Deus Ex: Invisible War
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| Deux Ex: Invisible War {{#if:{{{image|}}}|<tr><td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;">{{{image|}}} | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Ion Storm Inc. {{#if:{{{publisher|}}}|<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Publisher(s)<td>{{{publisher|}}} |
| Release date(s) | December 3, 2003 |
| Genre(s) | FPS, RPG |
| Mode(s) | Single player {{#if:{{{ratings|}}}|<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Rating(s)<td>{{{ratings|}}} |
| Platform(s) | Windows, Xbox {{#if:{{{media|}}}|<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Media<td>{{{media|}}} |
Deux Ex: Invisible War is a computer game produced by now-defunct developer Ion Storm. It is the sequel to Deus Ex (2000). It was released for Microsoft Windows computers and the Xbox game console in the U.S. on December 3, 2003, with a worldwide release scheduled for January 2004. There is no indication of the game being ported to other platforms.
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Overview
The protagonist of the game is "Alex D.", a 21-year-old (players can pick both Alex's gender and skin color). Some of the characters from the original game reprise their roles in this sequel - including Paul Denton, Tracer Tong, Nicolette DuClare, Chad Dumier and JC Denton (the previous game's protagonist). As before, the action takes place in a number of real-world locations, including Seattle, an arcology and surrounding Medina in Cairo, the Black Gate and its environs in Trier in Germany, Antarctica, and concluding on an ice-bound Liberty Island, the starting point of the first game.
Like its predecessor, the game features nonlinear gameplay, while still retaining a largely linear central plot. Similarly, nanotechnology and conspiracy theories again play a major role in the action, and action once more concerns the conflict between the WTO, The Order (both of them later show up to be branches of Illuminati) and Knights Templar. However, some players feel that an in-depth story line took a back seat for more action. This is possibly due to the removal of some items from the original Deus Ex, such as computers that allow the player to read email, as well as less character development.
Criticisms
Unlike the original game, Invisible War was intended from the outset to run on both the PC and a console platform, and its design reflects this; many elements of the game appear to be a compromise between the abilities and environments of both platforms. Some players perceived this dual release as Ion Storm "selling out" to the console crowd. Indeed, the initial (unpatched) default.ini file had many irrelevant configurations or misconfigurations; this ranged from Thief: Deadly Shadows references, (a game also developed by Ion Storm) to outright misconfigurations that included the Field of View being set to Xbox settings, and even a number of sections with Xbox hardware configurations.
In fan communities, debate has raged over what effect various design changes have had on the experience of the game: some fans have voiced concern that the game has been "streamlined" (simplified) too much, with others agreeing that the changes were for the best. The game received generally positive reviews on its release, although devoted Deus Ex fans were quick to reveal the occasional low-scoring rating. The game was criticised for its inability to run on certain graphics cards, such as the GeForce 4 MX line of graphics cards from Nvidia due to its lack of pixel shaders and for the relative shortness of the game compared to Deus Ex. The graphical performance of the game was also an issue many fans brought up; performance on the PC was reported to be dramatically worse on ATI Radeon video cards than comparable Nvidia GeForce products, and a number of reviews pointed out that framerates on the Xbox seemed very low. Still other fans voiced concerns over the relative low quality of the in-game textures. A few even went so far as to create the DX2 HighRes Texture Pack, a community-made texture upgrade package which replaces existing in-game textures on the PC with high resolution fan-made versions.
Ion Storm has already released two patches for the game to address some major concerns. However, many players argue that these do not go far enough and that the game is still problematic. At the time of release, a pinned thread on the official forums was available for configuration modifications, although the most offending problems -- such as the Xbox-oriented HUD position, slow mouse response time, and inability to disable shadows -- were corrected with the aforementioned patches.
According to the publishers, Invisible War met sales expectations both on Xbox and PC.
Gameplay
Similar to the original Deus Ex, gameplay consists of a mix of exploring city environments and conversing with the inhabitants, and infiltrating facilities patrolled by hostile guards. Players are usually presented with multiple approaches to any given problem; they can bypass obstacles by crawling around in the air vents, use shadows to sneak past enemies, or simply use their weapons to kill everything in sight.
Presentation
Invisible War uses a heavily modified version of the Unreal Engine 2 developed by Epic Games, Inc. Amongst the added or replaced features are a custom renderer with real-time lighting and the Havok v2.0 middleware physics engine, as opposed to the Unreal Engine's Karma middleware solution. Havok v2.0 is also seen in such titles as Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, Half-Life 2 and Painkiller. Every object in the world has a size, weight, and mass, and can be picked up and thrown, nudged, or blown around by the force of an explosion. Lights can be moved, and this alters the shadows cast by objects.
As a consequence of console-oriented development, the game's levels are significantly smaller than those seen in the original Deus Ex. Console-oriented development also has had consequences for the game's graphics: the game's characters are a bit less detailed and have somewhat lower polygon counts than those seen in, for example Unreal II.
Many other features, such as visual "bloom", which creates a slight blurring of the game's lighting similar to a streetlamp on a foggy day, were intended as aesthetic choices but perceived by customers as a console-centric modification. In the case of bloom, what was meant to create a noir mood simply caused the image to appear somewhat fuzzy and out-of-focus, leading players to believe that the effect had been put in place to save processing power.
Differences from the original Deus Ex
- Character development has been simplified significantly in Invisible War. Players no longer earn "skill points" from completing objectives for upgrading their character's abilities. Instead, the player character starts without any limits to his or her normal abilities (such as aiming, proficiency with items, etc.) All upgrades are achieved through acquiring biomods that give the player character special powers (such as increased strength, invisibility, or the ability to control robots) but cost energy to use.
- Combat is also more action-oriented than in the original Deus Ex. Weapons no longer have a varying reticle to simulate weapon inexperience or inaccuracy while moving — a player simply needs to point and shoot. Both the player and enemy characters can withstand more damage than in the previous game, making player death less common. Enemies are more maneuverable than those in the original game (capable of side-stepping, rolling, and running behind cover), but compared to other first-person shooters released at the time, the AI is slower, less responsive, and inefficient at navigating the game environment.
- Instead of different ammunition types for each gun, all weapons draw from the player's reserve of "Universal Ammo". Each gun uses a different amount of Universal Ammo per shot, with weak weapons such as the pistol using very little ammo, and strong weapons such as the rocket launcher using large amounts of ammo. The drawback of this system is that, once a player runs out of ammo, none of the weapons are usable. The player can carry enough ammo to kill at most a dozen people before running out. However, almost all killed enemies drop partially full clips of ammo to replenish the stock; also, weapon modifications can reduce ammunition consumption.
- Biomods function similarly to the nano-augmentations of the original Deus Ex. The major difference is that they are not permanent, and can be swapped for a different biomod if the situation requires it. Some biomods, such as the ability to hack computers, replace abilities that are acquired in Deus Ex through use of skill points. There are also far fewer biomods in Invisible War.
- Damage is no longer modular. Instead of having separate health for the player's head, torso, and appendages, the player has a common pool of 130 hit points which varies based upon the selected difficulty. Similarly, enemies sustain the same amount of damage regardless of where they are injured. For many weapons, headshots do not do extra damage (the only weapons that do still cause headshots are the pistol and the sniper rifle). Originally, headshots from the pistol did not instantly kill an enemy, requiring 3 or 4 headshots. However, the second patch released increased the pistol headshot multiplier, meaning that it now takes approximately 1 or 2 headshots to take down an enemy.
- The inventory system has been simplified. In the original Deus Ex, objects take up different amounts of space in the player's inventory. In Invisible War, object size is irrelevant, with the player being able to carry 12 or more categories of objects (such as weapons, grenades, or medkits) at any one time. Similar small items are stacked, so that one inventory slot may contain multiple small items. The size of the player's inventory can be changed with certain biomods.
- The story is now told more through character interactions than through hacking computers and reading emails. Books and newspapers in the game world are still readable.
- Levels are significantly smaller due to the compromises in simultaneous PC and Xbox development. The Xbox's 64 MB of RAM caused each level to be broken up into smaller areas. The available space is more densely layered, with overhead airvents, underground tunnels, and multiple story buildings.
- The original Deus Ex renders certain characters invulnerable to damage, to prevent the player from disrupting the plot at various points in the game. Invisible War handles this differently, by designating certain areas in which player weapons are disabled, and throwing heavy objects causes no damage. All characters outside of these areas can be harmed and killed. This violates a premise of the game, that you can kill whoever you want. There are times, namely through use of glitches, where a player can take a shot at a target, and he will not die however much damage is dealt.
- The appearance of "multitools" has changed significantly from the original game, in which they resembled mobile phones. Now they look more like screwdrivers. They now also perform the functions that lockpicks did in the original game.
Plot
The player character, Alex D, begins the game learning that there was some sort of terrorist attack in Chicago. The terrorists appeared to be seeking some sort of laboratory in Chicago. Alex is one of the trainees of this laboratory. Alex and the project leaders are safely evacuated before the city is seemingly destroyed. After being moved to the Seattle facility, Alex and fellow program trainees Billie Adams, Leo Jankowski and Klara Sparks are kept in the dark about what really happened to Chicago. However, they are attacked by Seeker warriors of The Order Church. The player, as Alex, must then escape the lab, and find out what has been happening.
Characters and organizations
- Main article: Deus Ex: Invisible War characters
See also
External links
- Official Website displays game site maintenance message
- Ion Storm Homepage temporarily down as Eidos performs maintenance
- PlanetDeusEx Fan Website
- Retexturing Project for the PC Version
- Template:Moby game