Deus Ex Preview

Pronunciation: 'dA-&s-"eks-'mä-ki-n&, -'ma-, -"nä; -m&-'shE-n&
Etymology: New Latin, a god from a machine, translation of Greek theos ek mEchanEs

1: a god introduced by means of a crane in ancient Greek and Roman drama to decide the final outcome
2: a person or thing (as in fiction or drama) that appears or is introduced suddenly and unexpectedly and provides a contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty

Street graphite rulez!

Our hero is looking lonely...

Welcome to the world of Deus Ex, a world where the only thing that you should trust in is not to trust anyone. It is dark and cruel, ruled by criminal and terror, and no one is safe there. The only hope is the UNATCO, antiterrorist squad, and you are an enthusiastic, freedom-fighting member of it. You will, however, soon be involved in a series of tricks and intrigues that will throw you into the real world where the boundary between good and evil is not always clear.

Warren Spector, the author of System Shock, one of the most appreciated RP games in the last couple of years, will soon present us his new creation. Warren intends to "give the power back to the players and face them with some real problems, rather than puzzles". He said that Deus Ex would be a game which every player will be able to shape according to his own taste, a system of infinite possibilities and multiple choices, which will let everyone create his personal subjective world.

There will be altogether eleven skills - hacking, healing, lock picking, demolition, technical knowledge - and four weapon types. You start the game with average capabilities, and use your experience to raise skill levels. You will be able to perfect only two of the skills that will be the most useful ones for your tactics. That does not mean that you will have to rely on well-practiced skills during whole game, but they will certainly help you (for example: only a well trained hacker can hack into a system without triggering any alarms). The conversations are going to be simple, yet they will have a great influence on the game course. The greatest advance of characters will be achieved through upgrading their basic characteristics like running, jumping or night-vision. This advance scheme combined with the skill advance will allow the creation of highly specialized characters

Deus Ex will run on a somewhat modified Unreal engine. The enhancements will include: better AI routines, 2D interface modification, lip-synching feature enabling real-time lip movement synchronized with the currently played WAV file. (first seen in Half Life), precise injury localization (the so called: hit location system) and much more, so that it is bound to have a completely different in-game feeling.

The programmers’ goal was to create a game that will easily be playable in various ways, so that players of different affinities might achieve same results. Every puzzle will have many possible solutions for you to find. The difference between a FPS and a RPG like this is that, for example, in one of the first missions your assignment will be to get inside the closed off Statue of Liberty and neutralize the terrorist group hiding inside. It is up to you weather you choose to take the terrorists out one by one, or just hack their defenses down and just stroll in elegantly. The only important thing is to fulfill the mission, no matter the way. So do not let the Unreal engine and visual appearance deceive you - this is a brain game.