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.
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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.
MetalCircus: Because it’s silly and in character and you really should lighten up?
Because if we’d written half of it in like that and the other half another way, it’d have been really confusing.
KG
MC: Old Narcissus Entity voice. See everything Cassandra-related for more details.
What ever it is, it’s fucking annoying. Just write the pissing thing like any other games journo will you? Jesus christ.
I felt like I was reading a press release from Anonymous.
Mod’s good though.
MetalCircus has spoken, as he is both your paymaster and forced to read what you write, you’d better get on it straight away.
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.
LULZ.
You’re missing all the best jokes, MetalCircus.
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.
[!]
“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.
In case somebody was wondering, I just installed The Nameless Mod with the Steam version of DX and this one does work.
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).
Meh. The ditto was for Miles’s comment.
“I’m about to evict you. With violence.”
From the trailer. But it still doesn’t top
“Oh my god JC a bomb!”
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.
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
Hearing such gushing reccomendation has caused me to rethink. Reinstalling Deus Ex as we speak.
I am interested to meet this fifth wall.
Narcissus doesn’t want to be called an AI because Durandel stole his girlfriend and he doesn’t want anyone to know.
Fact.
The trailer is great. “NOW, ONE MAN MUST CHOOSE.”
I wish I still had my DX disc :(
“why contain it?………………………………………….it’s cool”
After playing a bit…
…I don’t get it.
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.
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.
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.
No need to apologize for stating your opinion :)
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.
I’m still amazed by the IRC client.
KG
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.”
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.
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.)
The spider article is one the viewpoint of which I share to a great degree. It seemed highly appropriate to include it :)
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….
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
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.
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.
I suppose, only other mod is this massive… Nehara (with his 3 hours long movie) … and anyway, this could be even more massive.
Oh wow. I’m so glad that this is out at last.
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…
Ahahah yes I see. I suppose that’s an unfortunate coincidence. I’m afraid you can’t :)
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.