This News Item has been viewed 13,598 times
If you set your mind back to the year 2000 you may remember when an ambitious game called Deus Ex came out. It was a first person – role playing game. You had a number of ways to find your way through the story driven action, a chance to enhance your character and develop specific skills based on your chosen style of game play. If you wanted to go in guns blazing or sneak your way through – the choice was yours. You even had a choice of how the game ended, based on your actions. The game received numerous “Game of the Year” awards. But the only thing that the game lacked was decent graphics. The time that was spent developing all the main features of the game, left little time for that. But where Deus Ex lacked - Deus Ex Invisible War (DXIW) makes up for it.
DXIW aims to put you into the game. It aims to make everything as real as it can be (in a manner of speaking of course). It aims to put you in the shoes of the character - to see the world as he would. With the organic interface burnt into his eye, with shadows being cast as things move. The game is based on the Unreal engine, but most of it has been rewritten. A dynamic lighting system has been added and the Havoc physics system implemented. Every light in the game will be dynamic. Shoot a lamp and watch the shadows swing around the room. Watch as a character walks in front of a lamp and how the shadow is cast. Need a place to hide, knock a lamp over and hide in the shadows. The shadows go as far as the detail in the game. With facial scars and wrinkles in clothes casting shadows too. And to help the stealth aspect of the game, a Thief like light meter has been added, so you can see how well hidden you are in the shadows. Most of the game locations will be dark just as in the original, but a new breakthrough in the game is that one (or more) of the locations will be in daytime 
The game also has an impressive sound system. Not only mentioning the 5.1 surround sound support. But sound, just as light will make a difference in the game. Open a door and shoot your gun, the sound will carry further altering more people. The game also claims to provide a truly interactive environment. Where every object is movable and useable (there is only so much you can do with a barrel  ). This is where the physics comes in. Kick a barrel, or drop it down the stairs and watch it roll down realistically. This also applies to all items in the game. When you shoot a character, expect to see them fall and tumble in the appropriate way, instead of seeing a lot of gore. Spector doesn’t want his games to be gory, just realistic.
To add to all of this, the AI has been greatly expanded from the last game. The enemies will act appropriately and will their awareness to your presence will be based on your actions. If you sneak in the shadows, they won’t see or hear you. If you run past them with guns drawn, they might just react . Most enemies can’t see in the dark, believe it or not, that’s an enhancement on the first game. And one of the more impressive aspects are the non-scripted sequences. If an enemy breaks through a glass window to attack you, it’s not because they were programmed to do so, its cause they reacted to your presence. And other factors of your behaviour can provoke reactions. Something as simple as staring… (You lookin at me?…. hehe)
As for the game itself, it starts of with a brilliant intro; you can have a look at it already on our site. It’s the mid 21st century, around 15 years after the original game, it continues after one of the endings currently undisclosed. Chicago has been infiltrated by a terrorist, attack drones are deployed but it’s already too late. He detonates a nanite bomb that eats the city and levels it to the ground. Key members of a research team are evacuated to a secret Seattle location just in time. The story unfolds as a secret invisible war beings. You then begin the first mission is Seattle. Alex D. is your character. You might remember the clone pod at the end of the first game You have the option to choose whether your character is a male or a female; something that the team wanted to do with the first game, but they were restricted by the sound requirements. They would have had to record twice the number of lines of your character which run into the thousands anyway. This time round they had the time to consider giving the male character more strength and the female character better conversation options, but they settled on the choice being only cosmetic. You choose the skin tone, hair colour, sex and things along those lines. And unlike in the first game, you are not forced to make decisions about your characters skills at the start. In fact the skills and augmentations system has changed a little bit. You now make decisions about how you want to develop your character during the first level.
Instead of the old skills and augmentations system, you will have the bio mod system. Throughout the game you can find in the regions of two dozen bio mods and you will only have 9 bio mod slots. So you have to make tough decisions about your characters abilities. Each bio mod will have 3 levels called tiers - the higher the tier, the better the bio mod. Mods available will range from the eye bio mod that gives you night vision and lets you see through walls at the higher tiers, to the swimming bio mod, to black market mods such as the health leach or bot domination. The bot domination is an interesting bio mod as it lets you take control of bots. Whether you take control of a cleaner bot to check what’s round the corner or take control of the guard bot to kill your enemies
These bio mods give you an option on how to play the game. With the right combination of mods, you won’t have to touch a single weapon to complete the game. That might appeal to some; others might want the heavy hardware. And it’s all here, from simple pistols, to assault rifles. And let’s not forget the gadgets that you get to play with; multitools for hacking, laser mic for listening to conversations from a safe distance, glass cutter for making your way in quietly, noisemaker for distracting your enemies. And don’t forget that you can still upgrade your weapons. Different modifications to your guns can even make a pistol very powerful. With all these tools and skills at your disposal you choose if you want fight your enemies head on, or if you want to set traps for them.
All these features of the game, from the dynamic lighting, to the tiniest details on the maps come at a price. This will be a very demanding game on your hardware. The extensive use of pixel shaders and pixel lighting means that the minimum requirement will be a GeForce 3 or a Radeon 8500 if not higher. As for the console, the Xbox GPU is based on a GF 3 and that’s why it’s currently the only console which DXIW is planned for. A few months ago the development team was fighting to get the frames per second above 20. They plan for the final game to run at a smooth 30 fps, but that will push your PC to the limits. But it’s all worth it for the amazing gaming experience Deus Ex promises.
The game has been planned for 2003, currently planned for December. Let’s hope that it can make that deadline. All of us here at DE2Files.com can not wait to see the final product and we are very impressed by all the footage and pictures that we have seen. This game is going to rock 
 09-07-2003 @ 05:41 - Deus Ex IW Multiplayer?
 09-06-2003 @ 22:11 - DE:IW BioMods
|
