Deus Ex: HR - Demo overview (no spoilers) - Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Tennmuerti

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Edited By Tennmuerti

As some of you might be aware a demo for Deus Ex: Human Revolution has leaked onto the internets.
Having played through it I would like to share my thoughts, and hopefully people will be more informed as to what the game is like and if it is any good.

Some disclaimers:

This is based on the leaked DEMO version so keep that in mind as some of the points might not apply when the game is released.
I have already pre ordered the full game, so please keep the pirate comments out.
This will includes some images from the game, if mods have a problem with this due to forum rules, please PM me and I will remove them, rather then lock down the topic completely please, (Square Enix and Eidos don't seem to mind people talking about the demo so far)
Will try to keep spoilers to an absolute minimum.
If you have questions after this, I will try to answer them.

TLDR version.

Think Alpha Protocol but in a cyberpunk setting and imo better.

Pros:

It's pretty goddamn awesome!
Many multiple ways to complete missions
Well done leveling system
Interesting conversation system
Branching choices/consequences
Looks cool as fuck, incredible style and atmosphere
Expertly implemented game mechanics
Hacking is actually fun an interesting unlike many mini-games in similar games
Runs very smoothly on highest settings
Sense of cohesiveness due to the game systems being explained by fiction

Cons:

NPC conversation expressions are on the wooden side
Long load times
Graphics are inconsistent in quality, skybox kinda sucks.
Some problems with loading in textures (not popin/visivility, but slowdowns)
Weird body proportions for some people
Various minor demo issues (which seem easy to fix in full version)

OK enough bullshit.

Cyberpunk is Back baby!

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a hybrid fps/rpg set in a not so far flung future. It's a prequel to the previous games in a franchise. Cybernetic improvements and implants are propelling humanity forward and thee is a lot of shit going down. To put a general idea in your mind, take Alpha Protocol as the base, remove the faction systems, add awesome atmosphere, cyborgs, way more ways to go about completing levels and objectives, better shooting feel (if you even want to shoot anyone) and you will be pretty close to Deus Ex: HR . Obviously there is more to it.
The demo itself is actually quite substantial and I must have spent more then 10 hours exploring every nook and cranny.
There is a short prologue, a hefty 1st mission which is also a tutorial, a section of the city acting as a hub with side quests and it's own areas where you need to complete some objectives main and secondary, and a 2nd mission after which the demo ends.

When I knew this game way my type:
"After running around the first minor hub area and checking out everything including both men and ladies toilets, I finally went to the required main quest NPC and promptly got reprimanded for wasting a bunch of time and reminded that cybernetic implants did not make me female" Said NPC also was kind of a dick and gave me a bunch of shit in general.
Whether or not this game is better then the original Deus Ex I cannot say, having played but not finished that one. But it seems to measure up at the very least especially if people don't put on their rose tinted goggles on. It definately does a better job of honouring the old franchise unlike games like Fallout3 or Xcom. Regardless of it's roots, this seems like a very solid game and if you enjoyed the hybrid shooter/rpgs like Mass Effect or Alpha Protocol it's definately worth checking out.

Play how you want to.

Multiple approaches. Arguably the greatest strength of the game and the most important part of it (and also what the original is mostly known for) The games flexibility works on several levels. Lets start with the basic one, tactical mission approach and level design.
The most straightforward way to go about getting through a level is to go guns blazing if you want to for example. Basic shooting is from the FPS perspective, switching to TPS while in cover. You have multiple tools at your disposal: assault rifles, shotguns, stun weapons, emp/flash/frag grenades, mines etc. (mele is a one shot kill on human enemies but it's limited by your energy reserves). The other directly opposing way is to go all stealthy like and try to silently take out enemies, avoid security, sneak around, etc. The levels themselves offer multiple approaches and many routes to traverse them. The cool part is that you can mix and match any style and any path through a level. This is not like you are picking either to go by path A, B or C, the various routes

a floor plan of a part of one of the levels, not showing hidden routes

through the level can be stringed together in various ways depending on what tools and skills you have access to like hacking, moving heavy objects, breaking through walls, stealth, availability of codes, side objectives. If you are a supreme completionist you can just go through ALL the different routes to explore the maps in their entirety and try out masochistic things to take out multiple enemies that are grouped together silently without raising an alert. You can sneak through vents, use cover to hide, create distractions for guards to kill them or avoid them. Combine the tools and skills at your disposal in fun ways: I once threw a flash grenade at 2 guards talking to each other, ran up to them and did a double take down (skill), was pretty fucking badass.
Oh since we are talking about guards.You can take them out lethally or non lethally (either option from distance or in melee) the non lethal take down creates less noise and gives more XP, the downside is that if you fuck up and the body is found then his mates can wake his ass up.
Another example would be a mission you get in the first game hub, it's not a separate level per se.
You have to get into the police station and retrieve a certain item.
We can:

walk right in and try to convince an old friend to let us walk around the station
use the sewer system to get in from below but you will have to hack a laser fence with that approach
stack some boxes in the side ally to jump a fence, climb up the fire escape and use the vents at the top of the building
shoot our way in
sneak in through the front entrance if we have stealth abilities

You can even experiment with the game environment to a limited degree to game the system. In the above police station for example there is a hackable terminal behind in a room you can sneak into, unfortunately one of the guarding cops happens to be looking though the rooms window onto the workstation, so if you try to hack it he will see you and raise an alarm. So what I did was go back out to where the cop was standing guard, find a bunch of boxes throughout the level and stack them between the guard and the window, after some tries I managed to block his line of sight and he did not see me hack the terminal.

The flexibility is not limited to level approach, it extends to NPC interaction together with choices and consequence. I will have to use an example here, but it's not spoilery. At the end of one of the levels we will confront a "bad dude" with a hostage (our orders are to neutralize him), here are the the various ways to hadnle the situation that I know of:

let the bad dude go, he will take the hostage with him.
try to talk him into releasing the hostage (this is hard):
if we fail he will get away with the hostage
if we succeed he will let the hostage go and slip away
if we succeed really well he will let the hostage go and promise to help us out later, then slip away
ignore him and go aggressive, bad dude will go into animation to kill the hostage
most likely he will manage to kill the hostage at this point we can kill him or stun him (if we only stun him, we can meet him later in the police station)
if you are fast enough you might manage to pull out a gun to either stun him or kill him before he kills the hostage (i keep failing but i know it's possible, others have done it)

Depending on weather or not the hostage was killed/saved/taken or bad dude killed/stunned/ran away we will have some different interactions with other NPCs and have some minor variations down the road also. For example the first time around I saved the hostage and let the bad dude go but he came through and provided me with a couple of codes that could be used on the majority of doors and computers in the second mission if I wanted.
Like I said, this is really where the game shines.

Better, Stronger, Faster

The system in which you gain new skills can't technically be called a leveling system because there are no levels. You gain XP and after reaching a certain threshold are awarded with a point to spend on improving your abilities. However you can also purchase these points for a lot of money in the cybernetic clinic (limited supplies) or find them in the world. Another cool part here is that not only all the ingame interface stuff is explained with ingame fiction together with your cybernetic augmentation, so is the system on how you gain your abilities. I found this cohesive approach quite satisfying. Some abilities cost more then one point and it seems like I was always tor between where to spend them, since all the skills seem useful in various situations. Overall it seemed well balanced and each upgrade meaningful. I soon adopted an approach of keeping 2-3 points in reserve rather then spending them, to be used when a situation arose where they would really help out.

why sawed off shotgun is sawed off, learn bitch

There is an inventory system which limits the items you can carry, with some items taking quite a large part of your space. Advantage of handguns: small size. Disadvantage of a bazooka: it's freaking BIG. Connection here is that you can use some of those precious points to upgrade your carry capacity :P Guns have various upgrades you can apply if you buy or come across upgrade kits. You get XP for almost everything you do, taking out enemies, hacking, finding secret routes, completing an objectives without anyone seeing you, never raising an alarm, reading research data, etc

Let us converse dear chap

The dialogue is a mixed bag, but it offers enough depth.
The actual dialogue system is great mechanically. First of all the developers took heed of people bitching about conversation choices in games like Mass Effect / Alpha Protocol /

some options are only available with cybernetic upgrades

DA2 where you are provided with tiny ass one liners which frequently did not match up with what your dude actual said. So: you still have those small choices, BUT wenyou mouse over the choice you will see an expanded dialogue which is almost exactly what your character will say. So both people who don't want to read and who want control over their choices are satisfied! There is also an interesting persuasion system that is quite well done imo, and a way to sometimes force what you want by use of pheromones. Like I said mechanically is satisfying.
The bummer comes in when dudes start talking. After games like L.A.Noire and Witcher 2 the animations are positively wooden. Half the time the only thing that moves on an NPC when talking are their lips. It's downright jarring. And faces themselves are of mixed quality, some have kinda bad textures. Voice acting is hit and miss, with great performances by some NPCs, terrible by others. The main character voice will very likely be a love/hate scenario with a lot of people

Eye Candy

Like the dialogue system this is has some good moments and some bad moments.
Good things first: atmosphere and style are excellent. I mean damn, it looks cool as fuck. The visual design is superb and really hammers in the cyberpunk feel of the game. Seriously 10/10 to dudes who designed the environments and the effects, props. 99% of the time the game also runs as smooth as a baby's bottom on max settings, on my gaming laptop.
Bad things: technically the game is not very impressive. Even on max settings it looks a bit dated when compared to PC games like Withcher 2 for example. Up close most things look good, but the game very quickly degrades object quality with distance. Another issue is that the game seems to not be streaming in textures smoothly, that 1% of the time when you are quickly traveling from one area to another the game starts to really chug for a few seconds before becoming super smooth again. Hopefully whent he game is released we can get some more graphical options and they work out those texture loading kinks. But this is not a simple fix, so who knows. Also some of the NPCs seem to have weird body proportions. Meanwhile here are some images for you to judge by yourselves, like all of the above this is max settings, 1920x1080:

Hacking

Hacking is a major part of the game. There are many many doors/computers/safes/security systems to hack. Like mentioned in the first main part of this writeup if you don't want to hack shit, you don't have to, there are many ways to get what you want. However I recommend you hack. Main reason is that hacking is actually FUN! There is no usual silly mini game here. Instead hacking is pushed to a more abstract layer, you are not really a hacker, but you are a dude who knows enough, kind of like a script kiddie, you know how to use programs that do the hacking for you, your job as a human operator is not to hack yourself but to decide how to hack. I'm not going to explain the system in full detail,

but the basics are that you have a network of nodes that must be navigated to reach target node/nodes, nodes have difficulty degrees, which increase hack times and chances of detection, when you are detected a security countermeasures activate and try to lock you out, at which point you need to works fast. The are different types of nodes that have various effects. The node webs you hack will vary from very simplistic ones to really big ones of 20+ nodes. There are some extra programs you can deploy when hacking that help you out, you can fortify your own nodes, capture bonus nodes for extra goodies, etc. Security systems are way way more effective then you, cleaning out and upgrading all connected nodes simultaneously, hence why the head start before they detect you. Just to give you an idea of how important hacking is in the game 4 out of 21 upgrade paths are just for hacking. I must have hacked over several dozen devices during the demo and not one of them was identical (there were a couple similar topologies but never with the same nodes).

Miscellaneous bullshit

Odds and ends that don't merit their own section.
Skybox looks really fucking bad, I mean come on, is see boxes ffs
There are hookers, no you can't solicit their services, it wouldn't fit the character or the atmosphere anyway.
Some serious load times in this demo, maybe they'll fix this maybe not.
Had a couple of crashes while playing.
Tutorial system in the demo has many issues. If you access the tutorials through the game menu they don't have voice overs. They are voiced when you get prompted for tutorial tips ingame, however the text below them is messed up completely seeming to pull from random dialogue. Also the tutorial is for the Xbox controller only even tho this is a PC demo. But the tutorials are easy to fix and stick out so I assume this will not be an issue with the full version.

In conclusion: game is pretty dope imo.

If you have questions, ask.

12 years ago