hasn’t quite reached the level of Fallout 3 or Bioshock yet. And if you don’t like the official Deus Ex 3 board, you can always come hang with us at OTP:
http://www.offtopicproductions.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1516
We like intelligent people :)
Another few things about Deus Ex
That game was elastic, like I mean bendier than something really bendy.
You would go, “I bet I can screw up the game by killing this character” But in nearly every case where you tried it and survived the game would just shunt itself over and continue on.
Kill Anna on the plane? No probs, now you just see glimpses of Gunther waving his fist at you when you take off in the copter.
Like exploring? Sweet man! They put a whole bunch of secrets in the first couple of levels that if you are really paranoid you can find out a lot of stuff you shouldn’t really know till much later on.
Did you ever jump off the wharf and swim down to the sunken boat and break in to see what was inside? Did you know it was there?
If they manage that with this new one I’ll be there even if I have to play some stubble jawed jerk off…
And if they do an area like Hong Kong in the first game but with modern tech – so bustling with pedestrians, little secret alleyways, skyscrapers to caper through, an area where you don’t have to fight in the open, but sneak into police stations and try not to set off alarms, or hunt someone through a city office… Where you can just mingle in the city streets, before heading off to steal a sword…
It might be worth it just for that one level…
i kinda like the artwork, actually. weird, perhaps, but goth-victorian futurism would almost begin to make sense with dx.
after invisible war there’s really nowhere to go but up anyway, right?
WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO MY DEUS EX!
/end rage
But seriously… Next thing you know they’re gonna announce that they’re using cutscenes.
Dues Ex had a cutscene… Well one at the start anyway, and that sort of one at the end…
Ooh! I know I know!
Quick Time Events… You can smell them!
I bet there will be moral choices too, and they’ll be tracked on your achievements page, and they will be really complicated ones like – “to kill or not to kill” with meaningful consequences like “trader joe no longer trades with you, even if you are average joe…”
I bet they say “Our plot raises the bar on interactive story telling”
I wonder if it will have children…
Bullet time? Don’t forget that.
Moral choices should always be “Help woman for free OR threaten to kill her and demand more monies”.
If the alternative some ‘bad ass’ like Dante from DMC, I’ll take Average Joe. Nothing like not being able to relate because your character is a douchebag.
Games without children wandering around in populated areas bug me. It’s a small nagging feeling, like these people, the city folk, are aliens or something.
I am somewhat relieved that the game is set in 2027. Deus Ex 2 was set too far in the future for me to care about what was going on.
I hope we get to meet young Gunther Hermann and Anna Navarro at some point.
But where are the electronic old men?
Removing character skills from combat sounds just about right for Deus Ex, considering how they were mostly made obsolete by player reflexes anyway.
The cover system… I’m not sure what to make of it. No dynamic lighting? Even basic, predefined sections? Don’t quite understand how they’re going with that.
And auto-heal doesn’t quite phase me, unless they plan on including it in combat.
“The gameplay takes the form of a consequence-driven multi-path, multi-solution approach in a non-linear space”
For !%#*’s sake. What possesses people to speak/write like that? What’s wrong with “You will make choices, and those choices have consequences that will take you down different paths”? I have to deal with the financial equivalent of this all the time and it drives me nuts. I swear PR-speak has become much worse in the last five years.
I’m curious about the ‘experience points for guns’ idea, it would be interesting if they implemented something along the lines of xp represents something concrete in the game, such as the assessment of your actions by organisations, hence the amount of resources they trust you with. That logically leads to a situation where affiliation with an organisation gives you xp multipliers – say shooting a commando who’s out to kill you gives you 50 experience points, but if you’re hooked up with the terrorist group that is also under threat by the commandos, you get 100 or 150 or whatever xp instead, because you’re doing stuff that advances their cause, even if it’s entirely for your own benefit. Done smart, you could create diabolical situations where players are able to join up with different factions and manipulate them into killing each other to get xp multipliers that they can spend on lots of cool kit.
Man, do I dislike cover systems. Call me old school, but I’ve never experienced one that felt natural. Just give me crouch, lean and some stuff to hide behind and I’ll make my own damn cover system.
A thought about the “Punch someone through a wall” maneuver. What if you’re in some non-descript corridor when you encounter a guard, use this Wall-Punch mod, and punt the poor sod through a wall into some kind of adjacent bio-weapon research chamber, thereby releasing a harmful substance into the area you’re in? I’d be scared to use the bloody thing. The only way I can see them avoiding that sort of incident would be if they made it a context sensitive mod, where the icon only lights up in certain areas where it’s usable, thereby killing any sense of immersion and bordering on quicktime event? Just… no.
I am up to this point in Neuromancer;
“He called it a Texas Catheter, and Case didn’t like it at all.”
I hear they’ll also be a sex scene – the option of romance marking a Blue Shift away from the previous games in the series.
Your wit has not gone unnoticed. Kudos sir.
Rath: The “punch someone through a wall” means that you punch through a wall to hit someone on the other side, not hit someone so hard they fly backwards through a wall.
Ah. Sense more that makes. ^_^
I’m with Willy359 with regards to the cover system. The only reason for a cover system in games is for those poor sods on consoles playing FPS games. On the PC, a cover system is not needed and is a hindrance. Like Willy said, all us uber PC gamers only need crouch and lean and we’ll make make our own damn cover system.
Also, I agree with EyeMessiah regarding the “wedge” that DX1 enforced on us the first 10 hours of the game. It totally broke the immersion for me in DX1 when JC, a nano’d up super agent, would struggle to aim his pistol(!) at someone 20ft away.
As EyeMessiah puts it: “I’d rather that action gameplay is more about player skill, and less about the invisible spreadsheet behind the action.” And I agree 100%. Remove the silly game-mechanic of my aim being wobbly until I put 5 points in “Small arms” please. If it was *ME* in the game, then the wobble makes sense, but not if I’m a super secret agent with nano augs.
Why oh why did they insist on keeping an leveling up experience system?
This is no longer the early 90s. :(
Part of the joy of DX1’s story was you/JC were immersed into the plot from the off. You were making things happen, your choices had an effect, you were driving things.
Average Joe appears to be there when stuff happens, then he starts running – presumably he’ll be advised by shadowy figures who aren’t quite what they seem. So somewhat akin to Assassin’s Creed (in story structure terms). And the story was the best bit about Assassin’s Cred, wasn’t it?
I don’t know where you got that idea: it’s quite clear that when you started the game, JC was a pawn to greater interests, and barely broke away from that as the game continued.
So instead of assuming from very, very little, there’s no reason whatsoever Average Joe security guard couldn’t end up in similar situations.
And as we know nothing of the plot, as it stands at this juncture, there’s no reason he should even be such a character unless the plot dictates it.
It is always hard to beat the original (because back then, it was new, unique). Consolization isn’t helping these sequels of PC games get any better as well. But anyways, not enough info to judge it yet, though I hope it doesn’t use auto heal bar crap and has leaning..
On the side note, ‘Adam’ eh? Couldn’t get more Christian than this. But then again, I guess you have to deal with it since these games are created by western developers.
According to the lead game designer of DX-3, DX-1 was too slow. Apparently, it didn’t have enough memorable moments..
Says so on Kotaku: http://kotaku.com/5066944/deus-ex-3-guy-says-deus-ex-1-was-kinda-slow
Well, im sure the game will be upto parr with the first one, you guys better bet on the game being a little more fast paceed than the first, Which it had strategy to make up for the quite choppy combat system. Their AI were relativly dull, so im hoping for an overhaul of that aspect. I think the ‘mods’ they were referring to are just for Weaponry. Hopefully they arent serious about lelaving out all the Augs, thats what made DX , Deus Ex. It would be nice if they concentrated on adding more aspects to the game instead of taking them away. They already have alot of the Audio, from the origional, So if it was upto being a true RPG, id bet they would broaden the plot out a tad from the whole conspiracy turnes reality they had in the first one, and I bet they would add more depth about the training, the academy, and Dentons family, aswell as Simons, and his goons at MJ, hell bent on creating chaos for everybody. One of the most eventful games ive played. well done!!