Would you have bought DX:HR if it wasn't Deus Ex?

[Jaedar]

Jeez Jaedar, you're such a grumpy old man!

I'm younger than you

I won't argue the grumpy part though, I have become quite disillusioned with the games industry. Seeing everything I like getting slowly ripped out of every genre I like does that it seems.

[AEmer]

@ Morrowind:

I loved that game, it was awesome, I had a lot of fun with it back then. But supperior gameplay mechanics ? _really_?

Do you even remember the leveling system? I was 15 when it came out, and I ended up restarting morrowind 5-10 times in order to create a character that was tough enough to run around freely. I wasn't dumb, I wasn't new to gaming...the game was just that tough to get into.
It was full of horrible mechanics like favoring people who chose _not_ to take training in endurance and hand-to-hand and heavy armor, then equip heavy armor and go to the nearest beach, try to swim and box with a mud crap for a couple of hours. Can you say WTF?

Oblivion kept this aspect, only now you'd be summoning daedra and fighting with them in the safe confines of a town...and you're saying the system that rewards this sillyness shouldn't be changed? And do you recall that the much lampooned scaling enemy system _was in morrowind too_ ?

And the original Fallouts had perhaps one of the worst learning curves of all time. I love that game to death, but MY GOD was the character creation system broken. Any semblence of balance or choice comes down to 5 different optimized builds, or essentially gimping yourself. Fallout 1 and 2 are character creation: The game.

These games work in spite of archaic and convoluted game systems, _not_ because of them. You want to know why these games have replay value? because starting over again and again is the only way to slowly figure out the ups and downs of how to create a character.

I do find there's an odd charm to a lot of the old game systems, don't get me wrong, but they're full of downright moronic concequences, and choices that aren't choices at all because some things are clearly and vastly supperior. I think the only reason I really enjoy them is because I like comprehending convoluted things. I like puzzling things out. I like thinking about arbitrary unimportant fictional game systems...Even _if_ I thought I enjoyed the game systems of morrowind and fallout 1 and 2 more than fallout 3 and Oblivion, that has absolutely no bearing on the quality of those games because I'm in the minority due to my idiosyncracies.

[Neveos]

Well, at first I thought it was an awesome game, but it started going south when I realized how bland everything was getting. You never connected with anything, and the NPC's were all repeating completely useless crap. Every NPC was the same. It was also annoying how few things there were to interact with. The emails were more interesting than what the NPCs had to say. They didn't even have unique names.

As far as conspiracy theory goes it dabbled in some good stuff with media spinning and whether or not to listen to the bio chip recall. But it could have been much much more relevant to today's plethora of conspiracies, and I hated how they re-vilified arabs and muslims with the 2 E-Books devoted to the state of Israel. Israel's Mossad is possibly the worst actual conspirator in the world. The first DX did much to make us question the notion of terrorist, and instead, this only emboldens the label on Arabs by telling the story of how a united arab front simply decided to wipe israel out, leaving israelis to fight a valiant on-going guerilla war.

Such a bigoted prediction pisses me off severely.

[Dragon]

@ Morrowind:

I loved that game, it was awesome, I had a lot of fun with it back then. But supperior gameplay mechanics ? _really_?

Do you even remember the leveling system? I was 15 when it came out, and I ended up restarting morrowind 5-10 times in order to create a character that was tough enough to run around freely. I wasn't dumb, I wasn't new to gaming...the game was just that tough to get into.

Better to have a system that poses a challenge than a level-with-you system where bandits run around in full daedric armor in no time and where a rat does more damage at lv10 than any heavy hitter at lv1. In Morrowind you know if you run into a dangerous place and you get worked over that you need to train harder while in Oblivion everything is as piss easy or difficult (depending where you set the slider) at lv1 or lv1Million.

It was full of horrible mechanics like favoring people who chose _not_ to take training in endurance and hand-to-hand and heavy armor, then equip heavy armor and go to the nearest beach, try to swim and box with a mud crap for a couple of hours. Can you say WTF?

Morrowind punished a few character builds in an way it should not. Oblivion on the other hand punished abominably anything but the two builds the developers have been using. Skyrim goes even further where one build is favored like hell and anything else is a joke.

Oblivion kept this aspect, only now you'd be summoning daedra and fighting with them in the safe confines of a town...and you're saying the system that rewards this sillyness shouldn't be changed?

Which is one of the many reasons Oblivion sucks. Throwing that out of the window is great just that in Skyrim they went on to replace it with even more fucked up ideas.

And do you recall that the much lampooned scaling enemy system _was in morrowind too_ ?

In a reasonable way. It didn't throw off the entire game as it did in Oblivion where you get actually punished for leveling up. Smart people go all the way to the end-boss at level 1. How brain-damaged is such a system please?

[bobby 55]

I hated how they re-vilified arabs and muslims with the 2 E-Books devoted to the state of Israel. Israel's Mossad is possibly the worst actual conspirator in the world. The first DX did much to make us question the notion of terrorist, and instead, this only emboldens the label on Arabs by telling the story of how a united arab front simply decided to wipe israel out, leaving israelis to fight a valiant on-going guerilla war.

Such a bigoted prediction pisses me off severely.

Dude http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War. I'm not saying who's right or wrong, but after ten thousand years of hating each other I can't see that changing anytime soon.

[shadowblade34]

I hated how they re-vilified arabs and muslims with the 2 E-Books devoted to the state of Israel. Israel's Mossad is possibly the worst actual conspirator in the world. The first DX did much to make us question the notion of terrorist, and instead, this only emboldens the label on Arabs by telling the story of how a united arab front simply decided to wipe israel out, leaving israelis to fight a valiant on-going guerilla war.

Such a bigoted prediction pisses me off severely.

Dude http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War. I'm not saying who's right or wrong, but after ten thousand years of hating each other I can't see that changing anytime soon.

It seems more like Israel wants to wipe out the Palestinians, and then the rest of the Arabs, I've had friends who were shot dead by the Israeli forces for no fucking reason.

The conspiracies in DX1 were more relevant and interesting to me than DXHR's, and the ionly argument that the 'purists' seemed to use in DXHR was the 'playing God' one.

[bobby 55]

The conspiracies in DX1 were more relevant and interesting to me than DXHR's, and the ionly argument that the 'purists' seemed to use in DXHR was the 'playing God' one.

And that without enhancements they'd be inferior scholastically, their chances of employment would dimish, not to mention being in hock up to their eyeballs, and would always need to purchase neuropozyne.

Edit: An excellent article by Mr Gillen at RPS: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/09 ... more-72674

[Jonas]

It seems more like Israel wants to wipe out the Palestinians, and then the rest of the Arabs, I've had friends who were shot dead by the Israeli forces for no fucking reason.

Christ, I don't really want to derail this thread, especially not into an inevitably awful Palestine/Israel argument, but discounting the efficiency with which each side has gone about attempting to wipe out each other, I'm pretty sure they're equally vengeful at this point.

[shadowblade34]

The conspiracies in DX1 were more relevant and interesting to me than DXHR's, and the ionly argument that the 'purists' seemed to use in DXHR was the 'playing God' one.

And that without enhancements they'd be inferior scholastically, their chances of employment would dimish, not to mention being in hock up to their eyeballs, and would always need to purchase neuropozyne.

Edit: An excellent article by Mr Gillen at RPS: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/09 ... more-72674

My phone has fucked up loads of my posts today, what Iwrote but got removed by my phone for some reason is that I said by the end of the game only the 'walking weapons and playing god arguments seemed to be used'.
Everything else just seemed to have been dropped, and they were only really seen at the beginning in Detroit. Were they mentioned anywhere else?

Christ, I don't really want to derail this thread, especially not into an inevitably awful Palestine/Israel argument, but discounting the efficiency with which each side has gone about attempting to wipe out each other, I'm pretty sure they're equally vengeful at this point.

Agreed

[bobby 55]

The conspiracies in DX1 were more relevant and interesting to me than DXHR's, and the ionly argument that the 'purists' seemed to use in DXHR was the 'playing God' one.

And that without enhancements they'd be inferior scholastically, their chances of employment would dimish, not to mention being in hock up to their eyeballs, and would always need to purchase neuropozyne.

Edit: An excellent article by Mr Gillen at RPS: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/09 ... more-72674

My phone has fucked up loads of my posts today, what Iwrote but got removed by my phone for some reason is that I said by the end of the game only the 'walking weapons and playing god arguments seemed to be used'.
Everything else just seemed to have been dropped, and they were only really seen at the beginning in Detroit. Were they mentioned anywhere else?

The television news updates mention a few concerns with interviews of the public. I think the employment one was on a newspaper at Picus but I can't swear to it. General eavesdropping reveal snippets. I'm considering a non lethal playthrough so I'll make note of where I find stuff. Hopefully that kinda thing isn't randomised.

[shadowblade34]

That's another thing, how many newspaper stories where there? I only saw a change in them after a change of location or completion of a major mission.

[AEmer]

I am trying to replay HR right now, but I really can't enjoy this shooting business. It's just not fun in any way to me. Popping uninteresting moles with poor AI.

The AI is really really terrible.
These two guys walked right past me
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/59582 ... F9C643D27/

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/59582 ... DB985BE07/

You do realize that AI in a stealther is designed with a lot of weak-spots, because that way the player can attempt to fool it, yes? It's not a bug, it's a feature

I would counter that the AI is quite advanced. Try taking the various augmented reality augmentations to see how the AI works. You'll be able to notice a myrriad patterns. Using it together with the invisibility augmentation and the xonar-sight augmentation, you can pretty much ghost around amongst your enemies in full view without ever being seen. How cool is that?

It's part of the central Deus Ex design ethos; there should be a fair few "holes" through which the player can choose to move, and some of those holes involve tricking the AI. That means an AI programmed with a lot of advanced features that will make them behave in relatively dumb ways. Hitman 2 is an example of an older game with exceptionally advanced AI, applauded at the time, where those exact same things in your screenshot could occur.

[shadowblade34]

I am trying to replay HR right now, but I really can't enjoy this shooting business. It's just not fun in any way to me. Popping uninteresting moles with poor AI.

The AI is really really terrible.
These two guys walked right past me
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/59582 ... F9C643D27/

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/59582 ... DB985BE07/

You do realize that AI in a stealther is designed with a lot of weak-spots, because that way the player can attempt to fool it, yes? It's not a bug, it's a feature

I would counter that the AI is quite advanced. Try taking the various augmented reality augmentations to see how the AI works. You'll be able to notice a myrriad patterns. Using it together with the invisibility augmentation and the xonar-sight augmentation, you can pretty much ghost around amongst your enemies in full view without ever being seen. How cool is that?

It's part of the central Deus Ex design ethos; there should be a fair few "holes" through which the player can choose to move, and some of those holes involve tricking the AI. That means an AI programmed with a lot of advanced features that will make them behave in relatively dumb ways. Hitman 2 is an example of an older game with exceptionally advanced AI, applauded at the time, where those exact same things in your screenshot could occur.

The second screenshot is understandable, yet the first one, I was standing in the open, they just walked past me, ignoring me. Even when the enemies are cloaked, they just stand and shoot at me, sometimes they throw grenades a their feet.

Did anyone else find it really easy to beat the guys who try to attack you after meeting with Zhao? Just a gas grenade did the trick, they all stood next to each other.

[Dragon]

If you had seen the many situations in game where I had piles of enemies in one room because of send-bob and another send-bob or even more stupid bob-iness then you would not consider these "voluntary holes". This is at best bad AI but not voluntary holes. Deus-Ex is about "how" you approach a problem not about voluntary holes that don't exist and fail as soon as you cough at them.

EDIT: Concerning the guys you mention, I had been in the vent shaft. I've not seen worse AI since a long time than there... okay... I've seen worse in the FEMA map. Too bad I can't screenshot or video-crap with this crap-shit called Steam.

[bobby 55]

Did anyone else find it really easy to beat the guys who try to attack you after meeting with Zhao?

I 'cheated' by cloaking at exiting via that vent. No probs.