Deus Ex: Human Revolution Impressions (spoilarz)

[White Haven]

One quasi-interesting detail with regards to the horrid 'pick a button!' ending choice bit, actually. Anyone who you execute the shit out of during the end segment doesn't slow up as an ending option in the Room of Choices. I executed the fuck out of Darrow for being a murdering hatfucker after I talked the codes out of him. No Darrow ending appeared as an option.

[Stark]

If you fail Darrow's convo fight, or avoid the other two, you can actually have only the fourth option at the end.

Everything else you do in the entire game is totally irrelevant.

[Chardok]

Do we know if Jensen's face was replaced in whole or part? There's no way dude rocks a chin that pointy naturally. and he carries that shit at the beginning of the game, too.


I forget - does he ever not wear sunglasses?


Also - is he Kazuma Kiryu from Yakuza?

It's possible, right?

[Stark]

His sunniest ocassionally retract into his head. Getting that mod working was way more important than things like 'a flashlight' or 'night vision' or 'external batteries'.

[Chardok]

His sunniest ocassionally retract into his head. Getting that mod working was way more important than things like 'a flashlight' or 'night vision' or 'external batteries'.

Why would one require a flashlight in a world where every other brick glows gold?

Although I agree about the batteries thing. Dig this endorsement deal Jensen could rock when he goes back into his "normal" life.


If you think all batteries are the same, consider this:

When supercopspymurdererhacker Adam Jensen needs his cloaking system to function for a full seven seconds, he relies on the power of duracell batteries.

And when surfer dude/super genius CEO David Sariff is up late at night designing the latest in lifesaving augmentations, his bionic arms keep going all night long with the power of duracell batteries.

So when it absolutely has to work, Duracell.

Trusted by more corporate-types than any other.

*Bing bong bannnnnng*

[Tolya]

Alright, I got the game. I only played through the prologue yet, but some initial thoughts:

1) They should kick the guy who did the music in the nuts. I sometimes return to the original theme of DE1 because of it's sheer awesomeness. I remember the first time I loaded DE1 I got shivers down my spine from that masterpiece. It was just "right" for the game. Here you are greeted with some ambient stuff roughly similar to menu music in Mass Effect. One of the things I always liked about DE series was music. I am still waiting to be amused in this department.

2) The game has the overall feeling of DE1 with better graphics. It just feels clunky and unpolished, especially in the movement area.

3) I got three crashes so far, the one that returns you to the splash screen with options you can tweak. Everything happened in the first five minutes and the game has been running fine since, but Im keeping my fingers crossed.

4) What I feared most happened: you are the head security of a huge corporation but your choice of weapons is limited to a dart gun with 9 darts or a cattle prod or something else. Shit, you should have a huge armory where you can stock up in whatever you want. It would just require better game design so that the player doesn't get "godmodded". But here (again!) we have the old famous "here's a gas grenade. There's a facility with 50 terrorists. Have fun, enjoy!".

Overally the game feels like an overhauled DE1 in terms of gameplay. Five years ago that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing but right now... c'mon Square Enix, you could do better you lazy shits.

First impressions are sometimes wrong impressions so I will see how the actual game goes after the prologue.

[Chardok]

Dude, when you get to Jensen's Apartment, you will TOTALLY go "WTF". I mean, this dude is the head of security for a multiBILLION dollar multinational, and he lives in THAT? And thank you very much, Mr. Sariff, for the ludicrous "secret Stash" that includes loads of crap that

a) I don't need
and
b) contains a shelf full of stuff I canno even pick up.



PS - living in an apartment where you have to hack your own stuff is cool, right?

[CaptHawkeye]

Jensen may have picked a small apartment on his own accord since he doesn't strike me as the kind of guy to frequently have guests over. As for the supply thing, yeah it makes no sense. Especially since Sarif opted to hire a single guy for security instead of a PMC. You'd think they'd have some spare cash lying around for weapons, food, etc.

[Stark]

Chardok is just an idiot trying to be relevant by repeating what other people say. You may have noticed that the game explicitly presents a massive cleavage between rich and poor, people actually talk about how expensive their shitty apartments are, and that Jensen's apartment is the penthouse in a highly-secure building in a city on the very edge of social collapse.

I bet it costs SHITLOADS, and it's bigger than every other apartment we see aside from those owned by Fortune 500 people.

[SylasGaunt]

Also there are codes for things like the wall safe laying about or sent to you. I certainly didn't have to hack any of my own stuff (I did anyway for the xp but I didn't need to)

[Stark]

Hey Sylas I don't want to be a prick or anything by mygamercard stopped working six months ago.

[Chirios]

Turns out I was right about it being rushed.

Deus Ex Devs Taunt Us With Cut Content
Earnest "Nex" Cavalli | 2 Sep 2011 20:05
Filed under: earnest "nex" cavalli, business, microsoft, money, xbox 360, xbox live

Upper Heng Sha, the streets of Montreal, India; you won't find these places in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. At least, not anymore.

Speaking to industry publication EDGE, Eidos Montreal art director Jonathan Jacques-Belletête and lead game designer Frank Lapikas spilled the French Canadian equivalent of beans on the wealth of content cut from the final version of the game. If you're a fan, you may want to surf away to something more pleasant, lest your rage overwhelm you.

"There were definitely supposed to be some streets to Montreal. There were outdoor locations set in one of the most famous neighbourhoods of Montreal, called Plateau. It's got very specific architecture, called tri-plexes, with twirling exterior staircases made of this old metal," Jacques-Belletête said.

"It's very specific to Montreal, and we'd drawn concept art of how these streets would look in 20 or 30 years from now. We even tried them in-game. Walking around them felt quite special - that architecture had never been in a game before, and never realised alongside a vision of 2027. It was really cool."

"We had planned for a lot more city hubs," adds Lapikas. "Montreal was supposed to be one. Upper Heng Sha was actually built, but it was never finished."

"At the beginning of the project we even planned to go to India. But as we constructed the city hubs, and understood the amount of work it took, we had to pare it down."

Continuing, the pair claims that the amount of furniture and interior design nuances the firm designed "could fill an Ikea catalogue."

Before fans have a chance to purse their collective lips and burst into petulant wails, the duo clarifies that these cuts were necessary to make Deus Ex: Human Revolution the stunningly detailed game you're likely enjoying at this very moment.

Since Edge already took the comment-bait route by asking readers whether they might have preferred more locales to explore, over the hyper-detailed stomping grounds that made the final cut, I'm just going to make that decision for you guys.

Sixty percent of you are suddenly very angry that you won't ever see India circa 2027, thirty-five percent of you can see the logic in cutting these areas in service of a more detailed final product, and five percent of you are still raging over the amount of blood spraying from the goat's neck in this comic.

I'm right, aren't I?

Or at least the content was cut out.

My guess, this content is going to be released over the next few years as DLC. Sales for the game were pretty high, so a sequel is probably in the works. While the sequel is in the planning stages, the other members of the development team will be working on the DLC, before switching over to the sequel proper.

[Stark]

I'm not seeing how this excuses anything; plenty of games cut content for time. It generally means management sucked, which just feeds into all the otherproblems the game has.

[Chirios]

I'm not seeing how this excuses anything; plenty of games cut content for time. It generally means management sucked, which just feeds into all the otherproblems the game has.

No, but it does explain why you go from having a large city with quite a few sidequests to a larger city with next to no sidequests, to just going to a series of buildings without any sidequests.

[Chardok]

Chardok is just an idiot trying to be relevant by repeating what other people say. You may have noticed that the game explicitly presents a massive cleavage between rich and poor, people actually talk about how expensive their shitty apartments are, and that Jensen's apartment is the penthouse in a highly-secure building in a city on the very edge of social collapse.

I bet it costs SHITLOADS, and it's bigger than every other apartment we see aside from those owned by Fortune 500 people.

That's a load of poop. I'd never heard anyone talk about their shitty stupid apartment. I came up with that all by my lonesome, TYVM.

The guy lives like he's a 19 year old who just moved out of mom's house. giant bigscreen TV that takes up half a wall, 50 year old couch with a combat rifle hiddne under a cardboard box on his COFFEE TABLE, combat rifle hidden behind a cardboard box blocking his fridge, combat rifle leaning up against the dresser, Sleeps on a futon, punches mirrors like an adolescent gothkid, and nothing to eat but canned beans and cereal.

[Stark]

I guess you never noticed he has mental problems, or that almost everyone has cardboard boxes in their apartment, or that Sarif has an even huger TV for nothing but baseball? OH NO HE SLEEPS ON A FUTON! GAME RUINED! Let's forget the apartment is part of the Sarif Owns Jensen shit to keep him on a leash and not where he used to live.

You're doing that thing fat people do when they start to make up problems with a game that has enough real problems already.

[Chardok]

I guess you never noticed he has mental problems, or that almost everyone has cardboard boxes in their apartment, or that Sarif has an even huger TV for nothing but baseball? OH NO HE SLEEPS ON A FUTON! GAME RUINED! Let's forget the apartment is part of the Sarif Owns Jensen shit to keep him on a leash and not where he used to live.

You're doing that thing fat people do when they start to make up problems with a game that has enough real problems already.

Look, I notice things, alright? also there are things I don't notice. like the social strife and sharp divsions between ich and poor. I may have noticed it, but whatever, we have that now - So yeah, I still say his apartment is silly. Guess what else is dumb in my brain: Stealth guy with HIGHLY REFLECTIVE GOLDEN GLASSES.

Make that shit matte, mang.

[Stark]

His apartment might be silly - not because it stands out - but because everyone's apartment is silly. Even the worst level-1 security flophouse in evil China has a walk-in closet and a huge bathroom. Radios and TVs don't have snooze modes. Fridges are objects but ovens aren't. Turns out they were designed by a trendy Frenchman and then he pressed the STAMP APARTMENT button 25 times?!?!

Did you know the Icarus system is totally silent despite making noises like BWARGHGHGHG and CRACKLECRACKLECRACKLE and uses no power despite involving force lightning? IMMERSION.

[salm]

4) What I feared most happened: you are the head security of a huge corporation but your choice of weapons is limited to a dart gun with 9 darts or a cattle prod or something else. Shit, you should have a huge armory where you can stock up in whatever you want. It would just require better game design so that the player doesn't get "godmodded". But here (again!) we have the old famous "here's a gas grenade. There's a facility with 50 terrorists. Have fun, enjoy!".

Heh, I found that strange, too but it´s quite obvious why you don´t get mega guns in the beginning. I think that´s a realtively small problem.
My main complaint are the loading times.

Otherwise I´m quite happy with the game so far. I´ve played the first mission in stealth mode without killing anybody on hard it´s quite fun. It would be better if the NPC AI forgot you quicker than they do so it would be easier to just run away upon detection and then try again.

The AI is adequately stupid for a sneaking game, I´m fine with the controls even though i rarely play FPS with joypads.

The artwork is pretty good, not up to date technically but the Art Director did a very good job.

The story is told in an interesting fashion and actually is quite interesting as well. Stupid, yes, but who cares? I don´t expect serious philosophical stories from video games.

I don´t care too much for the hacking mini game and I´m a bit worried that it could become a true nuisance after a while.

I started on hard and find the the difficulty level ok. But I don´t play many games, maybe two or three per year so the game is probably too easy for more experienced gamers.

[Stark]

Why is it 'obvious' when later - at a point where you're swimming in ammo - the game plays EXACTLY THE SAME? Limiting ammo in my two playthroughs on hard and pacifist/foxy, achieved NOTHING but making the game stupid. I played the same when I had 50 trank darts as when I had 5. Hell, there's basically nothing to spend money on anyway, but stores are also amazingly limited.

It's a primitive idea that making ammo scarce does anything - particularly for the one-shot stealth weapons - but in order to allow stealth to be powerful, they had to cripple your ability to fight. It didn't work (there's like 800 combat rifle rounds in the game, enough to kill everyone) it just takes the setting from 'interesting future oh my' to 'ho hum another stupid quest-based game'. And then at the end you suddenly find 200 heavy rifle rounds in a toilet, 100 heavy rifle rounds in a rubbish bin, because it's the 'zombie level'.

The biggest lol isn't getting the wrong ammo from enemies - it's finding ammo for the typhoon, a top-secret military weapon, never released, used by four people in the ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD - in cupboards, boxes and offices. I mean, why not right? That makes sense.

[salm]

If that is the case they fucked it up later on. Limiting the players access to guns at the beginning though, is neither new nor bad in order to vary the game over time.
And I´d rather have a logical inconsistency in the setting than limiting game play relevant possibilities.

[Stark]

Did you ever change guns because of ammo? I changed guns because the bullet-shooting ones sucked, but the limited ammo just meant players had to carry several guns (and the rocket/grenade launchers for ages), which plays right into their terrible inventory system.

The ammo limitation does NOTHING but limit 'relevant game play possibilities'. Stealth is amazingly overblown and megapowerful, so why bother trying to prevent people having fun shooting people? People play the whole game using the headshot pistol anyway because the actual rifles suck shit, so using ammo to control player behaviour is a useless attempt, since it doesn't make the awful AI better or the huge hitpoint banks the badguys have any smaller.

Can you name a single example of how not limiting ammo so ridiculously would have removed a 'gameplay possibility'?

[salm]

Can you name a single example of how not limiting ammo so ridiculously would have removed a 'gameplay possibility'?

You misunderstood. It would be a bad thing if the game designers wouldn´t consider limiting the players guns in the beginning just because it causes a inconsistency in the setting.

[Stark]

Well you got me thinking about how the game rewards/punishes approaches... and I was thinking about games like Splinter Cell, where if you had lots of bullets you really would just blast everyone, thus sort of missing the point. Except those games have direct rewards and progressive rewards for 'clean runs' of 'pure stealth'. I can't think of any quests in DEHR where you get a better result or a different result for being totally unseen or very stealthy; the tranks etc are just there for pacifist playthroughs (and may be amazingly powerful by accident). So while they claim that shooting and stealth are both 'viable approaches', they don't reward you for one while firmly pushing you away from the other.

[salm]

Don´t they give you more experience if you stealth? I read that some where but I´m not far enough into the game to tell.

So while they claim that shooting and stealth are both 'viable approaches', they don't reward you for one while firmly pushing you away from the other.

Is that necessary? They want you to have fun with either way. Why should they punish you for choosing one option over the other?