By Lewie Procter on July 6th, 2011 at 12:35 pm.
Check it out. Here are twelve (count ‘em!) minutes of hot Deus Ex: Human Revolution footage, courtesy of the overflowing infinite video vat at IGN. Eidos Montreal Director Jean-Francois Dugas shows us around a section of the game located in “Tai Young Medical”, where Jensen is on a critical mission to collect some information from a data core. Why is it always a data core? It’s never data-lollipops or data-bears… Hmm.
I like the sound of isolating guards, and taking them all out one by one, then dragging all their unconscious bodies into one room. The vending machine makes a nice movable platform, but he’s missing a trick by not throwing it at any of the baddies.
You can see a bit of how the various Augmentations work here too, and get a rough idea of how you’ll be able to use the cloak. Some of the augmentations require energy to use, so when they are active they will drain from your energy. Your energy bar is split into multiple sections (and you can extend it through upgrades), and it will always recharge one section. You’ll never be stuck somewhere without any energy, but you still have to keep an eye on your energy levels at all times.
I’m not totally convinced by the punching through walls though. It looks like it’s only in places with specifically weakened sections, rather than any appropriate wall. It seems a bit limited to me, but we’ll see.
Or you can just whip out the tranq rifle and sedate someone, then subsequently knock out the others as they walk over to investigate the steadily growing pile of unconscious bodies OR SO I HAVE BEEN TOLD BY OTHER PEOPLE WHO HAVE PLAYED THE LEAK AND ARE NOT ME
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I’m getting a déjà vu. Crysis 2: Cloak, silenced pistol, headshots, steadily growing pile of bodies… I guess stealth games never escape from that.
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It’s somewhat inescapable: a good stealth game requires your targets to act predictably so that you can pounce on them at weak points in their movements.
How could you replace the “See something suspicious->Walk over and investigate” command in that situation without undermining the advantage of scripting it for other areas of the game?
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Problem is, tranged enemies can be ‘revived’ again by there mates :)
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Keep, a pile of bodies is not something that “should be investigated”. A strange sound or a open door that should be closed is something to investigate. A pile of bodies should directly raise to the combat behaviour, the guy who discover it should radio for help, etc.
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I suspect that Eidos Montreal kidnapped Hideo Kojima, took him to their HQ and repeatedly tortured him until he gave them the source code for the MGS1 guard AI.
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If someone sees one of their buddies knocked out then the alarm is quickly raised and everyone starts running around and then they shoot you. I have seen this multiple times, and it makes things quite difficult :)
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I always liked doing that in Commandos. Run out, punch somebody unconscious, tie ‘em up, run back, wait for his mate to come and free him, knock him out and then toss ‘em both under a bed.
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So, just like DX1, then. ;)
Man. Who designed the cloak Adam’s using to emit a bright orange flash when activating? I don’t think they understood “stealth”.
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I’ve played the leaked version (2 proper missions, 1 hub world) all the way through. If a guard finds another guard who’s been knocked out, he will revive him and then they’ll both go into search mode. If there’s an alarm button close they might try to press it, I don’t remember. But what guards in the future definitely don’t have are walkie-talkies or a comm-system.
Btw, the Sarif Industries chief network security guy is pathetic and should be fired, yet no one seems to really notice.
*The company suffers multiple intrusions in just the beginning of the game.
*He claims that it’s impossible to prevent network break-ins
*At one point, even though he knows a hacker has gotten into their network through a radio transmission, he can’t shut him out. You have to go to the slums and turn off the hacker’s antenna manually.
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@ Donjonson
The key word is “sees”. It’s easy enough to pop out of cover when no one is looking, use the tranq rifle, hide again (cheating all the while in 3rd person), wait for the first person to run over (they can’t see you while bent over examining their fallen comrade) and repeat ad infinitum.
What Inigo said is correct. It’s a bit disappointing (and up to the player to not exploit these easier paths), but the game is still very enjoyable despite the predictability of the AI.
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Maybe we should have moved past that point in ten years, but at least good sneaky games with the same problem (DX1, NOLF 1 and 2 come immediately to mind) show that it’s not a fatal, fun-killing problem.
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It’s true. In no way it is a Slayer Of All Fun. The 3rd person pop-out does make it easier than in some other games, though, because there’s not even the worry that you’ll poke your head out of cover at the wrong time, you can clearly see the guards’ positions even while remaining hidden.
A minor quibble. The game is still wildly engrossing and incredibly fun (and Deus Ex-y).
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Here’s the trick: If a guard sees someone go down, and they can’t see or hear where the shot came from, they’ll go over to the body while looking around. If another guard is around them while they do this, they’ll actually get behind something to cover them as they go up.
The first mission gives you a way to get to an almost unseeable higher vantage point over a bunch of guards, and a silent weapon. Getting in that position with the ammo and weapon for it isn’t as easy through the rest of the game.
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Screenie and youtube thumbnail makes the dude look like he’s working in front of a green screen.
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Haha, it totally does.
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I hope you can disable the yellow outline on objects. I know you are augmentawesome, but it looks stupid. I know what a door or vent looks like without it.
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You can.
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They added some options to the outline system Freud, you can turn them off completely, or only show it when you’re looking at something or the default mode, which is always on. :)
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But what if I want all objects highlighted all the time?
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@WJonathan: That is on by default, anything in range that you can interact with will have the glowing outline. You can go into the menus to turn it down if you want, but the default is “always show” mode.
I probably should have worded my reply more clearly. ^^
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I hope you can disable the continuous “YOU’RE AWESOME! HAVE SOME XP!” pop-ups in your barely-peripheral vision down either side of the screen.
Or at least reduce them to the subtle “Experience points gained” log message at the top of the screen in DX1.
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Playing the leak I actually preferred having the object highlighting. The thing is, in DX 1 and 2, because of technical limitations, all the environments were very bare, so items were much easier to spot. A room might just have a table, a potted plant, and an almost empty bookshelf with a lockpick on one of the shelves.
In HR, the environments are completely bursting with noninteractive clutter. Cardboard-boxes, coffee-cups, papers and lab equipment cover everything, so small items can be nearly impossible to spot sometimes without any aid.
There was no option for the XP messages in the leak, and they were definitely annoying.
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I’m going to do something risky here, and… possibly change my mind.
Not completely, just a bit.
I too, said “ugh” when I first say the ‘yellow outlines’ on objects in DX:HR,
but last night I was playing Bioshock 2, and…. it has golden outlines, and ‘strobe flashes’ on objects. And yet I don’t mind.
So, maybe it’s a case of ‘toning down the highlighting’ rather than removing it completely.
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What excited me: A bunch of times watching that video, I wanted them to take a different route, go about things a different way. There seemed to be a host of possibilities that went unchosen.
That’s what I want out of my Deus Ex. That’s all.
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From what I’ve seen there appear to be a LOT of ways to tackle various objectives, which is exactly what everyone was hoping for. :)
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Now that I’ve played a third of the game, I am refusing to spoil any more of the game for myself.
It’s so difficult.
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Gameplay videos always slightly annoy me when the player is fumbling around with a controller and taking 10 seconds to line up a shot instead of using a mouse and keyboard.
You’re doing it wrong, damnit!
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It’s always PS3 footage for this game. Bound to see some PC footage closer to the release.
PS3 or not, it looks Godly awesome.
It comes out on my birthday! That will be my present to myself.
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I know everyone likes to join in a bit of console hate but they aren’t “taking 10 seconds to line up a shot” because its on a console, this is a PR video, its meant to be slower paced, giving people time to view whats happening and to allow someone (like in this example) to dicuss whats going on *and* answer potentially unrelated questions.
If someone went in playing full speed in a real world situation, it wouldn’t be as usefull for promo as the view would often switch or change rapidly, as the people viewing the video might not be focusing on the same things the player is.
But no no, I’m sure its because its on a console and not on the glorious perfection that is PC
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I can’t fully agree with you there. It’s not just taking time to line up shots, it’s the annoying jerky motion of it all. Like when he goes far left, then far right before finally hitting the light at the elevator.
My friends talked me into playing some Rainbow Six on XBOX once and coming from years of pc gaming it was a nightmare frustrating experience, similar to trying to run in quicksand. Watching videos like this just make me feel uncomfortable and wanting to grab a mouse and do it for him :).
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Mctittles says: …it’s the annoying jerky motion of it all. Like when he goes far left, then far right before finally hitting the light at the elevator.
Moreover It was surveillance camera above elevator doors. But you are right, it’s annoying.
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“where you going, man who is dressed like a secret agent?”
“The cafeteria? Are you telling me it isn’t in this public area which is only accessible via a security checkpoint?”
“Nope. Off you go then, completely unsuspicious man”
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How very Deus Ex :)
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Haha, yes.
“Oh it’s in your desk. Fine. Nice military garb by the way, I’m surprised I’ve never noticed you going through this door I guard before, seeing as you work here and have a desk. A desk no less.”
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Guard: Sorry good sir, you are not allowed to access this area.
Jensen: Oh, am I under the impression that this is not the route to the cafeteria?
Guard: Why no, it is not. How do you not know where the cafeteria is if you work here?
Jensen: First day on the job, I got lost.
Yeah Jensen, very suave.
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(In the police station, i pop out of a wall duct right under the eyes of a patrolling copper)
“are you sure you’re supposed to be here, sir? i thought the station was in lockdown”
“yes, um… yes, i’m definitely supposed to be here. also, i’m absolutely supposed to be opening this other wall duct across from you–the one that leads to the armoury–and crawling inside. definitely. cheerio. carry on. nothing to see here.”
“right you are, sir. i’ll just…patrol some more i suppose.”
someone needs to do an Old Man Murray-style walkthrough. (http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/84.html)
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I like the revolver.
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I like the face punch.
I think I’m going to play it as the face punching revolver type Jensen.
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I always purchase the “Multiple takedown” aug for the simple reason that one of the animations is an honest-to-god bitchslap.
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I was actually kinda taken aback at the brutality of that arm … slicer … thing in contrast to the warm sterility of the rest of it. For my part I can see myself trying to work through the game with minimum fatalities.
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You can hate on it for being more action-y. You can hate on it for getting rid of skill points.
But no matter where you sit, you have to admit the art direction is second to none.
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I think most people have vented all their available bile on Invisible War for doing that. I myself quite like the unholy fusion of skill points and augs that HR has achieved.
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True, true.
Personally I think Spector was half-right with how he approached the upgrade system in IW. The skill points could be seen as a layer of abstraction easily replaced with augmentations (er, biomods) if done correctly. The problem was that it all got streamlined a little too much for my tastes. It was too restrictive, and lacked any real joy in advancement.
Eidos certainly seem to have found a reasonable middle ground. Deus Ex should be about multiple paths and significant consequence, not fiddling with a spreadsheet. I’m happy with this aug upgrade tree concept they’ve got going on.
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I dunno. Enemies seem to have incredibly small heads.
My biggest issue of it is the same issue I have with most stealth-based games: People don’t act correctly.
A woman was sitting within sight of our protagonist moving the vending machine and using it to leap to another level. You mean to tell me that she didn’t notice, or raise alarm? Considering how high security this place is, what with the armored thugs toting automatic weapons, you’d think she’d say something.
I’m sure if I punched a guy twice and flipped him right around the corner from you, you’d hear it. I’m surprised, further, that nobody thinks twice about a guy wandering around restricted areas with what looks to be really conspicuous secret agent gear, or that tripping an alarm in a closed lab wouldn’t cause a general panic and lockdown, especially after the battle with the “three guards spawn here” mulligan.
Evil corporations in these games are too dumb to live.
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It’d be even worse if the guard didn’t think anything of it, either. Unfortunately we don’ t know if he would, because by that point he was unconcious.
I mean, sure, people ignore crate-stacking in DX1. But a little progress in reducing gratuitous AI obliviousness the last ten years would be nice.
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@Nalano
The problem, as I believe Warren Spector said, was that the more you try to approximate reality in a game, the higher people’s demands are. You put a phone in a game and people say “Can I make a phone call?”. Perhaps that’s why most games are about as interactive as a coconut shy.
And the thing is, as Deus Ex proved, and the industry ignored, is that it doesn’t matter a jot. You can have holes all over the place, phones that don’t work, houses you can’t enter, cars you can’t use, as long as you still fill it with as much STUFF as you can it’ll still piss over everything and inspire fans to tattoo it’s art on their faces and mod the gameplay into perfection.
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To be fair about the vending machine – there were some random boxes stacked up between the lady and Jensen moving the thing, so she might not have noticed for that reason.
Also it’s a medical company and I bet she’s, uh, sampling their newest narcoleptics :)
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Thing is, Shazbut, that it kinda bothers me how far we’ve progressed in graphics and yet we’re doing largely the same gameplay as a decade ago because AI is still dumb as dirt.
And there was never a moment where our protagonist didn’t look behind himself and have direct line of sight to our patently clueless worker bee. Maybe those long hours at the office just shuts people down to their own surroundings. Damn corporations!
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it should probably just be third person tbh.
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It should probably just be first person tbh.
Dear god. That transition at 10:50 is horrible. It’s like loading a cutscene for one punch, then dropping you back into the world.
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No, no it shouldn’t.
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The takedown animations are a little annoyingly long. The time between the button press and the victim getting knocked out makes you feel less involved. I think they could be much improved by just cutting out the beginning 0.5 second or so of the animation, while keeping the extravagant moves.
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ok first person, but this half in half effort is a mess.
I’ll pick up up in 6 months or so.
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And when you do you’ll regret not getting it day 1. If you can’t be bothered with the leaked build (which, lets face it, is illegal and unfinished anyway), if and when they release a full demo: play it. The transitions in game are nowhere NEAR as jarring as the look in a video. The take downs are still a little off, so they aren’t my (er…my friend’s…) weapon of choice most of the time. But the cover system? Oh god…the cover system…it is so good.
Hand on my heart: This game, when on a PC at least, has one of THE best 3rd person cover mechanics I (er…my friend…) have ever played. The 3rd person transition there isn’t even noticeable.
I hate DX articles cause I just start getting hyped up again ^^
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I for one will wait for the first person only mod to come out. I find the perspective switching horribly jarring and completely detrimental to the immersion of the game. I understand they want people to see the ‘awesome cool’ takedown animations and what not, but why not also provide for those of us who don’t want the break in perspective and gameflow?
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They’ve been pretty honest about how they got the smash-through-walls bit from Robocop.
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I’ll be back in college shortly after this is released. I don’t know which will suffer more.
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Deus Ex 3 seems to really offer the kind of gameplay I like.
I would have liked it if you had to actually scan a wall for structural weaknesses with a visual upgrade you can buy.
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You can.
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I’ve seen six hours of it Eidos, I don’t need to see any more. Just release the bloody thing.
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God damn boring developer ‘walkthroughs’. Can’t they just cut the chatter, turn up the thumping techno soundtrack, and let the game do the talking instead?
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Did it. Looked pretty good.
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I love the Quebecoise accent, with the emphasis on random bits of words.
Also, the game looks swish. I like the sort of semi-realistic, semi-cel shady graphics.
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Honestly every time the same bit of preview comes up I feel the article should be
More preview video. Instead of watching it, then complaining about the player, or wondering how the game will turn out, how about you just download the journalist preview build already? Eidos has declined to delete discussion of it off their forums. Reaction has been universally positive. Just….go. We’ll wait.
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I do think their reaction to the leak should’ve been to put a couple of staff on making a demo out of it (cutting it down in length a fair bit, most likely). Putting out an official demo to compete with the leak would’ve reduced demand for the leak, but still increased demand for the game itself.
Because this is one game where the “demo” really sells it. I haven’t spent this much time playing and re-playing a demo since the Thief 2 Alpha demo—which, come to think of it, was similarly buggy and unfinished and still shining brightly.
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My first run through? I went through the front door, guns blazing. Killed every single one of them. I died so often because if headshots don’t kill you, just a couple of bullets will put you down faster than you can react. So it turns into a combination of sneaking around, looking for the best angle to attack from, deciding what weapon fits the situation best (are they standing in a group? here, have a grenade. will I pop up close range? take out the first two with a shot gun, jump back into cover, switch to the assault rifle), who to take out first and so on. It’s tactical on a level that games like MW2 only wish they could be.
That was only my first playthrough (beta leak) out of four. The second was my pure stealth, incapacitate run and the third was my pure stealth, don’t be seen by anybody and don’t touch anybody run. The fourth? Found a trainer (now that was difficult to find), gave myself all the PRAXIS points possible and went complete all-out.
Honestly, I love the game already and I’ve pre-ordered it. You have so many options and so many ways to deal with situations/missions that you’ll discover new alternatives on every run through. After playing the beta to death, I turned on the original just to get more of that same open-ended, dynamic gameplay and I finished it in one sitting.
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Each video of this game is uglyer than the previous one. I liked the look of the first ones, but now… damn, this is really low.
OMG just seen the gunfights. I am sold. Never buying this, even for €5.
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This is exactly the sort of shit I mean.
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Funny things is that I had read your com and actually paid attention not to fulfill your prophecy. Note how I spoke about the visuals, not the character (and especially the usual rant about TPV) and how the game actually is rather than how it could turn out. It’s still a rant, but hey, rant is a human right ! A least in France ;-)
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Bit silly that cloaking somehow defeats laser sensors – but otherwise looking really good!
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Well, they’re optical, and it’s optical camoflage…
I wasn’t really expecting it to work for game logic (not least as usually “stealth from meatbags” and “stealth from security systems” are separate), but it makes arguable “realistic” sense.
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Glad to see the writing is still up to the high Deus Ex standard.
“Oh shit… Death by a vending machine. How pointlessly tragic.”
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I know how that guy’s going down …
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How pointlessly tragic.
It’s the new “What a shame”.
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How fast can you write “GOTY”?
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About as long as it takes me to grow a beard.
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So, almost 2 months then?
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No, within six months.
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Big DX fan. I will be getting this game but from the looks of this video and everything I’ve seen this far, the graphics are pretty disappointing.
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Does it look better on the PC? Equally important is if the controls have been ported appropriately or will PC players be fighting with the wheel of consoleness to select their kit?
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The press preview had Deus Ex-style inventory tetris (though thankfully, it had an option to auto-arrange everything if you had space to pick something up but not all in one place), and number key shortcuts for selecting weapons or using items. Judging from this and other videos, the console version has a very different inventory UI. It does seem as though they’re targeting the PC properly.
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That takedown mini-cutscene transition is jarring as all hell. Wish they hadn’t done it that way. And HOLY JAGGIES BATMAN(I know, its console footage). Still, rest of it looks like a worthy successor to Deus Ex. Can’t wait!
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They got day light in my Deus Ex!
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While I’m glad that the cries of “look how orange it is!” have died down, I am disappointed that I won’t get to use my “I VANTED LEMON-LIME!” joke for the umpteenth time.
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What a shame.
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I know I’m going to enjoy the heck out of this game. Have we (or leak players) seen any particularly large areas though? The first Deus Ex had a sense of scale and exploration (which wasn’t well captured by the second game’s smaller maps, though I enjoyed that too) and that’s one of the things I’m most hoping for from this game. Either way I’m thoroughly looking forward to it.
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Given that the ‘small maps’ thing in IW was a function of limited RAM on the original Xbox, and that current generation consoles are suffering from the exact same problem, I wouldn’t get your hopes up.
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Large areas. You’d have to give me some idea of what you mean by large. Call of Pripyat large? No. Battlefield Bad Company 2 large? No. Witcher 2 large? Yes and much denser in content.
Large enough I winced at the thought of hiking Adam back to LIMB again, as cyber-renaissance-dystopic pretty as the journey is.
Detroit downtown is similar to Vampire Bloodlines Santa Monica in size and depth.
There really is a reason even the always-cynical pirates are impressed with the leak
It’s good. It’s very very good. And takedowns rock.
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The first hub is bigger than Hong Kong (and in the game).
Actually hey, just read the RPS preview – I remember something like the phrase “I gasped when I saw the size of the map, and that gasp went on a little too long when I had to scroll out to see all of it.”
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Love how you get more XP for doing stuff non lethally.
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Just to comment on some of the “stupid AI” comments. Ultimately this is a game. Lemme come at it from a different angle. I’ve GM’ed Pen and Paper Shadowrun for the better part of half my life. Shadowrun has a lot of very similar themes as Deus Ex, and the players are often in a similar situation where they need to infiltrate a high security building to accomplish their goals. Now none of the people I game with are professional criminals/special forces ect… One guy did a 4 year tour in the reserves to pay for college and another has a large collection of hunting rifles but that’s our high watermark for urban combat experience.
Now, if I GMed NPC responses realistically I can and probably should, stomp my players faces into the dirt every time they so much as look at a megacorp facility from across the block. The PC’s are outgunned, outclassed, lack the information advantage, and even if they do successfully infiltrate a facility I would have zero problem explaining how the NPC’s used cutting edge forensics (including the ability to magically trace people) to track the PC’s back to their hidey hole and drop a corp kill team in through the windows…
However I don’t do this… Why? Well I like to have players. If my players were never successful, the game would be absolutely no fun, and no one would ever want to actually show up to my place on Sunday afternoons to sit around and pretend to be spellcasting elves with submachine guns while eating Cheetos. Therefor I learned some time ago that the best thing to do is listen in really carefully to their planning sessions and adapt my adventures so that whatever plan the PC’s come up with has a reasonable chance of success. It’s not 100%, the dice might fail them, they might make a stupid mistake, ect but unless the plan is completely ridiculous I’ll figure out a way to let it succeed.
Adapting my adventure (or program if you will) to respond to their actions is bloody hard work though. I have to think on my feet, change my NPC responses on the fly, sometimes even entirely remap the adventure to let this happen. A perfect example of this would be a climactic firefight I had planned in a downtown parking garage for one adventure. The PC’s chickened out (rightly fearing a police response) let the target escape, and tracked him. My lovingly planned battle suddenly went out the window. Instead I was able to have the PC’s track their target to an abandoned mall in a area of town that had no police response and have the same firefight just in an entirely different setting. I can do this because I’ve got a human brain and can think creatively, a computer cannot.
Even on a small scale though I am much more capable of adapting to their actions. Take the pile of stunned guards as an example… Say the PC’s kill a guard and leave him out in the open. I have two options. If I feel it will bring the game to a halt and ruin the fun for the evening I can simply assume that he is the only guard patrolling the area and no other guard will come looking for him until he fails to check in after 10 or 15 or however many minutes. If I think a firefight will make the evening more fun however I can have the building security rigger notice his body on the surveillance system, track the PC’s, scramble a high threat response team and start locking down the building. Now the PC’s have to fight their way out. I can even make some guards cowards, some insanely brave, and everything in between. AI controlled guards however have to follow the same pattern they were programed to do, there’s no way around it and if they were to react in too “smart” a manner then the game would be way too difficult and no one would have any fun.
If my experience with Shadowrun has taught me anything it’s that it’s better to play the NPC’s “dumb” and let the PC’s experience success rather than playing them too smart and have the PC’s constantly fail. I suspect that the Deus-Ex devs are thinking the same thing. The critical difference though is that I can adapt things in a way that my players don’t realize that I’m shifting things around and removing obstacles from their path. A computer has no such luxury. My NPC idiocy is hidden by a GM screen, Deus-Ex’s is forced to be out in full view.
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