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AT THE CONCLUSION OF the original Deus Ex, players were presented with three choices that would determine the shape of human society for the next few decades, if not longer. Invisible War picks up twenty years later as you traverse the world that was created by that choice. No longer JC Denton, you play Alex, an inductee to the Tarsus Training Academy who rapidly discovers that the life led thus far has been something of a sham. Far from being an inductee you seem closer to an experiment being closely monitored although you have little time to contemplate this as the facility you are in is under attack. Escaping into upper Seattle you become a free agent learning about the world at large and being courted by a variety of factions who desire your unique help. It becomes your task to discover exactly what was going on and make choices towards the future based on how you feel about it.
A floating patrol bot.
Expect to encounter a variety of robots.
The story is one of the strongest points of the game, especially if you take the time to seek out all the snippets of text and conversations possible within the game. A nice touch is the variability of those conversations depending on missions taken elsewhere and even minor changes based on the sex of the player. (Like the original, your in-game appearance is selectable with the sequel allowing you pick a sex as well as choose from a selection of skin colours.) Combine that with news reports that reference events from previous cities and you have a strong sense of having an impact in the world, that youir choices actually matter.
It is all smoke and mirrors, of course, but it is a surprisingly good attempt with only a little linguistic clumsiness required to support it. It is especially remarkable when you consider that every conversation within the game has matching spoken dialog to go with it something that few RPGs manage. Even the excellent Knights of the Old Realm frequently resorted to an intelligible singular per species 'alien speech' sound to cover a lot of its conversations. It's a real feat to pack all that onto two CDs worth of game data.
This area is illuminated by a rotating light,
so imagine those shadows moving as the light does
and you have some idea of how moody the game can be...
Getting to hear those conversations requires a similar mix of FPS and RPG game mechanics to the first game, although the sequel has had the original's slightly more arcane mix of skills, biomods and inventory management tweaked. Quite a few of the changes made have been very controversial with some of the fans of the first game. For starters the skill system has been entirely removed and the functionality of that has been collapsed into the biomod system.
For instance, how to learn the hack skill: you must augment yourself with the right biomod rather than putting skill points into the hack skill. Given that skills within the first game often overlapped biomod functionality, this tweak is actually an improvement. It is now harder to create a character that is universally capable and you are forced to consider the style of play you are aiming for. Similary the inventory system has been overhauled to have twelve slots that contain one type of equipment per slot. You very rapidly fill this and have to make choices about what kind of equipment you need. |
