Deus Ex: Human Revolution Preview

The guys at NowGamer have kicked out another preview of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, with many of the details about the cyberpunk FPS/RPG coming straight from Eidos Montreal game director Jean-Francois Dugas.

The mission in question showed protagonist Adam Jensen infiltrating a police station to retrieve a chip from the brain of a corpse for David Sarif, head of the Corporation he works for. The deceased was a member of Purity First, a group that campaigns violently against augmentation, but he himself was augmented an odd combination and one worthy of investigation. One of the many themes in Human Revolution is that of technology dehumanising people, but as with all the ideas in this semi-realistic future world (like the question of how the advantages of augmentation are distributed in society), Dugas is adamant players will make up their own minds.

(We’re not trying to be moralistic or tell people ‘˜here’s the lesson you need to learn’ that’s not our role. To me it’s about making people think about these things and come up with their own conclusions.) It’s an approach that helps layer this sci-fi world with depth and a sense of place; something we very much felt as Jensen made his way to a police morgue in a futuristic ghetto of Detroit.

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Jensen heads down an alley beside the station, jumps over a fence with a dumpster, climbs a fire escape to a side door and hacks the security hacking is a line-based puzzle mini-game in which you attempt to capture registry before the Server spots you, fortifying nodes on the route to slow its pursuit and unlock the door before it reaches your IO Port. Using X-ray vision and hiding with his Cloaking augmentation, Jensen makes his way into the detective’s office. Here he uses one of the game’s signature takedowns, which show off your augmentations in spectacular third-person fashion blades out means messy lethal kills, but you can do non-lethal ones, which Jensen does here.

(Basically, we see takedowns as rewards for getting close to enemies, and you can do it whenever you want so long as you have the energy to do so,) says Dugas. Players will need to manage their depleting augmentation energy levels with special nutrition bars, ensuring these one-hit kills aren’t abused. Jensen drags the unconscious body through the doors so his ID will deactivate security automatically, and the guard’s PDA has a door code for the morgue. Finally grabbing the chip, Jensen uses EMPs to deactivate security into the sewer and escapes.