Deus Ex: Human Revolution - E3 Preview @ Giant Bomb

Giant Bomb has posted their impressions of the demo for Deus Ex: Human Revolution given by Square Enix at E3. The demo was also shown in a closed off area, available only to accredited game journalists. Here's an small part from the preview:

From the looks of the demo, it's a safe bet the story-related scenarios at least will give you the freedom to define your play style. When confronted with a surly bouncer who wasn't too excited about letting Jensen enter the club, the demo's driver went through a simple-looking menu-based dialog tree to talk his way past the front door. The conversation system doesn't look quite as elaborate here as the ones in games like Alpha Protocol and Mass Effect have recently, but each option does carry a label dictating how aggressive or focused on the topic at hand it is. Of course, afterward I was told it would have been a perfectly valid option to just shoot the guy and storm into the place, too.

There's also previews at GamerLimit and GameZenith
More information.

That trailer was Blade Runner meets Ghost in the Shell, muy bueno.

The conversation system doesn't look quite as elaborate here as the ones in games like Alpha Protocol and Mass Effect have recently

Alpha Protocol and Mass effect had "elaborate" conversation systems?

This does not bode well….

I'm expecting what they are talking about is that this is a standard tree based conversation system instead of the (so called) elaborate time based radial system from Mass Effect and Alpha Protocol. I am glad they aren't using that since it is an unwanted constraint on something you should be thinking about and choosing instead of being forced into. The only way the radial system would be useful is if you are told before hand what you have the choice of saying before you get into the conversation. It is not useful for roleplayers to not have control of the conversation.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Alpha Protocol and Mass effect had "elaborate" conversation systems?

This does not bode well….

That is indeed such a weird statement that I suspect he refers to the amount of words + the ability to chose the flavor of the character's personality, and not to what we generally understand as "conversation systems".



In any case, I haven't got too far with Deus Ex yet, but from what I've seen even Mass Effect is more "elaborate" than it was in that department. So I don't think that's much to worry about.