I’ve played Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] and I liked what I saw. A brief visit to just two areas suggested a more confident and open approach to first-person stealth-action. My preview focused on the level design because that’s where most of the improvements seemed to be but Eidos Montreal are also determined to improve player character Adam Jensen. That’s already evident in the improved control scheme, particularly as it relates to use of cover, but it’ll also be felt in his new augmented abilities. You can see some of those in the new trailer below.

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Deus Ex: Mankind Divided[official site] is already looking like a worthy follow-up to Human Revolution as well as an inventive prequel to Ion Storm’s original cyberpunk classic. When we visited the studio to play the game earlier this month, we also spent time talking to two of the brains behind the game about the inspirations and processes that go into this bleak vision of the future.

First up, here’s Jonathan Jacques-Bellet te, executive art director at the studio. We spoke to him about collaborative storytelling, fashion, architecture and graphic design. Along the way we learned about content cut from Human Revolution, the places that Deus Ex is going next and why Jacques-Bellet te believes that India could be a perfect cyberpunk setting.

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Deus Ex: Revision [official site] is a project that overhauls “the environments and soundtrack” of Ion Storm’s classic, and it’s out now on Steam. The release has the backing of Deus Ex’s current publishers and developers (Square Enix and Eidos Montreal), and is designed to work exclusively with the Steam release of the original.

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The Deus Ex series, with its highest of highs and most middling of lows, is 15 years old. Old men, running the world. But not complicated pre-order schemes. They can’t run those, it appears. The anniversary is being used to promote upcoming fourth game Mankind Divided, due out in February (thus I will be a man divided between it and XCOM 2), and so we get this animated trailer which is mostly tease for the new title but does include various shots of characters from the first game. Who ever would have thought glimpses of Bob Page and Walton Simmons could make us feel so warm and fuzzy?

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Here s a thing I love: going back to an involved game after weeks, months or even years away, after life got in the way or you hit a brick wall, and abruptly abandoned that world. Starting a brand new game from scratch can never offer the same delightful confusion, even though you begin it from a place of even greater ignorance.

Without fail, I go back in to an abandoned game convinced I know how to play it, that it s a simple matter of resumption and I ll be romping through it as if I d never been away. Then, crushing reality. It s not simply that it takes some time to remember the controls, or the flow of combat, or which device is needed for which action. It s re-establishing the motivation. What was it that drove me onwards? … [visit site to read more]

Level 28! No, the other kind of level. The type that you run around in, shooting people or jumping on their heads and that sort of thing. Adam, Alec, Alice and Graham gather to discuss their favourite levels and/or maps from across the vast length of PC gaming, including selections from Deus Ex, Call of Duty and Quake III. Someone even makes a case for Xen from Half-Life, and means it.

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An entirely objective ranking of the 50 best PC RPGs ever released. Covering the entire history of computer role-playing games is a daunting task and attempting to place the best games in such a broad genre in any kind of order is even more daunting. Thankfully, we are equal to all tasks and below, you will find the best fifty PC RPGs of all time.

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I know it’s not really called Deus Ex 4 in any shape or form, but ‘Deus Ex: Mankind Divided‘ [official site] is long and headlines boxes are short. You get the point though: here’s the best part of half an hour of Adam Jensen asking for it in Square’s upcoming stealth-or-death sequel. On show: new augmentations, purportedly improved combat, ‘social boss fight system’, a gun which fires swords from your wrist and a new, grumpy pilot who keeps talking about coffee.

Also, it’s very pretty, but my graphics card is frightened. Video and my own notes on it below, anyway. … [visit site to read more]

You didn’t ask for this. You didn’t ask for this because if you know the I Didn’t Ask For This meme then surely you already own Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and thus have no interest in it being discounted to 3.99 in a pack also including Deus Ex 1 and Invisible Whatever. What a shame. But if you don’t> already own Human Revolution, then oh my God this price is the bomb! The bomb! … [visit site to read more]

Texture packs, replacement models, and post-processing mods can do a lot to pretty a game up, but they can’t conceal that jagged old level geometry. It’s an awful lot more work to re-do and update levels but by gum, the folks at Deus Ex: Revision are putting in the time. The Caustic Creative team have been tarting up and reworking Deus Ex‘s levels with more props, more decorative architecture, and fancier lighting.

Version 1.0 of the “re-imagining” mod had been due on May 12 but due a mysterious alluring offer it’s pushed back into the nebulous “near future,” those PC Gamer chaps have spotted. In the meantime, we’ll have to make do with a new video showing off a few of the reworked levels.

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