Deus Ex sequel poses hard choices

By Alfred Hermida
BBC News Online technology editor

In the fictional world of Deus Ex: Invisible War, set in year 2072, there is no right or wrong.

The look of the game is inspired by Blade Runner

There are not black and white choices to make in the sequel to 2000's acclaimed Deus Ex game, instead just shades of grey.

Game makers Ion Storm deliberately set about creating a world where a player's choices determined as much of the outcome as possible.

"In Deus Ex you don't know if you are a good guy or a bad guy," said Warren Spector of Ion Storm. "No other game lets you make significant choices."

Mr Spector recounted how his wife never completed Deus Ex as she did not like any of the alternatives she faced at the end of the game.

Conspiracy theory

Invisible War comes four years after Deus Ex earned considerable praise and awards for its cerebral plot and open-ended game-playing.

In the sequel, Ion Storm presents a dystopian future where faceless corporate factions battle each other.

Games have trained players not to think. We are trying to get out of that experience Warren Spector, Ion Storm

Gamers play the role of an cybernetically enhanced agent, who quickly becomes a pawn in the struggle between the rival groups.

"Deus Ex is about conspiracies," Mr Spector told BBC News Online, "it is about discovering the secrets behind them."

For this, the game's maker was heavily influenced by the TV series, the X-Files, while the look of the environment draws heavily on the seminal film, Blade Runner.

Invisible War is part of a growing number of games which have adopted a more freeform style of story-telling, giving a player a large degree of control in deciding what they do and how they do it.

The trend was kick-started by the hugely successful Grand Theft Auto franchise and has since been adopted by others.

Choose your style

The challenge for the makers of Deus Ex was to create a game that allowed players this freedom, but still made sense as a story.

"It is a very hard problem," admitted Mr Spector. "We wanted to let players determine the game's story."

Do you shoot or talk? Deus Ex 2 is all about choices

"What we try to do is control the skeleton of the story."

Deus Ex 2 aims to offer a unique personal experience by offering choices in virtually everything.

Gamers are presented with multiple and sometimes conflicting objectives by the rival factions. Which of these you follow, and how, is left up to you.

Similarly, the style of action in the game is determined by the type of body enhancements chosen by a player. Those who like playing stealth games can opt for invisibility cloaks or x-ray vision.

Those who prefer to fight their way through a game can go get enhancements such as extra strength or body regeneration nanobots.

It means that nearly every objective in the game can be achieved in several ways. Buildings can be infiltrated by picking door locks, sneaking in through the air ducts or just taking out the guards and blasting your way in.

"Games have trained players not to think," said Mr Spector. "We are trying to get out of that experience."

"It is not about how clever we are, it is about how clever you are."

The typical gamer can expect to get 15-20 hours of play out of Deus Ex: Invisible War. But Ion Storm say people can go back and play the game again and have a different experience every time.

Deus Ex: Invisible War is published by Eidos for the PC and Xbox and is out now