Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

rockpapershotgun.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 129 posts

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

#91

Post by Wohlf »

golergka wrote: post #81
hibikir wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Couldn't a few artists and level designers in 1995-2000 crank out a whole lot more finished products than ones in 2015-2020 though? Seems like you need entire teams to make one level in modern games.

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

#92

Post by jointpdf »

mdrachuk wrote: post #27
ubermonkey wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the oldest viable game to you, now? I just played the first Mass Effect for the first time, and was really impressed by how well it had aged for a game from 2007. I replayed the first Bioshock (also from 2007) not long ago, too, and it, too, holds up IMO. Could we get further back than 2007?

I think 2007 is exactly the year. I’m playing Bioshock now, so much fun. But Deus Ex from 2000 is clunky.

I’d say 2004:

- Half Life 2. I recently started playing it again (for catharsis, when DC was under military occupation a few weeks ago—drones, helicopters, gas-masked cops and all), and woo boy is that game still jaw-dropping to me. Plus, games built on its engine, like TF2 and L4D2, are still popular.

- World of Warcraft. I never got into this game at the time (was still a recovering EverQuest addict), but sometimes I pop on the free edition and level a character to 20. It’s still the largest MMO by player base.

- Also: Knights of the Old Republic II, The Sims 2 (best Sims imo), Metal Gear Solid 3, Halo 2, Metroid Prime 2

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

#93

Post by WorldMaker »

stevekemp wrote: post #38
notkaiho wrote: post #21

We need, in fact the industry simply REQUIRES, in-depth oral history journalism and retrospectives like this. The "gaming industry" is 40+ years old now, and there have been absolutely pivotal works in that time. They deserve to be interrogated and documented dispassionately and with rigor.

https://www.filfre.net/ is a great example of such an examination - starting with the classic text-adventure games, and gradually getting more and more current. The table of contents is impressive, the writing is wonderful, and you can download a series of ebook collections containing the individual blog posts.

The most recent articles on DOOM are especially relevant here, because some of the names involved in Ion Storm (though not as directly involved in Deus Ex) show up in the various tales about DOOM and the early Shareware era.

(Jimmy Maher also is pretty good about citing sources and the book Masters of DOOM is cited several times as a primary source, which is also why it is recommended several times in sibling comments.)

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

#94

Post by clarry »

dageshi wrote: post #88
clarry wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> And that's why they won't make any more... you'd be mad to try and do another immersive sim.

To be clear, I don't think they even tried, as far as DX:HR is concerned. Instead, it looks like they tried hard to borrow ideas from these mainstream console games and made an anti-immersive "sim" that constantly takes you into third person, floods the screen with XP & loot popups and other UI noise, replaces melee weapons with "tap E to watch a mini-cutscene where MC beats up a guy", features busywork-filler-padding sidequests for the instant gratification RPG addicts, etcetra.

I think, if someone actually tried, this is a proven niche where one could definitely find some success.

As far as the FPS genre is concerned: boy do people nitpick them. You can point at a handful of super popular titles, and for each, there's a mountain of forgotten and thoroughly mediocre (or worse) first person shooters.

There's no single genre where success is for granted. In general, there's a long tail of games that get little attention and a small bunch of "rockstars" that everyone plays.

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

#95

Post by WorldMaker »

eyerony wrote: post #49
ubermonkey wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the oldest viable game to you, now? I just played the first Mass Effect for the first time, and was really impressed by how well it had aged for a game from 2007. I replayed the first Bioshock (also from 2007) not long ago, too, and it, too, holds up IMO. Could we get further back than 2007?

IMHO Perfect Dark is one of the oldest shooters that holds up (play the version on the Xbox 360, maybe also the XBone, not sure). Yeah yeah it's a console shooter, but it's outstanding and hi-res + dual-stick controls make it feel modern-enough. Do note that it has two two-player campaign modes in addition to regular single player: co-op, and... versus . Yes, versus. Also be aware the difficulty modes change the obje…

> (play the version on the Xbox 360, maybe also the XBone, not sure)

Perfect Dark on the Xbox One is a lovely bit of emulator stacking: it's running in the Xbox 360 VM on the Xbox One, and the 360 game is itself running a custom Microsoft N64 emulator. It works much better than you think it should given the layers upon layers of indirection; many kudos to Microsoft's game VM and emulator teams for some of the hoops they've gone through over the years.

A good way to pick up Perfect Dark for the Xbox One is the Rare Replay pack. Sometimes you can find it for surprisingly cheap given the wealth that exists inside it. In addition to Perfect Dark and its 360 launch title prequel Perfect Dark Zero, it's about as complete a set of Rare's extensive back catalog as Microsoft's lawyers could muster the licenses for (so none of the games with Nintendo owned characters, though it sounds like they almost succeeded in convincing Nintendo, and also not Goldeneye which was bogged down with licensing issues between both Nintendo and EON Productions, the Bond license owners, and apparently truly scuttled at the very last minute based on intended behind the scenes features that wound up on YouTube anyway), plus some fun Behind-the-Scenes featurettes.

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

#96

Post by laumars »

clarry wrote: post #83
laumars wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Huh. Nobody praised the graphics back then.

I'm pretty sure they did. Unfortunately I don't still have any magazines of that era

> They were dated on the day Deus Ex came out; it uses the original Unreal engine (with some tweaks) and looks just as dated.

Back then "with some tweaks" and high resolution textures did make a significant differences

> I recall reviews considering Deus Ex's graphics "boxy" (literally!) and it has plenty of super small textures..

I guess our recollections differ then. I do remember the game ran slooooow compared to other games out there that used the Unreal Engine. Perhaps you had to run the game at a lower texture quality or resolution than other games?

> 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.

Basically your criticism here is few other games are Deus Ex since if everything you loved about Deus Ex was copied you'd just end up with the same game. And if that happened you'd probably also criticise it for not being original.

> I see people always dismiss this as nostalgia. I call bullshit, if only because I played very few games "back in the day"

That's exactly it though. You don't have to love every game you grew up with but you did have to spend time playing Deus Ex because you had fewer options verses now where you are able to skip game the moment your attention wavers.

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

#97

Post by throwanem »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #56
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.

We get games in that spirit once every couple of years, actually. Prey (2017) was a fine successor to the Deus Ex tradition, for example.

Was it? You're not the first I've seen say something like this, but in both setting and mechanics I found it much more akin to System Shock 2.

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

#98

Post by deelowe »

Wohlf wrote: post #91
golergka wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Couldn't a few artists and level designers in 1995-2000 crank out a whole lot more finished products than ones in 2015-2020 though? Seems like you need entire teams to make one level in modern games.

I guess it depends on the game, but just looking at a couple of AAA titles, the difference is staggering:

- Half Life -> https://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/half-life/credits

- Horizon Zero Dawn -> https://www.mobygames.com/game/playstation-4/horizon-zero-da...

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

#99

Post by saturdaysaint »

pjc50 wrote: post #65
ubermonkey wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the oldest viable game to you, now? I just played the first Mass Effect for the first time, and was really impressed by how well it had aged for a game from 2007. I replayed the first Bioshock (also from 2007) not long ago, too, and it, too, holds up IMO. Could we get further back than 2007?

I recently replayed the original Halo (2001) and it holds up fantastically (although it's more obvious how long the samey corridors are between the brilliant set-pieces). The original Half-Life (1998) probably would as well. LAN Quake is still entertaining. If you expand the remit to 2D games since they depend much less on tech, the retrogaming community has lots to offer.

I was riveted by Half-Life in 1998, but I recently picked up it's well regarded remake Black Mesa (which updates the graphics to approximately 2006 levels) and IMO, it doesn't hold up at all.

Nothing about it is epic - it feels like a cramped dungeon crawl. The gameplay and puzzles are extremely simplistic (lots of slow moving enemies crawling down a hallway). The story is a bad B-movie compared to some of the compelling modern games that are raising world-building to new levels. When you compare it to modern games, I don't see how anyone could justify spending more than an hour or two on nostalgia playing.

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

#100

Post by dageshi »

clarry wrote: post #94
dageshi wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> And that's why they won't make any more... you'd be mad to try and do another immersive sim. To be clear, I don't think they even tried, as far as DX:HR is concerned. Instead, it looks like they tried hard to borrow ideas from these mainstream console games and made an anti-immersive "sim" that constantly takes you into third person, floods the screen with XP & loot popups and other UI noise, replaces melee weapons…

A triple A game isn't viable on PC alone nowadays, it has to release on console and hence has to account for what modern (both PC and console) players expect. You're claiming to be a fan of this niche but haven't played any of the major releases in it from the past 10 years (Dishonored 1 & 2 + Prey), if you haven't played those games as a fan of the genre then what chance does the genre have? These were big games, marketed well by a major publisher (Bethesda).

As for genres, your point about only x number of games becoming a success is taken, but I guess my counter to that is, if you become a success in the shooter genre the upside is 10x or 100x what it would be for an immersive sim because the market for fps is much much bigger than those for immersive sims.

Post reply on HN