Modernising the original Deus Ex with new renderer and textures.
Putting aside that it clearly had giant shoes to fill, the second Deus Ex title, Invisible War, was a major let down for me. It was barely comparable to the original – had it been a clone with a new story, I swear it’d have been better. Extremely dumbed-down, it focused far less on playing as the in-depth, flexible, self-augmentation role-playing game of its parent. Perhaps this was a bid to attract the apparent new generation of gamers that sport the attention span of a mosquito and cupboards solely replete with Gears of War.
Horribly enough, the 2003 sequel didn’t look all that shiny in the graphics department, either. This was thanks to the Xbox and Windows versions being developed in parallel and a lowest common denominator mindset.
So, screw the second one, but playing through the original these days really does show its age. Wouldn’t it be nifty if it featured modernised graphics? Well, Deus Ex: New Vision is just such a mod. Upgrading the world textures, says the developer, will bring “the aging Deus Ex game to far more modern standards.”
Having begun work on the mod during March of 2007, the developer reported six months later that there were “only another 1800 or so textures to go.” Fast-forward to today, and after a whole lot of work from the developer, we’re just now seeing the mod’s very first public beta. “It’s finally here,” exclaims developer David Watts. “The first public beta of New Vision, featuring approximately 67% of the original Deus Ex textures re-made in high definition!” Fantastically enough, it’s not just a simple texture pack, as the public beta also includes an updated OpenGL renderer.
The purpose of this beta isn’t just to show it off, though – it’d probably receive the Brad Wardell Seal of Approval, so expect to see bugs. Curiously enough, this beta “will be the first and probably only open beta for the New Vision texture project,” says Watts. “The next beta will be much, much further towards completion so we think it’ll be fairly ‘closed’ – so only a limited amount of people will get access to it (oh we’re such a tease). We’ll be deciding who after this beta.”
If you can handle a 900MB download, grab it from Mod DB and see what you think. You can find a list of known issues in the project’s bug report thread, and if you come across something, be sure to let the developer know. The final release is expected sometime between July and September this year.
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Fresh confabulation