PC Gamer reports that Square Enix's upcoming third installment to the Deus Ex franchise will support DirectX 11 for the PC right out of the box (unlike Crysis 2). The game will also come packed with AMD Eyefinity support for spreading the visuals across five displays, and will run in 3D mode for those with compatible screens.
On the DirectX 11 front, tessellation was used to improve the character silhouettes and other objects in the virtual world according to Nixxes Software boss Jurjen Katsman. "In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, you see characters up close a lot as you interact with them, like in dialogues," he said. "Using tessellation to improve their look really helps make the world and the characters more believable, which is important in a story-heavy game like Deus Ex: Human Revolution."
As previously reported, the game uses a modified Crystal engine originally developed by Crystal Dynamics. The current development team said that the engine has been significantly rewritten so that it can take advantage of the extra processing power stemming from CPUs with multiple cores. According to the team, those particular players should see increased framerates even when not using DirectX 11-- possibly up to a 70-percent boost when running on dual-core processors.
The good news for PC gamers is that DirectX 11, AMD Eyefinity and 3D support aren't features that will be tacked on in the final stages of production. Eidos Montreal director of technology Julien Bouvrai assured fans that these features were embedded from the start. This indicates that the PC version isn't necessarily a "port" as originally believed, and an important step in re-establishing the PC platform as an important audience despite the industry's console focus.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution is slated to arrive in North America on August 23, 2011, for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows PC. To learn more about the PC version, check out PC Gamer's video below.
UPDATE: Square Enix announced that Deus Ex: Human Revolution will support numerous Steamworks features including auto-updating, Steam Achievements, Steam Cloud saving and more. The game is available now for pre-ordering on Steam at special limited-time pricing of $44.99 (standard version) and $53.99 (Augmented Edition).
The Augmented Edition boasts a digital 40-page art book, a "making of" special, trailers, animated storyboard of the CGI trailer, motion graphic novel, soundtrack, and a free download of the Deus Ex Game of the Year Edition.
