Deus Ex Invisible War Preview
Matthew Calamatta over at Loadedinc.com as this to say about the game:
Fans of the first Deus Ex are exploding with excitement. They’ve been invited back to a dark world of corporate greed, fanaticism, and body enhancements. That world is so very different from the real world, only because you can go back to your previous save when you naff things up.
Deus Ex: Invisible War is set twenty years after the events of the first game. Society has shattered and formed into hardened enclaves, where the haves and the have-nots are mixed in with the wants and the don’t-wants. JC Denton, the hero of the first game, sort of destroyed the whole of civilisation, so if you played the last game to completion I hope you’re proud.
Anyone who’s touched the first Deus Ex will feel at home with Invisible War. The way you interact with your environment is largely the same. Guns, shock batons, talking, fiddling with robots and machinery, hefting dead bodies over your shoulder; the core gameplay is unchanged. Multitools are back - they let you crack safes, open doors and mess with electronics. Bio-Enhancements are back; so far LoadedInc has the ability to become invisible to cameras and even humans, which is jolly useful. A massive, coherent, and immersive game-world is also back, and it’s bigger, better and more Byzantine than before. As Alex D, the man/woman bio-enhanced hero/ine, you’ll be dropped into a socio-political soup where all the other ingredients are trying to get you to be like them, work for them and taste like them.
Let me explain: there’s the World Trade Organisation (WTO) - an unaccountable, globally powerful octopus with its own evil agenda. There’s Tarsus Academies, where you are being trained and modified to become a special-ops security person, and then there’s The Order - a world church whose members behave like a mix of Hare Krishnas, Luddites, and Marxist Hippy guerrillas. And that’s just the opening act!
These are the first factions you’ll encounter, and they represent, at first, the more rational centre of a huge network of groups. Later on there’ll be extremist what-have-yous all with their own agendas. No matter the size of the entity, be it a global corporation or coffee-shop owner, you can always feature in their plans. Since you have such diverse skills you’ll be given all manner of jobs: murder, hacking, rescuing, arson.
You’ll be torn this way and that; each person telling you the other is a liar. With each new gobbet of news you might see things in a new light. Thought you were working for the good guys? Think again. Then find out the crazies may not be so crazy after all. Or are they? Deus Ex: Invisible War does a fine job of creating a paranoid, confusing world, where you don’t know whom to trust and whom to believe.
From the opening “disruption” (we’ll say no more so as not to spoil things), your fellow Tarsus students represent some of the paths open to you. One gets a job as a WTO soldier, another joins the Order. They’ll do their best to convince you to follow.
People have a disconcerting habit of popping up in your Heads-Up Display. There’s obviously some global intercom at work here, and it does open up some logical errors. You could be trusted by a head honcho of the WTO, but still carry on and drug all her guards and blow up all her sentinel bots. She’ll eventually pipe up (as a little picture at your left eye) after you’ve done the damage. Is this believable, if she knows how to contact you at any time and knows what you’ve done? We’re not totallly convinced.
The gameplay mechanism allows for this sort of thing; flirting with factions, playing both ends against the middle and sowing confusion. In the articles we’ve been publishing you’ll read how the developers wanted this open environment to give the player room to do things as they see fit. I think they’ve succeeded. For every goal you’re set there’ll be a couple of ways to get to it. That’s what the game’s makers have claimed, at least. So we put this claim to the test and can assure you it’s true: there are many ways to skin a cybernetic ally-enhanced cat.
You’ll need a pilot pretty early on in the game. Two clear choices present themselves: the direct path involves killing a dozen soldiers, assassinating a smuggler, disabling several security systems and blowing up no end of bots, turret guns and doors. The less gung-ho option is to talk to the smuggler in question and do a deal that will get the pilot his jet back. So the experience you have will depend on your playing style and mood. Are you in a kill-lots-of-people frame of mind? Go ahead. Fancy a sneak-around instead? No problem.
Both the above routes to a goal offered their own rewards and challenges. We may also have found a third way (arching of brows, mad twitch in eye).
As we settled down into playing, the graphics and interface began to sink in more clearly. It’s all a bit confusing at first, and there’s little time to admire the basketball in your dorm room, or the glow of a light bulb over a toilet seat. Then it hit us: a little check-box in the video settings called “Bloom”. This little wonder does an amazing thing: it takes that harsh, flat, Direct-3D look and wraps it in a soft fuzziness that results in, well, something warmer and more real than usual. I’m not really sure what it does, but with Bloom turned on the whole game world seems to come to life.
The game-world is a fairly standard dystopian near-future, the sort of place sketched out for us by films like Akira and Blade Runner and the books of William Gibson. Plenty of neon signs, dark streets, very little sky visible - the effect is moody and claustrophobic. The flavour they’re aiming for is pretty clear, but the design is not as good as it could have been; it’s missing that ‘cool’ look which marks the films and the cartoons and comic books. Many of the interiors seem a little too boxy and squat, and there are times where the scale seems all wrong.
Invisible War still deserves to do well, despite the odd graphical and logical quirk. Anyone who’s enjoyed the Thief games, the Hitman games or the first Deus Ex will be more than happy to dive in. There’s fighting galore, plenty of creeping around, and quite a few neat gadgets you can insert into your body (we’re talking bio-upgrades, here). The complex and involving storyline is richer, deeper and more interesting than the original. While some could argue that too much freedom can be too confusing, we say “Bring it on”.
