Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Officially Unveiled

Deus Ex: Human Revolutions has been officially unveiled with a CGI trailer, some screens and a ton of GDC coverage. You can watch the trailer at the official teaser site but I'm going to embed it here, courtesy of Blue's Youtube channel.

Here's a sample of the coverage out there from the GDC presentation:

• GameSpot
• IGN
• Gamasutra

They all cover the same general territory - the visual design; here's an illustrative snip from GameSpot:

For Human Revolution's high-level visual goal, Jacques-Belletete said the team focused on two points: illustration as opposed to simulation, and that design distinction creating desire. When it comes to illustration, Jacques-Belletete wanted to create a world that wasn't necessarily photorealistic, but one whose individual pieces looked like they all belonged within the same reality. This aesthetic extended to characters' faces. Jacques-Belletete said they wanted to avoid any uncanny valley problems, and even singled out recent PS3-exclusive Heavy Rain for some critique. "It (Heavy Rain) is a beautiful game, but those people are so scary! And you look at the teapot in Beauty and the Beast, and that little dude looks alive and he looks like a human being," he said.

On the second goal— design distinction creates desire—Jacques-Belletete explained that looking unique can be a strong selling point for a game. He cited the example of the Big Daddy and Little Sister designs in BioShock as great examples of a game pushing a distinct look. He then put up a slide showing stills from games like Killzone 2, Gears of War, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Unreal Tournament 3, and Turok, saying they were examples of games that all looked similar and therefore weren't doing anything distinctive.

More information.

a well done CGI movie… nothing less, nothing more.

Great, this means I'm going to have to hold my breath for the next umpteen months until we really see what the game's going to be like.
(Pins and Needles)

Let me get you off those needles, it's gonna be a typical mainstream game. I can bet my life on that.

Not that I hate everything mainstream, but they just won't stay true to the sequel. Which will likely still be 9/10 game, but just not the masterpiece the original was.

In any case, time to replay Deus Ex. The trailer did bring back some good memories for some reason, so I guess that's nice.

Originally Posted by BearishSun
In any case, time to replay Deus Ex. The trailer did bring back some good memories for some reason, so I guess that's nice.

I only played the demo of deus ex, but I have to admit I loved it already a lot more than I ever liked splinter cell.
I wish to find the game someday and really play it.

the video looks good and interesting, but more like an action shooter then what I tasted of deus ex.

It will suck.

That said, all of my friends skipped Deus Ex because they thought from the first map that it was a brainless shooter.

I refuse to get excited over a nice trailer and a couple of perfectly right statements, give us some gameplay info finally, Eidos!

@JemyM - I decided to play the first map as a stealth game, had just come off a Thief and System Shock II retrospection… Took me about half an hour to sneak to the top of the statue, but the goons inside kept hearing me somehow and throwing grenades at me (or I activated a trap , I don't remember, I was still exploring the game), so a couple of reloads later I just went Rambo on them and carried on thusly through most of the game with the occasional bit of hacking to tip the scales on my side of course.

I loved it, but with that said - it really is somewhat stiff as a shooter - coming from SS2 where you could sneak and hack and go into these adrenaline killing-sprees seamlessly - Deus Ex could really use some improvement on that last one - it was built on a very shooter engine and basis after all and it seems odd.

Well the feature list is great (below), but who knows.. i probably would have enjoyed Deus Ex TW too if it wasnt for the tiny levels.. not too many cyperpunk games out there. Looking forward to this!

—Non-linear, multi-path, multi-solution gameplay.
—Different ways to solve any objective depending on your play style (social, hacking, stealth or action).
—Character and weapon customization.
—Action/RPG just like the first game.
—Choices and consequences.
—A semi-open world approach to levels and missions.
—An inventory system similar to DX1.
—It's not a sandbox. It's not totally linear. It's like the best of both of those approaches.
—Random explorable elements with earned experience points.
—Global travel.

Everybody mentions the tiny levels of IW, wich really broke the whole thing. But there was anoter major design flaw for me : the game was just much too easy, there was few challenge.
This is coming from the "choose your own solution" way of designing : there was always one obvious and easy solution to every situation. Of course the small size of the levels made it even worse. And you had too much augs too early.
Well, hope you can choose the difficulty in this one….
Aprt form this i'm excited :-) Deus ex 1 my best game ever

Teh Bl00m! It hurts us! Burns it does!

I actually found the trailer pretty thrilling; well at least until the wolverine-blade popped up…

Originally Posted by Bateman
I actually found the trailer pretty thrilling; well at least until the wolverine-blade popped up…

Yeah that blade is a really lame touch

Where else would a concealed blade extend from ? Wolverine's blade where three from the spaces between his fingers, and this guy's was a single long blade from his forearm. I didn't think wolverine at all when I saw it. Wolvey doesn't have a monopoly on edged weapons concealed in extremities .