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Eurogamer has Deus Ex 3 blowout

jonremedy

Member
FirewalkR said:
Yesterday I had a horrible nightmare!!!!

I dreamed that Deus Ex Human Revolution was Ubisoft's and I was actually starting to consider getting it (knowing that PC is the only option) despite Ubi's abhorrent DRM scheme. It was such a relief when all of a sudden I remembered it was Eidos/SE's...

But to think I actually considered giving in to Ubi's idiocy... even for the great looking true sequel to the Best Game of All Time...

I feel dirty now.

Be glad that that's the worst problem your sub-conscious feels it needs to tackle :)
 

Lafiel

と呼ぶがよい
Unexcited for this personally. But i really hope it is good, but that info is sounding really nice.
 

Wallach

Member
Brobzoid said:
Just so we know what we are talking about here, you mean taking out multitool or turning gameplay mechanics into minigames is trimming and streamlining not dumbing down for the plebeian console lead SKU?

I think you can fold a lot of the functions the multitool served into other elements of gameplay. It's not like you can't give the player some other means of messing with keypads and whatnot without the stupid disposable resource aspect of it. I don't think carrying around a stack of multitools was particularly interesting if that's what you're asking.

As far as "turning gameplay mechanics into minigames", hacking already was something of a minigame in the original Deus Ex so I'm not clear on what you mean. In fact it was basically just a really shitty mini-game that I very much doubt anyone enjoyed. I don't have a problem with them trying to make that aspect more interesting, though I would be concerned about how much of a time sink their proposal is because hacking was something you really did a fucking ton of if you had high computers.
 

Gorgon

Member
Brobzoid said:
Just so we know what we are talking about here, you mean taking out multitool or turning gameplay mechanics into minigames is trimming and streamlining not dumbing down for the plebeian console lead SKU?

Games get dumbed down to increase sales across all platforms, and not because console gamers are too stupid to get it. You make it sound like the original game sold 10 million on PC and as if The Sims wasn't one of the best selling PC games of all times.

People need to outgrew this shit, really.
 

epmode

Member
Gorgon said:
Games get dumbed down to increase sales across all platforms, and not because console gamers are too stupid to get it.
Not true. The developers of Bioshock specifically talked about how they removed proposed features because they were worried that people unfamiliar with that style of game would be confused by so many options.

edit: Actually, both things you wrote are true. The developers feel that sales will increase across all platforms partially because a "streamlined" (read: "dumbed down") game will sell more to people too stupid to handle more options.
 

Tunesmith

formerly "chigiri"
ss_preview_dx_hr_screenshot_derelict_building.jpg.jpg

Loving the reference. :D

HL 2!
 

Dresden

Member
It'd be really cool if they could color-code the ethical dilemmas, so I don't actually have to read anything to make sweeping moral decisions that affect the narrative of the game.
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
Sounding very interesting. Here's hoping they deliver.

vocab said:
Regenerating health says no.
Quiet. Regenerating health is awesome and would definitely be welcome here.

It's 2010. As much as people love the original, it's extremely dated by todays standards. They can't simply duplicate the original game and actually have it feel good. The first game had awful combat and terrible AI, for instance. There have been so many strides made in this area and I hope they take full advantage of this while delivering things that made Deus Ex enjoyable.
 

Kade

Member
Dresden said:
It'd be really cool if they could color-code the ethical dilemmas, so I don't actually have to read anything to make sweeping moral decisions that affect the narrative of the game.

I liked that in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. Most of the lines were pretty straight forward and you could tell whether they were aggressive, passive, etc. They also changed the font of the selections aswell for example, a sultry reply would be in pink serif italics while an aggressive reply would be in large green all caps blocky font.


dark10x said:
Sounding very interesting. Here's hoping they deliver.


Quiet. Regenerating health is awesome and would definitely be welcome here.

It's 2010. As much as people love the original, it's extremely dated by todays standards. They can't simply duplicate the original game and actually have it feel good. The first game had awful combat and terrible AI, for instance. There have been so many strides made in this area and I hope they take full advantage of this while delivering things that made Deus Ex enjoyable.


They should just fix the afwul combat and terrible AI then. I think most of the systems in the first Deus Ex are fantastic, even by today's standards. If the broken and shitty stuff was fixed instead of removed, we've have GOTY EVERY YEAR here.
 
dark10x said:
Sounding very interesting. Here's hoping they deliver.


Quiet. Regenerating health is awesome and would definitely be welcome here.

It's 2010. As much as people love the original, it's extremely dated by todays standards. They can't simply duplicate the original game and actually have it feel good. The first game had awful combat and terrible AI, for instance. There have been so many strides made in this area and I hope they take full advantage of this while delivering things that made Deus Ex enjoyable.


What incentive do you have to avoid combat if you can just camp behind a wall for a few seconds while any damage you incur regenerates? Removing that element of risk/reward and resource management belongs in a Deus Ex game about as much as flashy third person takedowns.
 

obonicus

Member
Confidence Man said:
What incentive do you have to avoid combat if you can just camp behind a wall for a few seconds while any damage you incur regenerates? Removing that element of risk/reward and resource management belongs in a Deus Ex game about as much as flashy third person takedowns.

You can make the AI actually challenging, so you're not talking just about a battle of attrition.
 

Timber

Member
What incentive do you have to avoid combat when you can just turn on your regeneration aug while you're fighting?
 
Timber said:
What incentive do you have to avoid combat when you can just turn on your regeneration aug while you're fighting?

There are still resources and tradeoffs to consider. In that instance you would have to have that particular aug installed (at the expense of another aug), and have energy supplies to power it.

Since that ability is free and unlimited in HR engaging in combat is a no-loss situation. As long as I have enough ammo there's no reason to avoid combat.

Ideally when you encounter a group of guards the decision to engage wouldn't simply come down to whether you have enough bullets to kill everyone with, but whether you were at full health, whether you had any medkits, whether you had ballistic armor, what your skills were geared toward, whether you had an aug to mitigate damage, energy to power the aug, etc...
 
Cannot WAIT. Bring on the grand return of Deus Ex. At least half a year to go and I love the directions they're taking. :D

Also, Bush pic better stay in game. :lol :lol :lol
 
See, the beauty of this game (maybe) is that we get the CG graphical goodness of Square Enix's render farms without all the squeaky, embarrassing Final Fantasy baggage typically attached. Thanks. :D
 

Draft

Member
Simplification doesn't have to mean dumbing down. Regenerating health and hacking mini-games aren't necessarily less "hardcore" than first aid kits and multitools.

At least, those are things I told myself about universal ammo before IW came out :/
 

Timber

Member
Confidence Man said:
There are still resources and tradeoffs to consider. In that instance you would have to have that particular aug installed (at the expense of another aug), and have energy supplies to power it.

Since that ability is free and unlimited in HR engaging in combat is a no-loss situation. As long as I have enough ammo there's no reason to avoid combat.

Ideally when you encounter a group of guards the decision to engage wouldn't simply come down to whether you have enough bullets to kill everyone with, but whether you were at full health, whether you had any medkits, whether you had ballistic armor, what your skills were geared toward, whether you had an aug to mitigate damage, energy to power the aug, etc...
I haven't read all of the released information on DE3, but it doesn't seem like it's so far removed from your ideal situation to merit any significant complaints.

I think when it comes to the original Deus Ex's purported 'Hardcore-ness', the elephant in the room is that it's a piss easy game. Points of criticism often include its shoddy graphics and weak AI/combat, but hardly ever that it presents no real challenge past the first few missions.

Deus Ex gives you so many items that you never find yourself in any truly difficult situation. In the case of health regeneration, bioelectric cells are easy to come by, and it makes you practically invincible. And it doesn't really incentivise the use of stealth, either, because weapons are plentiful and often ridiculously overpowered. Whether you still want to sneak around despite the game's lopsidedness is entirely up to the player, and this seems to be the case in DE3 as well, albeit in a different way.

If recharging health means that it's actually possible to die in the game, then I'm all for it. Because that certainly wasn't the case in DE1, provided you don't completely suck at it.
 
Draft said:
Simplification doesn't have to mean dumbing down. Regenerating health and hacking mini-games aren't necessarily less "hardcore" than first aid kits and multitools.

At least, those are things I told myself about universal ammo before IW came out :/

Regenerating health is in the sense that you don't need to manage anything. Get a boo boo? run and hide. It's not like you can run out of the ability to regenerate. As enemies in Alpha Protocol say, "hide like a bitch, die like a bitch."

Hacking mini-games depend on they balance it. If they get insanely difficult as you progress, I can see that being great. Hacking mini-games and whatnot are always the easiest way to have a middle ground for player skill and stats.
 

Cep

Banned
Linkzg said:
Regenerating health is in the sense that you don't need to manage anything. Get a boo boo? run and hide. It's not like you can run out of the ability to regenerate. As enemies in Alpha Protocol say, "hide like a bitch, die like a bitch."

Hacking mini-games depend on they balance it. If they get insanely difficult as you progress, I can see that being great. Hacking mini-games and whatnot are always the easiest way to have a middle ground for player skill and stats.

Except that no matter how easy or hard they are, they eventually become a chore if you see them often enough.
 

Draft

Member
In defense of both (just playing devil's advocate:)

Regenerating health works when the combat scenarios are tightly designed. The developer knows that the player goes into every fight at 100%, and so every fight can be designed to tax the player to their absolute limit, with no concern for possibly hosing the entire level (or even playthrough!) because the player had to burn all their first aid items.

Also, and don't you dare deny this, especially PC players: that quickload button is very tempting when you barely scrape through an encounter the first time, burning most of your items in the process.

I've always considered regenerating health as an in-game response to that meta-game tactic.

Hacking mini-game is OK, but only if the game becomes impossibly difficult later on unless the player has upgraded their hacking skill. If hacking works like Deus Ex 1, which is to say almost every quest/objective will have a hacking solution, and the player can beat every hacking encounter by just being good at the mini-game, then hacking is overpowered.
 
The meta-game is part of the fun. Being presented with a challenge, having certain resources to expend, and getting through it in the most efficient way possible is far more rewarding than just plowing through and coming out of an encounter exactly the same as you went in regardless of how sloppy you were.
 
Cep said:
Except that no matter how easy or hard they are, they eventually become a chore if you see them often enough.

That is true, but hey, what's a better incentive to level up stats than having the ability to auto-complete something?

no, really, ME2 mini-game hacking was incredibly boring and that could be a problem. But one of the big reasons it was boring in ME2 is because they were everywhere and were insubstantial rewards.

Draft said:
In defense of both (just playing devil's advocate:)

Regenerating health works when the combat scenarios are tightly designed. The developer knows that the player goes into every fight at 100%, and so every fight can be designed to tax the player to their absolute limit, with no concern for possibly hosing the entire level (or even playthrough!) because the player had to burn all their first aid items.

Also, and don't you dare deny this, especially PC players: that quickload button is very tempting when you barely scrape through an encounter the first time, burning most of your items in the process.

I've always considered regenerating health as an in-game response to that meta-game tactic.

Hacking mini-game is OK, but only if the game becomes impossibly difficult later on unless the player has upgraded their hacking skill. If hacking works like Deus Ex 1, which is to say almost every quest/objective will have a hacking solution, and the player can beat every hacking encounter by just being good at the mini-game, then hacking is overpowered.

Regenerating health isn't bad for all games, but for games that give you options like the original Deus Ex, Hitman, old Splinter Cell, etc. there is usually a finite amount of threads to take care of. It's usually you entering an area and having the option of how to take care of it. There could be changes in DX3, but generally you don't have situations where people bust into the area and it goes into a firefight unless you want to play that way.

About quick saving, I liked what the Hitman games do by allowing more quick saves depending on difficulty. On normal they permit about 3 saves per level I think.


Confidence Man said:
The meta-game is part of the fun. Being presented with a challenge, having certain resources to expend, and getting through it in the most efficient way possible is far more rewarding than just plowing through and coming out of an encounter exactly the same as you went in regardless of how sloppy you were.

I agree with that. When I play the Max Payne games, I can get through a shoot out without taking a hit, but I like loading up the start of the battle to take them out more stylishly.


honestly, the only thing I'm really annoyed about with this game is that you probably won't be able to input usernames and passwords. It was so cool to find someone's info and just log-in to their account or something like that. Way more satisfying than a mini-game.
 

Draft

Member
Confidence Man said:
The meta-game is part of the fun. Being presented with a challenge, having certain resources to expend, and getting through it in the most efficient way possible is far more rewarding than just plowing through and coming out of an encounter exactly the same as you went in regardless of how sloppy you were.
I agree, but I don't think that way is inherently superior to "resetting" the players resources before each encounter.
 

Timber

Member
Linkzg said:
Regenerating health is in the sense that you don't need to manage anything. Get a boo boo? run and hide. It's not like you can run out of the ability to regenerate.
It's not like you can run out of the ability to regenerate in DE1, either. And, like Draft said, whether or not DE3 gives you ample time and room to just run and hide depends on how combat situations are set up. It's not really an intrinsic problem of recharging health.

Regarding hacking, I find that these are game(play) mechanics that no game, or at least no game I've played thus far, has a feasible solution for. I like the idea of how they handled it in DE1, but the items you use for purposes such as hacking should have been much more scarce. And even then, if you do find yourself lacking sufficient items, the game is structured so that there are always other ways to get around whatever door or whatever problem it is you're facing. And that's a strength as well a weakness of the game. It's fun to have so many choices, and it adds to the game's replayability, but it drains it of any challenge.

Another way to approach that would be just a stat-governed chance to succeed - a pen & paper solution. But that doesn't work either because then you either keep trying incessantly, or, if you have an exhaustible amount of attempts at your disposal, just load game.

Mini-games could work. It depends on how lengthy and how fun they are. Often they last too long, are too trying or too tedious. What does sound interesting in DE3 is that the mini-games don't pause the action around you. This could lead to a more intense experience, as well as encourage a more tactical playing style. Though of course this will all depend on how it's implemented.
 
Draft said:
I agree, but I don't think that way is inherently superior to "resetting" the players resources before each encounter.

I'd say it is, without a doubt, at least for a Deus Ex-type game. Your experience dealing with an encounter is going to change based on what resources you have available and all the choices you made up until that point with respect to your character's abilities.

Take the more meaningful variables like health management away and I can't think of anything to call it other than dumbed down. Maybe it makes for a better action game but that's not what this is, or should be.
 

Draft

Member
Confidence Man said:
I'd say it is, without a doubt, at least for a Deus Ex-type game. Your experience dealing with an encounter is going to change based on what resources you have available and all the choices you made up until that point with respect to your character's abilities.

Take the more meaningful variables like health management away and I can't think of anything to call it other than dumbed down. Maybe it makes for a better action game but that's not what this is, or should be.
What if total HP was a player controllable stat that could be upgraded via XP or augs? In that case, later encounters could be designed as prohibitively difficult unless the player had 1.5x-2x the HP of a default character. That would force the player to find solutions more suitable to their character, like stealth, diplomacy, etc.

Ah, but that's certainly not the direction this game will go in.
 

WrikaWrek

Banned
F9 key kills game design.

Basically, you spend most of your time pressing F5 and F9 to the point of stupidity. The point of the game is to take on the challenge, and that is just another kind of cheating.
 
Draft said:
Also, and don't you dare deny this, especially PC players: that quickload button is very tempting when you barely scrape through an encounter the first time, burning most of your items in the process.

I've always considered regenerating health as an in-game response to that meta-game tactic.

This is precisely why properly constructed regenerating health has never bothered me.

Cep said:
Except that no matter how easy or hard they are, they eventually become a chore if you see them often enough.

I think I could safely say that the correct way to handle hacking would almost always be to provide a more substantial activity (more like a "maxi-game") for it that is influenced but not dictated solely by skills, and use it more infrequently as a gatekeeper for larger rewards rather than on ten thousand random crappy chests.

Confidence Man said:
I'd say it is, without a doubt, at least for a Deus Ex-type game. Your experience dealing with an encounter is going to change based on what resources you have available and all the choices you made up until that point with respect to your character's abilities.

I agree with the principle that having expendable resources is important, but do you really think that health is one of the most interesting options to choose?

If you're good enough, health management becomes completely irrelevant because you just avoid ever getting hit. If you're bad enough, it kind of also becomes irrelevant because you wind up using quicksave-abuse to squeak through every encounter after three or four bungled tries. In any situation where your average health lost per encounter is less than or equal to your average health-restoratives-made-available per encounter, you can basically ignore it.

Generally speaking, I feel like limited offensive options are much more interesting because it's much harder for good play to make them irrelevant.
 

Sober

Member
If anything, regenerating health should be (considering today's standards) included when you start with augs, but the regeneration rate should be slow enough that you have to invest into in somewhat for it to be useful if you want to go gung-ho instead of developing the other stealth/social/hacking/etc augs. I mean, I loved DX1 and I still like health packs and all but regenerating health is basically the standard (until someone does something better since the MOH:Airborne/FC2 system didn't seem to catch on) and you are basically half-machine anyways. I do wish they have actual medkits to pickup and carry around to supplement health regeneration though.

And no multitools, did they cop out and say they haven't been invented yet or something? A hacking minigame I could care less about if they have it, but if they are going to have the outcome affected by augs, then it should go something like this:

Hacking/Lockpicking Augs have X levels, Lock/Mainframe difficulty have X+1 levels, where the highest level of difficulty should be something along the lines of "you can try it but it'll require tool assist".
So if you have level 3 (of let's say 5) lockpicking augs, every lock level below it should be easily solved with an autosolve button (or level 2 has a certain chance of failing), while equal or higher requires you actually play the minigame (but higher levels should be increasingly more difficult, and the highest being impossible without finally getting your final aug upgrade.) That way you can't just 'get used' to the mini-game and requires you to heavily invest into the augs to actually get good rewards. Obviously, if there were say, 6 difficulty levels, 0-3 would be simple things like food to medkits, 4 and 5 would contain weapons and 6 would be like other godlike things, for example. I dunno.

Also, if anyone has actually played Uplink, could they link us a video of how hacking works, since they go on about that as how it'll work in HR.
 

truly101

I got grudge sucked!
I was Hong Kong when I last played DX, finshed the main story missions there, I wonder how much left I have to go. Its been a couple of years since I played.
 
truly101 said:
I was Hong Kong when I last played DX, finshed the main story missions there, I wonder how much left I have to go. Its been a couple of years since I played.

Why the hell did you stop!? :lol


BTW am I the only one who sees Invisible War as the Windows Vista of the gaming world? I swear this game better be as good as that should of been, or I am gonna cry.

Edit - Oh just because I can
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j8jMn2Kcgs
 
ChronicleX said:
BTW am I the only one who sees Invisible War as the Windows Vista of the gaming world? I swear this game better be as good as that should of been, or I am gonna cry.

Its should have. Should have.
 

Cep

Banned
charlequin said:
I think I could safely say that the correct way to handle hacking would almost always be to provide a more substantial activity (more like a "maxi-game") for it that is influenced but not dictated solely by skills, and use it more infrequently as a gatekeeper for larger rewards rather than on ten thousand random crappy chests.

Bingo.
 

Wallach

Member
What they've told us about hacking on their forums is basically that unlike DE1, you will not be removed from the game world while hacking. That means whatever hacking "mini-game" this is will probably be represented on the interface you're hacking itself, as they've already said you can still freelook while hacking a device. Also, they basically said improving your hacking skill makes it so you have to actually do the actions yourself less and less and it becomes faster (which is important as some hacks are going to take place in dangerous spots).
 
This game is looking so f'ing good. Really nice art, DX1 gameplay elements over DX2 and a heavy Bladerunner influence everywhere.

In your face "cyberpunk is dead" thread!
 
Why can't they just have regenerating health for normal mode and survivor/pro mode without it, with the addition of medipacks, pills, etc.? How difficult is it to code 5 extra items and make HP a numerical value (which it is to begin with, you just don't see it with regenerating HP)?
 
Colour me surprised, it really looks like the team working on this have a clear understanding of what made Deus Ex so amazing.

So far I think they have the feel and atmosphere nailed, I just hope they can deliver on the gameplay front.

Invisible War is probably one of my most dissapointing games ever; it's not a terrible game, but as the sequel to Deus Ex, it seemed much more terrible than it really was.

Human Revolution at least has that going for it - most Deus Ex fans are pretty pessimistic after Invisible War, so the chance of being pleasantly surprised is higher.
 
I'm really hoping the social interactions deliver. One thing I'm not sure if I like is the streamlined approach. I kind of like reading the dialogue and picking what to say. It's more interesting to me in this way because you don't always know what the intention is behind the dialogue option. I think this is what really bothers me in a game like Mass Effect versus KOTOR or Dragon Age. In Mass Effect, there's basically only a few options, and the good choice is in blue, and the bad choice is in red.

This seems to be taking the same approach with the basic "Persist, Interrogate, Bribe, etc" general options. I know this is a streamlined approach, I just hope it is done well. I hope there's many options of what to say, not just go through general choices and watch it play out. I'll have to wait and see how that turns out.
 
The only problem I have with what they're doing for Deus Ex 3 is the stealth system. Line-of-sight over light/shadow based?
Lame, fucking lame.
 

Dresden

Member
Pinko Marx said:
The only problem I have with what they're doing for Deus Ex 3 is the stealth system. Line-of-sight over light/shadow based?
Lame, fucking lame.
dunno about you, but extreme contrast between light/shadow and assuming that guards somehow magically go blind once they walk into a pool of darkness is rather out of style
 
Dresden said:
dunno about you, but extreme contrast between light/shadow and assuming that guards somehow magically go blind once they walk into a pool of darkness is rather out of style

Still better than line-of-sight stealth IMO. But we'll see how this works out, I'm willing to go where the developers take me, as long as it works.
 

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
Wallach said:
I agree about the inevitable part, but... personally I think this game needs it. *shrug*

By "this game" I mean the original and not the other one that never actually happened.

You are a bad person, and you are the reason RPG shooters are getting dumbed down.
 
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