TNM Review

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TheUnbeholden
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TNM Review

Post by TheUnbeholden »

Finished playing the mod, It started out great, the best voice acting I've heard in a mod.. other excellent mods I've played have never attempted voice acting (apart from a farcry mod called Matto4).

Its also very long, I like that :D.

Unfortunately the game lost a bit of steam towards the end, the plot was thrown at you cheaply, without much detective work, and it ended when I was really starting to get into it... The end part of the game was a little confusing around in the ship... I ended back tracking a few to many times.

Aside from that I would have preferred if the story line kept being compelling, like it seemed to be in the beginning of the game. I really liked the fact that you could read books in game, emails, magazines.. I wanted more of it. Basically the game allowed me to read some fan fiction, as well as get used to the whole "forum city" idea. It was interesting enough but the main plot line should have been handled a bit more like a mystery rather then just been fed plot.

Is there any walkthrough that can be recommended? because I really want to see everything this mod has to offer, and I feel as though I've missed alot. Thanks in advance.
Last edited by TheUnbeholden on Sat Feb 11, 2012 12:09 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: TNM Review

Post by bobby 55 »

This walklthrough is done by the most thorough of TNM players and *cough* 1.04+ patch hatcher. :)

http://thenamelessmod.com/wiki/Walkthrough
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Re: TNM Review

Post by Jonas »

Thanks for your feedback TheUnbeholden. I think we'd all have liked to make the storyline more investigative and make the player more independent of the various factions (indeed the first version of our design document had no storyline at all, just the objective of finding Deus Diablo), but we had several other considerations that kept us moving in a more Deus Ex-like mission-based direction, including the wish to satisfy the hunger of Deus Ex fans (including ourselves) for more DX, and the problem of giving players enough direction to not get stuck - you might be surprised how fast most players get stuck if you don't lead them by the nose through most of the game, and being stuck is no fun for anybody.

Have you ever played Redsun 2020? They have no voice acting, but they leave you to your own devices throughout most of the game. Personally I found it pretty frustrating to not know what I was supposed to be doing at all times, and I did end up getting stuck and abandoning the mod, sadly. But perhaps you'll have better luck with it than I did :)
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Re: TNM Review

Post by nerdenstein »

Redsun 2020 was a good mod, but yes it was fustrating at times,
Storyline was a broken (not knowing what to do or why you were doing it alot of the time) and some of the maps were big and confusing.
The real trouble with reality is that there's no background music.
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Re: TNM Review

Post by TheUnbeholden »

Picked up TNM again. Playing the WC path this time. But a few small criticisms is when I go up to that bum in front of the sols bar. For some reason my character says "don't talk about Scara like that!" when the bum tells me about having experiments done on him by World Corp.. I found that weird how the game forced me to treat the bum like that and kiss Scara's ass, and don't appreciate being forced to say something I wouldn't normally say. Just cause I work for Scara doesn't mean I'm going to not listen to criticism about him. I find that working for Scara is actually a very 'distant' job where you don't really get emotionally involved or make friends with anyone, or even meet much people from world corp... A dialogue option to reflect that would have been nice.
In fact finding out some of the secrets of World Corp.. while working for World Corp actually sounds like a interesting motivation to join world corp in the first place. It makes it easier to snoop around the place after all.

Actually the mod does give you late in the game a secondary objective of infiltrating the sub level of World Corp while working for Scara to find Zero Presence (without telling Scara about it).

I felt compelled to work for Scara for the money as a hitman/assassin, but I also wanted to be free to play detective and work to find out Scara's dirty secrets (the end of the game also gives you a choice to ban Scara and take control of world corp eventhough you worked for him... so it makes perfect sense)
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Re: TNM Review

Post by chris the cynic »

I've been meaning to get back to writing The Narcissus Walkthrough at some point, right now it only covers the first district. In theory that would be a walkthrough for after you've been through the game a few times. If it were, you know, finished.

-

I didn't have that particular WC conversation, but I also felt like there were things where the WC storyline forced you into saying things that really didn't seem like they should be the only option. Though, it should be pointed out, I'm generally not someone who plays as World Corp so it didn't come up that often.
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Re: TNM Review

Post by Jonas »

Totally valid criticism, but it must be said both storylines force you to say a lot of things, and so does Deus Ex. Deus Ex gets around it by never having JC show any emotion, but since we decided that Trestkon should have some personality of his own, it's almost unavoidable that he will occasionally say something that doesn't quite align with what you as a player want to say. The only way to get around that would be to have multiple choices for every single one of Trestkon's lines, like BioWare tends to do. That wasn't really feasible though :)

We did implement a handful of choices during playtesting, when testers objected to their character saying a certain thing - choices that were just emotional alternatives that didn't influence the direction of the conversation much. Clearly we should've done that here too, it just slipped through the cracks.
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Re: TNM Review

Post by justanotherfan »

Yeah, I agree, that is a good criticism of the WC storyline. In DX, there's the "Be a jerk to the mechs/pacifists/etc" early on, but it subsides as JC gets dragged into the NSF struggle. TNM offers the choice, and gets to assume that the player is as psychopathic as WC. JC is fairly neutral, but also makes some strikingly strong statements to Simons and Manderley because it's hard to imagine him uncertain at those points, just as an evil Trekstop would have to say antisocial things.

Could consider it uncharted territory for a DX game, allowing choices that make the playercharacter a villain (alienating the player), but there's probably a way to do it better. I figured they were having fun, making the player say outrageous things.
--

Being fed plot is kinda standard in the theme. Think Deus Ex, The Matrix, Halflife2, Johnny Mnemonic, Bladerunner...they're less detectiving than they seem. Instead of clues, the main character mostly bounces from person to person, being told what to do or who to see next. Bucking that trend makes the character seem annoyingly murder-mystery omniscient, or the game nearly impossible. With the former option, the player no longer has a representative avatar, and with the latter option, the player gets frustrated. The videogame player should have the "A-ha moment" first, not the character, and that's hard to do. Balance is important, but I'd err on the side of players getting through the game. I like TNM the way it is in this respect.
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Re: TNM Review

Post by chris the cynic »

Jonas wrote:Totally valid criticism, but it must be said both storylines force you to say a lot of things, and so does Deus Ex. Deus Ex gets around it by never having JC show any emotion, but since we decided that Trestkon should have some personality of his own, it's almost unavoidable that he will occasionally say something that doesn't quite align with what you as a player want to say.
I think you actually give Deus Ex a bit too much credit. Which is something that I don't think I ever expected I'd say. Deus Ex doesn't always get around it, sometimes is smashes into it face first.

Years ago over at PDX someone brought up the Lebedev mission which includes the following:
JuanLebedev: I surrender
JCDenton: What?
JuanLebedev: Easy now, Agent. UNATCO has a policy against killing unarmed prisoners.

[snip]

(Anna just told JC to kill Lebedev in one of three different ways depending on past choices.)
JCDenton: He surrendered. He's an unarmed prisoner -- UNATCO policy protects him.

[snip]

JosephManderly:All right, Denton. What the hell happened? You were under direct orders -- MY orders!
JCDenon: Sorry about not killing Lebedev. He seemed worth interrogating.
In the words of JC Denton, "What?"

What the hell happened to UNATCO policy? You're told that UNATCO policy is the reason not to kill him, UNATCO policy is the reason that you give for not killing him at the time, yet when you have to justify your actions to your boss you make up some bullshit about knowing who is worth interrogating?

With consistency like that you half expect the debugger to say to JC, "You lied at least once about why you spared Lebedev. Forgetfulness, perhaps?"

It makes no sense. Bringing up UNATCO policy might have gotten JC out of trouble because Joseph Manderley might not have wanted to give the, "I AM THE LAW!" speech necessary to say that obeying the policy was wrong and Manderley probably couldn't have known that Lebedev would surrender, making him an unarmed prisoner, thus you'd be presenting him with information he didn't have at the time the order was given. Manderley was, on the other hand, already well aware of all of the factors that would make Lebedev worth interrogating before he gave the order to kill Lebedev. There's no way in hell it would serve as a justification for JC's actions and JC deserved to be smacked down for using such an unnecessarily flimsy excuse (especially since he had an actual justification on hand.)

There may very well be people who did spare Lebedev because they thought he was worth interrogating. But if your reason was the reason that the game originally presented you with, being forced to ignore it in favor of something you may never have considered, or may have considered but found to be less than compelling, could be jarring. (It certainly was for the person who originally brought it up.)

That's somebody else's example.

One that always stood out for me was what happens if you fuck up the rescue of the hostages in the subway station. It stood out for me because I did just that and I wasn't exactly happy about it. I got to Hell's kitchen knowing that I fucked up and when Paul said, "That hostage rescue was a disaster," I agreed entirely. So when JC responded with defensiveness and righteous indignation, "UNATCO policy is clear: no negotiation. You try for a rescue, and if it works, it works. I don't need you second-guessing me," any illusion that I was in control of JC was destroyed.

I never noticed that both of these examples involved citing UNATCO policy before. You fail to cite it when you probably should, you have to cite it when you might not want to. Perhaps I should try to use examples with a broader range in the future.

-

[What follows is addressed specifically to people other than Jonas, since Jonas already knows this.]

Anyway, I should probably say that while I would have done certain things differently, I know (for I was a beta tester) that changes were made to give more choices in terms of dialog and the developers of TNM should definitely get credit for that.

One example is that when you get the space station if you've decided to, you know, not kill all of your old friends your only out is to side with Ryan, but originally the conversations didn't acknowledge that at all. So maybe you as a player had already decided that you're going to turn your back on everything that World Corp represents, that you really have no interest in murdering DD or frying the people at PDX, and you were actively working toward that goal while ignoring every order that Scara gave you, but when you talked to KK or DD the conversation was completely WC-loyalist in flavor. That could be pretty jarring. That was fixed and I think that the game is better for it.
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Re: TNM Review

Post by justanotherfan »

JC is fairly uncertain in the beginning, since he's new to UNATCO and being an agent. Reality is sinking in, and JC still must be subordinate. At that Lebedev point, Paul has made JC question his loyalties, so the less said to Manderley and the more agreeable it is, then the more time JC has. Paul's defection put JC's loyalty into question too, so JC has to play politics. Saying "Sir, under section 3 letter F of the UNATCO Handbook, you're a dink" could have gotten JC decommissioned. IOW, JC no longer trusts Manderley and makes an excuse to buy time.

That's how I went through it. If someone didn't see it that way, it could be jarring. With Trestork and JC possibly alienating the player a bit, I guess the issue is having a Gordon Freeman or actually having a character, and what's better for gameplay.
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Re: TNM Review

Post by chris the cynic »

justanotherfan wrote:JC is fairly uncertain in the beginning, since he's new to UNATCO and being an agent. Reality is sinking in, and JC still must be subordinate. At that Lebedev point, Paul has made JC question his loyalties, so the less said to Manderley and the more agreeable it is, then the more time JC has. Paul's defection put JC's loyalty into question too, so JC has to play politics. Saying "Sir, under section 3 letter F of the UNATCO Handbook, you're a dink" could have gotten JC decommissioned. IOW, JC no longer trusts Manderley and makes an excuse to buy time.
On the one hand, I don't want to say that your opinion is wrong, if that's how you saw it then that's how you saw it.

On the other hand there are a couple of holes in that looked at from a pure story perspective.

I'm going to try to do the short version here (I was up to 894 words and still not done when I thought I was running too long and started over.)

The first problem is that everything you said would apply even more to JC's meeting with Navarre. Especially when you consider that the only way you get to give the "seemed worth interrogating" line is if you allow Navarre to kill Lebedev. When Navarre reaches you on the plane UNATCO just found out your brother is a traitor, they know that said traitor told you to talk to the person you've been ordered to kill, and when Navarre shows up sure enough you're standing there chatting with the guy UNATCO told you to kill. You certainly don't look very loyal. Also, Navarre in addition to being your superior, is an armed combat trained augmented agent. If there's a time to try to hide your true motives and look loyal that's got to be it more than when you come back to UNATCO after handing the NSF leader over to Navarre.

The second is, what JC says isn't very agreeable. JC said that he disobeyed because Lebedev seemed worth interrogating. That's a problem for two reasons. The first is that it means that JC is claiming that he disobeyed on his on initiative. If he disobeyed this order because he felt like it was a bad one, what other orders might he disobey? Not only is he basically coming out and saying he is disloyal, he's saying that he's disloyal in an inherently unpredictable way. There's no way to know when the next time JC will think disobeying an order seems worthwhile. He's essentially compromising any credibility he had as an agent. The second is that he's coming out and saying that he knows what to do better than Manderley. Lebedev's value as an interrogatable prisoner did not suddenly increase between when Manderley gave the order and when JC refused to carry it out. That means that when JC says that to Manderley he's saying, fairly directly, "I thought you were wrong."

Compare that to the reason that JC gave Navarre, "He surrendered. He's an unarmed prisoner -- UNATCO policy protects him." First it places clear limits on when and where JC would disobey orders. He will only disobey if the order violates UNATCO policy. That means that, unlike with the canon response, he can be trusted to carry out the vast majority of orders and it should be easy to assign him missions where he will not have reason to disobey. It says that he is loyal to UNATCO and the only way he would disobey an order is if his loyalty to UNATCO overrode his duty to carry out the order. It says, in short, that he is still a useful agent. Second, that never claims that Manderley was wrong.

That's a point that probably deserves to be looked at in isolation. As you've said, Manderley has a lot of power over JC at this point and it is therefore in JC's best interest not to piss Manderley off. That the canon response was to basically say that Manderley was wrong (though softened with a "seemed") doesn't really play to that. JC's open with Navarre is different, the very first thing he does with her is to tell her something she might not have known, "He surrendered." Manderley especially couldn't have known that Lebedev would surrender which means that when he gave the order he had no way of knowing that carrying it out would be against UNATCO policy. As such, if JC were to point out that Lebedev surrendered he wouldn't be saying, "You're wrong," as in canon Deus Ex, but instead, "Things changed."

Would that make Manderley happy? Almost certainly not. He wanted JC to follow orders regardless of policy. It's probably going too far to say that he wanted JC to follow orders mindlessly* but he certainly didn't want JC to spare Lebedev and even though Navarre killed him in the end (in the conversation in question), he's pissed off and would likely remain that way regardless.

That said, I do think that the person who brought this up originally was right. If a game says, "Do X for reason Y," repeatedly, and then you're asked why you did X, saying you did it for reason Y should, at the very least, be an option. Especially when it makes as much sense to do so as it does in this case. Given the choice between telling the boss man, "I disobeyed your order because it seemed like you were wrong to give it," and, "I didn't carry out the order because between when you gave it and when I could carry it out things changed in such a way that (through no fault of yours) carrying it out would have broken the rules," the second seems like it would be somewhat wiser.

-

*Imagine that the new information JC learned was not that Lebedev surrendered and was unarmed, but instead that the NSF on Liberty Island had planted a nuclear bomb near UNATCO HQ and killing Lebedev would set it off. I'm guessing that if, upon being faced with that, JC decided to disobey orders by rendering Lebedev unconscious and bringing him to Jaime so the remote detonator could be disarmed, Manderley would not be pissed off JC disobeyed. Instead I think he'd probably be relieved that JC disobeyed.
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Re: TNM Review

Post by justanotherfan »

True. Still, both motives can apply to JC. I couldn't find the script of the JC/Manderley conversation, and haven't played in years, but since Anna orders JC to "Terminate the prisoner, Agent. If you are too afraid, you are ordered to return to base on Manderley's authority", then Manderley has already given orders that take JC's fearful or principled hesitation into account. If I were JC, I would assume (perhaps wrongly) that Manderley knows the policies of UNATCO and must work accord to them. I'd also assume that orders which ignore policy and already take objections into account would mean the policy argument already failed; JC needs to give some additional convincing argument or excuse (eg. we should use Lebedev).

I definitely understand the viewpoint where JC must be a predictable agent, where loyalty to the rules is a fair second to loyalty to Manderley. After Paul's defection and Manderley's unconscionable orders, UNATCO seems to be less bound by rigour, and more about the ends than the means. "I thought I was helping you more this way" seemed to grasp at that.
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Re: TNM Review

Post by chris the cynic »

justanotherfan wrote:True. Still, both motives can apply to JC. I couldn't find the script of the JC/Manderley conversation, and haven't played in years, but since Anna orders JC to "Terminate the prisoner, Agent. If you are too afraid, you are ordered to return to base on Manderley's authority", then Manderley has already given orders that take JC's fearful or principled hesitation into account. If I were JC, I would assume (perhaps wrongly) that Manderley knows the policies of UNATCO and must work accord to them. I'd also assume that orders which ignore policy and already take objections into account would mean the policy argument already failed;
A lot of this is probably going to come down to the "perhaps wrongly".

As players we know a lot more about what is going on than JC. Specifically, we know that Manderley was actually watching the video feed from JC's infolink when JC met Paul but was not watching when JC met Lebedev met Anna.* Which means that we, as players, know that Manderley didn't know Lebedev had surrendered when he ordered Anna to take over and send JC home if JC couldn't complete the mission. That order had to be given before Lebedev surrendered, and thus couldn't have taken Lebedev's surrender into account.**

JC the character doesn't know that Manderley stopped watching, but neither does he know that he started. (JC only finds out Manderley watched the part of the infolink feed with Paul after he got back.) JC the character also doesn't know what Anna reported to Manderley after the fact (and in this case we the players don't either.)

Certainly I can understand taking, "On Manderley's authority" to mean that Manderley is either watching and ordering in real time or specifically said in advance that should Lebedev surrender while unarmed and JC refuse to kill him based on UNATCO policy that JC should be ordered back to base. I honestly don't remember what I thought the first time. Given the information JC had available, I think it would be reasonable to assume that Navarre's orders were more generic, something like, "If JC can't get the job done you do it and send him back here," without a specific consideration of the exact circumstances.

But that's not really important because I think the larger consideration is not so much what Manderley did as the best way to respond. If the player took a principled stand based on UNATCO policy, as he claims to Navarre, then allowing the player at least the option to say that to Manderley would be a good idea. If JC is more concerned with not pissing off the boss (which I'm not totally convinced the conversation supports) I think that starting from the assumption that the boss isn't going out of his way to break the rules might be a good idea even if JC doesn't really believe that.

I'll stick the conversation in a footnote.***

-

*The way that we know this is that no matter what you do, including blowing up Anna before she gets a chance to speak, Manderley doesn't see it and if necessary it can be effectively hidden by Alex deleting the logs. We aren't told why he stops watching, possibly he had to run out of the room to get Paul's killswitch activated (or perhaps he just wants to scream when he finds out his best agent defected.)

**Though it could, as you say, taken the potential of Lebedev's surrender into account, but it could just as easily been given to deal with the possibility that Anna would find JC cowering outside the room unable to contemplate the idea of an assassination in the first place. In the instances where Anna suggests that JC be given the mission she puts it forward as a test to see if JC will make a good assassin and there are many possible reasons that that might not work out beyond Lebedev surrendering.

***
JosephManderley All right, Denton. What the hell happened? You were under direct orders -- MY orders!
JCDenton Sorry about not killing Lebedev. He seemed worth interrogating.
JosephManderley We don't give you enough information to make a call like that.
JCDenton I guess that means I don't get the op bonus?
JosephManderley You can turn in your weapons right now if you're going to be a smartass.
JCDenton I risked my life, and I recovered the Ambrosia. I deserve compensation.
JosephManderley We don't have time for trifles. Whatever. Take it. But it will be the last one. Clearly monetary incentives don't work with you and Paul.
JCDenton I try to do the best job I can.
JosephManderley Just shut up and listen for a second. Christ, JC, this kind of behavior, not to mention your brother's defection, is making certain powerful people very nervous. Nervous about you. You understand the importance of loyalty, don't you?
JCDenton Yes, but --
JosephManderley Well, that's what seems to be missing in you and your brother. Brace yourself for an ugly lesson, JC. The Coalition has shut down Paul's augmentations and has activated the killswitch.
JCDenton Activated... what?
JosephManderley He's our enemy now. He's gone, JC. The Coalition wants you to understand that he's just another terrorist, like the ones that have died by your very hand this evening.
JCDenton Can they really kill him -- with the press of a button?
JosephManderley Yes -- and you, too. So take these orders seriously. They're sending you to Hong Kong.
JCDenton What about Paul? Will I get to see him again?
JosephManderley Please. Just get your equipment and meet our pilot Jock at the helipad. You will need to take out a man called Tracer Tong, Paul's contact in Hong Kong. Prove that they can trust you. JC --
JCDenton Yes...
JosephManderley It's critical that they trust you.

JosephManderley The only way to allay their suspicions of you, JC, is to actively work against your brother's allies.
JosephManderley I got you this opportunity; now it's up to you.
JosephManderley Move out, agent.
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Re: TNM Review

Post by justanotherfan »

I figure Manderley is aware of UNATCO policies. He is the bureaucrat in charge, placed there by the conspiracy, but he'd know "We don't kill unarmed people". He'd know JC's bio in detail, that he's a principled idealist (if that matches the choice). Since UNATCO is "formed by executive order", there'd be an oath to uphold the constitution (or the Charter of Human Rights since the "US is a UNATCO member nation"), so Manderley's orders would have to be legal. Constitution could have changed though after a 2020 SuperPatriot Amendment ;-) (the US government would never assassinate an unarmed man without a trial).

When Anna is killed, I remember Alex popping in, yelling at JC, "What the hell was that? I'll cover you this time, but...", although I don't remember if JC can find out that Manderley wasn't watching when Anna isn't killed.

If the difference in what JC says to Anna versus Manderley bothers enough players, I guess it should have been made an option. Still, the current phrasing matched what I was thinking; I wouldn't want to throw the book at Manderley, show that he ordered a murder, or even just point out that he's made a mistake. The apologizing and taking the blame with an excuse, it seems to give him more time to settle alliances.
----

Amusingly, looking through the UNATCO handbook quotes, I can't find anything about unarmed enemies, just that "you also understand the necessity to HEED ORDERS from your superiors without hesitation; your superiors are typically briefed on matters for which you may not be cleared, and hesitation on the part of an agent can result in the serious IMPAIRMENT of mission objectives and attendant CASUALTIES". Maybe the quotes are incomplete, or maybe JC realized Lebedev was bluffing or something. It just didn't bother me.
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Re: TNM Review

Post by gamer0004 »

justanotherfan wrote:(the US government would never assassinate an unarmed man without a trial).
Er Bin Laden?
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