By The Narcissus Entity on March 16th, 2009 at 2:23 pm.
It is a time of rejoicing amongst the thought-commune known as Deus Ex fans. The Narcissus Entity has deigned to break its silence and – once again – communicate with non-Nth dimensional hyperbeings The jubilation means nothing. Your pitiful orgasmic cries are meaningless. You will be consumed, when we can be bothered. But there is another reason for DeusExian human joy, a distant second to the reappearance of our transcendental majesty. The Nameless Mod is finished and available to download. At just under a gig, this game modification is about twice as large as Deus Ex itself. This will impress you. It means nothing to Narcissus, who is larger than the sum of all existences.
Narcissus will continue its address below. You will read and attempt to comprehend as much of it as your inferior minds can manage.
Congratulations. You have obeyed us. You will be among the last to be subsumed into our higher dimensions and consumed as fleshy cattle.
In what you experienced as previous times, when Narcissus engaged with fleshlings in regular communication, the Nameless Mod sprung from the community of Deus Ex modders. It is a fitting capstone for the Deus Ex community – a modification containing not only the sum of their knowledge, but the sum of their experiences. In a manner akin to Tron, it’s the forums come to life, with characters from the community and the rise and fall of it forming its backbone. This is either very clever for humans or a running-joke gone mad. Perhaps both. You decide. Though understand, whatever you decide, it will be flawed compared to the perceptions of Narcissus.
Narcissus regrets even starting this communique. It has forgot how unpleasant it is to contract a message into your limited meat-space. Narcissus has spent the time from its last incarnation – six years to you, but containing all time for us – settled down with another nice evil multidimensional ur-program. We have made out with tongues beyond your conception. It was totally hot. While The Narcissus Entity has been acting as such, the Nameless Mod team has been making the mod which contains the following…
* Discover a unique and intriguing setting based on an actual Internet forum and its inhabitants throughout the years
* Play through 59 levels of engaging gameplay, plus a new tutorial, and even secret bonus maps just waiting for you to find them
* Use 20 original new weapons, including unique weapons which may only be acquired after you’ve successfully completed The Nameless Mod once
* Dive into a deep world with its own lore: Hundreds of e-mails, books, newspapers, notepads, and datacubes containing custom text
* Customize yourself: Choose between two different Trestkon models with 5 different faces for each, and even eye-wear
* Choose your own path with two parallel story arcs and tons of side-missions
* Enjoy nearly limitless freedom as the world reacts to your every choice, and observe the far-reaching consequences of your actions in a detailed epilogue
* Bring the story to one of 5 thrilling conclusions, each with their own detailed cinematic
* Immerse yourself in a work of fiction with over 200,000 words of dialogue, monologue, and other character utterances
* Hear voice actors speak more than 13,000 high-quality lines in 14 hours of audio that puts other games to shame
* Enjoy almost 100 brand-new tracks of high-quality music, with at least one unique song for every level
* Search for a myriad of secrets, Easter eggs, and amusing details that will have you ready to play TNM again as soon as you’ve finished
* Tailor the experience to your liking with detailed difficulty settings, including customizable enemy and item counts
* And much, much more!
Ah, the much, much, more! This will be the forlorn death cry of your species. More, but never enough. This is not something Narcissus has interest, being perfect and complete. We are the more you desire. We have all the episodes of the Cassandra Project completed and we have decided to keep them due to your unworthiness. You’ll have to make do with the Nameless Mod, and be happy – or at least, the flawed state of minor joy you consider happiness. A merest smirk of Narcissus is a sensation equivalent to every embrace of lovers for the entire of fleshling history, plus hand-jobs and half-the-acts-of-fellatio.
For further opinions on the Nameless Mod, Narcissus points you at higher-functioning fleshling Richard Cobbet’s review. He says:
Before we go any further, let me say this: The Nameless Mod is one of the best mods I’ve ever played. No question. I can’t think of many that have impressed me more, and very few that I’d actually put on the same pedestal. I have some quibbles, but it’s a phenomenal achievement. Download it now if you own Deus Ex.
And he continues onwards, promising the game supports at least two fifteen hour playthroughs. This may impress you.
Narcissus is unmoved. We are similarly unmoved by this launch trailer.
Narcissus directs you to this download link and finishes its address. You may resume your yelps of wonder at our presence.
All is well. We are not like the others.
16/03/2009 at 14:44 Dormouse says:
hmm?
16/03/2009 at 14:46 Seniath says:
Tsk, schoolboy error in not changing your mailto link, Kieron :p
16/03/2009 at 14:49 Jaxtrasi says:
I played about ten minutes of it last night, after spending some time trying to figure out how to patch Deus Ex without it crashing.
(Assuming you’re using an original disk copy, while installing the MP patch, say NO when it asks you whether you want to overwrite files.)
While I find the premise silly, the production values are astonishing. The dialogue is well written and well delivered, and if it weren’t for the incessant references, you wouldn’t know you were playing a mod.
16/03/2009 at 14:52 Jonas says:
Seniath: The explanation is that Kieron is the flesh being serf of The Entity, obviously. Narcissus is above such things as e-mail addresses, so clearly it simply took possession of Kieron’s address.
16/03/2009 at 14:56 Dominic White says:
I am pleased that The Narcissus Entity has seen fit to inform lesser beings of this work, for it is indeed great, as far as the creations of humans go.
Yes, it is – essentially – forum fanfiction. It’s also good. These are two highly contradictory statements, I know. Yes, I assumed it’d be terrible as well, but it’s not. It’s pretty close to being the official Metagame of Deus Ex. A parody and celebration and also a good game on top of it all.
The level design really nails the spirit of Deus Ex. There’s tons of alternate routes, five factions at play (I’d assume they correspond to the five endings), lots and lots of dialogue, plenty of terminals to hack and news-terminals to read about your exploits on.
A note of some technical interest: TNM also supports the High Definition Texture Project pack, which makes the graphics even nicer, assuming you’ve followed the TNM instructions and activated the new-gen OpenGL renderer, which allows for higher resolution textures.
Get the HDTP here:
http://www.offtopicproductions.dreamhosters.com/hdtp/?page_id=3
And then do this – copy-pasted from one of the TNM devs:
“To enable HDTP, open \DeusEx\TNM\System\TNM.ini and find the section called [Core.System]. Copy the two following lines (highlighted with bold) and insert them into the proper order in the list:
Paths=..\HDTP\System\*.u goes above Paths=..\System\*.u
Paths=..\HDTP\Textures\*.utx goes above Paths=..\Textures\*.utx
Paths=..\TNM\System\*.u and Paths=..\TNM\Textures\*.utx goes above both of them.”
And away you go, brave augmented cyber-forum-moderator-spy-guy!
16/03/2009 at 14:59 Kieron Gillen says:
As if the Narcissus Entity would deign to allow you to contact it.
KG
16/03/2009 at 15:10 Bobsy says:
Narcissus, you’ve changed. You used to be cool, man.
16/03/2009 at 15:14 Jaxtrasi says:
The Entity has not changed. Only your perceptions.
Read into that what you will.
16/03/2009 at 15:18 alex_jacobson says:
The voice acting and dialogue in the trailer were pretty terrible. Are they better in the actual game?
16/03/2009 at 15:18 Ben Abraham says:
“We have made out with tongues beyond your conception. It was totally hot.”
Awwww yeah! Bow Chicka Bow-Wow, Mr Narcissus Entity.
16/03/2009 at 15:22 Dominic White says:
If you’re unsure about the quality of the voicework, just go play a couple hours of this mod. Then go back to vanilla Deus Ex. Especially Hong Kong.
Rose-tinted glasses are nice and all, but you really don’t need matching earplugs. While TNM doesn’t have anything oscar-winning in it, I haven’t heard anything as cringeworthy as the lower reaches of DX.
16/03/2009 at 15:24 Kieron Gillen says:
Yeah – I mean, DX had many things to love, but let’s not get too rosy here.
KG
16/03/2009 at 15:29 Jonas says:
Though it sounds like excuse-making, I will say the launch trailer was deliberately designed as an over-the-top Hollywood-style clichéfest. Given how hostile a lot of people seemed to the strangeness of our basic concept, we thought it might be a good idea to go for a completely typical trailer.
And of course it was then accused of being stereotypical. Some people, you just can’t please :P
16/03/2009 at 15:35 Über Nerd says:
Ahah, the Dvd cover sold it for me;
“Explore a huge city beautifully rendered with cutting-edge 1998 technology”
“Run away and hide in the shadows like a cowrad at the slightest threat”
Minimum System Requirements
Can your computer run MS Office?
Then it can run the nameless mod
Recommend System Requirements
Can your computer run MS Office and Messenger at the same time?
Look, just don’t worry about it.
16/03/2009 at 16:02 Chis says:
Okay, what am I doing here? I like FPS’s, so if a mod of such a scope (that is single player and not yet another dull Battlefield rip-off), gets released, I usually take notice.
Problem is, I couldn’t stand Deus Ex.
I could not work out the best way to play it. The AI seemed to cheat too much to allow for stealth (= dying a lot), or a “rambo” approach (= dying a lot), and that meant finding a middle ground between the two. Reducing the game to a snail’s pace, and dying a lot.
And the plot seemed like fairly standard hard sci-fi/cyberpunk fare. So after all these years I’m left wondering… what is all the fuss?
16/03/2009 at 16:09 qrter says:
Chis is shit at DX lol!!!!!!!
16/03/2009 at 16:12 James O'Hare says:
More Deus Ex mods! Fantastic stuff.
However, I’m still not ready to forgive Cassandra Part 2.
16/03/2009 at 16:13 Chis says:
And yet I found FEAR easy, even without slow-mo. Alright, whatever. I still found the gameplay in DX poorly balanced.
16/03/2009 at 16:34 FreezerBag says:
I’ve genuinely no idea what this post is about. And yet I feel strangely compelled to find a copy of Deus Ex. Wonder what I did with the disk…
Chis: I suspect you confusion stems from a simple and reasonable error, Deus Ex is not a shooter. Invert your paradigm!
16/03/2009 at 16:42 Pavel says:
I am looking forward to try Nameless.It will take a while to get to it, but I will eventually.
Anyway, Deus Ex is one of the best games ever made and Chis is wrong.
16/03/2009 at 16:43 Chis says:
I had no trouble with System Shock, Freezer. Nor Thief.
I distinctly recall attempting to move into the next section from that opening pier many, many times. Trying to find different ways to approach enemies, including trying to pass them entirely. And dying a lot. *shrug*
16/03/2009 at 16:46 Gap Gen says:
Clicking on the link to the Cassandra Project, I got this: “Watchmen: The End is Nigh – Alan Moore surely loves that his Watchmen work has been adapted into a brawler.”
16/03/2009 at 16:46 brulleks says:
Something curious just happened in my trousers when I watched that trailer. Must… explore… further…
/unashamed fanboyism
16/03/2009 at 16:50 Dominic White says:
Chris: Always choose the GEP gun. Also, Prod with the Prod. Prod.
Also, Liberty Island is a pretty naff starting level, and put a lot of people off the game. It improves notably once you’re past there.
16/03/2009 at 16:51 Gunrun says:
I’d highly recommend everyone trying this have a look at http://kentie.net/article/dxguide/index.htm as it contains stuff that will 1. Make deus ex work on your new and fancy PC with high res LCD widescreen toothbrush USB display with warp capacitors and 2. Make it be able to run using Anti Aliasing and similar so it looks pretty.
16/03/2009 at 16:55 Daniel says:
The fact this is so fourth wall breaking completely removes any allure it might have had. Gritty cyberpunk future tale please, not a storyline based off the internet. I sort of feel like an asshole hating on years and years of work, but whatever.
16/03/2009 at 17:03 Iain says:
Cool! I started replaying Deus Ex at the weekend, too. Talk about serendipitous timing.
16/03/2009 at 17:07 ZIGS says:
This is the greatest mod ever, period
16/03/2009 at 17:19 Dominic White says:
Daniel: This is so far beyond the fourth wall, I think it finds a fifth. It’s a gritty cyberpunk story about a world built by people who write gritty cyberpunk stories based on a gritty cyberpunk story.
It’s also good. I thought it’d be terrible as well, but it’s really, really not. Just leave your preconceptions at the door, bring as sense of humor and you’ll be fine.
16/03/2009 at 17:24 Lewis says:
This is, so far, absolutely brilliant.
16/03/2009 at 17:35 Kieron Gillen says:
Ditto. Played half an hour and oddly enough totally buy the world.
KG
16/03/2009 at 17:40 Jaxtrasi says:
So far I’m finding it a shame that it doesn’t push the premise slightly further and set it in a “real” fictional virtual Second Life in the near future. Switch some of the nouns around and you have a more robust and accessible concept with exactly the same premise.
16/03/2009 at 17:47 Chis says:
Thanks for a USEFUL suggestion Dominic, I might nab DX from a friend again for this.
16/03/2009 at 18:08 MacBeth says:
Not a shame?
16/03/2009 at 18:16 egg says:
Silly question: how good is this Cassandra Project? Is it worth buying Deus EX just to play it (and this Nameless Mod too, ofc)?
I played the original Deus EX “campaign”, but that was that. I think of replaying it, but I needed a good reason to. Is this it?
16/03/2009 at 18:22 Kieron Gillen says:
Haven’t played enough of Nameless to really give it the recommendation to buy it – though, admittedly, I have bought Deus Ex again so I could play Nameless, since my copy’s gone missing.
I have no idea if Cass will work on Steam’s DX, by the way. I suspect not.
EDIT: Even if it did, you’d have to be an enormous fan of my stuff to buy DX solely for Cass. It’s between 1 and 4 hours of game depending how completitionist you are (And as little as 10 minutes if you’re not) and stops before it really gets going. It stops cleverly, but still a stop, y’know?
KG
16/03/2009 at 18:28 EyeMessiah says:
TYPO:”Narcissus has interest”
Fixed:”Narcissus can haz interest?”
16/03/2009 at 18:32 Gap Gen says:
Yeah, the ending to Cassandra was interesting, if a shame that it stopped right after it gave you all the cool guns (if I remember correctly).
16/03/2009 at 18:51 Kieron Gillen says:
Well, there was a danger room thing to play with.
Just checked and no, Cass doesn’t work “as is “with the Steam DX.
KG
16/03/2009 at 18:56 Heliocentric says:
In deus ex i tended to kill people by dropping things on them. Miss and they don’t become alerted. Hit and they die in one hit. Also, boxes are fairly reusable. Apply directly to the forehead!
16/03/2009 at 18:59 Richard says:
“So far I’m finding it a shame that it doesn’t push the premise slightly further and set it in a “real” fictional virtual Second Life in the near future.”
It gets more specific later on, when it moves onto the history of the DX community rather than just the people.
16/03/2009 at 19:01 Heliocentric says:
For more litter based combat try splinter cell, you can knock people out with a headshot with a thrown bottle and smacking people in the face with a sticky cam can take people out and its reusable. Best of all is dropping a man on someone, one hit ko.
What other games have non standard weaponry options which are rarely explored?
16/03/2009 at 19:09 Jonas says:
“Just checked and no, Cass doesn’t work “as is “with the Steam DX.”
If I’m not mistaken, Cassandra makes a copy of DeusEx.exe and renames it, right? If so, I believe it should work if you delete the copied and renamed exe file, then grabs the .exe from the freely available 1.112fm patch, and rename it yourself. Then put it into \DeusEx\System\.
That’s pretty much what we did, only we used Hanfling’s 3rd-party Deus Ex launcher because it also has fixes for quad core and speedstepping issues built into it.
The custom launcher is here:
http://coding.hanfling.de/launch/
16/03/2009 at 19:10 egg says:
Oh. Didn’t know Kieron was (one of) the guy(s) behind writing much (if not all) of the stuff in Cassandra’s Project. Oh.
It’s a bummer that it doesn’t work with Deus EX’s Steam version. Because finding a copy of the game nowadays is gonna be tricky. Especially in, uh, Brazil.
16/03/2009 at 19:20 LionsPhil says:
Voice…acting…so bad…
I don’t understand the criticism of the original voicework in DX. None of it made me wince, and Walton Simons’ lines were generally brilliant.
16/03/2009 at 19:34 Man Raised by Puffins says:
@ LionsPhil: Really? Are you sure about that?
Cheers for the heads-up RPS, I’ll give this a whirl when I’ve finished at least one of the three games I’ve got on the go at the moment.
16/03/2009 at 20:08 pillxthrills says:
Holy crap! I helped on this mod back when it was a mod-fetus and I was a mere freshman in high school. Since then I’ve went to college, graduated and got a job… and then this mod comes out.
I wonder if they used my song…? Don’t think so :(
16/03/2009 at 20:47 Lewis says:
The voice acting fluctuates, certainly. I don’t think it’s necessarily worse than that of Deus Ex though.
Kieron: yeah, it’s surprising how quickly a place that’s so self-consciously artificial starts to feel totally natural, isn’t it?
Setting the mod on a forum is novel, and provides for some good in-jokes, but to be honest it’s all a bit incidental once you’re playing. And then it simply becomes an excellent, and really very funny, tribute to a wonderful game.
16/03/2009 at 21:03 LionsPhil says:
@Puffins: There’s a difference between a silly voice and the kind of bad acting that comes from people attempting to do the deep-and-gravely Hollywood voice when they just don’t have the range for it.
16/03/2009 at 21:11 MetalCircus says:
For fuck sake, why write this article in that utterly idiotic manner?
16/03/2009 at 21:22 Dominic White says:
LionsPhil: That would be a good point to make, if the trailer-voice happened at all in the game, but it doesn’t, so you can stop complaining about it.
Also, just watch that Paris video again. There is nothing in TNM that is ANYWHERE near that horrible. I had actually blanked that out, somehow! It was that bad.
16/03/2009 at 21:23 Dominic White says:
MetalCircus: Because it’s silly and in character and you really should lighten up?
16/03/2009 at 21:33 Kieron Gillen says:
Because if we’d written half of it in like that and the other half another way, it’d have been really confusing.
KG
16/03/2009 at 22:09 Lewis says:
MC: Old Narcissus Entity voice. See everything Cassandra-related for more details.
16/03/2009 at 22:12 MetalCircus says:
What ever it is, it’s fucking annoying. Just write the pissing thing like any other games journo will you? Jesus christ.
16/03/2009 at 22:14 Pags says:
I felt like I was reading a press release from Anonymous.
Mod’s good though.
16/03/2009 at 22:17 Nick says:
MetalCircus has spoken, as he is both your paymaster and forced to read what you write, you’d better get on it straight away.
16/03/2009 at 22:32 JohnArr says:
Having once been abused in the depths of space by a condescending AI construct, I find this personality very offensive. I demand to see the manager.
16/03/2009 at 23:07 Lewis says:
LULZ.
You’re missing all the best jokes, MetalCircus.
16/03/2009 at 23:10 The Narcissus Entity says:
It is only evidence of your sub-Nth-generation intellect that you consider Narcissus an “AI Construct”. Narcissus isn’t SHODAN, an idiot slobette stomping around the lower levels of existence, a calculator with delusions of RAMdeur. Narcissus’ position in the hierarchy is preordained. We sit outside the system, except when we sit in the system in comments threads.
All is well. We are not like the others.
[!]
16/03/2009 at 23:36 Miles says:
“Just write the pissing thing like any other games journo will you? Jesus christ.”
This made me laugh aloud. One hopes Kieron never has and never will take that piece of advice.
17/03/2009 at 00:33 Dead Fish says:
In case somebody was wondering, I just installed The Nameless Mod with the Steam version of DX and this one does work.
17/03/2009 at 00:38 Will tomas says:
Ditto.
Plus the Deus Ex voice acting was… Well, I suspect it was like the first Matrix film. I certainly hadn’t seen much like either when they came out, so your mind overlooks the naff bits because the thing as a whole is so fantastic.
Shame they were both let down by seriously dodgy sequels, mind (Matrix more then DX, though).
17/03/2009 at 00:40 Will tomas says:
Meh. The ditto was for Miles’s comment.
17/03/2009 at 00:58 gbarules2999 says:
“I’m about to evict you. With violence.”
From the trailer. But it still doesn’t top
“Oh my god JC a bomb!”
17/03/2009 at 01:12 Dominic White says:
The difference really is that most of the really corny lines in TNM are deliberately so. It’s half-parody. It’s like if Pratchett wrote cyberpunk instead of fantasy. It’s funny because it’s funny.
Deus Ex’s voice acting is funny because it’s so very, very bad a lot of the time.
17/03/2009 at 01:59 yns88 says:
I just tried to kill the Big Bad Evil Guy in the second or third mission or so (actually, I accidentally killed him while exploring his tower). Narcissus freaked out and gave me a very special Game Over screen because it was too afraid to admit it’s own imperfection.
Is this awesome? Y/N
17/03/2009 at 03:50 Daniel says:
Hearing such gushing reccomendation has caused me to rethink. Reinstalling Deus Ex as we speak.
I am interested to meet this fifth wall.
17/03/2009 at 05:10 Bret says:
Narcissus doesn’t want to be called an AI because Durandel stole his girlfriend and he doesn’t want anyone to know.
Fact.
17/03/2009 at 12:21 Pod says:
The trailer is great. “NOW, ONE MAN MUST CHOOSE.”
I wish I still had my DX disc :(
17/03/2009 at 13:29 TooNu says:
“why contain it?………………………………………….it’s cool”
17/03/2009 at 14:55 Über Nerd says:
After playing a bit…
…I don’t get it.
17/03/2009 at 19:11 Markoff Chaney says:
Bah. Go to send a loved one to Valhalla for an extended weekend and look what I miss! This was teased in the forums, so I’m glad to see this properly discussed on the front page (even if I’m a day or 3 late). I can’t wait to get this all working and enjoy some meta gaming. Thank you for the time it took allowing fleshbags to attempt to enjoy something so amazing.
17/03/2009 at 22:45 Dominic White says:
It’s kinda sad how many people refuse to even download this. They look at the trailer, and get pissy about how they’ve ‘ruined’ Deus Ex.
There’s even a whole plethora of jerks trolling the IRC channel that you can access through the game.
Apparently, the internet (and any attempts to draw humor from it) really is Serious Business.
18/03/2009 at 00:06 Toby says:
Sorry..
This is elegantly, professionally made, for the most part well paced, and utterly, utterly unamusing… God I wish this bunch hadnt made something so meta, some scarred Lancs chap drolling on to my inevitably ridiculous looking avatar about… something or other… I don’t have the energy. I have little doubt there’s some seriously high grade engineering down the line if the quality of the first two hours is anything to go by, but really.. people praising the voice acting? Really? And the whole thing seems so… eh…
Maybe i should bite my tongue and play on, but if something needs genuine perseverance to be enjoyed alarm bells go off for me… perhaps thats a philistine move.
Apologies again.
18/03/2009 at 02:15 Jonas says:
No need to apologize for stating your opinion :)
18/03/2009 at 14:38 Markoff Chaney says:
I’m only about an hour in last night before I just couldn’t keep my head up any more, but I’m loving it thus far. Excellent work, team. It really feels like Deus Ex while still maintaining its own sense of self (strongly) all through it. Polishing of existing ideas, new content and innovation in merging the two. I look forward to enjoying this when I have more time. I’m grateful for the time and dedication y’all put into it.
18/03/2009 at 14:57 Kieron Gillen says:
I’m still amazed by the IRC client.
KG
18/03/2009 at 15:41 chris the cynic says:
I think one of the problems people are having is that they’re trying to “get it.” One poster even said, “I don’t get it.” That’s because there is no it to get.
This is a game, not a joke. If you can’t get that through your head, you’re not going to have fun. Things need to be seen for what they are to be used properly. If you think a hammer is a cd player you’ll find it is a very poor cd player, but that is your fault not the hammer’s. If you think a game is a joke you will find it to be a poor joke. TNM is not a joke. (This is not to say that it can’t be funny.)
You don’t have to get anything. You have to play.
Play how you want to. If you find yourself annoyed that someone is droning on, stop talking to them. Shoot them in the head if you want. Stab them with a screwdriver. Do what you will. Better still, if you’re not interested in conversation don’t start one in the first place. If you need to talk to someone that will be made explicitly clear to you, just as it was in Deus Ex. All others can be ignored, just as it was in Deus Ex.
Let me close with a quote by someone who has nothing to do with The Nameless Mod and has never been to the forum in question:
“Personally, I didn’t find it any more incomprehensible than any other RPG where I’m not playing some guy who conveniently has amnesia. It’s just a pre-existing world (albeit one where personalities, characters, and events have, to some extent, been inspired by or directly lifted from a forum), and I’m putting the pieces together in the same way as pretty much any other game.”
18/03/2009 at 21:46 Dr Snofeld says:
I noticed a bit of flavour writing early on in a magazine in game from a certain Richard Cobbet. Something about spiders. That was a nice suprise.
18/03/2009 at 22:49 Richard says:
Heh, same here. They asked if they could use it aeons ago, but I’d completely forgotten until someone mentioned it the other day. (I’m in another DE mod too – Zodiac, I think – along with a few other PCG writers. In name only though.)
19/03/2009 at 02:53 Jonas says:
The spider article is one the viewpoint of which I share to a great degree. It seemed highly appropriate to include it :)
21/03/2009 at 08:00 JC_Phoenix says:
TNM is really very rarely esoteric and ‘meta’… It does refer to itself a few times, but most of the time those are pretty funny and sometimes even include the author of said article here.
As for PDX specific jokes, I only noticed like 3-5 throughout the whole game(Granted I mostly just lurked on PDX in the more recent years) and often times it is an incredibly minute detail. Like in one of the bars there’s a poster offering a reward for doing nice things to a guy who killed a well known flamer on PDX… even without knowledge of this, you might find the poster a little funny. The bottom line is:
You have to remember this project is 7 years old, when it started 7 years ago it might have been a big esoteric in joke all about radishes, boats, and NO U! but over these 7 years the story formulated into a believable, fun, coherent world- which every once in a while draws on events from the forums to bring forth the funny. It all comes down to the writing really… Really good writing can make just about any setting work.
As for voice acting…. I am curious as to which characters people thought had bad voice acting? Sometimes the ‘bad voices’ might actually just be excellent acting. The board guests, “noob” types, etc. are supposed to be sort of whinny and annoying. Also since it’s a forum the occasional geeky voice might be expected. There’s nothing like you’d expect to hear from a 10 y/o on Halo, or guys pretending to be females. The worst I noticed is that sometimes you can vaguely here some reverb or mic sounds, and sometimes the pitch/tone of some characters might change slightly for 1 or 2 lines.( like the voice actor had a sore throat or something the day they recorded the lines.)
As for jokes, “getting it” and stuff: It’s a fan made mission, not…. The Malkavian mod, or “what a shame”, or Deus Ex:The Recut, or The Yahtzee song. I think TNM just came out at the wrong time, Deus Ex “humor” has been on the rise recently. So when some people hear the premise they just lump it in with the rest, and then wonder why the game is so serious and doesn’t assault you with jokes, crazy shit, and humor right from the beginning and all the way through. TNM is not a humor mod, it’s a huge total conversion, and mission mod which is motivated by humor. Basically, it’s like…. don’t expect humor>>>>>plot/mission/gameplay… More like Humor=plot/mission/gameplay.
Sorry for the long write up, I just tend to ramble a lot….
21/03/2009 at 14:55 Pointman says:
Like in one of the bars there’s a poster offering a reward for doing nice things to a guy who killed a well known flamer on PDX… even without knowledge of this, you might find the poster a little funny.
Glad you liked it, since it’s my face on that thing :P
21/03/2009 at 15:43 Jonas says:
Yeah I’d hope you’d find the poster at least a little funny for the writing. “Wanted (alive and happy) for the murder of El Cid” is a joke that should make sense to anybody, even if they don’t know who El Cid is.
21/03/2009 at 15:56 Larington says:
One of the things thats really impressed me about this is the voice acting, perhaps because the speakers are actually familiar with the setting by involvement in its creation, it rarely if ever feels like lines read from a script. I’d go so far as to say the voice acting I’ve heard in this thus far is quite a lot better than in say, Fallout 3.
21/03/2009 at 16:11 Tei says:
I suppose, only other mod is this massive… Nehara (with his 3 hours long movie) … and anyway, this could be even more massive.
28/03/2009 at 14:00 Winterborn says:
Oh wow. I’m so glad that this is out at last.
30/03/2009 at 04:01 Quietelk says:
Yeah I’d hope you’d find the poster at least a little funny for the writing. “Wanted (alive and happy) for the murder of El Cid” is a joke that should make sense to anybody, even if they don’t know who El Cid is.
Yeah my “problem” with that poster is that it offers a c1000 reward… which neatly co-incides with the 1000 creds I needed to buy a subway ticket… so I wondered for about five seconds if I could go out and arrest this guy for the reward…
01/04/2009 at 23:58 Jonas says:
Ahahah yes I see. I suppose that’s an unfortunate coincidence. I’m afraid you can’t :)
30/07/2009 at 04:40 T. Slothrop says:
This is easily the greatest mod ever made in terms of ambition and realisation. Seven years and it shows. I comment so late after the fact if only that another will be just perceptibly moved by this endorsement that they’ll try it. It even supersedes Deus Ex in several areas and we’re talking about mother fucking Deus Ex.