By John Walker on November 26th, 2007 at 5:38 pm.
Well here’s some rather big news.
Eidos have announced Deus Ex 3.
Details have emerged on Gamasutra that Eidos’ new Montreal studio will be developing the third part in the Deus Ex saga as their first project.
Almost nothing is known beyond that the developers have passed a proof of concept for the game. Stéphane D’Astous, Montreal’s general manager told Gamasutra,
“”We’re only working on AAA, major titles. We’re going to be developing only major AAA games, using only next-gen technology. We will want to limit our dev teams to a human-sized team of 80 people at the very highest of the peak in the production cycle. We don’t want to become a huge studio where there’s over 100 people on a title. We want a smaller, multi-discipline group that are tightly knit together. But by doing so, we will give them at least 18 to 24 months for the production cycle.”
However, it’s extremely unlikely Deus Ex’s daddy, Warren Spector, will have anything to do with the project, as Shacknews points out. His Junction Point Studios was recently bought by Disney, keeping him tied up in big-money development for the foreseeable future. Nor does it seem likely that designer Harvey Smith will be involved, being all wrapped up with the development of Blacksite 2 down in Austin, Texas.
While opinion was divided over the second game (seriously, if you’re in a pub with Alec and Kieron, bring it up: hilarious), our crazed love for the original Deus Ex is enough to have excitement oozing from every pore of the RPS bodymass, even with just a name announcement. Oh, and Eidos? Make sure it appears on PC. We have sticks.
Trailer below the clickileap.
Gametrailers: kthnxbai
26/11/2007 at 17:42 drunkymonkey says:
I wonder who it’ll be who’s working on it.
And if it’ll be any cop.
26/11/2007 at 17:56 Kieron Gillen says:
Clearly, they should have invested in the Cassandra Project team.
KG
26/11/2007 at 18:02 ran93r says:
AAA title?
I call shenanigans, sadly.
26/11/2007 at 18:18 Feet says:
Initial excitement as turned to dread that it might not make it to PC…
Or rather, depression that even if it does it will not be a “Games for Windows” exclusive. I’ve nothing against the consoles, I just think that cross-platform development can really ruin what could be good games by having to make compromises and losing focus on certain aspects.
I know it’s not really financially viable to ignore the “next-gen” anymore, but still. A man can dream of better times I ‘spose…
*sigh*
26/11/2007 at 18:48 Richard says:
The smart money’s on a side-scrolling platformer for Xbox Live.
26/11/2007 at 19:12 Mark-P says:
I want to be happy, but I fear the console port. :(
IW wasn’t a terrible game, but it still wasn’t half the game that the original was, and much of that was the result of an acute case of consolitis.
26/11/2007 at 20:22 Feet says:
http://www.eidosmontreal.com/en/games.html
IN A WORLD…
26/11/2007 at 21:10 Jives says:
I just saw the teaser for it… i didnt like it. If i hadnt known what it was a trailer for I would have said a bad overblown hollywood thriller
26/11/2007 at 21:25 Mark-P says:
I kinda liked it. It gives at least the vague impression that they might have some kind of direction for the project. Plus bonus points for using some music from the original. I love Alex Brandon’s stuff.
26/11/2007 at 21:39 drunkymonkey says:
I loved the trailer, as teasers go. It was suitably epic, and if they can carry out the complexity implied, Bioshock will have a sexier cousin.
26/11/2007 at 21:42 Ryan says:
Blacksite TWO? But…why, for god’s sake? I have yet to hear a single positive word about the first one, it is, to the best of my knowledge, selling like some sort of Bizarro anti-hotcakes, and already they’re hard at work on a sequel?
26/11/2007 at 21:44 Nuyan says:
After watching that teaser and thinking about it being a console game, I’m inclined to say Deus Ex never should had a follow-up.
That game was so incredibly awesome, guess I should install and finish the whole game another time.
26/11/2007 at 21:47 bobince says:
Ohboy, what an unencouragingly derivative trailer.
Of course they had to use the original theme, there’ll be no audio assets yet. Or art or plot, by the looks of it.
Difficult to see where there is left to go with the plot, really.
[ObIW: I'm glad I only paid a tenner for DX2. It was fun enough, but the ‘freedom’ felt so mechanical; there were always exactly three approaches to each problem, all laid out before you instead of giving you the feeling of forging one's own path. And the simplifications of ammo and mods ruined the balance... first time through I upgraded eyes to full power in the first room and the rest of the game became trivially easy. oops]
26/11/2007 at 22:04 John Walker says:
Smith was talking about Blacksite 2 months ago. Which was not exactly a positive sign for the first game, when the lead dev is publically thinking about how he’s going to improve upon it before it’s released.
26/11/2007 at 22:28 Dracko says:
This trailer makes me vaguely excited. It comes off as classy.
Let’s not forget that Deus Ex was almost entirely derivative in its aesthetics and design in the first place.
26/11/2007 at 22:40 Duncan says:
Yeah, you’re really reaching if you’re finding anything of significance to hate on in that teaser (other than maybe the intonations of the narrator.) Brandon’s score was a cool touch… which they did not “have” to use.
26/11/2007 at 22:41 Alec Meer says:
Hearing that music again is absurdly exciting. It almost makes me forget the miseries of…. No, too late.
Invisible Wank, more like.
26/11/2007 at 22:41 Masked Dave says:
If it’s just another solid shooter set in that world I’ll enjoy it. More would obviously be nice, but I don’t mind if it’s isn’t.
26/11/2007 at 22:47 John P (Katsumoto) says:
Alec… Poohface, more like! TAKEN DOWN.
I got into PCG’s “best of the forum” the other month for saying that IW rocked. A proud moment. I will now attempt to get into RPS’s “best of the site” section which I presume is coming up shortly:
Deus Ex: Invisible War – what a GREAT game.
Thanks
26/11/2007 at 22:50 John P (Katsumoto) says:
Uh, on topic though: as with the rest of you, I fear this will be trashy, but yes, that music did indeed “warm the cockles”.
26/11/2007 at 23:11 Muzman says:
No Smith or Spector, but any sign of writer Sheldon Pacotti on this?
I’m guessing not. Pity. He took (although no doubt others influenced the thrust of the story) the fairly cheesy undercurrents from the first game into something with a bit more nuance (only then they couldn’t make the game that lived up to it).
Anyway, now we can argue about which ending is the real one all over again. Hooray, I think.
26/11/2007 at 23:23 Dragon says:
Embeddable trailer on Gametrailers: http://www.gametrailers.com/player/28286.html
Some of us still hurt from DX:IW. It’s going to have to be oh so very good to get over that.
26/11/2007 at 23:24 Kieron Gillen says:
Last I heard of Sheldon was him being at Junction Point.
KG
26/11/2007 at 23:47 Thelps says:
All I can say is, it better not suck. Deus Ex is the kind of game that is such an intricate balance of so many factors (scenario, moral choice, character-driven story telling, good ol’ guns and cyborgs) that it has truly vast screw-up potential. That said, if they get it right (and for me, even IW got it right where it counted) then it’ll be yet another real beacon of what modern games can achieve.
All the trailer said to me was: Hinting at decent scenario, but also freeloading off the franchise’s previous good name. So the jury’s still out.
27/11/2007 at 00:10 John Walker says:
I thought Deus Ex 2 was a great game. Unquestionably disappointing when compared with Deus Ex. But then that’s to compare it with one of the greatest games ever made. Compare it to the majority of games that year and it was really splendid.
Bloody awful ending though, coughsameasbioshock’scough.
I’m most disappointed at the lack of compliments for my title design, and indeed the lack of phonecalls from Eidos asking to buy it from me.
27/11/2007 at 00:13 Kieron Gillen says:
I hope I get a consultancy fee.
KG
27/11/2007 at 00:29 Dileep Reddy says:
This is why intellectual property should be owned by people and not companies. Deus Ex isn’t about “One Answer” overwriting the others……..
27/11/2007 at 01:01 King Awesome says:
I still think that the truest sequel to a game like Deus Ex would be a game wholly unlike Deus Ex, but in the same spirt of doing things a little differently. It is one of the few first person games to give you a real sense of freedom and a range of options to the way you approach the challenges of the world. Somehow at the time, its near future, shockingly precursive conjuration of our world felt fresh and thrilling. By the time of Deus Ex 2 though the setting felt common place and tedious.
I might have set the whole thing in the Napoleonic wars, cast the player as an agent of the dastardly english crown. Sprinkle in some royal court conspiracies, some european travelling, and some ancient secrets of the catholic church and call that Deus Ex 2. Deus Ex 3 would clearly feature a sandwich shop in Northamptonshire, an ordinairy seeming chap with an unordiairy imagination and a highly intimidating dreamworld peppered with subconcious meaning.
Oh, and robot arms obviously.
27/11/2007 at 01:09 Dracko says:
On the other hand, we could all just play Marathon Infinity all over again.
27/11/2007 at 01:10 WCAYPAHWAT says:
“Clearly, they should have invested in the Cassandra Project team.”
Clearly, someone should finish the cassandra project.
oh, did that Zodiac mod ever end up being finished? i enjoyed what i played of that
27/11/2007 at 01:27 cabbs says:
Cheesy voice over. Why is there a cheesy voice over?
What purpose does the cheesy voice over serve? What sane individual would actually ‘appreciate’ a voice over of such cheesy magnitude?
27/11/2007 at 01:41 Duncan says:
Yes, clearly this preoccupation with voiceovers will be Eidos’s undoing.
27/11/2007 at 04:26 Gwog says:
Any DX3 is better than no DX3 but I’ll check back in once it’s on shelves and there are impressions being posted. GL to the devs, though… it’s probably not going to be a fiscally-mandated eighteen month dev cycle full of very high morale.
27/11/2007 at 08:00 Bobsy says:
Trailer: better than I expected. They’re at least thinking about this a little. And the music from DX1 rather than 2 (I think) is a good sign.
But still, I’m worried.
(although I like the idea of a Napoleonic DX. Or, or, or, set in the declining imperial court of the western Roman empire in the 5th century AD. YES)
27/11/2007 at 08:13 CrashT says:
If you pause the trailer you can see there’s a date on the polling box of 2027, seems like this could be a prequel.
27/11/2007 at 08:52 Garth says:
Oh my God oh my God oh my God. A(nother) Deus Ex game? Given that Deus Ex is pretty much my favourite game ever, you can imagine how much jumping in my chair I am currently doing.
Can’t wait to be totally let down, like with Deus Ex 2!
I loved the use of the original music — I have the entire songlist from Deus Ex on my playlist.
27/11/2007 at 09:07 John P (Katsumoto) says:
You all smell. Kieron, we need a Making Of: Invisible War, I feel. All this DX2 bashing makes me queasy.
27/11/2007 at 09:18 John P (Katsumoto) says:
Sorry for double posting again – http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=176374 – Tom Francis sums up in point 4 why most people really didn’t get on with IW. In my opinion.
As for why so many people didn’t get on with Deadly Shadows – that will forever elude me.
27/11/2007 at 10:06 Richard says:
Nah. I didn’t like IW because it was a terrible, terrible game on every level – literally and figuratively. Combat, story, dialogue, missions, atmosphere… the original DE had its problems, but IW was beyond a joke. Had it been from an obscure Russian developer and named Vox Populi or something, it’d have got 60% scores at best and sunk without trace.
27/11/2007 at 10:35 AK says:
Interesting list of what zips by during the hyper-speed flashy bit towards the end: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_Ex_3
“A sign ‘We do not welcome augmented people here’”
X-Men, anyone?
27/11/2007 at 10:50 malkav11 says:
Funny. I thought Invisible War was much, much less ambitious than Deus Ex, which is a bit disappointing, to be sure. But it made up for it by being a lot more accessible and enjoyable without cheating my ass off. Like the mod system. I don’t know how balanced it was, but unlike DX1′s, all of the mods felt genuinely useful and powerful out of the gate. And the weapon upgrade system meant I could create an entirely customized arsenal where every gun had specific tactical purposes I’d assigned to them. I was a bit sad to see the skill system go, but…ah well.
27/11/2007 at 10:53 Kieron Gillen says:
AK: Ooooh.
Re: DXIW: I may have to do a retrospective on it. I think its problems are a little different than the simple No-mutants-allowed reaction to anything different. Since Bioshock bumped into a couple of them, may be worth re-examining it.
KG
27/11/2007 at 11:47 Crispy says:
I think until the game is out no amount of hype, promises or interviews will convince me that this won’t be analogous to…
“You know the rape scene in Irreversible? You know the guy who walks into the tunnel and witnesses the act but backs away, never to be seen again? Well if Monica Bellucci was Deus Ex, and the rapist was Invisible War, I’m worried that Deux Ex 3 will be like the witness coming back after the rapist has scarpered to have another go.”
As you can see by that horrible image I’m going with a ‘guilty until proven innocent’ line on this one, purely on the blockbusteresque “In a world…” deep voice being an indication of a lack of respect for the original.
I’m am very prepared and hope to be proven totally wrong on this one, but after that trailer I’m definitely more than a little fearful.
27/11/2007 at 12:13 Garth says:
I also have my worries, similar to Crispy. Deus Ex: Invisible War didn’t just ‘annoy’ me or ‘piss me off,’ I became a red-hot ember of seething rage whenever it’s name was even mentioned. Deus Ex is, essentially, my Holy Grail. Or wait, my bible. Both? Either way, imagine seeing their holiest of relics re-transcripted, and suddenly is a giant pylon, or a scorpion with no legs or something.
I think that PC Gamer blog pretty much covers all the bases of how this is going to go down.
1) Deus Ex ‘Fans’ (as if ‘fan’ could possibly describe the devotion we hold) are going to destroy large portions of cities (or their computer desks, most likely) because it’s not Deus Ex 1, prettier.
2) On the console front, I’m not so sure. One of the major reasons… ‘that sequel’ got the mediocre reviews it did was due to being made for PC and Console simultaneously. I think this could go either way — they’ll have learned from that mistake and do PC or Console exclusively (If it’s PS3 only I will commit murder), or they’ll go PC/Console =, and try to not.. do that other game again.
3) While it might not be as long as Deus Ex, I don’t expect they’ll try a 4-5 hour game. If they do, they’ll have not only alienated the fanbase (what is left after that sequel anyway) and have turned away anyone who knows the brand name.
4) I’m expecting an ‘ok’ game. To me, that means 6-7 out of 10. To it’ll be an eight or so, maybe an eight point five.
27/11/2007 at 12:30 Muzman says:
I don’t get the love for old DX. I think I missed the boat on that one. I should, since I will swear by the life changing effects of a game or two, just different games.
Incidentally I still labour under the belief that IW was a pretty ambitious game until a mixture of circumstances, to do with the engine mostly, kinda blew up in their faces. I don’t really know though. I’ve never thought they entirely meant it to be the way it ended up anyway, as some seem to think here.
27/11/2007 at 13:14 Acosta says:
It would be interesting seeing a debate between Alec and Kieron about Deus Ex 2, maybe you could think on it as a future piece for rockpapershotgun.
27/11/2007 at 13:37 Kieron Gillen says:
Socratic dialogues!
I think I’d have to replay it. I can certainly argue about my opinion now, but I suspect – like Alec did with Vampire – if I went back to it, it’ll change a little.
That said, I’ve certainly got some takes on why it failed, and – aside from tech and whatever – there’s a core belief they ran with which (I sadly suspect) isn’t true. Bioshock has ran into the same problem too, in a smaller way.
The best example is the Vent issue. People complained a lot about having to crawl through vents constantly. Except, you don’t have to. The skillset in IW is really subtle and there’s dozens of options at any time. But the vent solution is simple and easy and efficient,and people took it every time it turned up and were bored.
(And never experimented with the options as they didn’t *have* to.)
Invisible War was made with the belief that players like doing interesting things. Many of them don’t – they’d rather be boring and efficient, and have to be forced into being interesting.
(In Bioshock, it’s the “I can complete the game with the wrench” thing by respawning and running. Yeah, you can, but it’ll take forever and be really boring. But what sort of person would do that voluntarily? It’s tedious. Some people need the game to force them to stop being tedious.)
This argument can’t help but come across as a diss against people who play the game like it, but I’m more talking about a key part of human psychology which many gamers have and a developer has to consider when making their games.
KG
27/11/2007 at 14:05 Acosta says:
Ah, yes, thank you Kieron, I am glad someone share my opinion about something I truly believe: sometimes, players are to blame when they decide they want to transform a rich and interesting experience in a bored exercise of repetition.
I was speaking with a colleague that I consider as one of the best reviewers in Spain. He absolutely loved System Shock 2 and was looking for Bioshock. He is one of that PC “elitists” that loves flight simulators, role-playing and heavy tactic games and that would prefer not touching a console pad . He liked Bioshock but listed a good amount of thing he didn´t like about it, some of them were fair, but one of them was the “I can pass the game with the wrench as I´m immortal and enemies keep the damage”.
Why anyone would want to do that? Is one of that moments when you realize how damn hard is to create a game: he wants a non discriminatory game that can be played by anyone in a satisfactory way, not only for money and market but because is the right thing to do. But at the same he wants to create an open experience where people can experiment and test many different possibilities so they can have a richer experience than the classic run & shoot. And at the same time they must do all this given freedom to the player, as they complain if they feel forced to do or not do a specific thing.
I think Irrational (yes, I call it Irrational :P) could have solved this with some mechanism to have the enemies recover energy, but I am sure they didn´t predict players would start to use exclusively the wrench and using the infinite respawn for defeating Big Brothers. So I think is not problem of the studio only, if the player want to play in a not fun way with the tools they have given him, what can they do? (the answer is another linear shooter with cinematic sequences and “let me take your hand” mechanics, I guess).
27/11/2007 at 14:10 Gwog says:
I noticed something similar with DX1… many people complained about how it was ‘slow and boring’ right from the start, and by digging deeper it turned out that everyone instinctively pursued the stealth approach to the Liberty Island level, thus making their approach much slower and more measured than if they took the GEP and started blowing shit up.
27/11/2007 at 14:17 Kieron Gillen says:
Acosta: I suspect my solution would be to simply have some manner of “reward” for the hardcore to minimise the use of the support system for more casual players.
(e.g. In Thief:DS a good player will find them having much more gold than a normal player, meaning the game becomes easier for them in a feedback loop. Having something else for players to do with their Gold – perhaps increasing some kind of “Status” thing represented by Garett’s flat or something – would be a relatively simple thing to do.)
But yeah, it’s hard.
(Balancing is insane in an Immersive Sim thing. Regarding Bioshock, the people who seem to like it least are the ones who actually used the research stuff to the full extent. They had full damage bonuses against everyone, so used less ammo to kill everyone, so got through the game without even thinking aboutwhat weapons to use. Meanwhile, I used it only when things got tricky against a certain baddy sort, and spent the entire game at least considering what equipment I had an alternate solutions, etc.)
KG
27/11/2007 at 14:38 Acosta says:
Kieron: Yes, when I reviewed Bioshock I was continuously experimenting and found it was one of its stronger points when compared to other shooters. In one part of the game I decided to run a experiment so I planned and executed four different ways of beating a Big Brother without getting “killed” and all were pretty different and creative enough to feel like it was “my thing” and not a careful planned set of actions placed by the game designer that I must execute as I was a puppet.
Rewarding for creative gaming would be pretty nice in a scenario when a) the game understand you are being creative b) there is something really useful for that. While in Bioshock you are rewarded with lot of improvements that make the game easier, maybe it could be better if they offered other type of tangible rewards that convince the player of the benefits of it. Is hard indeed.
27/11/2007 at 14:57 Sören Höglund says:
Yeah, that positive feedback loop is tricky. I researched everything in Bioshock, and was swimming in ammo and resources by the end of the game. Which made the endgame being extra rubbish, since it was stupidly easy as well as lacklustre in terms of narrative and design. Especially after you get the invisibility tonic, it gets luidicrously easy to plan and execute very efficient attacks. Of course, it didn’t help that some weapons were genuinely unbalanced, with the chemical thrower w. electro-gel being the chief offender. You can take down a big daddy witout a scratch easily with that thing. (Security bullseye as well, though that requires a lot more patience.)
Progress in narrative-heavy games like Biohock and Thief is the big obvious carrot most people go for, me included. If there’s an easy path forward, most people will take it.
27/11/2007 at 15:22 Richard says:
What Deus Ex did well was to spend much of the early part of the game hitting you with pointers as to how else you might be playing. If you’d gone in guns blazing early on, you were gently pressured into playing the next bit more calmly as a change of pace. When you triggered something, you’d get feedback on it almost immediately – the obvious example being blundering into the womens’ toilets and getting a dressing down during your first mission briefing. Even if the limitations became pretty clear on subsequent playthroughs, it made it feel that every choice you made could have an impact, giving the big set-pieces like Lebedev and going to see Paul a genuine level of intrigue the first time you went through them.
Conversely, Bioshock, and Invisible War for that matter, really didn’t care how you played. The choices were there, but the only thing most of the characters cared about was how your actions directly benefited them*. The moral dimension didn’t play a part, and the closest they got to suggesting you try something different was throwing some half-arsed threats (the bit outside the Nassif Greenhouse is pure comedy…) that hardly offered an incentive to try it their way next time… or even play the What If game. What if I’d gone with the Church? Well, most likely, I’d have pressed a different button and had an identical chat with the WTO.
When the macro-level is handled that poorly, the micro-decisions of whether to go through vents or hunt down a microtool really doesn’t have much chance. It definitely doesn’t help that the characters you’re busting your proverbials off for are nothing but a bunch of whiny, arrogant pricks, incapable of realising that the player wasn’t their errand boy/girl, or that choosing between their cack-handed schemes for world-domination was rather less compelling than… well… conquering it directly! Praise Helios!
No. Far from picking sides in the great conflict, I wanted a sub-quest to put my head on the do-not-call list. After a while, I resorted to the quickest, obvious solutions to problems simply to get it over with.
(* The Little Sisters are an obvious exception in Bioshock, but to be honest, I was never convinced that their sad story was more than a subplot in the city’s history – if a good one)
27/11/2007 at 17:27 Garth says:
I think my issues with IW are very similar to Richard’s above, only I had much less time with the game. The reason for this is that the game was so buggy it was unplayable after certain points*. One of deus ex’s huge draws was how many things you could find that weren’t required for game completion — I’ve found entire zones of levels when I replayed the game. I was constantly reloading old saves to see if I could do something different.
I think a lot of the problems with IW were directly related to the fact that it was for both PC and Console — the controls felt ‘off’ to PC users; needlessly simplistic changes were made to core mechanics of the previous game (one ammo for all guns? Wow…); there were no really memorable ‘chats’ in the game (compare to the rather lengthy talk with the bartender in Hong Kong [in Deus Ex] about the benefits of free-market economies with little government interaction vs. restricted economies of the ‘western’ nations); the NPC’s were much less memorable, and really.. well, character..ful.
I don’t hate linear gameplay as a standard; Deus Ex made me feel that I had a lot of choice in what went down. IW, on the other hand, made me feel like my choices were 1a or 1b, not a real difference in the end.
27/11/2007 at 17:28 Garth says:
(Err, my * was for the following errors: audio would start normally, and then speed up to the point it was essentially instant. If I threw a basketball at someone, the game would crash. Invisible walls, textures missing, etc.)
27/11/2007 at 18:50 Miles says:
Oh. Jesus. I… I really, really want this to be good. But it won’t be.
27/11/2007 at 19:30 Schadenfreude says:
If anything people might go a little easier on this on the basis of “Well, at least it’s better than Invisible War”. Assuming it is better than Invisible War of course.
27/11/2007 at 19:55 Duncan says:
Richard: if Invisible War had been an obscure Russian title, it would, if anything, be better regarded than it is now for not being subjected to the massive backlash it received.
Of course there’s a ton of things wrong with Invisible War. But the amount of hate it’s generated (which has far eclipsed the initial “pretty good” reviews) has always been way out of proportion with how bad it actually was.
27/11/2007 at 19:59 John P (Katsumoto) says:
You know, I’ve found just as many different ways to play Invisible War (after completing it 5 or 6 times, I have tried to exhaust them, I promise) as I have with Deus Ex. I don’t get where this “and at the end of IW none of your choices mattered” thing comes from, anyway. In Deus Ex, the final three endings were the identical no matter how you had played the game? In fact, in IW how you played the game would even change where you started certain missions from, for example, something you don’t seen in DX at all.
Grr. I accept IW is no where near as DX but most of the criticisms people level at it are complete nonsense.
27/11/2007 at 20:00 John P (Katsumoto) says:
And +1 to what Duncan just said – if this game had been called “Invisible War” and not featured a character called JC Denton or one called Tracer Tong, it would have been received with open arms, not CLOSED FISTS.
27/11/2007 at 20:02 John P (Katsumoto) says:
Fooks sake. *”Invisible War” and not “Deus Ex: Invisible War”. Yes, I know you have a PREVIEW box.
27/11/2007 at 20:11 Garth says:
Yes, I would have almost no beef with it at all if it was simply called Invisible War. The problem is, it wasn’t. It was the sequel to a fantastic game of the year, and it was mediocre.
And the thing is, there’s no reason for it to not be at least ‘good.’ They had a great story to work with, great characters, setting, and so on. Instead they went “ok, let’s shave this down, remove these key elements from the original (skill points, wow.)”
It would be really interesting to have seen how the game would have fared sans the Deus Ex name.
27/11/2007 at 20:53 Richard says:
No. At best, I think would be regarded like Stalker – a brave attempt, but one that only the hardcore are really going to remember a few years on. Possibly an action-RPG Gothic.
But that’s not the point. The point is that the Deus Ex name was more than a millstone round its neck, especially on launch. In much the same way as a marine will seem to have better AI than a zombie simply by dint of looking human, people mapped their expectations on it both ways. The difference is that while there’s a backlash now, the initial response was very much “It’s Deus Ex, therefore it must be awesome. Even though…”
What really stuck in my mind: the pub conversations at the time it was released didn’t revolve around what was great about it, but rather “Name another game that does it better.”
There weren’t any around t the time, sadly. And wouldn’t be until Bloodlines. But that doesn’t change anything.
I don’t get where you’re getting that line of argument from. It’s not something that anybody’s said at any point in the thread. However, the endings aren’t a particularly great example to bring up, simply because the only break-point that I remember is whether you help the Templars. Once you get to Liberty Island, you can still pick and choose whatever ending you like. The difference is that instead of making it as a moral, personal call, as Deus Ex invited you to do with its choice of apocalypse, all of Invisible War’s endings are straight up “Pick the incredibly unpleasant people you want to rule the world.” Even the independent ending screws you in that respect when the Omar turn the planet into Fallout 3.
The problem with the choices in it isn’t that they’re not available, it’s that the game does a very bad job of inspiring you to make use of them. Compare… well… any of it to Liberty Island in the first game, where it hands you a toybox and says ‘This is your world – go play!’
It never builds the connection to the world that makes you want to save it – to hate the baddies and connect with the good guys in the way that you could when wandering through Hell’s Kitchen. Where was the scale? Where was the discovery? Where were the set-pieces and the moments that really inspired you to be a hero?
At the risk of sounding like a luvvie, where’s the motivation, dahling?
Really, the biggest moment in the whole game happens in the intro. Nothing you experience as Alex D comes close. Even the nanobot Statue of Liberty – the iconic ending – just splutters.
Hate’s too strong a world in most cases. Vivid disappointment is closer to the mark. For my part, I don’t think Invisible War is a mediocre game – I think it’s a bad one. I don’t insist that everyone agrees, and I’ll give it some kudos – it’s an ambitious enough game, no question about that. And I won’t say it doesn’t have some good moments (NG Resonance for instance). And it has the finest comedy line in any serious RPG, thanks to:
…which had me howling with laughter in the office. But sadly, that wasn’t enough. Not for a Deus Ex sequel. Not as an individual game in its own right.
27/11/2007 at 21:03 John P (Katsumoto) says:
Richard – apologies: I am having this discussion on several other forums/comments threads as well, so am having difficulty remembering what has been said where.
Basically this all boils down to personal preference (what doesn’t?!) – I found that there was a lot of choice in IW, which you admit, but I also found that there getting inspiration to experiment with the choices wasn’t something I found lacking. Evidently I am in the minority – but that was my experience, and that is why I don’t understand the hate.
I thought it provided just as much of a toy-box as the original. I prefer the original because of its story line, length, depth (in terms of interface and conversation trees) French people, and so on, but in terms of the freeform lovin’ that DX is often remembered for – I found enough of that in IW as well. And you can’t take that away from me, IW-Hate-Brigade! :)
27/11/2007 at 21:06 Richard says:
Fairy nuff.
Aha! A challenge! (clicks fingers) SEND IN ZE DOKTOR!
27/11/2007 at 21:31 Duncan says:
Richard: I agree it could have been Stalker — but isn’t Stalker held in better esteem than IW is these days?
I think you and I are focusing on separate critical responses to IW. I think the (delayed) negative reaction has completely outweighed the initial reviews, which I agree were too blindly positive. “Name a game that does it better” is a poor defense. All I’m really saying is that there was an overcorrection.
27/11/2007 at 22:00 Sören Höglund says:
Actually, you’re misremembering. The Omar don’t cause the apocalypse, they’re just the only ones fit enough to survive the mess humanity makes when it doesn’t have strong, guiding hands to lead it towards an eternity of techno-communism/hyper-capitalism/fascism. *snarl*
I’m not nearly as hard on Invisible War as most people, but the fatalism, lack of any ambiguity or hope of those endings really pissed me off.
27/11/2007 at 22:17 Richard says:
Yeah, I’m probably getting things mixed up, but I remember the implication of them messaging you with a thanks after you take out the other faction leaderes as it being ‘their’ ending. Especially coupled with their agressive philosophy that Leo was trying to break away from at that point.
But I may well be wrong, it’s been a long time since I watched that ending.
28/11/2007 at 01:06 bobince says:
Good catch! That would certainly be a solution to the otherwise seemingly intractable problem of following on from the ending(s) of DX2.
That’s because the vent solutions were presented so transparently; at one point an NPC even explains the three possible routes you can take out of a situation, including the vent. You don’t get the joy of finding a well-hidden vent for yourself, exploring, and feeling like you’re coming up with your own creative solutions nearly as much as in DX1.
DX2 also had very little element of mystery compared to the first game. I hope DX3 chucks out all the people constantly spewing lazy pleas into your head and leaves you to work it out yourself for a bit.
Agree with the points above about their unlikeability of most of the characters, which just makes their paths even more obviously mechanical. (I seem to remember enjoying the hologram, though… the character that’s not supposed to be real, natch.)
Still, I don’t hate it. It could have been a lot worse. They could have licensed it out and given us Deus Exxxtreme: JC Denton Radical Skateboard Racing.
18/12/2007 at 21:38 matte_k says:
hey, alec, just spotted your icon.
Freelance Peacekeeping Agent, yes?
18/12/2007 at 21:44 Alec Meer says:
Yes, yes?
18/12/2007 at 22:10 matte_k says:
sorry for double posting, but i have just read the rest of the thread…
the first Deus Ex changed my perception of gaming radically, to go into detail would be to repeat most of what has already been discussed above. The second game i enjoyed too, but my faults with it stemmed from some very basic flaws in the physicality of the game itself, namely incredibly bad motion/lip synch in cutscenes, which left you feeling as if you were watching a puppet theatre rather than interacting with a dystopian film noir (sorry, i have been watching blade runner)
Comparison of the two games is difficult, particularly because of the high regard in which the first game is held despite the fact it is not without its flaws-for instance, you are the pinnacle of human/technological integration, a super spy in every sense, but your aim with a ranged weapon is like that of a small child until you upgrade your skill in that area. NOLF 2 had a similar skill system, but at least you could aim properly to begin with.
Regarding DX3, the first question shouldn’t be “is it going to be any good?” it should be “Why do we need another DX?” Sequels rarely stand up to the originals (with a few exceptions such as HL2), in fact another badly made game bearing the DX name will make the original have less impact-and that’s most definitely not a good thing