Eidos Montreal have released the third trailer for their upcoming game Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the third installment in the Deus Ex series and a prequel to the original Deus Ex game. Add to that, the game is now available for preorder from major retail outlets. It seems that eight years after Deus Ex: Invisible War unwittingly sent the franchise into hibernation, Deus Ex is back. With a bang. A very big bang.

The trailer starts with a few scenes from the second DX:HR trailer from March, but "the year is 2027," Adam Jensen says now. A time of great innovation and technological advancement, but also of chaos and conspiracy - "I don't even know whose side I'm on." We see rioting crowds, futuristic city skylines, a machine gun forming out of a mechanized hand, aircraft taking off and being shot down, someone telling Adam to "find them - they cannot stop the future", Adam's body being augmented, someone threatening to take Adam "to hell!" and telling him that he'll "never find them", and Adam dropping out of the sky in a ball of electricity, promising to "never stop looking".

There is a lot going on in this trailer - no gameplay footage, but with the jaw-dropping visuals and haunting music, it's hard to complain. For all the action we see (explosions, gun battles, fight scenes), there's also a good emphasis on story: "Corporations have more power than the government," Adam warns. The person who appears to oversee his augmentation asks "How do you feel? The body may heal. The mind is not always so resilient." Deus Ex: Human Revolution seems to take the best of its preceding games - the original's world of shadowy, manipulative corporations and organizations, and the second's questions of human nature in the face of transhumanism - and combine them into what looks to be an epic continuation of the series.

While both Deus Ex and Deus Ex: Invisible War offered non-lethal ways to victory, Adam Jensen does the opposite in the trailer for Deus Ex: Human Revolution: he skewers guards with a long blade that springs out of his augmented arm, and the final scene is of Jensen punching a hole in a wall and breaking the neck of the guard who was standing on the other side - all with one hand. I'd be very surprised if the violence in the DX:HR trailer is an integral part of the game, since the first two games allowed for zero body counts. Aesthetically, the action makes for a great trailer; I have faith that Eidos Montreal and Square Enix know better than to mess with the formula that made Deus Ex as great as it is.

The trailer has met with good reviews: EL33tonline called it "insanely stylish"; VGChartz said it was "quite enticing" and called it "three minutes of awesome"; Neoseeker opined "it's easily one of the more epic showcases we've seen"; and The Escapist simply said "[it] is holy jeepers hot!" With a release date of early 2011 promised, the future is coming soon, and it cannot be stopped.