Deus Ex 3 - I'll just leave this here

[AgentSmithereens]

I liked all I read in that article, particularly the stuff about finishing the game without killing anyone, and meeting DX characters along the way.

[Xesum]

May you are the father to Gunther Herman?

[justanotherfan]

That was a great cinematic. Certainly some French style. They're taking renaissance/art seriously (rembrandt is nearly renaissance, an animated Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp, I like that), even an icarus myth. It's not crazy esoteric, but it's intellectual or interesting. I like that. The first stepping stone in the human-cyborg evolution that leads to nanoaugs in DX and then possibly nanoaug-networks in DX2. The biological bit seemed grisly, with questions of necessity, excitement, rebirth, arrogance, and consequence.

Those glasses could be to hide augmented eyes, not just to be cool or to be used as sunglasses. I like how he breaks his fragile glass, possibly accidentally, with crazy arms. The remote diagnosis mechanical mod is a little suspect, and I know a few people who will hate that, but it was at least interesting.

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/re ... s-tulp.jpg

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

Guys that was pre-rendered

You'd be surprised how many people can't tell the difference. Just making it clear.

[chris the cynic]

I was actually trying to ignore the eye aug, and doing a fairly good job of it too.

The downside I see to the eyes is pretty much the consistent downside I see to the design decisions I've disagreed with; they chose to interpolate and are making choices that can't reasonably be seen as interpolation. Anna and Gunther can't reasonably follow that.

If we were looking for the next generation mechanical augs after Deus Ex, produced by a manufacturer who had given up on (or never considered) Nano augmentation and decided instead to make better mech augs, then those eyes might make sense. As is you just have to tell your brain to turn off and ignore the glaring inconsistencies (Brain: For fuck's sake, Gunther's eyes are mentioned in dialogue! Why pick those, of all the things you could fuck with? Response: Down brain! Pretend you're watching Percy Jackson.)

The arms are a definite improvement though. I found that placing my focus on the arms allowed me to ignore the logical impossibility of the eyes.

Anyway, the point of the above is that the remote diagnosis mechanical aug, while a stretch which doesn't make much sense in the context of what this game is supposed to be according to the people who are making it, doesn't bother me much. Certainly not nearly so much as the fact that it fits into a package with the size, shape, and general appearance of an eyeball when Gunther's, apparently less advanced, eyes were visibly disfiguring. Ditto for Anna's one augmented eye.

If Deus Ex 3 looked like it would be close enough to Deus Ex for the remote diagnosis mechanical aug to bother me for being a remote diagnosis mechanical aug (instead of for being a flashy tiny possible-to-cover-up-via-clothing-choices aug) that would be a pretty good thing.

The fact that they put those arms on him so you could pay attention to those and let the problems with the eyes slide by almost unnoticed is already a good thing when taken in the context of what has come before. The same can be said of the spoken part of the video.

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I'm wondering if the sunglasses might be a reference to Neuromancer of sorts.

[Added] Written before Cyberpunk's post.

[Also Added:] Apparently at some point there was a rumor of some sort about the "sword arm aug" which, like the spoon, it now appears exists.

[Edited] When I allow a spell check to tell me that a the William Gibson novel is spelled Necromancer and random words start appearing in sentences for no reason, that is probably I sign I need sleep.

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

Great post Cynic. Yeah I agree to a point about the eyes. If we look at Anna and Gunther's eyes they were these big clunky things- so it makes no sense for adam to have elegant small lenses like JC did.

I'm wondering if the sunglasses might be a reference to Neuromancer of sorts.

Yes. Molly Millions' Mirror Shades- though her's were implanted directly into her skull like Gunther's. In reference to this I think it would have been more logical to make it so Jensen had the same thing, where the glasses could NEVER be taken off- lets remember that JC never took his glasses off

Surprised the devs didn't think that when they put them in.

It also doesn't make any sense why his vision is augmented but then he also needs sun glasses-- why not just give him sunglasses on his eyeballs?! LOL have they not heard of contact lenses. It didn't make a lot of sense for them to be in his skull. Here's the offical reason for JC's glasses.

PROSPECTUS: SERIES P AGENTS
proposal by Dr. Arthur Donovan (Versalife/HK)

The Series P Agents are the logical continuation of research resulting from the
Series N: the development of a human agent with enhanced capabilities and
absolute loyalty, but without the non-standard appearance of mechanical
augmentation or the unpredictability of nano-augmentation. Like the Series N,
the strength and speed of the Series P should be substantially above baseline
while new conditioning techniques will result in minimal pain response.
We conservatively predict a Series P agent would be 78% more effective in
combat than a normal operative without any form of augmentation.

Key features from the Series N agent will also be carried over, including the
self-termination mechanism. An ingenious variation on the "kill-switch", the
self-termination mechanism is wired into the autonomous nervous system of an
agent. If mortally wounded, the mechanism will activate and explode,
eliminating any evidence of the agent and damaging nearby hostiles.

However, we are still continuing in our attempts to isolate the source of the
albino traits present ever since the Series L, but so far the simple addition
of sunglasses and dark clothing appear to have resolved the matter in a
practical fashion...

JC and Paul Denton are Series N [Nanotech]. The MIBs are Series P [Physiopharmaceutical]. It is unknown what Series L was.

from http://nuwen.net/dx.html

JC only wears glasses because he is albino. (It would only make sense if Jensen is series L.)

[shadowblade34]

This guy was before JC, but he has cooler and more futuristic glasses than JC? I think this will be a good game to play, but the fact that it has no Multiplayer
would be kinda crappy,

[Jaedar]

This guy was before JC, but he has cooler and more futuristic glasses than JC? I think this will be a good game to play, but the fact that it has no Multiplayer
would be kinda crappy,

No.

[Lork]

Anyway, the point of the above is that the remote diagnosis mechanical aug, while a stretch which doesn't make much sense in the context of what this game is supposed to be according to the people who are making it, doesn't bother me much. Certainly not nearly so much as the fact that it fits into a package with the size, shape, and general appearance of an eyeball when Gunther's, apparently less advanced, eyes were visibly disfiguring. Ditto for Anna's one augmented eye.

Are you serious? You're as bad as the people who complain that the radios in Star Trek: Enterprise aren't as big as the ones in the original. They're not going to make their augmentations look like the ones in Deus Ex 1 because Anna and Gunther look ridiculous. They could have made the guy look like 2000's concept of a cyborg and maybe it would've made you happy, but it would've turned everyone else off, because that's not a credible representation of the future for 2010.

Science marches on, deal with it.

[gamer0004]

Anyway, the point of the above is that the remote diagnosis mechanical aug, while a stretch which doesn't make much sense in the context of what this game is supposed to be according to the people who are making it, doesn't bother me much. Certainly not nearly so much as the fact that it fits into a package with the size, shape, and general appearance of an eyeball when Gunther's, apparently less advanced, eyes were visibly disfiguring. Ditto for Anna's one augmented eye.

Are you serious? You're as bad as the people who complain that the radios in Star Trek: Enterprise aren't as big as the ones in the original. They're not going to make their augmentations look like the ones in Deus Ex 1 because Anna and Gunther look ridiculous. They could have made the guy look like 2000's concept of a cyborg and maybe it would've made you happy, but it would've turned everyone else off, because that's not a credible representation of the future for 2010.

Science marches on, deal with it.

Then don't make a new DX game. Just because in 1984 there was no Airstrip One or Thought Police doesn't mean the novel became irrelevant, and if Orwell (or someone else) had written a prequel or sequel it should have fitted in the original setting. The same is true for DX.

Gamespot interview:
http://gdc.gamespot.com/video/6253569/
Analyzation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ-388aRwSw

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

Are you serious? You're as bad as the people who complain that the radios in Star Trek: Enterprise aren't as big as the ones in the original. They're not going to make their augmentations look like the ones in Deus Ex 1 because Anna and Gunther look ridiculous. They could have made the guy look like 2000's concept of a cyborg and maybe it would've made you happy, but it would've turned everyone else off, because that's not a credible representation of the future for 2010.

To be fair, Enterprise was a pile of steaming ass, hence why the show ended the way it did. (having to leech off TNG just to salvage itself.) I hated it- excluding the episodes with the evil enterprise, those were just gold! and I love the opening.

Anyway Mech technology as we know is supposed to be shown as not all that great, yet here we can clearly see Jensen looks as if he could kick any Nano-Aug person's ass instantly. It just doesn't seem like the right way of leading into Deus Ex 1- because we know Gunther and Anna were on the way out- the game should show that in 20 years time these mechs are going to be next to pretty damn useless- the game needs to reflect that still. I just don't see that.

[shadowblade34]

This guy was before JC, but he has cooler and more futuristic glasses than JC? I think this will be a good game to play, but the fact that it has no Multiplayer
would be kinda crappy,

No.

No to what? The guy has more futuristic glasses than JC, the mech aug in the trailer looks too futuristic, even JC was not that futuristic.

[chris the cynic]

Are you serious?

Yes.

You're as bad as the people who complain that the radios in Star Trek: Enterprise aren't as big as the ones in the original.

Right, because false equivalence is really a sound way to argue a point.

They're not going to make their augmentations look like the ones in Deus Ex 1 because Anna and Gunther look ridiculous.

Which was the point. Do you honestly think that the Deus Ex developers couldn't imagine prosthesis that looked less disfiguring? The idea of cyborg in popular culture at the time was someone who looked exactly like an ordinary human being until you literally looked under their skin.

The way Anna and Gunther looked in Deus Ex was a divergence from the concept of cyborg at the time. It represented a conscious choice on the part of the developers. They chose to make Anna and Gunther look ridiculous. It's part of a process known as "World Building".

One of the foundational premises of Deus Ex was that mechanical augmentations were extremely disfiguring. The MiBs were created because albinos with strange voices and glowing red eyes blend in better than even the most advanced mechanical augmentations.

The reason that MiBs exist is because the most advanced mechanical augs in existence look ridiculous. That's the point. They're supposed to look ridiculous.

They could have made the guy look like 2000's concept of a cyborg and maybe it would've made you happy,

Maybe you are a nine year old, but as someone who was alive and conscious in the year 2000 I can assure you that the concept of a cyborg way back then had little to do with what was seen in Deus Ex. What was seen in Deus Ex was, as I said, an example of world building not simply grabbing the current sensibility.

Also, those DX3 eyes aren't a case of science marching on, so don't lie about it. They're a case of going back to the 1980s concept of a cyborg, which was itself closely based on the 1960s concept of a cyborg. And the 1960s concept of a cyborg was probably a throwback to something even earlier than that. The word might have been coined in the 60s but the concept has been around far longer.

To be clear, while I had reason for specifically choosing the 1960s and the 1980s we hardly need to stop there, the tradition didn't go away in between or after. There were two tv series about that sort of cyborg in the 1970s. Likewise if you look at the examples of cyborgs in popular culture in the 1990s and 2000s you'll see that they continue that tradition. This isn't a case of science marching on, it is a case of things staying exactly the fucking same for the past 50 years at a minimum.

The concept of a cyborg now is not noticeably different from the concept of a cyborg ten years ago.

If you want to be really pedantic about it, what we've just seen of Deus Ex 3 has a concept of cyborg that is less advanced than the concept that has been in popular culture continuously and largely unchanged since the 1960s. So it can hardly be said to be a case of science marches on, because science is marching in the opposite direction. What we just saw, most notably those arms, represents them changing direction from their earlier released art. The new direction is away from both the march of science and the concept of cyborg that has been standard since the 1960s, that direction happens to be moving toward the Deus Ex mechanical augs.

I think this is a good thing, but if we're going to talk about the eyes specifically, I think they didn't go far enough. Beyond the consistency issue I think they're missing an opportunity. Eyes are very important to people. We talk about them as windows to the soul, making eye contact can can make a huge difference socially, they're one of the first things people look at when meeting a person, so on and so forth. If they're going to embrace the disfigurement and pariah status that goes with mechanical augmentations in the world of Deus Ex the eyes would be a perfect place to do that.

The choice of whether or not to replace your eyes with more efficient but inhuman-looking disfiguring mechanical eyes could be a powerful one. It could also be one with consequences. Even people who consider themselves enlightened and can look passed mechanical arms and legs might still have trouble accepting someone with inhuman eyes. If you can't cover them up with sunglasses then it's a choice whose consequences are always with you.

but it would've turned everyone else off, because that's not a credible representation of the future for 2010.

All of the trends that indicate that in 17 years we might have eye-sized eye-shaped remote medical imaging technology that can diagnose broken bones at a distance in a way impossible for everything we currently use to diagnose broken bones were, in fact, in effect ten years ago.

Saying that we will not have a device capable of doing what that thing did which fits into a sphere with a diameter of 24mm is just as credible now as it was then.

If you disagree, if you find the idea that we won't have eye sized medical imaging technology that can detect broken bones through clothing and flesh at a distance to be completely unbelievable, then how about a bet? I plan to be alive in 2027, I'm guessing you do too. I'll wager right here right now that we won't have such things. Even if we overcome all the other hurdles, and eye isn't exactly a big thing. A little under an inch in diameter if that 24mm figure is correct.

Now I don't know whether you'd want a "the money's not the point" bet of $1, or a friendly wager of something like 10 or 100 dollars, or a, "I'm going to make this chris the cynic guy pay!" bet of a far larger quantity, but I am quite seriously willing to wager anything that is not more than 10,000 US dollars so name your price. I was going to say 100,000 but that would require setting aside an average of $5,882.36 a year for the bet over the next 17 years which seems excessive. So unless you're willing to discuss financing options I think my limit here is $10,000.

All of that said, if you are actually nine years old then I rescind my offer. I have no desire to take money from someone because they made a bet at the age of nine.

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Quick point about the thing Mr_Cyberpunk quoted.

The commentary over at nuwen.net is, unfortunately, inconsistent. It's pretty good at tracking down references, but a lot of the things it infers are not so good. The best example of that I can give is that pretty much everything it says about the date of the game in the commentary makes no sense if you stop to think about it.

Anyway, in this case it says, "JC and Paul Denton are Series N [Nanotech]. The MIBs are Series P [Physiopharmaceutical]. It is unknown what Series L was." That's ... not supported. That's not supported by the game for multiple reasons. For one thing, JC is not albino all the time (you get to choose) and certainly not albino by default*. For another the "self termination mechanism" in Series N agents was explosive. If JC's self termination mechanism had been explosive the game would have ended much sooner, specifically when Simons activates your killswitch.

More on this can be found over at Theos Ek as written up by our own Jcelios (walton simons).

There was I time when I took for granted that the commentary at nuwen.net was accurate, even after that time ended the idea that Series N meant Nano augs stuck with me. What finally made me realize that that couldn't be right was when walton pointed out that the thing says that Series N agents have an explosive self termination mechanism. Nano augs clearly do not.

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*In case you were wondering JC and Paul were originally supposed to look completely normal, the face lines and eyes were added later with the script and such changed to reflect that. So this can't be a throwback to a time development when Nano augs were supposed to necessarily be albino because such a time didn't exist. Before they were going to look the way they do now they were supposed to look like completely normal people.

[Hassat Hunter]

This guy was before JC, but he has cooler and more futuristic glasses than JC? I think this will be a good game to play, but the fact that it has no Multiplayer
would be kinda crappy,

No.

No to what? The guy has more futuristic glasses than JC, the mech aug in the trailer looks too futuristic, even JC was not that futuristic.

Probably no to "no multiplayer = crappy". What's with the emphasis on MP and raping games as a result of that these days. Can't get a decent SP game anymore?

[Xesum]

Fallout 3 isn't multiplayer, yet it is good.