per chi interessa qui il mallopppone di notizie.
Anyway, so I've got the new issue of PC Gamer UK, and rather than being a puff piece about the art or dissecting the upcoming trailer, it is a full (6 page!) proper preview, with screenshots and everything!
Bad news for everyone like me, however: Regenerating health is still in, and still no details on exactly how it will work - though oddly they do give details on how the energy system will work (see below) so I think we can safely assume regenerating health is going to be as simple as it sounds. It may be slow, it may be fast, but I don't think there's going to be more to it than that. I honestly thought after all the uproar about this over the last 2 years that EM would at least add the option not to have this, but apparently not.
More bad news, but tempered with a bit of good / interesting news: Third person cover and takedowns are still in. However, the "interesting" bit of news is that you can move around crates etc, and these are still recognised as valid cover points by the system. Well, I find it interesting. Also, the one shot of the cover system fully in action shows that it is, as expected, just like Rainbow Six Vegas - it doesn't zoom in to cut off peripheral vision or anything, you can see fully round corners.
It's not all bad news, however: the PCG writer has come away with a measured but positive response to the game. I'm still not convinced, but I'll try to report the rest of the info in as neutral a manner as possible (though I am going to offer my impressions / conclusions on some parts, deal with it.) This is going to be a lot of text, I'm afraid, and it's not going to be arranged in any specific order. Anything in quote marks is directly from the mag:
-Crossbow bolts can pin enemies to walls (and potentially ceilings? The article is unclear.)
-"Jensen jumps. Both guards are skewered horifically on flat-tipped blades from his wrists, which retract beneath articulated prosthetic hands before their bodies hit the ground." That'd be one of the third person kill augs we've heard about then.
-"Hmm, this kind of is Deus Ex." Like I say, measured but overall positive.
-The writer encourages us to compare it to DX1, even though he didn't expect to.
-DXHR carries over the parts of the DX template, but "reinents them all to be a lot smoother, slicker and more violent than the original." Smoother and slicker I'm on board with, more violent not so much. Not sure I could get "into" a protagonist as much as I did with JC if he's multilating bodies like it's Soldier of Fortune.
-"I doubt it will be better than Deus Ex 1, but I think it might be comparable." I should probably mention at this point that PC Gamer gave Invisible War 90%+. Keep that in mind!
-"Jensen can kill or concuss anyone with his bare hands at close range, whether they see him coming or not." Further down the article he mentions "instant death melee attacks" so we can confirm one-button kills, Arkham Asylum style, if you're close enough. Sorry guys who were hoping this wouldn't be the case.
-Energy system: "You have an upgradable number of energy 'pips' and the ones you use up don't regenerate. It's only if you run out of energy completely that, very slowly, the energy will be restored."
-Still on energy system: "So you start each mission with a full stock..." Ouch. Definitely don't like this, because it suggests that missions are individual and instanced, rather than one ongoing plot like DX and IW - otherwise how does the energy system know when a "mission" begins?
-They mention that there are things to recharge your energy, but not what these are.
-From Dugas, in a rare moment of not saying something I hate: "We don't want it to be a run and shoot game. If you try to run at the enemies, 2, 3, 4 bullets and you're dead."
-Health system: "It's a shame that you can no longer lose limbs..." Lack of locational damage confirmed. BUGGER. Hardly a surprise given health regen still being there, but gutting nonetheless. I could almost have lived with health regen if they'd found some way to keep in locational damage.
-Example, and I'm going to give a full quote here:
Citazione:
It [the stealth system] is best explained by example. Snooping through the backrooms of a club to find a certain hacker Jensen hits a T-junction. The cover key is pressed, and he hugs the left wall, which switches the game to third-person mode. As well as letting you see what you're hiding behind, it lets you peek around the next corner without exposing yourself. A thug is coming. He stops, itches, and turns round. The cover key is released, switching us back to first person, strolls up to the thug and attacks. Back to third person, he taps the guard on the shoulder and cold-cocks him."
-In the sequence above, which probably takes place over no more than 3 or 4 seconds, the perspective shifts 4 times (5 if you count the fact that it would shift back to first after the kill had been performed." For those trying to say that a) third person is entirely optional and b) it won't affect the game that much, give it up. You are going to spend a significant amount of this game in third person.
-There are apparently dozens of takedown moves, which are contextual, and have a different effect depending on whether you tap the button (non-lethal) or hold it (lethal, involving wrist blades.) "Both are expertly animated, but my main concern with the game is that it might disconnect you from your character: you don't know which move he'll perform, you watch it from third person, and you're not in control." Make of that what you will.
-Stuff about the setting next: I'll annotate it if people really want, but it's all stuff we've heard before.
-Shanghai is apparently bigger than DX1's Liberty Island - well, I'd kind of hope so!
-It is "thick with people" and you can apparently talk to everybody in the game, and not just single pointless lines. I'll be interested to see how this works out.
-"You're a security guard who had his arms blown off" - so definitely not possible to play through the game without getting augmented, despite earlier statements.
-Augmentations are bought with cash from "Limb Clinics," and once bought, they are then upgraded with XP to reflect Adam getting used to them. They start with basic functionality, but higher levels add extra features, rather than just making them more powerful. I'm fine with this system.
-In addition to your arms, there are 19 other augs to choose from (and it seems you can buy them in any order, as long as you have the cash - this is just the impression I get, however.) Each aug has 4 or 5 extra functions unlocked with XP.
-Jensen's voice is gravelly - I think we knew this from the trailers!
-Talking about Toufexis' voice, audio director Steve Unspellablesurname said: "That's his natural tone. I didn't want a mimic of JC, but he needed to sound like he's from the same family." Same family, you say? Were you meant to say that, Mr Unspellablesurname? (Seriously, his surname is Szczepkowski.)
-"You're like Clint Eastwood with robot arms, wearing an expensive curtain. Who wouldn't want to play that?"
-Conversations are described as "verbal fights", because depending on your actions, you can either "win" (convince people to share info,) draw (they stay tight lipped, but you can keep trying) or lose outright, and they will refuse to talk to you again. The branching conversation trees are so intricate that apparently it takes 6-8 hours for each one (to plan, I assume, rather than each has that many hours of recorded dialogue!)
-Conversations can be quite long, and emotionally heated - more so than we're used to in games. Interesting.
-Hacking minigame: "You play it on a map of the system's internal workings, trying to capture nodes to ultimately reach the registry. Each node captured carries a chance of detection, and if that happens you have to race to the registry before the system's trace reaches you." I don't know about anyone else, but I'm still none the wiser as to how this will work! The fact that this takes place on a screen in real time and you need to keep an eye out for enemies while you're hacking is reconfirmed, which is good.
-You can pick up bodies - dead or alive, though I sense only "alive" if they're unconscious - and hide them.
-Guards can revive other unconscious guards. That's going to screw over the non-lethal players.
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And that's the main article! Here are a few random notes on the screenshots, boxouts and captions:
-Graphics are fine - they're not astounding, but they're perfectly good enough (screw graphics, we're Deus Ex fans!) and those worrying that the game would be limited by the Underworld engine need not worry any more.
-Your pilot is called Faridah Malik.
-There is a hacker called Tong in the game, but it's not Tracer. PC Gamer refrained from giving spoilers on this point, but warned that this was there choice, not an edict from EM, so other articles may give spoilers - watch out.
-"I asked producer David Anfossi if any characters from the original Deus Ex 1 would be returning in person. 'No.' But then, confusingly, he said that they may have 'cameos.' I tried to get a straighter answer from audio director Steve [Thatsurnameagain] by pretending I already knew. Would the returning characters have the same voice actors? 'You'll know a couple of the people...We got the actors from the first game to come back and reprise their roles.'" Sneaky, Tom Francis!
-The helicopter we've seen from the shots of the upcoming trailer looks almost identical (albeit with worse lighting) in engine. And its license number is 800-BEE. This amuses my inner 6 year old (the one I ate earlier.)
-Nothing in the article at all about collecting augs off dead enemies.
-One of the screenshots shows a room with literally hundreds of lightbulbs on the ceiling. No idea what that's all about.
-Some of the screenshots show Adam in third-person, but clearly not in cover or using an aug - judging from the camera angles though, they look like cutscenes (or possibly conversation scenes - have we actually had confirmation lately that these are definitely first person? Nothing in the article says so) rather than further 3rd person gameplay.
Augs:
There's a boxout mentioning some of the augs, I'm not going to type all the detail but here's a brief overview:
-Enhanced vision: See through walls, analyse structures for weak spots to smash through (so not all walls will be breakable, sadly)
-Mind reading: Hinted this is just during conversations, details still fuzzy.
-Mind control: Awesome. There will be social repurcussions for using this.
-Cloak: No mention of whether this affects bots, or if that's a separate aug.
-Claymore: Multi-kill. Boo.
-"Icarus landing system": :Lets you drop from heights silently and safely, or if you hold the fire button, you slam into the ground and stun nearby enemies.
-Strength: As with Deus Ex, but also dampens recoil, and later on lets you punch through selected walls.
-Wrist blades: We know.
-Hacking module: As expected, but one nice feature is you can set off alarms in remote areas to distract guards. Upgrades also make the minigame easier.
-Mysterious splayed hand: Still no details.
Finally, special mention must go to the Boxguard droid - literally, a robot that unfolds from a perfect cube. Despite my misgivings about parts the rest of the game, whoever designed this deserves a pat on the back, this thing is just awesome and I can't wait to see it in motion.
So there you go - lots of detail to pick apart. Enjoy!
