Deus Ex - overrated or God?

[PeZook]

Because Stark said we needed this thread

I also need to waste some time, so what the hell.

So, what's your (completely worthless) opinion on Deus Ex?

On one hand, you have really poor game mechanics: unbalanced weapons, ridiculous inventory & supply system (oh hey mr. anti-terrorist working for a shadow world government, you can chose from those three options for equipment: a box of 9mm bullets, one grenade or two whole lockpicks!), dance-dance revolution instead of combat and completely meaningless moral choices (oh, Carter won't issue me another single box of bullets! Oh woe!).

It's also really, really easy.

On the other hand, I personally think it put together the futuristic atmosphere really well. For its time, the opening scenes on the Hong Kong market were incredible, with bright lights, the music and crowds of people walking about. There were little in-game cutscenes of people talking, etc. Some of the weapons were interesting, too, like the tranquilizer crossbow or various EMP devices for fighting robots.

Of course, let's put a veil of silence over the plot. Jesus...

Either way, despite all its flaws, I played it through three or four times. You?

[Eleas]

I had barely heard of it when I got my hands on it, so I had fun. It wasn't a spectacular game, but it did have a way of sucking you in, at least for me. The stiffness of the characters and the wooden protagonist was disappointing, but I liked shooting things from concealment, and it amused me to sabotage things in novel ways.

But a "great" game? Nah, not really.

[Stark]

The horrible aspects are really no worse than a dozen other shit shooters in the period. The stupid weapon balance was par for the course back then, the horrid inventory and the stupid upgrades were just a part of the linearity.It's level design (with a few exceptions) was worse and less interesting than many other games; the Liberty Island and the stupid Area 51 base especially.

Honestly, I think people think it's 'great' because a) nerds like using totally broken mechanics to feel 'powerful' and b) it tricked them into thinking the game was very dynamic.

[PeZook]

Don't forget the "incredible" plot. Turns out all you need to do in order to impress the nerd demographic is kludge together a totaly inconsistent and self-contradictory amalgam of every conspiracy theory ever. They'll lick this shit up.

Even if we view the story on a character-by-character level, it fails horribly. "Hey, my name's Carter and I'm an old-timer. I don't think UNATCO should kill terror suspects without due process. Here, take whatever you need form the armory."

"But Carter dude, I just murdered every UNATCO trooper in the bunker during my escape! Why do you give me weapons?"

"Oh, yeah, but they don't count."

[Gaidin]

Meh, I like the classic conspiracy theories as entertainment so Deus Ex taking all of them and cramming them together into a 'take over the world' story was great fun for me. The moral choices were somewhat useless, and I was somewhat aggravated when they derailed you onto the NSF's side anyway after pushing a game of choices. Never had a big problem with the weapon balance though. <shrugs>

[Kane Starkiller]

Awesome game. Probably one of the most fun games I have ever played. The music was great, level design was awesome (several entry points to every mission critical room). The story, while filled with sci-fi clishes, was as original as game stories go and the execution itself was superior to almost anything I saw in a computer game.

[PeZook]

The moral choices were somewhat useless, and I was somewhat aggravated when they derailed you onto the NSF's side anyway after pushing a game of choices.

Yeah, that was fun. "UNATCO betrayed you. Now come on and work for the NFS who totally trust you with their most important operations despite the fact you totally massacred them before without blinking."

It was even funnier because the story was all big on moral choices for the first two missions or so, untill they made them completely irrelevant to anything. I mean, Carter trusts you just as much no matter what you do

[Gaidin]

Could be worse. They could've had the NSF trust you without even having you warn Paris etc of the incoming assault.

[Kane Starkiller]

Except I never massacred them I stuck with the prod. Call it a personal flaw but every time I play a sneaker like Deus Ex or Splinter Cell I always go for incapacitation rather than lethal force.
Besides Paul vouched for you.

[Gaidin]

Hahah yea I do the sneaker to. Still carry a gep gun for obvious reasons. As for Paul vouching...that didn't help much in Hong Kong. Still had to sneak into the labs and steal the dragon sword before they'd turn off your self destruct.

[PeZook]

Could be worse. They could've had the NSF trust you without even having you warn Paris etc of the incoming assault.

The entire thing could be worse, yes, but it still falls apart at the seams. I think that part of the problem was that the devs wanted to make a game that gave the player choice, but also had a story in mind, and perhaps some technical limitations I'm not aware of. In short, they didn't quite think through just how ridiculous the story is when you take certain routes.

For example, you are expected to instantly trust Paul and send the warning message after seeing some random holocube in a basement somewhere. It may sound okay when you've been doubting UNATCO's methods from the start, but when your attitude was "Huzzah damn dirty terrorists got what they deserved UNATCO rules yeah Paul you dirty traitor!", it just falls on its ass. By giving the player that (worthless) choice and simultaneously expecting him to follow the only righteous route designed by the devs, the game really shot itself in the foot.

There's dozens of little things like that: For example, all UNATCO troopers accept the shoot-on-sight order from Simons without hesitation (Why the fuck does Simons have authority over a UN agency, anyway?) or question, the US military doesn't react to a fucking commando raid on one of its most important airbases, there's a giant armored door in the bowels of UNATCO HQ nobody ever asks anything about (and acces to it goes through the infirmary...WTF?), forensics apparently doesn't exist (Lebedev. A surprise attack. He had a rocket launcher concealed on him. Seriously.)

Except I never massacred them I stuck with the prod.

Me too, but the point is that for the first three missions the choice of lethal vs. non-lethal force was played up to be this big thing, and then it turns out it meant nothing at all. Carter will still open the armory for you even if you painted Satanic symbols on the walls of UNATCO HQ using the janitor's guts.

Besides Paul vouched for you.

How did he know he could trust you?

As for Paul vouching...that didn't help much in Hong Kong. Still had to sneak into the labs and steal the dragon sword before they'd turn off your self destruct.

Yeah, but that was a different organization, and that part was actually better, storytelling wise. Except for the fact Tong let you into his super-secret compound and then admitted that he couldn't know if you worked for MJ-12 or not untill you proved your loyalty.

And then let you go on your Important Mission. Seriously. Think about it.

[Gaidin]

In defense of Simons. Him being in ultimate authority actually makes sense story wise. I'll grant you it doesn't make sense the first time through because there's no way you can know later information and can only guess by reading too much into the opening scene. His authority doesn't make sense from a 'FEMA...why do I care what FEMA thinks at UNATCO?' standpoint. But from the standpoint of how much they blackmailed him around, not to mention he's already a high position in MJ-12, which essentially uses UNATCO as another arm, him being able to command UNATCO is sensible.

[Gramzamber]

I will now spoil all your nostalgia by mentioning Invisible War.

[Gaidin]

What game is this you're talking about?

[Zixinus]

The sequel of Deus Ex.

I will say that I have much fond memories of Deus Ex, if for nothing else but for trying to do something that I haven't seen tried since and really trying to push to the technical limit that the game engine could offer at the time. The game was ugly, even when it was relatively new but it tried, even if not perfectly succeeded, to make the actual gameplay interesting and fresh.
I can't comment on the story's strength in, what? 5 years distance? But I do recall that you mostly had some comprehension of what are you doing and why, and I do recall that it had more-or-less effective moments.

Now, Invisible War was the polar opposite of the first game: it looked much more pretty but the gameplay sucked. The story couldn't fall flat more if it tried to and whoever thought up the idea for universal ammo for all the guns and weapons needs to be shot. I am sure it looked like a great idea on paper, but in practise, it only guaranteed that if you run out of ammo for one gun, you run out of ammo for every gun, forcing you to rely on grenades and that "dragon's tooth" sword (which, in the first game, was a hard-earned weapon while in the sequel it was as common as grime). Personally, I blame consolization, taking away core ideas of the first game and to make the sequel as console-friendly as possible (the controls kind of reflected this, IIRC). But its probably the combination of the firing of the key, creative people and the project becoming much more expensive due to higher graphics requirements.

[Gaidin]

Now, Invisible War was the polar opposite of the first game: it looked much more pretty but the gameplay sucked. The story couldn't fall flat more if it tried to and whoever thought up the idea for universal ammo for all the guns and weapons needs to be shot. I am sure it looked like a great idea on paper, but in practise, it only guaranteed that if you run out of ammo for one gun, you run out of ammo for every gun, forcing you to rely on grenades and that "dragon's tooth" sword (which, in the first game, was a hard-earned weapon while in the sequel it was as common as grime). Personally, I blame consolization, taking away core ideas of the first game and to make the sequel as console-friendly as possible (the controls kind of reflected this, IIRC). But its probably the combination of the firing of the key, creative people and the project becoming much more expensive due to higher graphics requirements.

There actually is a dragon's tooth sword in Invisible War that was the equal of the one in the first game. The problem is, there was no 'mission' to find it. It was sort of sitting on a bookshelf in an Antarctica level and you had to have the presence of mind to check every weapon(they had badass versions of every weapon lying *somewhere* in the game iirc) if you were going to have a shot at finding it.

As for story, if we leave aside the fact that it was poorly written, the big problem is that what they handed us was sort of the logical result of picking all three damn endings from game 1 and playing them to their logical end. I mean, take in the AI, decide the world needs a reset button, and then blow up the facility so that neither MJ-12 or Illuminati are distinctly running things, and rebuild, but end up with a few Illuminati-like orgs in the background sort of fighting each other(or pretending to as the case was...that part wasn't too bad). The idiotic writers painted themselves into the corner with that game. If I were writing it, I'd have done the Illuminati ending.

[Zixinus]

As for story, if we leave aside the fact that it was poorly written, the big problem is that what they handed us was sort of the logical result of picking all three damn endings from game 1 and playing them to their logical end.

I suspect that the point may have been at the end of the first game was that there wouldn't be a sequel.

But I even more suspect that the original storyboard writers left and the sequel was made by either lacking a few people or were just made up according to notes.

Kind of like Blood Omen series. Boy, did they fuck that one's story up for the sake of yet another sequel.

[Gaidin]

To be honest I'm looking forward to Deus Ex 3. Prequel to the first game and I think the character is a Mech Augmented person.

[Korvan]

I did enjoy Deus Ex, tho I could only play for short periods of time as it caused nausea in me. I played at the highest difficulty level, and once I got used to the fact that I couldn't Rambo my way through the levels it wasn't too hard. The funny thing is that the game actually became easier as the enemies started using heavier weapons in later levels. A rocket is no more deadlier than a bullet and you can see the rocket coming.

I was a compulsive ammo hoarder and had quite the arsenal towards the end of game, saving it all for a cataclysmic showdown with the final boss. And the game ends with a puzzle...

[YT300000]

I loved the game, because it was like nothing I had ever seen at that point. The visuals in the Hong Kong market were fantastic. In New York, you could pick up a basketball and throw it - sure, there was no semblance of real physics, but there was nothing else that let you do that back then. The music and atmosphere were amazing, to the degree that I rationalized away all the ridiculous turns because of the spine-chilling feeling of walking through a door you've been by a dozen times, and suddenly realizing that UNATCO is controlled by MJ-12.

Even the weapons balance didn't hurt - the aiming mechanism and inventory were clunky, but they made you play the game very differently from most other shooters at the time. Certainly the inventory was a lot smarter than Invisible War's, which would let you carry 12 of anything, even flamethrowers or rocket launchers.

All that said, I'm not sure how much I'd like the game today. Some of the magic might be gone.

[Companion Cube]

All that said, I'm not sure how much I'd like the game today. Some of the magic might be gone.

For one thing, you'll be painfully aware that there are only two or three screams in the game. I always got a kick out of how they'd play even if you'd blown someone to bits with the GEP gun.

[GuppyShark]

I really enjoyed that you could choose between stealth or combat approaches, instead of being forced into one or the other.

[PeZook]

Since we're on the topic on what the game actually did right, I'll step off my soapbox for a while:

1. Explosions were modelled very well. They were channeled by corridors, more dangerous in enclosed spaces than outside, bots were more vulnerable to explosives than firearms.

2. Many maps (not all) let you chose a few approaches to a particular problem. They were usually very standardized (front door vs. back door, human enemies or electronic security, stealth or combat, etc.), but it was refreshing that you could, in fact, chose your own way in some situations.

3. Music. Very cool and futuristic, contributed a lot to the mood

4. Atmosphere. Again, not in every level: that's the "Hong Kong effect" most people notice.

[Vendetta]

Kind of like Blood Omen series. Boy, did they fuck that one's story up for the sake of yet another sequel.

To be fair, they pretty much fucked everything else up about it as well. Soul Reaver was the only good one.

[Zixinus]

Soul Reaver and maybe the original Blood Omen. The rest was fucked beyond belief, especially Soul Reaver 2. You spent an entire game chasing down Kain and beefing yourself up for a fight, only to suddenly decide for some unclear reason that maybe Kain isn't such a bad guy after all.