Deus Ex may have never strayed far from pulp conspiracy theory but, in its diligent excavation of every paranoid fantasy known to man, it created a profound sense of impending apocalypse. The third game in the series is a prequel, set in 2027, 25 years before the events of Deus Ex, but even though players will know how it all turns out, Eidos Montreal says it has been careful to maintain that cloying fear of the future.

In both games, the culmination of such fear - of technology, of bio-engineering and of artificial intelligence - begs the question of what humanity might become in the wake of these things. And in number three, just as in Deus Ex, the answer is you. Whereas the protagonist of the first game, JC Denton, was a nano-augmented man that threatened to eradicate those with the less durable, surgically inserted mechanical attachments, Deus Ex 3 sees you play Adam Jensen, a security specialist working for one of the biotech corporations manufacturing the earliest transhuman modifications.

"There's a lot of competition for this technology, motivating underhand attempts to rule the market," says Jean-François Dugas, the lead game designer. "Corporations are likely to be attacked and blackmailed, so your role is to protect the interests of the company you work for. It starts very intimately: at the beginning of the game there's a big event that seems just to be targeted at your company, but propels you into a huge conspiracy."

Setting the third game before the events of Deus Ex is, the developers say, a logical choice given how the various possible endings of the sequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War, seemed so absolute. Establishing a global consciousness or a totalitarian religious state doesn't leave much in the way of wiggle-room. "Another thing was that we wanted to ground the game in an era the player would be more familiar with," says Dugas.