Curving Bullets in Deus Ex

by Charles Onyett - IGN.com | 27 April 2011 12:00
 
Be a better killer in Eidos Montreal's sequel.
 
There's more to making a kill in Deus Ex: Human Revolution than pulling the trigger. The whole point of the game and much of what has cemented memories of the original so firmly in the mind of those who played it is to offer meaningful choices. You can run, shoot and make a lot of noise. You can sneak around and zap enemies with shock prods and drag their unconscious bodies out of sight. Or you can make your way over to a computer terminal, hack through a security grid and gain control of remote weapons systems. It's up to you.
 
The catch is you can't do everything all at once. Though Deus Ex may look and play like a first-person shooter with cover mechanics, there's a heavy emphasis on character development. This isn't Crysis where you can swap between stealth and armor at will. Instead, the choices you make stick with you. As protagonist Adam Jensen you modify your body and your gear in according with how you want to play.
 

A job well done.

About six to 10 hours into the game, you'll have filled out enough of your skill tree to see a significant impact on gameplay. Taking the stealth approach can be an effective way to navigate dangerous areas, but costly. Remaining cloaked consumes Jensen's energy, which doesn't automatically recharge to full capacity, meaning the cloak ability can't be spammed. Instead, it'll need to be mixed in with careful movement around stages swarming with enemies. You'll need to keep an eye on the directions enemies are facing as they patrol, as their ability to detect your presence is based on line of sight and sound.
 
Keeping quiet gets easier with the right augmentations. Purchasing certain upgrades for your legs allows you to not only jump higher but also to do so without making any noise. This can be especially effective to hop out of a high-walled courtyard without being seen. My concern about avoiding conflict would be that I'd miss out on valuable equipment and opportunities for upgrade points that could have been collected if I'd used bullets to bypass enemies. Eidos Montreal assures me all paths through the game will be appropriately rewarded, which I hope is true. I've seen evidence that discovering alternate pathways through buildings, like crawling through ventilation shafts instead of walking through the front door, leads to rewards, so I'd tend to believe what's being said.
 
When inside cramped spaces filled with gun-toting enemies using the X-ray vision and target mark abilities can be an effective way to make sure you don't take an unintentionally lethal step. Using these abilities lets you see through walls and plant markers over enemy heads a la Splinter Cell: Conviction so you'll know where your enemies are and can track their movement. In combination with your stun gun and tranquilizer rifle, this can be a particularly deadly approach if you like to stick to the shadows.
 

Time to break out the EMP.

If you'd rather pop out of cover from time to time and announce your arrival with the crack of gunfire, Eidos Montreal is including a few rare upgrades. Unlike augmentations that are acquired by adding points to Jensen's skill tree, these upgrades are activated by purchasing special items from vendors and then combining them with weapons in your grid-based inventory. Combining a particular upgrade with your tranquilizer rifle adds an extra cursor to your through-the-scope view. It denotes where onscreen you should fire to properly lead a moving target and updates in real-time as an unsuspecting foe wanders. This matters because an enemy is going to take a longer time to keel over if shot in the leg than if shot in the head.
 
Another upgrade lets you curve bullets like in Wanted. Paired with a combat rifle this power puts a semi-transparent line onscreen connecting the end of your gun to your target. When fired, the bullet travels along the curved line, letting you hit enemies attempting to take cover and score hits without the need to manually line up shots. It seems like an effective way to shred the opposition, one that hopefully isn't too overpowered in the final game.
 
The variety of Deus Ex's gameplay seems to be well-crafted, and as a fan of the original, I'm still very excited to see what Eidos Montreal has created. What I still haven't had the opportunity to do in Human Revolution is wander around one of the major world hubs and get a sense of what the freeform NPC interaction and questing system is like. Hopefully I can provide an update on that soon. But enough about what I want, what do you still want to know about Deus Ex: Human Revolution?
 
Supplied by IGN.com