Deus Ex 3. I shit you not.

[Tale]

I'm loving the basic core of the game but I'm not loving the call-back to "we tried to make an open-world game but forgot to playtest it".

It's really not an open world game, compared with a GTA or Elite style game. Neither was the original Deus Ex. You can't make a career out of the open-ish sections.

[Kail]

I also didn't know conversations could vary, so how does the social enhancer aug work?  Steer the conversation towards an objectively optimal result?  I tried watching a clip of it in action but I don't understand the blinking alpha beta omegas or pheromones.

There's an "objective" in each conversation in which you can use it (e.g. trying to get guy X to tell me Y).  It's not something that comes up in most dialogues.

The aug has three components as far as I can tell.  One, there's a little bar in the top left that tells you how "persuaded" the guy is, higher = more convinced.  It shows little pictures of hearts and lungs and skin and eyes which I have no idea WTF they mean.  Two, there's a "pheromone" device, which you watch, and the one it blinks most under is the pesonality type of that character (alpha beta or omega).  Then, at some point in the conversation, you're given an option to use your pheromones, where you guess his personality type and if you're rewarded, it raises his persuasion level.  Three, there's a little psych profile on the right side of the screen which tells you about the guy's arguing style and which options would help you (in theory, in practice I didn't find it that useful, most of the time I thought two or three of the options fit the profile for "good arguments" but only one was the "right" one).

[cironian]

As others have said: This game is just way too awesome. I'm loving every bit of it, from the endless details hidden around the maps to the radically different approaches to most missions. Finally a true successor to DX1.

And yeah, the system for the "social battles" is what every RPG dialog designer should be using as a baseline from now on.

[Fabricated]

There is one decision that actually really bummed me out:

[tgr]

Personally, after having spent a bit of time with deus ex now, I think the cowering behind boxes etc system could've been dumped (or made optional) on the PC in favour of just manually crouching and leaning out etc. There are still times when I latch on to the wrong wall, or when it switches away from aiming the gun at a critical point, so I'm not 100% happy about it, but the rest of the game is so well-designed that I'm willing to overlook that.

Apart from that, it's been a refreshing return to newly released games which aren't too dumbed down.

[apocrypha]

So much fun to be had just dicking around. I just killed a dude by dropping a fridge off of a balcony onto his head. Here's 6 unconscious rent-a-cops stuffed into a ventilator shaft, which I blocked off with a vending machine after taking the pic:

The lip-synching, however, is truly terrible. I am particularly amused by the way that the characters jiggle about like Thunderbirds puppets when speaking. I've noticed that Malik (the heli pilot) is especially good at this.

[Khaldun]

I'm loving the basic core of the game but I'm not loving the call-back to "we tried to make an open-world game but forgot to playtest it".

It's really not an open world game, compared with a GTA or Elite style game. Neither was the original Deus Ex. You can't make a career out of the open-ish sections.

Yeah, what I meant instead was if you're going to let people complete quests in different orders and interact with objects before the quest connected to the object becomes live, you have to test that. Motherly Ties, for example, has glitched for me (and others) for the following reason(s):

1) If you talk to the ex-cop security guard at a time after you've gone in the police station via the sewer entrance to get to the corpse in the morgue but before you have hacking 2 the alarm in the basement sometimes goes off continuously? Even if you get out without being seen, you show as "hostile" to the police and can't get in the front by talking to Haas. So the ex-cop will tell you the things you need to do for Motherly Ties but one of them you'll automatically turn down (confronting the crooked cop) because you show as someone who can't interact peacefully with the police. If you later turn off the alarm in the sewer entrance with hacking, you now are peaceful with the police and can talk your way in. So if you're still working on Motherly Ties, it now expects you to talk to the crooked cop. Only you can't, because he isn't a named NPC because you didn't get that part of the quest in the first place, and the ex-cop security guard is now unavailable. So if you go and talk to the mother--the quest will prompt you to, as if you've finished it--you get stuck in a loop and have to shut down the game.

2) Cloak and Daggers gets glitched sometimes if you try to take out the gang members via non-lethal and have to lure out the guys in the closed room with a noise or gunshot--one gang member can't be seen and runs to somewhere you can't get to him, and the quest will insist that you have to get up in a building that you can't get into in order to find him. Some people manage to get him to run back but sometimes he gets stuck on something.

If you're OCD about finishing side quests this is very annoying stuff.

[Quinton]

Finished it up.  I really enjoyed the game.

Could have lived without the three boss battles -- they just didn't fit well with the rest of the game design.  I could see hardcore pure-stealth/nonlethal players being especially annoyed by them. 

Loved the twisty plot and the crazy details and backstory peppered all over the place in email threads, and other documents.  The conversation system worked really well -- I enjoyed verbally sparring with some of the key figures far far more than the boss battles, for example.

[cironian]

Could have lived without the three boss battles -- they just didn't fit well with the rest of the game design.  I could see hardcore pure-stealth/nonlethal players being especially annoyed by them. 

Yeah, I don't see how stealthy builds are supposed to do them without some form of cheese. So you may as well spam Typhoon twice and be done with it.

[Tebonas]

So my Stealthy Hacker is basically fucked during the boss battles? I can't remember that being a problem in Deus Ex 1. Bad oversight.

[Threash]

No, not at all.  There aren't all that many combat upgrades to begin with.  The problem isn't that stealth hackers can't win boss fights, the problem is that there is no "stealthy hacker" way of getting past them.  You just gotta fight, it's not actually hard.  It's not a problem of difficulty, just the jarring change of playstyle required.

[Yoru]

So my Stealthy Hacker is basically fucked during the boss battles? I can't remember that being a problem in Deus Ex 1. Bad oversight.

DX1:

[Tebonas]

I think I shot him with a tranquilizer dart? I did that with many people in Deus Ex. But it has been years.

[Quinton]

Some assorted thoughts post-game-ending.

Here be SPOILERS, not joking.

[kildorn]

No, not at all.  There aren't all that many combat upgrades to begin with.  The problem isn't that stealth hackers can't win boss fights, the problem is that there is no "stealthy hacker" way of getting past them.  You just gotta fight, it's not actually hard.  It's not a problem of difficulty, just the jarring change of playstyle required.

Though to be honest, the stealth hacker type should have the second best boss weapon in the game. You just can't stealth past them, which sucks.

The stun gun locks them down long enough to do anything you want to them. It's no typhoon cheese (two typhoons = dead every boss), but it's at least better than "all you have is a 10mm pistol, go nuts!"

The boss fights are the weakest part of the game, though. Just because they completely throw the entire concept of the game to the wind and say "here, we needed some bosses, so here's an obvious and repeated set piece against some random dude with more HP than a boxguard"

[Lantyssa]

Some assorted thoughts post-game-ending.

Here be SPOILERS, not joking.

[Quinton]

[cironian]

[Rasix]

Could have lived without the three boss battles -- they just didn't fit well with the rest of the game design.  I could see hardcore pure-stealth/nonlethal players being especially annoyed by them. 

Yeah, I don't see how stealthy builds are supposed to do them without some form of cheese. So you may as well spam Typhoon twice and be done with it.

That's what I did for Musclehead McGirt. I have no problem doing that.  It's basically my way of denying that they're even in the game.   

I'm just now at the TVM and I've still yet to kill anyone outside of the above mentioned aug.  Funny that I've got a sniper rifle, combat rifle and pistol which have yet to be fired. Plenty of ammo for everything.   The one thing I don't have a lot of is candy bars, I tend to use them when I'm down to one bar, which I suppose is pretty stupid.  I don't think I do enough take downs to warrant having to stay more than a bar up, but I hate being in the position where I can't do one when I need to.

Ohh and Malik's quest: awesome. 

[Quinton]

Reproduced under the spoiler is an email received by Pritchard, which absolutely cracked me up.  It provides some insight into his character but does not otherwise spoil any major plot points, etc...

[Yoru]

[K9]

Another character from DX1 pops up


I'm just up to Montreal, and the attention to detail is really superb. It encourages players to take their time to examine every element of each stage, and make the most of it. This is probably the first game where I am actually reading most of the in game text, rather than just skipping past it.

[Talpidae]

Goddamn EMP Limpet Mines stopped my massive fun of running around carrying my pet turret.

BOOOOO, I Say, Booooooooooo.

[Talpidae]

Could have lived without the three boss battles -- they just didn't fit well with the rest of the game design.  I could see hardcore pure-stealth/nonlethal players being especially annoyed by them. 

Yeah, I don't see how stealthy builds are supposed to do them without some form of cheese. So you may as well spam Typhoon twice and be done with it.

That's what I did for Musclehead McGirt. I have no problem doing that.  It's basically my way of denying that they're even in the game.   

I'm just now at the TVM and I've still yet to kill anyone outside of the above mentioned aug.  Funny that I've got a sniper rifle, combat rifle and pistol which have yet to be fired. Plenty of ammo for everything.   The one thing I don't have a lot of is candy bars, I tend to use them when I'm down to one bar, which I suppose is pretty stupid.  I don't think I do enough take downs to warrant having to stay more than a bar up, but I hate being in the position where I can't do one when I need to.

Ohh and Malik's quest: awesome. 

Twice now I've had to dump guns and boxes and boxes and boxes of ammo.  I suspect that the people who are complaining of low ammo are the ones running around shooting like it's the Wild West.  Which is a perfectly valid way to play.

I'm not judgemental.

Honest.

[Rasix]

I dart and shock way more people than I need to and I have like 20+ tranq darts and probably about 15 stun gun darts in reserve.  I probably won't start offing people until the end, if I do at all. By then I can justify that they're all just evil bastards.

I only started killing people in the original Deus Ex because I'd run out of non-lethal means to take them out.  Plus, those bionic G-men were a bit of a bother if you didn't throw some serious pain their way.

[Lucas]

Today at 10pm GMT there will be a special announcement about the game; what do you think it will be? DLC/cut content or what?

[Talpidae]

That we've all been dreaming and it's time to wake up and go to school.

 

[gimpyone]

My bet is an announcement that they're remaking dx 1 in this engine.

[cironian]

My bet is an announcement that they're remaking dx 1 in this engine.

Getting people's hopes up like that is really mean. (pleaseletitbetrue, pleaseletitbetrue)

[Thrawn]

For anyone that hasn't looked at it, the FOV option in the game menu really improves how the game looks imo.  You have less of a console tunnel vision viewpoint.

Thrawn, what kind of insane display setup do you have that gives you a screenshot like that?

Yep, 3 monitors side by side on a desk.  A lot of games don't support it very well unfortunately, even if it supports the graphics spanning that wide a lot of times the HUD is almost un-useable without an annoying amount of editing and modding.  But when it works great with built in support in something like Deus Ex it's awsssommmee.

[Lucas]

I haven't finished the game yet (actually, I'm still very early on), but regarding a possible DLC for the game:

[Lantyssa]

My bet is an announcement that they're remaking dx 1 in this engine.

I jokingly said that to myself.  It'd be awesome.

[kildorn]

I haven't finished the game yet (actually, I'm still very early on), but regarding a possible DLC for the game:

I'd be thrilled if they announced they were going to DLC in the planned montreal hub that was cut, since it would tie up a LOT of lost plot around there.

[Zetor]

The cynic in me says they'll just make the Tracer Tong sidequest available as paid DLC. 

[Miasma]

Some assorted thoughts post-game-ending.

Here be SPOILERS, not joking.