You play as Alex Denton, one of the four lab rats and a clone of JC Denton. There is also opportunity to play as a female in parts of the game, unlike in DX, where the only playable character was our hard-boiled hero JC. It’s said that this will not affect the gameplay and plot in a significant matter. DX2 is set in Seattle about 15 to 20 years after the original story. A question gamers and journalists have been discussing since the announcement of this game is how Ion Storm is going to solve the issue with continuing the story from the first game. Seeing as there were several endings in Deus Ex (five to be correct), creating a story that bases itself loosely on all the endings would be, in my very humble opinion, the best option. A tricky task, but a safer option than choosing to base the beginning of the story solely on only one of the 5 endings from DX. Obviously, all those who played DX didn’t complete the game all in possible ways, thus would it be a bad call to choose one of them, as that wouldn’t necessarily give all the owners of the original the same experience in this sequel. Based on how the different endings were done, there’s speculation that a certain ending from Deus Ex will be chosen. For you that still haven’t played Deus Ex (tut-tut) and aren’t particularly fond of spoilers I’ll leave out the reasons why. Anyway, whichever way out of this is chosen, it’ll be interesting to see how Warren and company sorts it out. They do have, I quote, “interesting plans”.
Ion Storm have expressed how they wanted to give the player even more freedom than we were given in the previous game, and how that is to be implemented without affecting the story/plot in a negative manner goes beyond me, but then again, Ion Storm aren’t regular developers. What they are probably referring to is the fact that in DX you were forced to leave a certain organization, freely or not. Ion, expressively, doesn’t want these kind of gameplay-restraining elements in the plot this time. Warren and his Ion Storm team wants to create a deep and complex story, and at the same time give players lots of freedom - freedom to make our own choices and decide for ourselves ways of approaching tasks and missions given. Mixing and balancing this ought to be a dimensional challenge, but my faith in Warren and his wizards is rock solid.
So far we know the game contains a deeply religious sect, calling themselves “The Order”. In addition, a mysterious organization which goes by the name of “Mako” also plays a wide role. It’s also stated that several characters from Deus Ex, both friends and fiends, are showing up in DX2, 20 years older, and hopefully 20 years smarter and more experienced, AI-wise. The Artificial Intelligence has supposedly been undergoing a major overhaul from the previous game.
Deus Ex 2 is using a tweaked and customized version of the Unreal 2 and Unreal Tournament 2k3. Remember those lethal security bots from the first game? Rumours has it, you can crawl smoothly between their mechanical legs, which indicates an advanced graphics engine. It’s details like those that makes the excellent games stand out from the good, and adds new meaning to the word stealth.
The only dissapointment so far is the fact that there will be no online play, whatsoever. Online multiplaying is becoming a must in today’s games, and it it’s in all honesty a bit of a let-down not to have this opportunity in DX2. You’d think it’s kind of strange that a game scheduled as far ahead as Quarter 4 2003 doesn't even have plans for an online part. Then again, this game is built as a single player experience, and maybe it’s for the best that it won’t go online, to avoid major dissapointment.
Edit 16/7/2003: Deus Ex 2 won't be coming to the PS2, so we've changed the entry to suit the fact it is still coming to the Xbox. The PS2 will be receiving an original Deus Ex title, but no further details have been released.
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