Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Preview @ Joystiq

skavenhorde

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Joystiq has posted a hands on preview of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The previewer, Andrew Yoon, experienced one level three different ways. The mission he played was to get into a building and retrieve an item. To do this you can talk your way in, sneak into the building or as a last resort you can go in guns blazing.
Andrew Yoon's impression of this demo:
Each playthrough of the level felt radically different, a testament to how the game adapts to whatever style you wish to pursue. I left the demo with a number of unanswered questions -- how do your actions affect later missions? Does each level truly offer the same level of freedom? There's a staggering ambition behind Human Revolution. With the right execution, Eidos Montreal has a real opportunity to fulfill the promise of Deus Ex, and introduce a new generation of fans to the franchise.
More information.
 
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Unlike most games that are coming in the not-too-distant future, this game excites a little more every time I read about it. I'm looking forward to this game quite a bit. Deus Ex and System Shock II need another game to join their hallowed halls.
 
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I'm with you, crpgnut. This game looks like it's trying to get the stink off of it from Deus Ex 2 and return to what made Deus Ex great.
 
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Having different options to tackle a mission is obviously good, in theory, but in practice, it should not translate to auto bypassing most of the hurdles. If simply buttering up a character thru talk can lead you to your objective, what's the incentive of trying action and stealth routes?
 
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In this one mission action is a last resort. You can go the stealth route is if you want to ….god forbid….roleplay as a stealth character or you could talk your way into the building. What other incentives do you need? You have a mission and you can tackle it the way you want to. That's it. I seem to recall Deus Ex being similar to that.:D
 
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Having different options to tackle a mission is obviously good, in theory, but in practice, it should not translate to auto bypassing most of the hurdles. If simply buttering up a character thru talk can lead you to your objective, what's the incentive of trying action and stealth routes?

It's all about choices and how you want to play, not what is easier or best or whatever. There is also consequences to the route you pick. In this case, the cop get in trouble because he helped you, he's not as friendly anymore when you see him again later. Some other consequences can be losing access to an important NPC, missing information on the plot and people involved, missing on side quests, etc.

And it's not like a BioWare game where if you didn't pick the right option you can restart at the beginning of the conversation or get 3 differently written options that all lead to same consequences. Here, if you fail the social "combat" you will have to pick the action or stealth routes, there is no retry.
 
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In this one mission action is a last resort. You go go the stealth route is if you want to ….god forbid….roleplay as a stealth character or you could talk your way into the building. What other incentives do you need? You have a mission and you can tackle it the way you want to. That's it. I seem to recall Deus Ex being similar to that.:D

You didn't understand my point. I was talking about the "effort" taken by a player.

Leisurely reading and choosing fairly obviously NPC pleasing dialogues surely takes no effort compared to say, sneaking around a bunch of enemies, staying in shadows, avoiding light n making sounds etc. Even for action route, you need to aim and manage guns and ammo etc. In Deus Ex, there were no dialogue specific skills to invest and most of the missions, although offered varied approaches, required certain form of "Action" from players. That is, to use ducts, sewers to sneak past enemies, use multitools to bypass security OR using full-blown action approach to blast the doors etc. Some may term it as chunk of "gameplay". I do not recall any major mission which could be solved ONLY using dialogues. Do you remember any? All I recall is 'collecting data' thru dialogues and in process, at certain points, making friends / enemies. Essentially, dialogue was used to forward / enhance the plot but it never was a gameplay (stealth / action / tech) alternative.
 
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It's all about choices and how you want to play, not what is easier or best or whatever.

I was mainly referring to the balance. Its not hard to pick up a dialogue which could work in your favor, mainly coz writers *have* to write them in some sort of indicative way. But I would not like if some part of the game specifically, but unintentionally, is easier than the alternatives. In this case, being a talkative character seems to translate to "easiest" difficulty level..or so it seems.

There is also consequences to the route you pick. In this case, the cop get in trouble because he helped you, he's not as friendly anymore when you see him again later. Some other consequences can be losing access to an important NPC, missing information on the plot and people involved, missing on side quests, etc.

All good and it can be argued that consequences can be implemented even for stealth and action routes. I am talking about the balance between choices here tho. Risk and reward.

And it's not like a BioWare game where if you didn't pick the right option you can restart at the beginning of the conversation or get 3 differently written options that all lead to same consequences. Here, if you fail the social "combat" you will have to pick the action or stealth routes, there is no retry.

But since DX:HR offers dialogue specific skills, I can easily max those and the chances of failing are severely reduced already. Of course that is similar to advancing in stealth / action / tech route, but at least in those routes I "play" the game, not just partake in conversation simulator and reach the objective. There are players who love that, including me, but as I asked above, what's the incentive to try other routes? Can the action route grant me more exp points? And by using trying the stealth route, I can perhaps find some hidden, valuable item etc? I would be interesting in knowing those details too..
 
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I see your point and don't really have an answer for you. Maybe it's one of the questions that the previewer had as well,"how do your actions affect later missions? " Befriend your buddy and betray his trust will probably (I'm hoping) have some consequences for you in the future. But I'm just guessing here. We'll just have to wait until they tell us a bit more about the game.

Overall, I'm somewhat optimistic with what I'm hearing about this game. If the previews, interviews, videos keep showing us more like this and with a branching storyline where your actions have consequences/rewards then I will be one happy rodent.
 
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Gameplay, baby! As I said from the start, this one excites me more than any other new RPG, including those from the "month of RPGs". I hope it holds up to the hype!
 
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Getting access to the morgue is no different then the mole people underground hideout in the first DX. In the mole people underground, the NSF are going to be hostile at first, but you can make them friendlies if you talk to their boss and pick the right conversation option. Otherwise they will stay hostile. You can also ignore them and stealth your way around or shoot everybody.

DX gave XP for finishing mission objectives and discovering areas. Killing people, walking in shadows or talking to people to get access to something didn't change the reward you received. Although you had a lot more chance of finding places when crawling in a vent.

And DX:HR have not skills. You use XP to increase augmentations effectiveness, but you need to buy the augmentations first. There's not dice roll to the conversation options, you need to pick the right one and beside knowing that a NPC like or not an attitude there's no way to know which one you should pick (beside save and reloads or a walkthrough).

I'm not sure where the Joystiq previewer got the "conversational skill" stuff from.
 
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I guess you could consider these augmentations skills depending on what they actually do.

I prefer to pick the right path rather than "roll" for it. If they do it right you'll be able to research any potential 'allies' with stuff lying around, journal entries, heck even the environment could give you clues as to each NPCs personality or likes/dislikes. If they do it wrong then there will be absolutely no help or ways for you to find out the right path without trial and error.

I'm still very optimistic about this game even without skills or rolling dialogues :)
 
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I don't mind trial and error, as long as I don't have to go back too far...

I hope they allow you to pick a build style and role play it to completion rather than force you to be a generalist.
 
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Getting access to the morgue is no different then the mole people underground hideout in the first DX. In the mole people underground, the NSF are going to be hostile at first, but you can make them friendlies if you talk to their boss and pick the right conversation option. Otherwise they will stay hostile. You can also ignore them and stealth your way around or shoot everybody.

Yes. As I said, in DX you cannot solve any mission ONLY through dialogs. It can make certain scenarios "easier", but even then it was limited to small n trivial side-missions.

DX gave XP for finishing mission objectives and discovering areas. Killing people, walking in shadows or talking to people to get access to something didn't change the reward you received. Although you had a lot more chance of finding places when crawling in a vent.

Only thing is, "talking to people" wasn't really an alternative approach as much as walking in shadows and killing people was. I hope you see the point over which I am debating upon.

And DX:HR have not skills. You use XP to increase augmentations effectiveness, but you need to buy the augmentations first.

There are social augmentations, if not "skills", which you can enhance upon. However, so far these terms are seemingly used interchangeably.

From the official FAQ:

You can spice things up with using your hacking skills and/or your social skills to unlock new possibilities, but you never have to do it if you don't want to.


There's not dice roll to the conversation options, you need to pick the right one and beside knowing that a NPC like or not an attitude there's no way to know which one you should pick (beside save and reloads or a walkthrough).

I would like if the dialogs aren't very indicative, but I doubt they will be so vague you will have no idea what to say to a certain NPC to drive home your agenda.

From the IGN Gamescom article:

The 'Chatty Cathy' Method

Finally, for those with a silver tongue, you can use your brains and conversational skills to pry information from the police officer on duty at the front desk. At this point, we're finally able to get a taste of how body language helps to indicate which responses to choose. In fact, there's even an augmentation to let you 'read' people, which will help pacifists get by.
 
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Yes. As I said, in DX you cannot solve any mission ONLY through dialogs. It can make certain scenarios "easier", but even then it was limited to small n trivial side-missions.

You don't solve the mission by talking to the cop, you just get access to the morgue in it. There's nothing else to it, beside avoiding a mass murder of cops, which is discouraged by your "handler" from the start. And you can easily transform that "easy" route into another one if you start to steal stuff in front of the cops. Which mean turning the easy route into the stealth route or gunho route if you want to "make a profit".

Some missions in DX are easier because you talk to some people. This is no different. The difference is that here you can fail to get in by talking, while in DX conversation were linear, you didn't need to persuade somebody to help you. Strangers gave you secret passwords or security codes after 2 lines of conversations and/or a few credits.

Only thing is, "talking to people" wasn't really an alternative approach as much as walking in shadows and killing people was. I hope you see the point over which I am debating upon.

EM decided to make the social aspect an important part of the game, it's part of the game "pillars" now.
 
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