HOME
By Al Giovetti
Price:
Genre:
Release:
Developer:
Developer:
Software Engineer:
Associate Software Engineer:
Designer:
License Holder:
Lead Artist:
Programmer:
ESRB Rating:
Senior Producer:
Producer:
Associate Producer:
Product Manager:
Publisher:
President:
General Manager:
Production Services:
Quality Assurance:
Creative Services:
Phone:
Website:
Requirements:
Recommended:
Deus Ex: Invisable War
Summary * History * Company Line * Game Play * Plot * Graphics * Animation * Voice Actors * Music Score * Sound Effects * Utilities * Multi-player Features * Cheats, Hints, and Walkthrough * Journalists * References * Letters
History
Summary
Company Line
Sequel to the mega award winning DEUS EX - over 30 Game of the Year Awards
You have DECISIVE POWER to create your own experience in an open gameplay environment. With multiple solutions to problems, the game changes to the players method of problem solving - sneak, hack, bribe or kill.
Use biomods to customize, upgrade and exploit the superhuman powers of your character - see through walls, leap 40 feet into the air, regenerate critical body damage or render yourself invisible.
RPG character creation and advancement through choice of biomods, weapons and inventory.
Apply information harvested from conversations with characters to gain access to restricted areas. Or bribe your way into unauthorized areas using cold cash earned through completing multitudes of side-quests.
Experience the peerless action-packed 1st-person thriller that combines shooter, stealth and RPG game-play elements.
Use biomods such as Cloak and Thermal Masking to evade conflict and enter areas undetected by both human and bot enemies.
When subtle methods fail, fall back on a lethal array of close and long range weaponry; stun prod, energy blade, grenades, bolt caster, shotgun, sniper rifle, and the rocket launcher w/ cam-guided missiles.
Completing side-quests for individuals along the way yields wealth and reputation. Bribe your way into unauthorized areas using cold cash earned through your dealings.
Explore a deeply simulated game world, where objects, physics, sound, light and shadow are tools you can use. The state-of-the-art physics system allows for unprecedented interaction with objects in the world.
With multiple solutions to every problem, each game experience is unique.
A dynamic, non-linear story with responsive plot branches and character attitudes that offer you unprecedented freedom.
Variable game-play--multiple solutions to problems and support for varying playstyles.
Non-lethal, non-violent resolution to conflict, allowing you to make an ethical statement through your actions.
Support for stealth game-play, with darkness and sound affecting enemy awareness.
RPG character creation and advancement through choice of biomods, weapons and inventory.
Interactive conversations - all with full audio - offer meaningful, plot-relevant dialogue choices.
A globe-hopping adventure that takes you from the United States to Egypt, Germany, and Antarctica.
BIOMODS
Biomods are modular nanotechnology implants that imbue you with extraordinary abilities. They are your principal operational assets both in and out of combat, as well as your main means of customizing your character.
You have five assigned biomod slots corresponding with various parts of your body. The light biomod is fixed in the sixth slot, and cannot be upgraded or removed. Standard biomod canisters can establish or upgrade any standard biomod in any slot, and black market canisters can establish or upgrade a black market biomod in any slot.
There are two types of biomods, active and passive.
- - Active biomods must be activated to use, and drain bio energy as long as they are in use.
- - Passive biomods are always on. A passive biomod automatically activates when its effect is needed.
Storyline:
It is twenty years since the end of the global conspiracy depicted in Deus Ex. In the aftermath, a catastrophic depression has crippled the world and warring corporate governments use terrorism as the primary tool to enforce their own violently destructive agendas.
A few days before the start of Deus Ex: Invisible War, Alex D is roused from sleep and rushed to a secret airfield to be transported away from the only world he (or she, if the player so chooses) has ever known. Confined to a new training facility in Seattle "for his own safety," Alex learns that the city of Chicago, his home, was completely destroyed by a terrorist nanotech attack.
The only fragments of Alex's former world are now confined to the training facility in Seattle: Billie Adams (a fellow trainee from Chicago), two other students from the Seattle program and - always - the expectation that the mysterious rites and trials of his training will lead to a lucrative job as a corporate mercenary and spy. These things, too, are about to fly apart, however.
As covert anti-terrorist operative Alex D. you are thrust into a hornet's nest of conflict, conspiracy and doubt.
In the huge, free-roaming world of Deus Ex, the challenge is in choosing your allies and your enemies.
Characters:
JC Denton is a male of unknown age who was born at Area 51. JC Denton is the protagonist - you play him in the game.
A former agent for the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition (UNATCO) and a maternal clone of his brother, Paul Denton.
Inciting the events that would bring about the Great Collapse, in 2032 with the help of a secret sect called the Illuminati, JC merged with the Helios AI - a rogue global communications program - with the hope of uniting the world through nanotechnology.
Paul Denton is brother to JC Denton and is a male of unknown age, also born in Area 51.
JC Denton's elder brother and the MJ-12 prototype for biomodification, Paul also disappeared around the time of the Collapse. His actions or even his very survival since that time are not publicly known.
Tracer Tong is a male, age 65 and born in Hong Kong. Tracer Tong is a brilliant engineer and scientist with a long history of working with the Dentons, pre-dating the Collapse. He was JC Denton's first ally after he left UNATCO, lending his skill and knowledge in defeating his government-implanted killswitch and tracking down the secret organizations working for and against him. His current whereabouts are not publicly known, but resourceful hackers and underground technologists can track him down when his expertise is needed.
Dr. Leila Nassif is the female Coordinator of the Seattle Advanced Training Facililty. Born poverty in Cairo, at age 6 Leila Nassif was accepted into a local Tarsus Elementary program on a need-based scholarship. She thrived under the Tarsus program, and over the next 22 years completed an education that culminated in an MS degree in Administrative Science and a medical degree from Seville Medical Center, with certifications in biomodification and psychology. After four years as assistant administrator of the Quito Reconstructive Therapy Center, she was offered her current position.
Despite her youth, Dr. Nassif has shown herself to be fully qualified for her position. Attractive, personable and highly empathic, Dr. Nassif has earned the loyalty and affection of her students. Having herself benefited extensively from Tarsus-backed scholarship programs, she can closely identify with the experiences of her residents. Her deep and abiding loyalty to the underlying principles of Tarsus ensure that she will carry out her mission in the SOR with objectivity and efficiency.
Billie Adams is an SOR Resident in Stage 2 from the New Chicago Faility. Billie was broght into the program around the same time that JC Denton was recruited. In many ways, Billie Adams is both the most and the least successful of the Stage 2 SOR residents. On the one hand, she has absorbed her Stage 1 academic and physical training with an efficiency, and to a degree, that demonstrates her suitability for Stage 2. However, her behavioral adaptability is far less encouraging.
Adams grew up in post-Collapse Old Chicago, and her early experiences on the streets left her cynical and hardened, with a particular mistrust for institutional authority. Her impulses have frequently lead her into conflict, bordering on insubordination, with her instructors. However, she has been retained in the SOR program due to her high competency, as well as her REFERENCE OMITTED AT YOUR SECURITY CLASSIFICATION.
NG Resonance is the boogie queen, a virtual pop star. She is the face of a hundred million teens, the voice towards which they aspire in timbre, tremor and belief. Her sound is the sound of money, control, prediction and profit, yet she herself is a wayward spark, a lit moment in a life robed, sheathed, magnified, and engineered by obscure barons who labor in darkness.
Alex Denton is a 21 year old male affiliated with the Tarsus Academy. Alex's presumed birthplace is Chicago. Alex finds himself a member of the elite Tarsus Intermediary program in Chicago, a training program for augmented antiterrorist and special-ops soldiers.
He is suddenly roused from sleep early one morning amidst chaos and confusion, rushed to a secret airfield, and transported away from the only world he has ever known. Hours later, he finds himself confined to the Tarsus facility in Seattle "for his own safety."
The city of Chicago, his home, has been completely destroyed by a terrorist attack - a devastating self-replicating nanite contagion.
Alex and his peers now stagger into a fractious world, angry, disillusioned and left groping for new loyalties.
Lin May Chen is a female contact for JC Denton in the Order. Lin May is a 25 year old female who was born in Hong Kong. In search of a stronger sense of self and spiritual fulfillment, Lin May Chen was attracted to the Order's message and quickly rose in their ranks. Now a high-placed missionary, seated at Her Holiness' right hand, Lin May has received a special assignment to uncover and halt "horrific" experiments being performed on human beings. The daughter of former MJ-12 conspirator Max Chen, she is devout and serious, dedicated to destroying the kind of inhumane research that has poisoned her father's legacy.
Here at Ion Storm, we sometimes describe the first Deus Ex game as being set "10 minutes before the apocalypse" and describing "the death of the old order."
Similarly, we describe Deus Ex: Invisible War as "10 minutes before the dawn of a new age, the birth of the new world."
The events of the first Deus Ex game plunged the world into chaos and, now, 20 fictional years later, several groups want to set things right, determining the fate of mankind.
- -- There's a religious order that wants to unify the world's religions...
- -- Another group sees salvation in uniting the world economically...
- -- Another wants to see the proliferation of human biomodification while another seeks to preserve the purity of the human race, eradicating biomodification entirely...
It's not so very different from the world we live in today.
However, there's one thing the world of Invisible War has that the real world doesn't -- YOU, in the role of a biomodified anti-terrorist agent named Alex D.
As Alex D, you must decide who to trust, who to oppose and who to support. And, since this is a Deus Ex game, there are many mysteries to explore -- the various factions aren't always what they appear to be and their TRUE goals may differ radically from their PUBLIC goals.
It's quite the conspiratorial smorgasbord, actually!
Who your enemies are will vary depending upon how you play -- the "heroes" and "villains" of the piece are determined less by designer fiat and more by your feelings, your actions and your interactions with the people you meet.
Fans of the first game will be pleased to find that some of their old favorite characters make repeat appearances in Invisible War, though often in new and different roles. (Even J.C. Denton, the hero of the first Deus Ex game, and Paul Denton, J.C's brother, make a critically important appearance in Invisible War.)
And since it's 20 years later, you're no longer the only biomodded human, as you were in Deus Ex -- now, there are others like you, and they all have their own thoughts about who's right and who's wrong in the global conflict.
So how will you use your power to solve the world's problems? Who will you side with and who will you try to stop? How will you do it? As the stealthy assassin, the deadly soldier, the charismatic hacker? The tools are there to support all of these choices and more. The world is as responsive as any you've seen in a game.
The choices are yours to make. Choose wisely. The fate of the world is in your hands...
Game Play
Inventory only allows you to carry 12 items. If you use the included strength biomodification you can carry 14 items. The game player will be required to play around adjusting inventory for hours. There is no excuse for coming up with a limited inventory system in today's games. Limited inventory adds complications that may or may not exist in real life. Inventory reality is simply an excuse to add a level of complexity that is irrelevant to the game play and plot which will use up game time. Limited inventory systems add nothing to game play.
Jumping while crouched takes a little work to get into cramped spaces like air conditioning ducts or windows while breaking and entering. This is another area the interface could have used some work. Jumping repeatedly to get into an airconditioning duct or a window is a waste of time.
There is a jumping and climbing sequence in the greenhouse in Cairo. Good thing the sequence is optional. This is the most obnoxious set of jumps and climbs ever put in a video game since Prince of Persia 3D.
Plot
M for mature seems to be a misnomer. Is it mature to kill all your enemies even those who do not believe in killing thier enemies. Is the death penalty warrented for a group of people who strive for a utopian world where everyone is equal physically and cybernetically and the internet is used to poll their public opinion when passing laws?
Nevertheless, at the end of Deus Ex, your avitar, Alex Denton will be required to choose between a multitude of evils. As one of his advarsaries concludes one of the evils is the best of all presented. But actually, the evil this biomodified female classmate is promoting is really worse than all the other choices.
The most moral choice presented to the gameplayer is to kill all his enemies and go renegade and become a rogue of all authority. Matrurity and morality do not seem to go hand in hand in the universe of Deus Ex. Was this why the M for Mature moniker was hung on this game.
I a bored and disgusted by games that pursue violent solutions to disagreement. Murder is not Mature. Finding a non-violent solution to a problem shows maturity.
Deus Ex should be applauded for providing the choice of playing the game in stealth mode where you turn off the turrets which kill and can seek non-violent solutions to problems.
As the game progresses the non-violent solutions become harder and harder to find. You can no longer beat up the evil players in power armor but are required to kill them. These adversaries explode and die no matter how you attack them.
Talking with people in the game whenever you can is a very good option. Talking does little to avert violence and will often lead to violence. The player must be very careful to watch what he or she says to the enemy.
Deus Ex Machina or god from machine seems to be the theme of the game. A hero
Graphics
Animation
Voice Actors
Music Score
Sound Effects
Utilities
The save game system auto saves your game at the beginning of a new location or when moving from one location to another. You can activate this save by selecting the current save from the game load menu. If you are not careful you could load an earlier save and replace the autosave at the beginning for the area with another new autosave. The system seems to be flawed. It is better to autosave than to not autosave so the confusion can be eliminated by saving the game to a regular save game slot when entering an area.
Adventure games should have an autmapping system. Providing the player with a graphic reader function with a map is a good idea and helps the player get around. A better idea is to have an online automap that shows the player where they are at all times and which activates as the player explores the terrain using normal fog of war rules.
Some game players prefer to play without maps. The map should always be included as an option. The dynamic automap is better than a static graphic map.