One small example....

[Jaedar]

The 'choice' with melee is that you can choose to upgrade it or not - if you don't upgrade it, you have to leave a gap between doing them because it drains power.

Battery upgrades aren't just for melee, they're for everything.

I'm all for enforcing choice - which is why I prefer HR's system.

See this is the thing, I don't think HR enforces choice. Maybe for the first couple of hours, but upon finishing the first city (montreal? or was it detroit?) I basically have everything. Every upgrade after that is: ok, what do I not need the least?

That to me, is not enforcing choice in a positive way. The only thing that I found limited was inventory, and that still wasn't *that* limited. Choosing between auqalung, rebreather and swimming is to me more interesting, because each choice has some non-trivial cost. Aqualung disallows another aug, rebreather costs inventory space, and swimming costs xp(which is precious). If aug cans were more rare in HR, it might have been different.

As for enforcing choice, HR doesn't enforce any choice re: melee, because you can ALWAYS use a takedown. You don't have to choose, and in fact you can't NOT choose to have melee takedowns available.

And yeah, this. Carrying a melee weapon as backup in DX is a choice. It costs inventory space at the benefit of always have offensive capacity. No such luck in HR, you can always one-shot every basic enemy as long as you wait for 10 seconds in between.

And I basically agree with everything else DDL said.

Honestly, I think the biggest reason never did a second playthrough of HR is the character system. Some of it is certainly that the combat is boring and I already did a stealth playthrough. But a lot of it is also that Jensen #2 will be virtually identical to Jensen #1 in terms of abilities. In Deus Ex, I think it's satisfying both to sneak and to shoot. Maybe I don't in HR because of the XP gains are only for taking out enemies, and all ways except melee give vastly reduced xp.

[DaveW]

You could also shoot through those weak walls, or put mines on them and shoot them (which I really liked, tbh: multiple solutions to the same problem ftw).

This is what I did when I first encountered them - I didn't realise I had to have an aug to punch through them.

I get the point about having 'redundancies' making the world feel realistic, but in general I found that in Deus Ex I got lost in the mechanics way too much when I tried to play it 'properly'. Every choice that was enforced felt like they had to make the game extremely contrived to do it, like making a super-soldier incapable of shooting something 10 metres in front of him. That, to me, felt less realistic and more like I was being forced to play a game within the confines of those systems. Obviously, that still happens with HR - I just think the simplified system made me notice it less.



Marcelo :

Having an art style does not make it pretentious. The fact Deus Ex does not have an art style does not make it unpretentious.

I speculate, but Deus Ex probably didn't have an art style because of the available technology and the time/budget. I say that because as soon as they had a kick-ass engine, they ramped up the art design and made stuff like this which is even more over-the-top sci fi than HR is. And then there's basically all of the original concept art. This guy looks pretty realistic too.

I'm not saying Deus Ex isn't ultimately grounded in reality more than HR - but I'm not convinced it was entirely intentional and I certainly don't think it makes it better.

[gamer0004]

IW pic is from a preview and the game is set in 2072 (IIRC).

Pic is dated between May 6 and September 6 2003 (as can be inferred from the HUD).

That weapon did not make it into the final game.

[DaveW]

Yeah the weapon alone shows it's not from the final game - they took all the "unique" weapons out and replaced them with new ones that used the same texture set. Probably due to the limited texture memory of the Xbox.

But it's indicative of the intended art style (of the gun) and actual art style (of the environment) - both of which made it into the game, except the final guns look crap because of the textures. All of upper Seattle, parts of Trier and Cairo (Arcology) and JC Denton's sanctuary all have a very strong art style that wasn't intended to be gritty and realistic - at least in the same way Deus Ex was.

[DDL]

Arcologies 4lief, homez!

This debate has gone to much more interesting places. Also, that concept art for what would later become GM_ScaryTroop is awesome. Those things were supposed to be riotshields?

Also, for all my ravings, I have to say I think HR is a better game, it's just that it does feel like a game. DX feels more like a living breathing world because it neatly bridges that gap between "streamlined for enjoyment" (HR) and "so realistic it's fucking painful" (hardcore military sims).

And of course, I cannot rule out that I am being influenced by a MASSIVE dose of nostalgia. DX is, after all, why I'm even HERE.

[fantsu]

I like how stupid Dave W is, saying augs were bad in original and good in HR, when the truth is opposite.
None of the augs in HR meant anything to me, they were all stupid or useless, or both, when in original maybe run silent and aqualung are the only useless ones.

Only cool aug in HR was the one that you can smash certain walls down, and even that is just plain idiotic.


The problem with guns in HR is that they just sound terrible, not guns at all. Otherwise they were pretty well balanced, modding of course sucked compared to original.

Original had so much better atmosphere, when every place around the world looked the same in HR.

What comes to character development (in skills and such) HR didn't have any replay value at all, no melee combat, you can get all the augs if you want and so on. Every battle is like deja vu from the earlier, same crouching behind cover, same enemies over and over again. The AI wasnt that good, better, but not much, different.

I wont even go into non-existent plotline of HR, where every tobacco smoking peasant says the same things about augs, over and over again.

[Jonas]

I like how stupid Dave W is, saying augs were bad in original and good in HR, when the truth is opposite.

1. We do not tolerate name-calling and personal attacks. Be mature.
2. "The truth"?

[DaveW]

I'm pretty sure he's trolling, but I'll bite.

"augs were bad in original and good in HR, when the truth is opposite."
[Citation needed]

"Only cool aug in HR was the one that you can smash certain walls down, and even that is just plain idiotic."
So it's cool, but plain idiotic? Hmm.

There are also a lot of identical augs. Cloak is in both games. Environmental Resistance, Targeting enhancement, Microfibral Muscle, Ballistic protection and EMP shield (probably more -those are the ones I can remember).

So, you say that the only useless ones in Deus Ex are run silent and aqualung - and all in HR were stupid and useless. How does that work, exactly?

"The problem with guns in HR is that they just sound terrible, not guns at all. Otherwise they were pretty well balanced, modding of course sucked compared to original."
Yeah the assault rifle in the original game sounded incredibly realistic - and suppressors obviously just reduces the volume of the gun. It doesn't change the sonic signature at all. HR's sounds are terrible in comparison!

"Original had so much better atmosphere, when every place around the world looked the same in HR."
Yeah, Detroit looks identical to Hengsha. It was basically the same map, they just changed the name of it and called it Hengsha. Bunch of cheats.

Deus Ex, on the other hand, had a completely different desaturated colour palette for various for world locations.

"The AI wasnt that good, better, but not much, different."

I'm not even sure what to say to this, really. Deus Ex's AI was pretty bad even for it's time. Suggesting that HR's isn't much better? Really?

"I wont even go into non-existent plotline of HR, where every tobacco smoking peasant says the same things about augs, over and over again."
Kinda like saying all the NPC's in Deus Ex say the same things about conspiracies, over and over again. NPC dialogue obviously doesn't equal plot, either.