E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy



An FPS/RPG by Streum On Studio, with a distinct everything but the kitchen sink sci-fi flavor. Taking notes from nearly every work of Cyberpunk literature and incorporating classic brutal roleplaying techniques. You play as a member of the armed faction (the titular E.Y.E.) of a secret order of demon-hunters named Secreta Secretorum who recently was afflicted with Laser Guided Amnesia and must remember why he was sent on the mission that gave him his amnesia. Along the way you uncover more and more about the incredibly complex backstory and the internal struggle of E.Y.E.

Gameplay wise, it plays like a combination of a modern shooter and Deus Ex, with all the hilarious ways things can go horribly wrong in a tabletop game.

Development started in 2006; this is Streum's first video game (their previous work being a board game). It was developed on the Source engine and is now on sale via Steam.

This game contains examples of:

 * Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Spacious enough for attack helicopters to fly around in!
 * The All Seeing AI: Played straight with the metastreunomic force creatures. If you're not invisible, they know where you are, and they will never stop hunting you down. Possibly justified since
 * It used to be that the AI for all factions had an uncanny way of knowing EXACTLY where you were if you weren't completely invisible, however thanks to a recent patch they behave more realistically and no longer randomly charge into your hiding places or turn around to see you trying to sneak by as soon as you enter an area.
 * Alternate Timeline: If you die in combat it costs you a regeneration, and you spring back to life basically on the spot. You only have a limited number of these per mission, and since unless you're playing as a tanking character in heavy armor you're going to die a lot, they are valuable. When you run out of regenerations or otherwise die in a fairly 'permanent' way (such as falling into an area you're not supposed to be, hence cannot be revived in), your character will find himself in the dream hub area that you arrive in upon loading your character, and is informed that the "death" that just occurred was just a premonition of a future in which he failed, allowing you to continue from the start of the mission with all your regenerations restored.
 * Anachronism Stew: An incredibly strange variant. The game's style is an anachronism of a plethora of sci-fi classics, from the Matrix (referenced by name even), Warhammer 40000, Fallout, Ghost in The Shell, and a backstory Lost would be proud of.
 * The weapons take this further, advanced firearms coexist side-by-side with battleaxes and katanas.
 * And finally we have armor, with Badass Longcoats, military-inspired bulletproof armor, and cyberpunk jumpsuits alongside armor reminiscent of medieval knights and Japanese samurai.
 * The best way of putting it is Hardcore Cyberpunk, which is what this setting/genre is called.
 * An Axe to Grind: Of the Battle-Axe variety; characters specializing in melee can easily one hit kill most enemies with it.
 * Badass Longcoat: Of the Killzone variety.
 * BFS: The Damocles sword, which is essentially a claymore with weird energy generators on it to make the sword's blade explode stuff on contact.
 * Black and Gray Morality: You are a member of EYE which is dedicated primarily to protecting humanity from the metastreumonic force and is divided into two subgroups, the Culters and the Jians. You also have the Federation which is supposedly a totalitarian government. EYE fights them not so much to liberate the masses, but to make a grab for power for itself. Then you start finding out that the monsters of the metastreumonic force are a manifestation of the natural environments across countless planets that have been destroyed by Humanity, and some Humans are even siding with the monsters. The only obviously evil side is the one you're told you're part of, which are a group of fanatical Culters who seem primarily concerned with eliminating every single Jian. Outside of them it's pretty open to debate on who's the real "good" team.
 * Blind Idiot Translation: While its not too bad compared to other examples, there are some examples of sloppy translation, most notably in one of the penultimate missions. See Guide Dang It below.
 * BFG:The Heavy Weapons department, particularly the Excidium which seems to be a massive semi-automatic cannon that awards an achievement for blowing oneself up with it's splash damage.
 * Boring Yet Practical: The S6000 assault rifle and the silenced B.O.S.C.O. sniper rifle. These are bog-standard bullet weapons, but they both have plenty of ammunition (100 rounds per mag for the S6000, and 25 for the BOSCO) and have reasonable accuracy and stopping power for their purposes.
 * Cast From Hit Points: The Power Converter augment will allow you to convert your blood (health) into energy - using a mechanical device bolted onto your heart
 * Cluster F Bomb: The player character is very fond of the word in dialogue choices.
 * Co Op Multiplayer: The game has full online cooperative support for the entire singleplayer and all its side missions. If you're crazy enough, you could have a 32 player coop game running.
 * Corrupt Cop: Corrupt Federals, Secreta members, Culters, Jians, and on and on.
 * Critical Failure: The most common Critical failure is a failed attack -- "Bullshit! Ultra-failed attack!", which does reduced damage. However, it's also possible to get tainted medicine - instantly killing you. Hacking can cause your head to explode. And some of the psychic abilities have the change to spontaneously kill you.
 * Cyborg: Players are encouraged to augment themselves with appropriate cybernetic components. A hacker might replace parts of his brain with a computer, a swordsman might install a large artificial adrenalin gland near their heart, et cetera.
 * Dueling Games / Follow the Leader: Looks like (and is being released close to) Deus Ex Human Revolution, but gameplay-wise is basically Hellgate London.
 * Dead All Along:
 * Dump Stat: Mental Balance, which reduces the likelihood of insanity. Unfortunately, it's completely redundant because of the "Maintenance" ability that every player has. Maintenance only takes about a second to do, and it will cure your insanity.
 * Expy: The Deus Ex Machina enemy looks an awful lot like a certain iconic Doom enemy...
 * Gaia's Vengeance: The Metastreumonic Force.
 * Gas Mask Longcoat: Federal Police.
 * Gas Mask Mooks: The majority of the Federal Police and Federal Special Forces
 * Gatling Good: The Sulfatum minigun. Fires a solid wall of bullets from a 500 round drum.
 * Genius Bruiser: The protagonist can be this, quoting Sun Tzu and the like.
 * Glass Cannon: You can summon a number of Polyclones relevant to your PSI-force. They usually die in 3 shots or less, but they are as competent as the AI and can even lob grenades so long as you order them to "Go Hunt!".
 * They are also Fragile Speedsters if you're wearing light armor.
 * Goomba Stomp: You can do this if you can jump high enough, and it does damage your enemies.
 * Grenade Launcher: The Spiculum Ovum. It fires manually detonated Kinder grenades in a nearly straight trajectory, which will stick to any surface.
 * Guide Dang It: The penultimate level, if you choose to ; he sends you to find someone called Akmal. This is undoubtedly one of the most annoying levels of the game, and it gives you no hints on how to complete it; you have to solve it by Trying Everything. The level is made even worse by the translations of dubious quality - the game mentions that you need to destroy a "switch" - said switch is a rusty metal plate in some dark corner of the level. What it doesn't mention is that you need to shoot it twice to actually ignite the gas.
 * On the upside, it also doubles as a Breather Level after the long slog on Mars, with no combat whatsoever.
 * Guns Akimbo: The BK13 pistols. Two rapid fire pistols, one in each hand.
 * Guns Are Worthless: Mostly Averted. Most Mooks can be dropped in a couple of well placed shots, but a character possessing high endurance and wearing heavy armor will take next to nil damage from low-caliber weapons.
 * Hacking Minigame: A unique example; all hacking attempts are subdivided into what you want to do (Possess, Hack, Destroy, or Steal) at which point a battle minigame is played out where both the player and the object being attacked attempt to gain the stat advantage and reduce their opponents health to 0.
 * Hand Cannon: Nothing but in the pistol department. You start off with a .50 cal and you can also use dual .45s if that's more your style. Later on you unlock a 222 cal revolver, but the king is the 444 cal Bear Killer revolver. It's so damn powerful that you can shoot down gunships with a few well placed shots. If that isn't horrifying enough it can be dual wielded with a sword.
 * Heroic BSOD: Gameplay variant. Constantly fighting while damaged or consistently taking damage, especially while suffering an injury (broken bone or laceration) will cause excess stress. Too much and the player character falls into a psychosis, ranging from hallucinating enemies and paranoia, or even the controls locking up and the character freezing in terror. An ability can be used to apply "maintenance" to yourself, and get your mind back in the game.
 * Hub Level: The Temple HQ
 * I Have a Family: "You've killed a good and caring daddy."
 * Implausible Fencing Powers: You can block any bullets being shot at you using the Facere Mortis katana, Damocles, or the Arrancadora
 * Interservice Rivalry: Figuring out the relationship between the Federals, the Secreta, the Culters, the Jian, etc. is a very messy process. For instance, the Culters and the Jian (both of whom are supposed to serve E.Y.E) fight each other but they hate the Federals even more. And all humans are united in their hate of the Metastreumonic Force, which is what E.Y.E was originally founded to fight.
 * Invisibility Cloak: Cyber cloak, which is an implant you can buy at the Temple. It gives the player a Predator-esque invisibility, which enemies can see close up, but only barely see from afar - they will head to your general direction if they see you running around while invisible.
 * Jack of All Stats: Equilibrium Lords have overall balanced stats that are incapable of suffering a Crippling Overspecialization. They are apparently average in stats and are capable of adapting to any situation. Further developing this particular class into a Grey Master can lead to a character that can use his Medikit effectively, run fairly fast despite wearing heavy armor, hack turrets fairly faster, take considerable amounts of damage, prolong the time it takes to suffer a Heroic BSOD, and cast PSI-Powers VERY effectively (Wherein casting an Invocation commonly spawns a powerful Carnophage).
 * Justified Extra Lives: Your character's "Resurrector" revives you from clinical death a limited number of times with a cocktail of drugs. Dying by either falling into a pit or running out of Resurrector charges causes you to wake up in the monolith area again as a character explains that your previous attempt was All Just a Dream.
 * Laser Guided Amnesia: Notable in that it is very laser-guided: the protagonist remembers practically everything except for plot-relevant information.
 * Linear Warriors Quadratic Wizards: Played With; although PSI-powers are devastating on their own right, relying on these powers alone aren't a very spectacular idea in direct combat. Endurance (despite being a health increasing stat) reduces stamina costs ("Stamina" is used for said powers) by a tiny percentage and an implant for the heart increases Stamina recovery rate...with that said, any class has the freedom to choose their armor size and can have any weapon available at the armory with the right carrying weight.
 * Lost Technology: Technology from the "Dark Ages". Some weapons are relics from it, and some technology, like the "Medkit" healing system.
 * Ludicrous Gibs: Large caliber weapons will often cause enemies to simply explode in a cloud of blood. The Damocles sword causes enemies to explode (and send arms and other body parts flying), while the Facere Mortis simply lops heads off.
 * Master of None: Equilibrium Fists are almost always the starting class of the player, they have less than spectacular stats and its up to the player whether he chooses to develop each stat, or go with a Specialization.
 * Mind Screw:
 * More Dakka: The HS 010 submachine gun can be best described as a bullet hose. It already fires faster than most guns in other games - and there's a firemode to triple its fire rate. The hundred round magazines lets you wildly spray the gun - which you will need to do, since it can't hit the broad side of an aircraft carrier in rapid fire mode. Good thing you can install an implant which removes recoil entirely when activated.
 * Nice Hat: Jian heavy armour.
 * Nintendo Hard: "Master" and above difficultly, when playing solo, especially after the major nerfs to ammo storage - players need to actually scavenge for ammo now.
 * Psychic Powers: Either they are recruited into two government different government special forces or E.Y.E. Rogue psychers are actively hunted down.
 * Real Is Brown: Everything is covered with at least 3 layers of grime, in keeping with the cyberpunk setting.
 * Recurring Dreams: "It is true that I killed my mentor... and yet, I am not his murderer."
 * Respawn On the Spot: Resurrectors automatically respawn the player where he died. There's a limited amount of resurrector uses, and they are shared between players in coop mode. Running out of resurrectors or falling into a bottomless pit results in the player being transported back to the dream world.
 * Sawed Off Shotgun: The Betty Boom. A sawed off 12 gauge shotgun with iron sights shaped like a cross. Unlike all the other shotguns, it can fit into a hip slot, normally reserved for submachine guns and pistols.
 * Scars Are Forever: If your karmic scale is off balance, every time your character dies they'll run the risk of suffering an irreversible stat penalty regardless if they used a resurrector or not.
 * However, a late game research tree removes penalties. If your stats have reached the point that it costs double (or even triple) to increase each level up, this can increase them at the cost of at least 110,000 credits.
 * Self Duplication: The Polyclone and Transmutation PSI abilities allow you to make copies of yourself. Polyclone will 1 to 6 clones of you, but they are all individually weak and typically die in one hit. Transmutation makes a single copy of you, but it is far more powerful than the polyclones.
 * Short Range Shotgun: The Betty Boom, for obvious reasons, cannot kill past a couple meters. The CAW hammer gets some of this, but not nearly as badly as the Betty Boom. The Deprezador on the other hand, averts this entirely, being effective even at fairly long range due to it's small choke - the combination of aiming ease, a huge magazine, and massive damage make it a very practical weapon.
 * Shout Out:
 * Legions of elite warriors stationed all over human space who are heavily indoctrinated into a specific religion, and who have fortresses designed to look like cathedrals
 * Investigating a mysteriously-quiet facility with dark hallways, on the planet Sulaco. There's also an achievement called "Corporal Hicks".
 * "Doctor Hyde" for teamkilling with a medkit.
 * "Dirty Harry" for killing a bandit with the 222.
 * "Deckard" for destroying a certain Mecha Mooks, also with the 222.
 * Your personal Scrab says "by your command".
 * Sniper Rifle: Three flavors. The BOSCO rifle is the weakest of the bunch, but offers a 25 round magazine, is lightweight, and is silenced. The TRK AD is a high-powered .50 cal anti-armor snipe rifle that can take out attack helicopters in two hits. The Hunting Machine is essentially a lengthened Bear Killer pistol; it offers extreme damage and an 8 round magazine, but lacks a scope - it functions more like a semi-automatic rifle.
 * Stealth Based Mission: You can play most missions in the game like this, only taking out key targets and avoiding the Mooks.
 * However, the enemies have shockingly good eyesight and will open fire if they have a clear line of sight to you. A popular play style has become throwing stealth out the window entirely and instead relying on heavy armor and miniguns.
 * Sword and Gun: It's possible to carry a katana or a in one hand, and a single BK 13 pistol in the other. Once you unlock the Bear Killer, you can swap out the piddly fully automatic .45ACP pistol for a .444 rifle round that can kill attack helicopters
 * Take That: "You killed a video game censor!"
 * One of the achievements asks you to "kill a Deus Ex".
 * The Syndicate: Several, with enough power to contest control of a likely galaxy-spanning empire (background data puts over 1200 worlds in control of the Federation); the main character is a member.
 * Too Dumb to Live: Several times you'll have the option to negotiate with a hostile NPC, usually an officer or commander. You can threaten them to do what you ask or die, and they will frequently refuse to believe you can kill them, even if you cut through their entire force to get to them in the first place.
 * Dutch, in the fourth area. If a monster gets behind him, he'll let it scratch his back with their foot long claws unless you kill them.
 * In addition, EYE agents don't seem to receive sensitivity classes. Its not so much knowing what will tick off a person so much as finding a path through the dialogue tree that does not reduce yourself to declaring to his face that you want to rape his dog, shoot him in the face and use his mother for pipe tobacco. You are just generally not a very nice person, Mr. 100 Karma.
 * Useless Useful Stealth: Though it is possible to be used effectively, Steath drains your energy stores and you must periodically take cover and let it recharge. Though you can easily get around while invisible, enemy NPCs have a habit of accidentally stumbling into your out of the way hiding place with machine guns ready whenever you stop to recharge. In addition most attempts of just sneaking past people are made impossible due to the insane sight range of your foes.
 * It's a bit better with that latest 1.3 patch. You can tone down the vision distance and hearing sensitivity of enemies, but they still have above-average awareness. You can sneak without cloak now though.
 * Was Once a Man: The creatures of the Metastreumonic Force are speculated to be this.
 * Weaponized Teleportation: The Dragon and Triangular Gate PSI abilities. They both functional fairly similarly - they teleport the player inside an enemy, killing the enemy regardless of its size or health, but the Gate can be very dangerous to the player casting it.
 * Whatevermancy: Cybermancy, Necrocybermancy.
 * Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy: Practically every heavily-populated area. This game is distinguished by showing just how many strip clubs, brothels, etc. would exist in such places.
 * You All Look Familiar: To an extent, there are a decent variety of enemy NPCs, but over the course of the game you'll see them often enough for this to take place; it doesn't help that they respawn in some areas.
 * You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Overlaps with Video Game Cruelty Potential in that after you possess someone and make them kill their comrades, you still have to dispatch them yourself because they remain hostile when you break the possession.
 * Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy: Practically every heavily-populated area. This game is distinguished by showing just how many strip clubs, brothels, etc. would exist in such places.
 * You All Look Familiar: To an extent, there are a decent variety of enemy NPCs, but over the course of the game you'll see them often enough for this to take place; it doesn't help that they respawn in some areas.
 * You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Overlaps with Video Game Cruelty Potential in that after you possess someone and make them kill their comrades, you still have to dispatch them yourself because they remain hostile when you break the possession.

"It's true that I read the trope page... and yet, I am not its reader!"