We sat out April Fools’ Day entirely on RPS, because we are cheerless fucks who can’t abide even the mere idea of other people having a laugh. Also because it was a bank holiday in the UK, but, y’know, principles.> The upside of this is that I can safely ignore everything which arrived in my inbox yesterday. The downside is that a couple of genuinely lovely things get overlooked. Thus, I shall break all the rules and not overlook a couple of them after all. For instance, Eidos Montreal’s Deus Ex: Human Defiance, which starts off with the rather videogames industry-stereotypical April 1 jape of ‘hey wouldn’t it be funny if we went retro?’ but winds up, perhaps inadvertently, making a 16-bit, 2D, reductive Deus Ex look hugely appealing. (more…)

Following his exploration of that murky world of game-to-film adaptations, movie brat David Valjalo finds himself in deep debate with Deus Ex overlord David Anfossi, talking cyberpunk, Sergio Leone and why the forthcoming Deus Ex film will break the trend and be one to watch.> (more…)

Now, don’t go jumping to any conclusions just yet. That’s how poor old Richard Kimble ended up having such a hard time of things. All that’s happened is that Squeenix have taken out a trademark in the name of ‘Deus Ex: Human Defiance.’ It could be anything. It could be nothing. It could be a game. It could be a movie. It could be another ropey spin-off comic. It could be a typo. It could be the official Deus Ex pancake mix.

It’s probably a game though, innit? (more…)

Somewhat surprisingly (by which I mean completely unsurprisingly, given the era in which we live), Tomb Raider has multiplayer. Naturally, this has been a source of great outrage among even the least fly-harming-est of gamers, as it’s a distinct disruption of The Natural Order. Granted, it does have two things working in its favor: 1) Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light added co-op multi to pretty great effect and 2) the mode’s an entirely separate, presumably cybernetic leg of the game being attached by none other than Deus Ex: Human Revolution developer Eidos Montreal. Here, now, brown cow, is a video of some finely mustachioed men introducing it to the star of spy dramadey Chuck for some reason.

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Insatiable film fiend David Valjalo stops by to offer his musings on adapting the unadaptables – how Hollywood has its work cut out for it, what we can read into the studios and production houses attached to silver screen versions of Deus Ex, Splinter Cell and Assassin’s Creed, formalist vs realist styles, the need to make 20-hour, splintered narratives conform to the three-act structure, why auteur directors aren’t the solution we might think they are, and why Russell Crowe is abstractly key to getting game to film right.> (more…)

Why distort one beloved franchise when you can do two at once? The latest DLC for Hitman: Ablutions once again fails to add new missions, ideally in a Streets of Hope vein, but instead a new costume and gun which can only be used in the Contracts mode. This new costume is the kevlar’n'metal duds of one Adam Jensen, he of Deus Ex: Human Revolution fame. This happens due to Hitman and Deux Ex being publisher stablemates, of course. As far as I can tell there is no narrative justification for why Baldy McChoke would come to acquire the augmented form of a mopey, bearded cyborg from the future, but hell, if Ridley Scott can contrive to unite the Blade Runner and Alien universes then this is no less silly.

The DXHR togs do make 47 look a bit like Gunther, mind. (more…)

Videogame movies! No one really asked for them, but we’re getting them anyway. I now imagine Ezio and Adam Jensen leaping hand-in-hand off the rooftop that is their medium of choice, but with Jensen engaging the Icarus Landing System while Ezio dies horribly because hay doesn’t work that way. At any rate, Deus Ex‘s film rights have officially fallen into the hands of CBS Films, and Human Revolution – not the original or Invisible War – will be its foundation.

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Right, Deus Ex is back on its feet and looking hale and hearty, whether it asked for this or not. What vintage PC game shall the electro-paddles be applied to next? Why, it’s Thief IV, a game about which we currently know all but nothing other than that Eidos Montreal are pulling the strings again and, I am 99.99% sure, it’ll have some sort of funny subitle rather than a number in the name. Well, anything’s better than ‘Thi4f’, right?

An industrious fellow on Neogaf has done a spot of digging around the quiet info-goldmine that is LinkedIn, and turned up a couple of starting, tantalising facts. Let’s have a look, and then hear what assorted Thief fans want to see from the new game. (more…)

Gameworlds have become ever-more lavish, but has there been a dark price paid for this? Craig Lager believes so. Production values are up but these worlds don’t seem to react to players’ actions as fulsomely as they once did, he worries – are we allowing games’ strange logic to take us for granted? But there is yet hope. Frowned at: Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Dragon Age II, Skyrim. Smiled at: The Witcher 2, Dwarf Fortress, Outcast. Please note these are Craig’s views, not necessarily those of RPS.>

In my version of Human Revolution, the police station should be surrounded. There should be SWAT teams, negotiators, probably even an evacuation zone. Adam Jensen’s face should be being projected from every single screen that litters Detroit’s streets as Eliza explains him as being a more-than-prime-suspect in a new, horiffic incident. An hour ago, she would explain, Jensen asked for access to the police morgue and was declined. Now the back door has been broken into, and a path of corpses and hacked computers lead to the morgue in which a body has been clearly tampered with. Instead, Jensen walks into the main lobby and is greeted with “Hello”. (more…)

Deus Ex: Human Revolutions’s first piece of expansion DLC turns up on the 18th, for the price of $14.99 USD, €10.99, or £8.99. I’ve been having a bit of a play, and I’ll be able to tell you a bit more – while attempting to dodge spoilers (there are few quite stealthy ones, but nothing fatal) – below.> (more…)