PC Zone travelled to Austin, Texas to meet the Ion Storm, the team working on the sequel to one of the best games ever made. Jamie Sefton was the only journalist allowed to play Warren Spector's latest conspiracy-laden masterpiece. You don't get luckier
Austin, Texas in the US of A. It's early February, but the dry heat of the midday sun is already scorching the wide, immaculately swept streets in their strict mathematical grids - the town planners here had the luxury of having hundreds of square miles of desert to play with. Just north of the Lone Star State's gleaming capital lies Dallas, which on November 22, 1963, became the notorious setting for the assassination of president John F Kennedy.
When we mentioned that one of the world's most famous conspiracies supposedly took place only 180 miles away to the creator of the conspiracy-filled first-person shooter/RPG hybrid Deus Ex, he completely pulled the rug on us. "The amusing thing is I don't believe in any of that stuff. Ask anyone. I believe - and I'm not kidding here - that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing JFK. I absolutely do not believe in conspiracies."
PC Zone is here at Ion Storm Austin with studio director Warren Spector to playtest the latest build of one of the most eagerly-awaited sequels in videogame history - Deus Ex 2: Invisible War. The development team, which also includes producer Bill Money and project director Harvey Smith, is understandably excited about showing off the new game, which has only very recently come together in playable form. "The best thing about getting to do a second game like this is you get to look back at the first game and think about what we got right, and what we got wrong so you can address it," says Spector. "A lot of people say that a second game stifles creativity - I simply don't buy that."
New Beginnings Invisible War begins with a disturbing intro FMV that was shown to us in an early 'animatic' form - basically a rough cut to give an impression of the finished product.
As atmospheric electronic music kicks in, the camera zooms into a scene in downtown Chicago where a figure is desperately evading the attentions of several futuristic helicopters and troopers. The action moves deep within the headquarters of the powerful TARSUS group, where two figures are discussing the appearance of a terrorist who may be targeting their organisation.
Cut back to the streets where a hooded figure steps out into traffic and takes out a Nanite Detonator. Robots try to tackle the terrorist, but he snaps the purple vial releasing a wave of energy that begins to spread out, disintegrating everything around it. People run away, screaming briefly before they are destroyed in a millisecond, as the two figures from TARSUS manage to escape from the destruction of the city in a waiting helicopter. "We aren't equipped to fight a war!" says the woman. "We're going to change the terms of engagement," replies the man. "We don't need cities or armies. We have the cells of human bodies. An invisible weapon for an invisible war."
Set 15 years after the original Deus Ex, Invisible War delivers a dark, dystopian world in which nano-technology is widespread, and a catastrophic worldwide economic crash has left various socio-political factions fighting for power. You play as Alex D, a next-generation clone of JC Denton, and have the choice of being male or female. Apart from having repercussions on how the game plays, this has also meant a massive amount of work for Ion Storm to implement thousands of voice lines for each gender - as well as options for skin tone, hair and clothing.
Alex D begins the game being sheltered by TARSUS, and after escaping from the destruction of Chicago, makes for a Seattle facility where he/she meets other augmented humans from the same experimental program.
When asked about which of Deus Ex's original three endings Invisible War has picked up from, Spector insisted that the team keep schtum. "One of the things we did on the first game was that we didn't talk about the story much at all," explains Spector. "Deus Ex was a game about conspiracies and mysteries that the player got to solve, and Invisible War is pretty much the same thing. Gamers discover stuff and it really means something to them as they play."
Harvey Smith did at least assure us we won't be seeing JC waking up in his apartment, rubbing the sleep from his augmented eyes and sighing with relief that Deus Ex was all a bad dream. "No, it's nothing like that! In RPGs you start the player off fresh, so you can build them up again. But we didn't want to do something cheesy like making the player JC again. You're playing Alex D who has genetically descended from JC, so you're almost him, but you're still separate. A cool thing is that you can actually take JC on in a fight. He'll be pretty formidable."
Power to the people Ion Storm went on to explain the changes they have made to the nano-technology upgrade system (a techno version of RPG level-ups) used to boost your player character. "A huge part of the game is that you can power yourself up in different directions - two people can end up with radically different interpretations of their abilities," continued Smith. In the original Deus Ex you had a choice of nine augmentations for specific body areas to improve physical attributes, and 11 other skills including lock-picking and computer hacking. For Invisible War, the skills and augmentations have been unified into a single system known as bio-modifications, that are powered by your rechargeable internal energy supply.
The body shop Each of the 21 or so bio-mods offers two types of upgrade, such as the choice between a spy drone or enhanced vision for the eyes. In addition, the nine player bio-mod slots have three levels, each with a dramatic change of function. Alex D's enhanced vision bio-mod, for example, can progress from night vision on level one, to seeing people through walls on level two, and finally to being able to see both organic and non-organic objects through walls on level three.
You'll also be able to buy black market bio-mods (and weapons) from a creepy organisation of rubber mask-wearing gangsters called The Omar. Among these illegal upgrades are a very smart bot domination augmentation (see I, Robot boxout) and a health regeneration drone that coalesces out of thin air and proceeds to look for corpses or unconscious bodies that it can break down into useful cellular material, like a high-tech vampire.
Another new addition is the ability to change any of your bio-mods once they've been installed. "A lot of people thought that in the last Deus Ex they got trapped into their powers, that they couldn't change their skills and augmentations after they'd chosen them," continues Smith. "What we've done is allow you to install something over the top of an old bio-mod, restoring it to level one. But although you've been able to change bio-mods, you might not be able to max out the new mod to level three."
Deus Ex: Invisible War continues the globe-trotting nature of the first game, visiting Chicago, Seattle, Antarctica, Cairo, Triere in Germany and another unrevealed final location. One of Ion Storm's main objectives from a design perspective is to make sure the game differentiates itself enough from the movie, The Matrix. "When The Matrix came out it had guys wearing long, black trench coats and we were like, 'Damn!' Deus Ex is a futuristic sci-fi game where everyone wears long, black trench coats, what are we going to do now?" complains Smith. "So, for Invisible War we wanted to come up with a slightly different look and are currently working on some new concepts. It'll be different, but people should still recognise it as Deus Ex."
Each character model is made up of 3,000 polygons, but because of the dynamic lighting used in the Unreal engine, it looks much higher - an ingenious technique used throughout DX2 to produce 3D textures from flat surfaces, resulting in graphically richer environments. Returning characters such as the Hong Kong scientist Tracer Tong (being kept alive by life-extending nano-bots), now have realistic facial expressions and deep scars that catch the light, while soldiers have combat fatigues that wrinkle. On top of this, metal robots and rubber floors really look like they are made from real materials, complete with shadows that move correctly across their surfaces.
"For many other games, dynamic lighting and real volumetric shadows are just pretty pictures - they are there to make the game look cool," says Spector. "But for us it's gameplay. You're going to be able to truly create your own darkness in which to hide, and the AI is tuned to support that kind of stealth, as well as notice when lights have changed."
The light fantastic Every light in DX2 is dynamic rather than fixed, which apparently comes at no extra performance cost - Ion Storm is working towards 30fps running on a minimum spec PC of around a Pentium III 850 and GeForce 3-level graphics card. An explosion in a room will cause the light fittings to sway, changing shadows in real-time. Flares can be used by your character to illuminate dark areas and new flying hunter-killer robots with built-in lights can throw their beam on you to reveal your supposedly well-hidden position.
As producer Bill Money walked us through the Antarctic base level, he showed off various other graphical jiggery-pokery including the smoke and fire effects from Alex D's flamethrower, the air conditioning fans that project shadows on the floor, and the first examples of the impressive new Havok physics system. Although Ion Storm refers to it as 'version 1.0', the results are already very cool. For example, if shot at, barrels now send out steady jets of ominous green gas from different angles depending on where they were hit. "Everything we have in the game we try and use for some kind of gameplay, so there are bio-mods that allow you to survive in toxic environments," adds Money. "You can be the guy who shoots gas barrels so a room is full of poisonous fumes and then craftily leads enemies into it, where they'll choke to death."
Yet the most disturbing aspect of the physics technology will be familiar to PC gamers who've played any recent first-person shooters - ragdolls. In Deus Ex, death animations were pre-animated, so that enemies who died side-by-side would assume the same pose, as well as sticking out over ledges and stairways in a highly unconvincing impression of rigor-mortis. Not anymore. Human and robot characters are now modelled in 3D and given a mass and weight in the virtual environment, with certain physical restrictions to prevent arms from bending the wrong way or turning people into squid (see the physics special report on page 16 for more details). "Ragdolling is really creepy," says Smith. "It actually makes you stop and think about the fact that you've just taken down a human being."
Everybody wants to rule the world The genius of Invisible War, like Deus Ex, is that decisions you make at particular points in the game will have massive repercussions on what happens next. Your allegiances change considerably as part of multi-branching storylines that will present the player with no less than four different endings. And which organisation you team up with ultimately affects your relationship with the others.
The long grasping fingers of the Illuminati return once again, as does a pseudo New Age religious group called The Order, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), The Templars, and the corporation that shields Alex D at the beginning of the game, TARSUS. And did we mention JC Denton? "A lot of the time the organisations will send you on missions that are mutually exclusive," says Smith. "As a result we reveal different characters and doors in a mission, so they play a little differently depending on who your friends and enemies are."
Bullet time After the excellent demonstration of the game by the DX2 team, there was only one thing left to do - play it. Ion Storm gave us a unique hands-on play of a level set in the Seattle penthouse apartment of a character called the Minister of Culture. We began outside the door of the Minister's gaff and decided to try to con the security guard to let us in, using Deus Ex's adventure-style speech interface to speak into the intercom. No luck. Of course we could've also hacked the keycode with a multi-tool, or maybe looked for a handy air-duct, but in the end we picked the lock of a service door leading to the roof above the flat.
Stop thief! Up top, an aerial security bot was patrolling the area, only giving us time to get into the apartment through the glass skylights - also guarded by the familiar red glow of a laser-triggered alarm system. This was where we could test out the new ability to add modifications to weapons, allowing you to custom-make your own armoury. We had a blaster fitted with a stealth modification that changed the basic weapon into a blaster stabilizer - an espionage tool that can melt glass without setting off alarms. Another example of a weapon mod is the targeting computer that makes bullets swarm towards your foe like hornets - although the team hasn't decided yet how many mods you'll be eventually allowed to add to your home-made bang stick.Once we used the blaster stabilizer, we could sneak into the apartment undetected. But it goes without saying that in the DX2 world we could've found numerous other ways into the flat, including cutting the power to the alarms. Inside we found the Minister in the kitchen, and feelingparticularly violent, we emptied a few rounds into his head, dropping him to the floor in a heap. Though it's not implemeted yet, Spector promises that they won't shy away from blood either. "This isn't a fetishistic thing, though. It's about letting players do what they want, and showing them the consequences of their actions. If you go through the game shooting at everything that moves, there is a price to pay - and it's a stiff one."
Instead of having to search bodies, characters now just drop any weapons or health they have, leaving the body free for you to pick up and dump in a corner away from prying electronic eyes. The AI of all the robots and humans in the game is still being tweaked to ensure that the behaviour is as realistic as possible, so guards will actively look for you if a body is discovered for example - but it's a massive undertaking with the fact that every object in the Deus Ex 2 world is dynamic. "What other game has to cope with the fact that you might throw a chair in front of a character?" asks Spector. "The AI also has to respond to whether you killed anybody - a friend, an enemy, or a hundred people. Plus we have AI that actually exploits the kind of lighting were doing. Nobody in the world has ever done that!"
Conspiracy theories Warren Spector, Bill Money, Harvey Smith and the rest of the Austin team still have many months of work ahead, but the signs are that DX2 will eclipse its illustrious predecessor in every way. There are still no plans for any multiplayer options as, according to Smith, "Our number one priority is making a game that's loyal to the first one. Down the road we may do level co-op or something, but it's a whole new set of design challenges."
With ground-breaking adaptive AI, cool futuristic weaponry, multi-branching storylines, unscripted challenge-solving and four different endings, Invisible War is a sci-fi action RPG that everyone should be gasping to play.
But is Spector really sceptical of the conspiracy theories in his games? "In my experience, human beings are not capable of keeping secrets. Anything that the conspiracy buffs really believe, we would simply know about. I can point you to the real-world research on nano-augmentation going on. In fact, there was some conspiratorial stuff that was so off-the-wall, if we'd put it in the game, everyone would've thought we were making it up. Somebody, somewhere believes everything in Deus Ex."
Warren Spector was not happy with the HUD from Deus Ex, and with those in early versions of Invisible War. "I lost count of the times I said I wanted an interface that looks as if it's burned onto the guy's eye, and I failed completely to communicate that idea. Now I think we've nailed it." The new translucent circular retina effect looks very smart indeed, with everything rotating round neatly, elements fading in and out, and screens zooming into view. "The fact that you have access to a keyboard doesn't mean that it's right to use every key. The PC version of Deus Ex was so unnecessarily complex with many secondary screens that distracted the player and pulled them right out of the game world. On the PlayStation 2 version we found that we could be much more economical and enhance the experience."
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