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Deus Ex at 20: The oral history of a pivotal PC game

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Re: Deus Ex at 20: The oral history of a pivotal PC game

#81

Post by golergka »

hibikir wrote: post #51
trabant00 wrote: post #6

> ‘You can make any game you want, you can take as long as you want, and money’s not an issue’. > ‘Just run the studio, we’ll pay the bills and keep you isolated from anything that’s happening up here in Dallas’. I don't think this can happen today and I also believe this is the reason we don't see anything close to the original Deus Ex.

Money not being an issue can still happen: See Valve, which have a money printing machine in Steam, along with a few long living, lucrative games. Work on Half Life 3 never really stopped , and we had a 13 year wait between Half Life Alyx and Half Life 2, episode 2. Sources say that the internal standards for a Half Life 3 are so high, it led to many restarts and a lot of work being thrown away. But the real reason w…

Game graphics standard were changing much more rapidly back then. Games released in 1995 and 2000 look much more different than games from 2015 and 2020.

Re: Deus Ex at 20: The oral history of a pivotal PC game

#82

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

ekianjo wrote: post #40
trabant00 wrote: post #6

> ‘You can make any game you want, you can take as long as you want, and money’s not an issue’. > ‘Just run the studio, we’ll pay the bills and keep you isolated from anything that’s happening up here in Dallas’. I don't think this can happen today and I also believe this is the reason we don't see anything close to the original Deus Ex.

> anything close to the original Deus Ex. Note that the original Deus Ex led to the pretty poor Deus Ex 2: Invisible War, that nobody talks about today. Deus Ex was more of an exception that anything else.

Deus Ex 2 was not a bad game. Most of the complaints centered around the negative effects of consolization (small maps, reduced detail, universal ammo system) more than anything else.

Re: Deus Ex at 20: The oral history of a pivotal PC game

#83

Post by clarry »

laumars wrote: post #75
clarry wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I don't think this can happen today and I also believe this is the reason we don't see anything close to the original Deus Ex. > The solution to that is to look outside of the traditional gaming paradigm. I don't think indie & VR gimmicks are the solution to lack of games that are close to the original Deus Ex. It's not revered for original superb mechanics; most of everything it does was done before. It's that it…

> I don't think indie & VR gimmicks are the solution to lack of games that are close to the original Deus Ex. I don't think flatly calling all indie and VR games as "gimmicks" does justice to some of the more innovative creators out there. > * It's not revered for original superb mechanics; most of everything it does was done before. It's that it put them all together and did so many things right to create a polished…

> It was mostly the mechanics people seemed to talk about at the time (and the graphics too).

Huh. Nobody praised the graphics back then. They were dated on the day Deus Ex came out; it uses the original Unreal engine (with some tweaks) and looks just as dated. Rendering technology moved fast back then and a game as large as Deus Ex had no hope of staying ahead of the curve. Plus they had to make some compromises to fit such a large scale game on disk & in RAM (there were other UE1 games that looked arguably better). I recall reviews considering Deus Ex's graphics "boxy" (literally!) and it has plenty of super small textures..

The thing that most people praised was the freedom. That's part mechanics, but what I was trying to say is that very few of the mechanics in Deus Ex were innovative; mostly they just did a great job incorporating mechanics that already existed in prior games. That's the ticket. You don't need to innovate and make some superb new mechanics to make a new Deus Ex quality game.

> In any case, story driven games have existed long before Deus Ex and still exist now.

Yes, but few games pull all the elements I mentioned above together. Deus Ex has "all the parts", and for most part it's done well, therefore it's more than the sum of its parts. Yes, story driven games exist, but few of them incorporate all the other elements that made Deus Ex what it is.

> I see these kinds of comments all the time and frankly a lot of it is rose tinted glasses.

I see people always dismiss this as nostalgia. I call bullshit, if only because I played very few games "back in the day" (and I don't like most of the games I had back then; I played them only because I really didn't have anything else to play).

Most of the old games I discuss today are games I've only played sometime during the last decade for the first time. And I keep finding old games that I really like, and then I don't like their sequels, and I have a hard time finding new games that I like as much.

Re: Deus Ex at 20: The oral history of a pivotal PC game

#84

Post by clarry »

dageshi wrote: post #76
clarry wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I don't think this can happen today and I also believe this is the reason we don't see anything close to the original Deus Ex. > The solution to that is to look outside of the traditional gaming paradigm. I don't think indie & VR gimmicks are the solution to lack of games that are close to the original Deus Ex. It's not revered for original superb mechanics; most of everything it does was done before. It's that it…

> Hardly anyone is doing that. But, evidently, a lot of gamers want that. Not enough really, we've had the Deus Ex reboot (Human revolution), Dishonored, Prey and their respective sequels, they're all great games but they didn't do amazingly, they mostly did "ok", they're all now on hiatus with their studios working on other franchises. I think these games (immersive sims) are actually pretty difficult to make and th…

I haven't played Dishonored or Prey but if HR is any indication, then they aren't all that great. No comparison to Deus Ex.

Re: Deus Ex at 20: The oral history of a pivotal PC game

#85

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #79
clarry wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I played HR for the first time last month and couldn't finish it, because it bored me to death and then gave me stupid boss fights. It's so dumbed down and just doesn't come close to the first Deus Ex. And yes it felt clunkier than the first game (I lost count of how many times I fell to my death trying to jump onto some platform to perhaps find a secret or hidden route, only to hit a stupid invisible wall)..

The director's cut provided non-combat solutions to some of the boss fights. But at launch, yeah, those were a huge miss if you had optimized stealth or hacking skills. It felt like a huge slap in the face to anyone that managed to bypass the boss fights in the original Deus Ex by finding the killswitch words. Penny Arcade captured the sentiment at the time pretty well: https://arewenewatthis.files.wordpress.com/2011…

In my opinion, there wasn't really an option other than to optimize for a stealthy gameplay style in DX:HR since ammunition was ridiculously scarce. (Intentionally so: https://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/08/17/why-i...) There is rarely the opportunity for a stand-up gunfight, very much unlike the original Deus Ex, to break up the monotony.

Re: Deus Ex at 20: The oral history of a pivotal PC game

#86

Post by MaxBarraclough »

dageshi wrote: post #76
clarry wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I don't think this can happen today and I also believe this is the reason we don't see anything close to the original Deus Ex. > The solution to that is to look outside of the traditional gaming paradigm. I don't think indie & VR gimmicks are the solution to lack of games that are close to the original Deus Ex. It's not revered for original superb mechanics; most of everything it does was done before. It's that it…

> Hardly anyone is doing that. But, evidently, a lot of gamers want that. Not enough really, we've had the Deus Ex reboot (Human revolution), Dishonored, Prey and their respective sequels, they're all great games but they didn't do amazingly, they mostly did "ok", they're all now on hiatus with their studios working on other franchises. I think these games (immersive sims) are actually pretty difficult to make and th…

Human Revolution was a prequel, not a reboot.

Re: Deus Ex at 20: The oral history of a pivotal PC game

#87

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #85
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The director's cut provided non-combat solutions to some of the boss fights. But at launch, yeah, those were a huge miss if you had optimized stealth or hacking skills. It felt like a huge slap in the face to anyone that managed to bypass the boss fights in the original Deus Ex by finding the killswitch words. Penny Arcade captured the sentiment at the time pretty well: https://arewenewatthis.files.wordpress.com/2011…

In my opinion, there wasn't really an option other than to optimize for a stealthy gameplay style in DX:HR since ammunition was ridiculously scarce. (Intentionally so: https://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/08/17/why-i... ) There is rarely the opportunity for a stand-up gunfight, very much unlike the original Deus Ex, to break up the monotony.

The ammo problem wasn't much of an issue for me, as I went for a strictly non-lethal playthrough (for which I was annoyingly denied the achievement, as one of the guards I tranq'd immediately fell unconscious...off a roof).

The unavoidable boss-fights were certainly something of a shock at the time.

Re: Deus Ex at 20: The oral history of a pivotal PC game

#88

Post by dageshi »

clarry wrote: post #84
dageshi wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hardly anyone is doing that. But, evidently, a lot of gamers want that. Not enough really, we've had the Deus Ex reboot (Human revolution), Dishonored, Prey and their respective sequels, they're all great games but they didn't do amazingly, they mostly did "ok", they're all now on hiatus with their studios working on other franchises. I think these games (immersive sims) are actually pretty difficult to make and th…

I haven't played Dishonored or Prey but if HR is any indication, then they aren't all that great. No comparison to Deus Ex.

And that's why they won't make any more... they're held to a much higher standard than other genres of games. People nitpick these games to death, meanwhile CoD is played by tens of millions every year. If you're a game dev, you'd be mad to try and do another immersive sim.

Re: Deus Ex at 20: The oral history of a pivotal PC game

#89

Post by ajsharp »

Deux Ex felt then and still today like a gift where story was everything, right before online/multiplayer completely transformed the industry, and for a good ten years single player was more or less an afterthought. I've never been so engrossed in a storyline as I was when I played Deus Ex. I re-played it a few years ago and I was shocked how satisfying it still was.

I don't work in gaming, and I haven't been an avid gamer in nearly 15 years. From my cursory viewpoint, it feels like every 5-10 years a story-driven game comes along, but mostly it feels like the industry is focused on either massive open world games, or Fortnite-esque quick-hit experiences.

I'd love to hear from people in the industry on how games like Deux Ex that live and die on story are thought of in the industry.

Re: Deus Ex at 20: The oral history of a pivotal PC game

#90

Post by rhn_mk1 »

kiddico wrote: post #64
laumars wrote: post #35

> “We were very influenced by three games: Thief, System Shock 2 and Half-Life.” Personally I got a lot more enjoyment from those games than I did Deus Ex. Particularly SS2 which still remains one of the most atmospheric games I've ever played and one of the few ones to make be jump and literally scared at times too. Not taking anything away from Deus Ex, but at the time it didn't feel as genre defining as the others…

I've been meaning to play SS2. Do you think I'd be confused to jump in there or should I play the first?

You won't lose much by not playing the first one. It's more tedious than the second installment, so I would try them in reverse order just for this reason.
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