Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Officially Unveiled

Deus Ex: Human Revolutions has been officially unveiled with a CGI trailer, some screens and a ton of GDC coverage.  You can watch the trailer at the official teaser site but I'm going to embed it here, courtesy of Blue's Youtube channel.

Here's a sample of the coverage out there from the GDC presentation:

• GameSpot
• IGN
• Gamasutra

They all cover the same general territory - the visual design; here's an illustrative snip from GameSpot:

For Human Revolution's high-level visual goal, Jacques-Belletete said the team focused on two points: illustration as opposed to simulation, and that design distinction creating desire. When it comes to illustration, Jacques-Belletete wanted to create a world that wasn't necessarily photorealistic, but one whose individual pieces looked like they all belonged within the same reality. This aesthetic extended to characters' faces. Jacques-Belletete said they wanted to avoid any uncanny valley problems, and even singled out recent PS3-exclusive Heavy Rain for some critique. "It (Heavy Rain) is a beautiful game, but those people are so scary! And you look at the teapot in Beauty and the Beast, and that little dude looks alive and he looks like a human being," he said.

On the second goal-- design distinction creates desire--Jacques-Belletete explained that looking unique can be a strong selling point for a game. He cited the example of the Big Daddy and Little Sister designs in BioShock as great examples of a game pushing a distinct look. He then put up a slide showing stills from games like Killzone 2, Gears of War, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Unreal Tournament 3, and Turok, saying they were examples of games that all looked similar and therefore weren't doing anything distinctive.