Deus Ex: HR - Profoundly Good (Spoilers)

[TechnicalBen]

I found it sadly overrated for the most part. Not to say it was bad by any means, but it seemed like decision-making in it was much less organic and more "Here's the voilent path, here's the stealth path, make your choice."

Of my £5 -£10 snap buys this year/16 months (I need to stop doing this!!!) DX:HR is the only one I did not regret. Granted, only one I regretted enough that I wish for a refund (FarCry2) and one I realized I'm never playing (Blockade Runner), but it's better than Crysis 2 (SP) IMO.
DX:HR had enough story, gameplay and player choices to actually keep me happy. It's like they did spend enough time either making a good game, or keeping what made the original engaging. Unlike some other games (Crysis 2 IMO and especially Far Cry 2) which just try to run off the good will from the previous game and then offer a COD or sub par gameplay. Don't get me wrong, Crysis 2 had the potential, but I feel they missed it. With DX:HR I think they did enough story, enough choices etc to keep the game "fun" and engaging and entertaining.

PS, AFAIK they main reason for going back to "china" was a limit in time and budget on the level design. They wanted the upstairs bit of China to be (while the same continent/city) and entirely separate and different level. But they had to cut back and reuse the same one over. You get a glimpse of it out the window at the skyline. All green parks and white buildings.

[BusterBluth]

HR's side missions were some of my favorites, and I really loved the function they served. You could blow through the story at breakneck pace and make decisions based on minimal information. Or you could talk to everyone, complete a few sidequests, read a few emails, and make a much more informed choice. It really put me into the mind of the protagonist.

But everything you guys have said about the original makes it seem like a vast improvement. I never got too far, so I'll have to revisit it.

[GunnerMcCaffrey]

PS, AFAIK they main reason for going back to "china" was a limit in time and budget on the level design. They wanted the upstairs bit of China to be (while the same continent/city) and entirely separate and different level. But they had to cut back and reuse the same one over. You get a glimpse of it out the window at the skyline. All green parks and white buildings.

They also had plans at some point for a Montreal hub, but in the end all we got was the view from the GNN(?) building's helipad.

I would love to see what kind of game the DX:HR team could make with more time, money, and freedom.

[r3dknight]

I'm just playing it with infinite battery cause eating chocolate bar is just silly as hell.
Going perma-stealth and punching people never gets old.

[DaftPunk]

For me they really fucked it up with that third person cover system,if you already played damn game in first person why switching to third when taking cover ? Also the takedowns..bloodyfucking takedowns.

[jnx]

Talking about cover systems, I love the one in Far Cry 3. It should become an industry standard. For those who haven't played it: When you go behind an object the character lifts the gun and doesn't just point through the walls, then if you press aim down sights, he leans or peaks, depending on your position, so that you can fire. It works beautifully and playing any other game where you can't do that feels limited.

[Mohorovicic]

jnx: I'm fairly sure Crysis 2 did that as well.

The things you learn about Adam, and the things left unsaid, mingle in a way that leaves you conflicted in your views of him, his world and those he works for.

Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

[r3dknight]

I think I understood why he got angry over Vegas - that Nipton encounter with the Legion was pretty hardcore.
Obsidian always insisted that they wanted to portray the Legion as 'necessary evil' but I just don't see it.

These guys deserve to get put down like rabid dogs.

But getting angry after seeing that dog's email is pretty strange, considering you almost got killed yourself. Like the Courier in Vegas, Adam underwent a 'second chance' himself. That should be enough motivation for revenge.

[Skeletor68]

I do agree that the takedowns were annoying (even if they looked cool).

There was no real reason to choose lethal instead of non as they were both so easy. Maybe if the non-lethal takedowns required more effort it would feel like a legitimate decision to have them in. Perhaps soldiers waking up after a while if you don't complete that particular area quick enough or something.

[Johnny Moustache]

It was quite good, particularly in light of other similar big budget releases, which have also told a decent story but offered little in the way of interesting gameplay. I agree with you that the game is hamstrung by having its development focused on the faulty-toaster that is the xbox 360, but I was impressed that Eidos Montreal actually seemed to give a damn about the game's PC legacy, and at its attempts at making the PC version as PC friendly as possible.

Square Enix seem to be more interested at putting product placements into their games than worrying about whether they're actually good or not. Lucky for them that those Eidos Montreal developers, who were creating their first game as a team, made more hits than misses. It's an impressive game.

The things that irritated me were (like everyone else) the lame, out of place boss fights, I thought the final part of the game was too linear, and the resolution of pick-one-of-four-buttons-to-get-your-ending was cheesy, so that none of your earlier decisions actually mattered. It was just a very un-organic, inelegant way of doing it. They overused those bloody air-vents to the point it was the default stealth option. If they're going to make a sequal, I think they need to expand the range of possibilities for achieving an objective that don't neatly fall into 1. crawling through a bunch of vents. 2. hacking whatever's available. 3. Running & gunning. The levels and missions seem specifically designed for those key tenets. Those are good, but in order for the game to be really good you need to allow for some level of emergence to take place... It just seems very tightly controlled as it is, despite the options you have available. Also, too many of the augmentations were useless. It's very possible to play through the game and be an OP stealth/hacking/warrior monster-hybrid, which is something that kind of breaks the game. Next time, they need to make sure every augmentation is equally useful. The immersion breaking 3rd person cover system also irritated me as well.

At the end of the day, its a lot of nitpicking. There were so many good things about this game, which made it a great experience for me. The music is fantastic and really enhances the atmosphere. I really like the art design, and they came up with a fairly elegant way of feeding story elements to you through the e-books and emails. It wasn't forced on you. You could learn as much or as little as you wanted about the background events without having 20 minute cutscenes forced on you. Some of the key social/persuasion conversations were quite well done too...like the one with Sarif.

Very good game for mine, hopefully the next one can fix the few issues HR had and build upon the good work.

[qizarate]

The take-downs did indeed swiftly lose their novelty after the first few. Saying that, there was something immensely satisfying about seeing Jensen smack the final boss straight on the chin at the end of the Missing Link. I'm not sure i really understand the qualms with the camera switching to 3rd person when you get into cover - The game utilises a shifting perspective, so what? It worked fairly well mechanically, helping to make stealth a lot more fun and viable.

I'm torn as to how i feel about the necessity of incentivising lethal/non-lethal approaches. I mean, the decision should be a moral one made within the context of the game. I really did want to kill people sometimes. It may not make a huge difference mechanically, but it does make a difference to how characters react to you.

This was probably one of my favourite games of 2011 anyway. I played through the Missing Link recently and had a fantastic time with that too. If only they'd taken a similar approach to boss fights in the original.

I do agree that the takedowns were annoying (even if they looked cool).

There was no real reason to choose lethal instead of non as they were both so easy. Maybe if the non-lethal takedowns required more effort it would feel like a legitimate decision to have them in. Perhaps soldiers waking up after a while if you don't complete that particular area quick enough or something.

[DaftPunk]

jnx: I'm fairly sure Crysis 2 did that as well.



Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

I think KillZone 2 started that kind of cover system,which i don't mind at all.

[Silgidorn]

There are a few spoilers in there guys. Don't read it if you are trying to finish it.
It's not well written yet, i'll correct it.

I enjoyed the game during my first play through. I didn't mind the first person / third person changes and i managed to kill as few people as i could (out of those friggin' bosses). Three things had problems for me.
1) The bosses. The fights were just gameplay choke points where you didn't have many ways of managing them. Yes they were set bo be climax points but my favourite climax was the ceo in her panic room. with the security team rushing in. I had problems to deal this without turning it into a firefight but i managed to.
2) It had some wonky talks in this. The one that was the worst was Jensen in his living room with his boss:" Boss, are you manufacturing enhanced super-soldiers?" says the enhanced super-soldier we are playing since the beginning in the game... This one just pushed me out of it. It was so stupidly written.
3) The F****ing end. I found that the end was just bullshit. It has james-bondesque hints to it and this gmae is a "how-not-to" example of managing multiple ends the wrong way.
First, the stupid hints. When Hugh Darrow told me that i should see his base in the (ant)arctic (?), I just knew it was going to be the place where the climax happens. When I was told in game to go there, not only there was a mean of going there standing in the next room, let's talk about serendipity, but it was a missile, a bloody missile. The last time I saw so much of an over-the-top way of going somewhere was in Indiana Jones: The Fate of Atlantis where you could torpedoe your way from a german U-boat to Creta...
Finally, this is so much the wrong way of managing multiple endings... You could do just whatever you wanted in the whole game in the end you had a boss, then a choice between four buttons. Each one giving you different cutscene and finale monologue. At least inf the first deus ex, you had to choose your side in the end and i have about 15 minutes of gameplay that went differently based on the choice you made. Did you want to merge with the AI or turn the whole thing off.

[Silgidorn]

I really enjoyed the first playthrough but the end and wonky dialogues killed the game for me.

Some examples in the following spoilers (SO WARNING, SPOILERS AHEAD):
- An awkward discussion with your boss

In Jensen's living room, Adam is having a critical discussion with his boss. The enhanced super-soldierish security chief wants to know if the company has been manufacturing enhanced super-soldiers. Err... well, I really do hope it was a rhetorical question.

- The whole last act is some kind of overt the top, in a weird, nearly james bond spoofesque way.

The second Hugh Darrow told me I should come visit his (ant)artic base, I knew it would be there that there that end would happen. Also, when the game actually tells you that you have to go there, a conveniently mean of transportation whose destination is exactly there is placed in the following room. It's worth noting that the transportation system is in fact a missile, A BLOODY MISSILE. Adam Jensens missiles himself to the final stage. The last time I saw such an overt the way of going from point A to point B was in Indiana Jones: The Fate of Atlantis where you could torpedoe yourself out of a german U-boot to Creta...

- Finally: this is the absolute wrong way of managing multiple endings in a game.

Absolutely none of your former choices leads you to a specific end, gameplay-y speaking. You crush the final boss and you have four buttons the choose from, each of them leading to a specific final video and monologue. This is the worst way multiple endings can be set. On another end, I can't really tell much about an eventual right way of handling multiple endings, even if I liked the way Fallout 2 managed it, a slideshow err.showing the different ways you influenced the various places and people you crossed during your adventure. By the way, did anyone ever managed to save the talking deathclaws in this game?

[deano2099]

- Finally: this is the absolute wrong way of managing multiple endings in a game.

That's often how life works though - you make a choice at each individual point, and those choices aren't generally restricted by things you've done before. The way the narrative of HR played out, there was no reason for the choices you'd made earlier on to affect the final choice (unless you let people die on that last level, where they do). However, if you'd developed any sort of connection with Jensen as a character, certain of those choices wouldn't be available to you. Sure, you could still press the button, but you'd know that there was no way the character, as you'd played him, would do that.

Or put another way, whenever I'm having a conversation with a friend, I always have the option of punching him in the face available to me. That option isn't locked off to my mind and body just because I've never been in a fight and don't generally do stuff like that. But I'd never do because it's not the sort of thing I'd do. I don't need a game to artificially restrict my choices.

I quite liked the ending and think it was trying to do a very specific thing: make the player figure out which philosophy they wanted to choose. I spent a good few minutes thinking on that choice, and the minute I made my mind up in my head I realised that that was the ending of the game. That's what the game wanted me to do - it takes you on a journey then asks you to make a choice. The consequences of that choice really didn't matter. The act of making it did.

edit- though in a way I agree, it's a not a great way to do 'multiple endings' as they're not that different to each other. But I didn't really see it as being multiple endings. The ending was in the choice, not in the results of it. To me there is one ending to HR and that ending is and then the player makes a choice.

[NathanH]

I'm being careful not to read the details of this thread but I am playing the game right now and I really like it, actually rather more than the original to be honest.

[ado]

Wait wait wait, why would you even need a cover system in a FPS like Far Cry 3? That makes no sense to me, we've all been taking cover in FPS games since Half-Life without having a button that makes us magically stick to walls. I can see its use in 3rd person games (especially stealth based 3rd person games) but it seems like a completely obsolete mechanic for FPS.

Anyway I agree that HR is a fantastic game for the most part, but its ridiculous flaws (especially the boss battles) spoil it for me. I played the game 1st time around as a pure stealth guy and after investing 18 hours in the campaign I just quit out of frustration. This has become a bit of a trite complaint but it does seem like no one playtested this shit before shipping it out in to the word. Matter of fact I am kind of shocked that they did not bother to patch the game after pretty much everyone on the planet complained about it's obvious discrepancies.

But if anything HR is a promise of great things to come out of future Deus Ex titles, which I am sure are in production as we speak (type?).

[DaftPunk]

They should completely ditch the cover system and instead of that introduce lean feature,yes that will do it for me.

[jquinn914]

I remember playing up to the Asian hub and quitting. I also quickly grew bored of Dishonored so maybe I'm just not into the genre. I adore VtMB which is vaguely similar (emphasis on vaguely). I could go on for days about the things I hate in HR and Dishonored but to name a few things: both stealth games where you could EASILY kill everyone instead, both have what I consider poor character building/progression, and thirdly, even if you convince yourself you're Batman incarnate and can't kill anyone for arbitrary moral purposes, how long does it actually take to master the stealth? These are games of patience, they're not thinkers by any means, just tests of your mastery over compulsions. Anyway, that's my rant.

[jnx]

Wait wait wait, why would you even need a cover system in a FPS like Far Cry 3? That makes no sense to me, we've all been taking cover in FPS games since Half-Life without having a button that makes us magically stick to walls. I can see its use in 3rd person games (especially stealth based 3rd person games) but it seems like a completely obsolete mechanic for FPS.

It simulates peaking and leaning in an intuitive way. If you can't see the good in that, I probably can't explain it to you either.