First look at Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Ten of the different augmentations are known so far, including enhanced vision, strength, cloak (invisibility), and wrist blades, which allow for some blood-splattering lethal takedowns. These are all fairly standard, but there are some interesting ones.

Mind reading will give you subtle (or perhaps glaringly obvious) clues as to which direction to proceed during conversations, while mind control gives you the chance to “hack” people’s brains, bending them to your will. However, they’ll remember you having done this and get unreasonably chippy about it later on.

Each ability costs a shot of energy, which isn’t of any real interest until you learn each shot can only be used once per mission, unless you can find somewhere to recharge them. If you have five shots, you can use five of your abilities while in the field. The final slot does recharge, but very slowly. This all means you have to make sure you don’t recklessly waste your abilities, or you’ll end up having a difficult time.

Once you’ve completed your objectives, your energy will be fully recharged and you’ll end up in one of Human Revolution’s hub areas. One of these will be Shanghai, which now has a city built on top of the old one, leaving the original metropolis in perpetual darkness. This hub is full of people, all of whom can be talked to in more than a perfunctory way.

This is difficult to believe, but Eidos Montreal is sticking to its guns on the topic, claiming that minor NPCs’ dialogue won’t be the monosyllabic repetitive one-liner affairs. Regardless of these incidental conversations though, which will be of the basic couple of choices, different outcomes type, the more fleshed out characters will be a different kettle of vocal fish altogether.

According to Eidos Montreal, it takes between six to eight hours to record a fully branched conversation for each character you’ll engage in a proper talk with, such are the apparent intricacies of the dialogue paths. People will also go on for much longer than you’ll be used to, which could be a superb thing or utterly horrible, depending on the quality of the writing and the voice acting involved. A lot is going to hinge on who you get to play and, more importantly, who plays him.

In a game with a focus on chatting, it’s important you don’t despise the person doing the said verbalizing. There’s no JC Denton here, being that he’d be minus two years old at the time Human Revolution takes place. No matter how much augmentation someone has, being a mere glint in the bio-milkman’s eye isn’t going to help in the fight against futuristic global corruption. Instead, you’ll be one Adam Jensen, a security guard whose arms have been sundered from his body by some augmented swine. This would be the end of most people’s career in international espionage you’d think, but not for Jensen. He’s only gone and got himself some big and glossy robotic arms, hasn’t he?