A genuine Deus Ex: Human Revolution Testimony..

[chris the cynic]

I think that Page & Chow convo is a great example, partly because it isn't the most major one possible. That'd be one of the details in one level, a memorable moment, but easily skipped depending on play style.

Thanks.

I'll admit that I honestly don't understand the "memorable moments" thing at all. I guess DX didn't have story climaxes in each vast level, but if that translates to "events you'd remember" I remember a lot of charged moments. Gunther at the subway, Anna looking at JC in the cell, humour disabling the killswitch, Page branding JC a traitor, Paul in the 'ton, the often-quoted Women's Washroom, the poor children outside Castle Clinton and in the Mole hideout, uh there's an alien shooting green goo rays...not to list everything, but DX did not lack memorable moments. I'm getting the feeling "memorable moments" is code for "eye-bedazzlering cinematic cutscenes" for me to be uninteractively bored during.

There are really only two ways I can figure out to interpret the statement. One is that they think Deus Ex sucked, and sucked utterly. I really don't find that likely. Whatever differences of opinion I may have with these people, and they seem many, I don't think they thought Deus Ex was crap.

So you can't take it literally (because that leads to the first way to interpret it.) So in that case I think they're talking about unmissable stop the game to notice how motherfucking memorable this thing you're seeing is things. (So yeah, probably eye-bedazzling cutscenes.)

In that case a lot of things that we remember suddenly get lumped into the "easily skipped depending on play style" category, and thus do not fall into the "memorable moments" things.

Gunther at the subway? You never need to make it that far.
Anna that the cell? Doesn't need to happen.
The Women's Washroom incident? Most people never encountered it.
The poor children? Some people might not even notice.

So on, so forth. (Though, clearly not for all examples. Paul in the 'ton is certainly unskippable.)

I'll add my own example:
WaltonSimons You take another step forward, and here I am again, like your own reflection repeated in a hall of mirrors.
JCDenton That makes me one ugly son-of-a-bitch.

Pretty damned memorable. Imagine how many people playing never saw it.

Also, some of these things might not be just perfect. I could give a lot of examples, and I actually started to, but it's really not necessary. Even if something is literally unmissable that still doesn't mean the player will experience it the way you want them to. There are all sorts of things you could do that might make the Paul at the Ton conversation not look exactly how the developers wanted, and that's with a character who stays in one place. Introduce movement and things slip way, way, way out of the developer's control.

Plus, most of the things you mentioned are conversations. You know, people standing around talking. Where's the pretty? Where's the action?

I'm wondering if memorable moments for them might be something like introducing enemies. Think about in Paris, on the way to the cathedral, when there's a military bot on patrol. I'm not sure, but that might be the first time one is actually in your way. (The ones in the MJ12 lab under UNATCO can be skipped, the ones in Hong Kong don't need to be set off, on the other hand the ones a the dockyard can be skipped only with some effort, as I recall.) Anyway, a potentially "memorable" way to do it would be to have approaching to a certain point trigger a cut scene. JC is making his way down that road and all of sudden you've got the boom, boom, boom of the military bot walking, JC, keeps going as the music pics up dramatically the sound of the military bot's footsteps growing louder and complementing the crescendoing music, a corner is rounded and for a moment all sound stops: there's the Military bot in all its glory, pointed right at JC, music returns as it fires a rocket and JC jumps out of the way (I'm imagining some impressive camera work here) just barely avoiding getting blown up as the music shifts into combat tracks and you're back in the game.

I can see it being both memorable and spectacular, and I'm sure that many people would think it was a good deal cooler than walking up and potentially seeing it a distance down the road pointing in the other direction. The problem is that the cut scene I've just described is nothing like the Deus Ex way of doing things, and it rules out the possibility that the truly memorable moment might be one that no one expected. (Say, you're fighting with the MJ12 troops on that bridging thing, all of a sudden a rocket comes out of nowhere and in a moment of "Oh shit" you realize that you'd failed to notice a military bot but it hadn't overlooked you. More rockets follow as you run for for cover. I think that could be more memorable than any given cutscene.)

Though that's taking it to an insane extreme. Someone would have to be fairly nuts to throw a cutscene in there. Hopefully they wouldn't be using cutscenes so liberally as to throw one in just to introduce a mindless enemy, and hopefully even if they did it would not be in such a way as to force you to fight. Can you imagine how jarring that would be if you were carefully going through the game stealthily, unheard and unseen by anyone and then suddenly you let the bot spot you for no reason?

Then again, even as I write this, a part of my brain is screaming, "Boss fights, you idiot! Boss fights!" Which may have some truth to it. If you're going for memorable, and you're going to force fights to the death, why not open it up with a cutscene? Why not stick in cut scenes left and right?

[Jaedar]

I was thinking more like the example from the leaked gameplay footage.

So slight spoiler alert I guess: Basically, it ends with Jensen looking at a bomb(turning CGI as well) and then going shit! after which he goes and jumps out a window, and then neo-gunther starts talking and showing off. Cue fade to black where the boss-battle would be.

So yeah, now we don't have to theorycraft as much.

[bobby 55]

There hasn't been too many memorable cut scenes in my experience. A cinematic, à la Arkham Asylum and the (pre) encounter with Scarecrow is another matter. That kind of thing I can live with.

Not that it matters because I'm buying it no matter what.

[chris the cynic]

I was thinking more like the example from the leaked gameplay footage.

So slight spoiler alert I guess: Basically, it ends with Jensen looking at a bomb(turning CGI as well) and then going shit! after which he goes and jumps out a window, and then neo-gunther starts talking and showing off. Cue fade to black where the boss-battle would be.

So yeah, now we don't have to theorycraft as much.

See, here's the thing. Theorycrafting (nice word) is actually enjoyable for me. Getting news about HR is the opposite. Reading what you just wrote is depressing. Let me jump out the damned window myself, if that really is the best way to go in my estimation.

(I'm reminded of something Jonas once wrote, I think, about how if the main character is going to do something awesome, let the player do it. The example in question was, I think, steering a bomb into the enemy space ship.)

[Jaedar]

See, here's the thing. Theorycrafting (nice word) is actually enjoyable for me.

But now you have a single fact to back that up. It's all in the numbers.

[Jonas]

(I'm reminded of something Jonas once wrote, I think, about how if the main character is going to do something awesome, let the player do it. The example in question was, I think, steering a bomb into the enemy space ship.)

Fucking Halo 2.

It's a rule I picked up from the DX dev team, I'm pretty sure Warren Spector wrote it, possibly in the post-mortem, but I don't have the energy to look it up right now.

Then of course we broke that rule in TNM a couple of times, most blatantly in the ATC hovercar cutscene - but at least that was sort of a hidden bonus for the ultra-exploratory. We totally would've let you drive that hovercar yourself, if we'd had the resources to code it up, even for a hidden one-shot.

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

It's a rule I picked up from the DX dev team, I'm pretty sure Warren Spector wrote it, possibly in the post-mortem, but I don't have the energy to look it up right now.

Yeah it was the post-mortem. I understand what they meant by that but I think there's a bit of room to allow some form of automation (ie relying on cool death animations and action scenes) so long as its interactive in some way. With Deus Ex HR we've seen this in a limited perspective, sure you get to setup a takedown, but its not rewarding being able to kill so many guys instantly, there's no interaction there- you're just watching Jensen kill guys for 5 seconds- that sucks IMO- if the game was truly good it'd do the 5 second thing but let you control the character at the time still.. and jesen could in fact die during a takedown. Though this is the same flaw with the Assassins Creed series, the takedowns just suck- and ever since double takedowns they've undermined the entire combat elements of the game IMO (as its basically an I-Win button that can be spammed many times).

I'm not opposed to automation of takedowns, but it would be nice to see it have some level of gameplay involvement and interactivity, where by the player actively participates in pulling off the moves and has say in the matter, and also can fail.

[Jaedar]

I'm not opposed to automation of takedowns, but it would be nice to see it have some level of gameplay involvement and interactivity, where by the player actively participates in pulling off the moves and has say in the matter, and also can fail.

I agree in principle, but that kind of thinking is what led to quicktimeevents.

When you look at it though it's kind of the same as in DX. In DX you sneak up and press LMB to deliver the (fatal) hit in the head, in HR you sneak up, hit whatever and deliver the (fatal) hit in the head. The difference is presentation, where HR feels it needs to remove the player from control to play a flashy cutscene. Personally I fear the constant perspective shifts will be jarring, preventing any immershun and that the animations will quickly become repetitive.

[Jonas]

When you look at it though it's kind of the same as in DX. In DX you sneak up and press LMB to deliver the (fatal) hit in the head, in HR you sneak up, hit whatever and deliver the (fatal) hit in the head.

Well in DX it was never that reliable. Until you figured out where the relatively arbitrary damage multiplier areas on the character models were, DX's locational damage seemed completely random and inexplicable. Once you did find out, it was still extremely easy to miss slightly and fail the one-hit takedown.

I'm not saying that was necessarily a good thing. I certainly think it seemed too random a lot of the time - like you didn't really know what you'd done wrong when you failed, so it didn't seem like your fault rather than just the game acting up. But I do think there ought to be some element of risk in performing stealth takedowns, more than just the remote possibility of being spotted by somebody else while the animation is playing...