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Dues Ex like game?

PWMK2 said:
People who didn't like Invisible Wars are just disappointed because they didn't get a new Deux Ex.
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Yes, we are such unreasonable pricks.

The only good thing I can remember about it was that it didn't manage to crash before I gave up in disgust. Beyond that, well, there was a reason it was going for $2 a few months after release...
 
dark_reign said:
It works for me. Using IE7 here. These are textures that a fan made for the game but look similar to what was shown early on during the development of the game.
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Must have been a temporary outage or something, working fine now.

Isn't there one for the original?
 
PWMK2 said:
All I was saying was that a game like Deus Ex comes along once in a VERY long time. The fact that the sequel wasn't as good was hardly a surprise.
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It is true that games of Deus Ex calibre are few and far between, but many of the design decisions made on Invisible War were obviously bad (or even shameful), particularly when several of the original design team were on board (not least of which was Warren Spector).

A few simple choices at the beginning of development (like saying no to console support) would have very easily brought Invisible War closer to the original's standard.
 
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks Mass Effect has some Deus Ex-ness to it.
 
Cadaver said:
It is true that games of Deus Ex calibre are few and far between, but many of the design decisions made on Invisible War were obviously bad (or even shameful), particularly when several of the original design team were on board (not least of which was Warren Spector).

A few simple choices at the beginning of development (like saying no to console support) would have very easily brought Invisible War closer to the original's standard.
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How would saying no to console support have made any difference? Just because a game is released for console + PC does not mean it is going to be horrible. Portal came out for both PC and 360 at the same time. Did that make it horrible? No. I haven't heard anyone say Portal suffered from "consolitis." Or are we forgetting the fact that Deus Ex was also released for PS2?

In your magical fairy land of game development, this would have happened:

"OK, so we aren't going to release it for Xbox."
"Sweet. Now we can make the game 10x more fun."
 
PWMK2 said:
How would saying no to console support have made any difference? Just because a game is released for console + PC does not mean it is going to be horrible. Portal came out for both PC and 360 at the same time. Did that make it horrible? No. I haven't heard anyone say Portal suffered from "consolitis." Or are we forgetting the fact that Deus Ex was also released for PS2?

In your magical fairy land of game development, this would have happened:

"OK, so we aren't going to release it for Xbox."
"Sweet. Now we can make the game 10x more fun."
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The inventory system in IW sucked because it was designed for a console controller. The levels were fuck-all small because that gen of consoles couldn't handle large levels with high detail. Those were two of the major flaws of IW and 100% attributable to consoles.

Portal worked cross-platform because it was simple.

The PS2 port of Deus Ex was bitched about for not being compromised in some of the ways that IW was later changed (read: ruined). Coincidence?
 
ballpoint said:
I'm playing Mass Effect, and aside from being a 3rd person game, it's very Deus Ex.
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Dome said:
mass effect and kotor 2 have a DX-ish elements
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gzervali2006 said:
Mass effect was a pretty fun game too... you should check it out
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iJeff said:
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks Mass Effect has some Deus Ex-ness to it.
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+1. I still feel Deus Ex has more of an open-ended feel to it, though. The fact that you can go through the game for the fifth time and discover even more solutions to certain situations never ceases to amaze.
 
ballpoint said:
I'm playing Mass Effect, and aside from being a 3rd person game, it's very Deus Ex.
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I'm with the OP, Deus Ex is/was a great game (played it a few times). I just recently finished Mass Effect and I believe its worth a honorable mention for a comparision to Deus Ex. I really enjoyed the story line plus the ability to hack, use bio-mods, weps, vehicles, the ability to manage character spec's, and everything else.

+1 for Mass Effect
 
jaegertech said:
The inventory system in IW sucked because it was designed for a console controller. The levels were fuck-all small because that gen of consoles couldn't handle large levels with high detail. Those were two of the major flaws of IW and 100% attributable to consoles.

Portal worked cross-platform because it was simple.

The PS2 port of Deus Ex was bitched about for not being compromised in some of the ways that IW was later changed (read: ruined). Coincidence?
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You haven't played Morrowind, then. It had a normal inventory system and the levels were huge. Just because it's designed for a console doesn't mean it has to be that way.

And I never heard any bitching about the PS2 port of Deus Ex. I don't remember hearing someone say, "Ugh, I hate these vast, open levels," or "I wish they made the inventory system into a wheel and hard to control."

And BTW, the inventory system was hard to use with the Xbox controller too, so if they seriously designed it for the Xbox controller, they fucked up even more. I think they just made a new inventory system and screwed up while making it. It seems nowadays that if a game has a simultaneous console release AND has lots of hype AND sucks, it has "consolitis."
 
PWMK2 said:
You haven't played Morrowind, then. It had a normal inventory system and the levels were huge. Just because it's designed for a console doesn't mean it has to be that way.

And I never heard any bitching about the PS2 port of Deus Ex. I don't remember hearing someone say, "Ugh, I hate these vast, open levels," or "I wish they made the inventory system into a wheel and hard to control."

And BTW, the inventory system was hard to use with the Xbox controller too, so if they seriously designed it for the Xbox controller, they fucked up even more. I think they just made a new inventory system and screwed up while making it. It seems nowadays that if a game has a simultaneous console release AND has lots of hype AND sucks, it has "consolitis."
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Perhaps I should have elaborated further in my original post, but I've something to add to this comment.

You are correct in that consoles are sometimes made the scapegoat for multi-platform failures. I made the jump to Xbox360 only recently, and find the experience very fulfilling.

Morrowind (we're talking Oblivion, aren't we?) was very easy to control on Xbox360, and of course had those huge expansive levels that made the game so great. However, Invisible War was designed with the original Xbox limitations in mind (specifically, 64 meg of ram). This choice necessitated some of the same design limits on the PC.

I can't really comment on the PS2 port.
 
PWMK2 said:
You haven't played Morrowind, then. It had a normal inventory system and the levels were huge. Just because it's designed for a console doesn't mean it has to be that way.
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Different game engine and game developer.

PWMK2 said:
And I never heard any bitching about the PS2 port of Deus Ex. I don't remember hearing someone say, "Ugh, I hate these vast, open levels," or "I wish they made the inventory system into a wheel and hard to control."
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From Wikipedia:

A port of the game, entitled Deus Ex: The Conspiracy, was also released for the PlayStation 2, on March 25, 2002. Along with pre-rendered introductory and ending cinematics which replaced the original versions, it features a streamlined interface with auto aim, and improved graphics and motion captured character models. Some levels were changed and chopped down into smaller areas separated by load-screens, due to the memory limitations of the PlayStation 2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_Ex

"Levels were changed or chopped down?":D
 
Cadaver said:
Perhaps I should have elaborated further in my original post, but I've something to add to this comment.

You are correct in that consoles are sometimes made the scapegoat for multi-platform failures. I made the jump to Xbox360 only recently, and find the experience very fulfilling.

Morrowind (we're talking Oblivion, aren't we?) was very easy to control on Xbox360, and of course had those huge expansive levels that made the game so great. However, Invisible War was designed with the original Xbox limitations in mind (specifically, 64 meg of ram). This choice necessitated some of the same design limits on the PC.

I can't really comment on the PS2 port.
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Actually, I'm talking about Morrowind. There was an Xbox port that came out at the same time as the PC version. The areas were, naturally, very large, and what it shows is that they could have made large levels for Invisible Wars. The PS2 version of Deus Ex had very large levels, and that console only has what, 24 megs of ram? When they released Morrowind on Xbox, I don't think there were any limited design decisions. What I'm trying to say is that it's not the act of releasing it on Xbox which created the smaller levels, but something else. If the devs behind Invisible Wars did the same stuff that Bethesda did with Morrowind, the levels in Invisible Wars could have been even bigger than the original Deus Ex and still have the game to release on Xbox.

dark_reign said:
Different game engine and game developer.
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Duh. Where did I say any different? :confused:

dark_reign said:
From Wikipedia:

A port of the game, entitled Deus Ex: The Conspiracy, was also released for the PlayStation 2, on March 25, 2002. Along with pre-rendered introductory and ending cinematics which replaced the original versions, it features a streamlined interface with auto aim, and improved graphics and motion captured character models. Some levels were changed and chopped down into smaller areas separated by load-screens, due to the memory limitations of the PlayStation 2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_Ex
"Levels were changed or chopped down?":D
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Uh... I was talking about how nobody complained about the PS2 version. If you read above, you would have seen that Jaegertech said that console gamers complained about how PS2 Deus Ex wasn't consolified enough, and I was responding to that.

I've played the PS2 version, so I already know that some of the levels were smaller. I never disputed that. Quote me as saying the PS2 port was an exact replica of the PC version and I'll force-feed myself cookies for a week. That said, the PS2 version's levels weren't actually changed all that much and they actually managed to make the game look a good deal better. You could also turn off auto-aim IIRC.

In other words, please read the above posts (up there ^^) before you shove information in my face. OK thanks. ;)
 
PWMK2 said:
Actually, I'm talking about Morrowind. There was an Xbox port that came out at the same time as the PC version. The areas were, naturally, very large, and what it shows is that they could have made large levels for Invisible Wars. The PS2 version of Deus Ex had very large levels, and that console only has what, 24 megs of ram? When they released Morrowind on Xbox, I don't think there were any limited design decisions. What I'm trying to say is that it's not the act of releasing it on Xbox which created the smaller levels, but something else. If the devs behind Invisible Wars did the same stuff that Bethesda did with Morrowind, the levels in Invisible Wars could have been even bigger than the original Deus Ex and still have the game to release on Xbox.
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Ah...I was thinking of the wrong title. I agree. All platforms have limits, and in the case of consoles, this can sometimes be an advantage. I was having a bit of a poke around in the IGN images of the Xbox version of Morrowind, and besides a reduction in texture quality and draw distance, there doesn't appear to be a great deal of change.

That said, I'm not sure we can necessarily say that it's indicative of the potential for other engines to achieve the same level of efficiency (if indeed that is what allowed Morrowind to succeed). Ion Storm modified Unreal Engine 2 for their uses, and it seemed to impact negatively on PC performance as well (I had a difficult time getting the game to run well on even a powerful rig at the time).

Warren Spector himself alluded in an interview to memory constraints on consoles (seen here: http://au.pc.ign.com/articles/437/437677p2.html

To support your case, it was definitely planned from the beginning to reduce the sprawling levels of Deus Ex to smaller, more contained zones in Invisible War. However, I still maintain that the choice of engine and a range of other factors (not exclusively console based) prevented Invisible War from being as good as the original.
 
Cadaver said:
However, I still maintain that the choice of engine and a range of other factors (not exclusively console based) prevented Invisible War from being as good as the original.
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Harvey Smith stated in that postmortem video clip that they made bad design choices, noting that $20 million was at stake. This says to me that they had to water down the game and interface to appeal to a wider audience. I know many said at the time of the release of the game that Warren Spector sold out and I tend to agree.

DX:IW could have been a great game had they stuck with the original game enviroment, kept the character development strong, and left the game interface alone. Tweaking things to streamline the interface was bad because you didn't feel you were in the Deus Ex game world, where things are supposed to be complex. IW felt sanitized and cartoonish--a far cry from the dystopian feel of the original. Overall the design choices were bad simply because Eidos saw big profits with the Xbox and Warren Spector went along for the ride, while Harvey Smith ran the show.

It's very possible that had the game been for PC only, the choices could have been just as bad or worse. But I really doubt it because money wouldn't have been a driving factor.
 
dark_reign said:
Harvey Smith stated in that postmortem video clip that they made bad design choices, noting that $20 million was at stake. This says to me that they had to water down the game and interface to appeal to a wider audience. I know many said at the time of the release of the game that Warren Spector sold out and I tend to agree.

DX:IW could have been a great game had they stuck with the original game enviroment, kept the character development strong, and left the game interface alone. Tweaking things to streamline the interface was bad because you didn't feel you were in the Deus Ex game world, where things are supposed to be complex. IW felt sanitized and cartoonish--a far cry from the dystopian feel of the original. Overall the design choices were bad simply because Eidos saw big profits with the Xbox and Warren Spector went along for the ride, while Harvey Smith ran the show.

It's very possible that had the game been for PC only, the choices could have been just as bad or worse. But I really doubt it because money wouldn't have been a driving factor.
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I doubt that was really the cause either. I mean, look at sales between Deus Ex and Invisible Wars. You can see that Invisible Wars sold a fraction as many copies as the original.

In game design, something that is good is done again. You want to know why we get sequels for top-selling games which are more or less the same game year after year? Take a look at all those Madden games. They are the same because they knew the old one sold a lot. Gears of War 2 is also a good example. Not saying the game is going to be bad because of it, but GoW 2 is going to be very close to the original. It is much more monetarily sound to do that than mess up something which is good. It wasn't a quest for money that spawned those design changes at Ion Storm; if it was, they would have made Invisible Wars more or less a clone of the original with new missions, like what Valve did with Half-Life 1. But they didn't.

I believe that all of the design changes that were made were made because they legimitately thought that they were making the game better, not worse. Do I know why? No. But it can't be money. They really fucked up on that one if that's the case. Invisible Wars sold hardly any copies. Money is important, but it's not what caused Invisible Wars to have been bad; if they truly cared about their money, they would have been a lot more conservative with the design of that game and we would have seen, essentially, Deus Ex 1.5.

Also, if the game was released only for PC... trust me, money would have been a driving factor. It always is. They aren't making these games for charity. They are making these games with the hope that people will actually buy them. People actually bought the first one, but they didn't buy the second.

Cadaver said:
To support your case, it was definitely planned from the beginning to reduce the sprawling levels of Deus Ex to smaller, more contained zones in Invisible War. However, I still maintain that the choice of engine and a range of other factors (not exclusively console based) prevented Invisible War from being as good as the original.
Click to expand...

Yeah, to tell you the truth, it probably was the engine that did it. With a game like Morrowind, or to a lesser extent Halo 2, they were able to get games with hugely bigger levels than Invisible Wars. However, Invisible Wars looked better than either of those two games IMO. So who knows.
 
PWMK2 said:
I believe that all of the design changes that were made were made because they legimitately thought that they were making the game better, not worse. Do I know why? No. But it can't be money. They really fucked up on that one if that's the case. Invisible Wars sold hardly any copies. Money is important, but it's not what caused Invisible Wars to have been bad; if they truly cared about their money, they would have been a lot more conservative with the design of that game and we would have seen, essentially, Deus Ex 1.5.
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My personal feeling from interviews and other assorted information is that the design shift was instigated by Harvey Smith, who assumed lead designer position while Warren Spector helped out on other Ion Storm projects (I think Thief: Deadly Shadows was in embryonic development at around that time).

This was Harvey's first stab at lead designer, and I think we can certainly agree that multi-platform development makes a whole range of decisions (including management, design, etc) much harder for anyone, let alone a first-timer. There was the need to make the Deus Ex world more accessible to a wider range of gamers, as well as satisfy the fans of the original (a not inconsiderable task).

It would be interesting to see how different things would of been had Warren stayed in the lead designer chair (or co-designer, as in the original game). Money may have indirectly influenced his decision to focus on other projects (Ion Storm may have felt his skills were better used to speed up other projects), but now this is just speculation.

In any case, I think many studios are now comfortable with simultaneous cross-platform releases (the tools have matured quite nicely in some directions) so any future Deus Ex titles might resemble the original a little more closely. :)
 
PWMK2 said:
I doubt that was really the cause either. I mean, look at sales between Deus Ex and Invisible Wars. You can see that Invisible Wars sold a fraction as many copies as the original.
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But the plan to shift the game to console was driven by money, greed, etc. because the original didn't sell as well as they had hoped. Eidos wouldn't have put up so much money had they not done the game for the Xbox. They were expecting large sales numbers because the original game got rave reviews and was an instant classic with a lot of PC gamers.

PWMK2 said:
I believe that all of the design changes that were made were made because they legimitately thought that they were making the game better, not worse. Do I know why? No. But it can't be money. They really fucked up on that one if that's the case. Invisible Wars sold hardly any copies. Money is important, but it's not what caused Invisible Wars to have been bad; if they truly cared about their money, they would have been a lot more conservative with the design of that game and we would have seen, essentially, Deus Ex 1.5.
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The problem is when a company becomes too big it starts to lose a lot of creativity and is more concerned about making huge profits. Harvey Smith said they shipped the game too early and it just happened to be three weeks before Christmas. What does that tell you?

PWMK2 said:
Also, if the game was released only for PC... trust me, money would have been a driving factor. It always is. They aren't making these games for charity. They are making these games with the hope that people will actually buy them. People actually bought the first one, but they didn't buy the second.
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Of course they want to be paid for their work but it shouldn't be the main reason behind making a game. These game designers are supposed to be creative, right? Wouldn't that be the drive of making a game and not the money?

The decision to make the game for the Xbox put limitations on what they could do, thus limiting their creativity. Game design should be about what worked in the past, keeping things they same IF they worked, and only changing things if there is a real need to.
 
Sorry for this semi-necro, but I didn't feel like I should start a new thread.

I just beat Deus Ex for the first time, less than four days after downloading it off of Steam. I'd have to say that it was worth every one of the 999 pennies charged to my CC! Now I can see why so many people list this game as one of the best ever. After drudging through the first few hours of horrible graphics and allowing my eye to adapt, I couldn't get enough of the game. My playtime was about 15 hours, but I probably squandered an additional 6 or 7 hours saving/reloading due to deaths as well as figuring out different scenarios. Finished at 6am this morning!

First thing I did when I finished was to do a search for Deus Ex on this forum, that's how I came upon this thread. Seems to be a lot of Deus Ex: Invisible War bashing on here. With about a week left of playtime before the schoolyear starts, would you suggest that I avoid this game? Reviews on Metacritic rate it decently- in the 8's for both user and professional reviews.

Or should I try my hand at Knights of the Old Republic 1 & 2? I haven't been into the Star Wars thing for a while... Star War Galaxies 5 or 6 years ago and Star Wars: Jedi Knight from 1997. The other games mentioned in this thread, Bioshock, Mass Effect, Morrowind, Oblivion, I've played through already.
 
Tzzird said:
Sorry for this semi-necro, but I didn't feel like I should start a new thread.

I just beat Deus Ex for the first time, less than four days after downloading it off of Steam. I'd have to say that it was worth every one of the 999 pennies charged to my CC! Now I can see why so many people list this game as one of the best ever. After drudging through the first few hours of horrible graphics and allowing my eye to adapt, I couldn't get enough of the game. My playtime was about 15 hours, but I probably squandered an additional 6 or 7 hours saving/reloading due to deaths as well as figuring out different scenarios. Finished at 6am this morning!

First thing I did when I finished was to do a search for Deus Ex on this forum, that's how I came upon this thread. Seems to be a lot of Deus Ex: Invisible War bashing on here. With about a week left of playtime before the schoolyear starts, would you suggest that I avoid this game? Reviews on Metacritic rate it decently- in the 8's for both user and professional reviews.

Or should I try my hand at Knights of the Old Republic 1 & 2? I haven't been into the Star Wars thing for a while... Star War Galaxies 5 or 6 years ago and Star Wars: Jedi Knight from 1997. The other games mentioned in this thread, Bioshock, Mass Effect, Morrowind, Oblivion, I've played through already.
Click to expand...

If you enjoyed Mass Effect, you will like KOTOR 1 and 2.

BTW, do yourself a favor and pick up the High Definition Texture Pack for Deus Ex ("HDTP") ... while it's not a major graphics overhaul, it does help things a bit. Oh, and play through DX again ... you find something new everytime you play through the game.
 
Get the mod RedSun2020. It's an entirely new adventure with a different UNATCO agent. I'm playing it now. It's about half the length of DE.
 
While it is not out yet it appears that Fallout 3 will have a lot in common with Deus Ex. It is an FPS but you can focus on a wide variety of skills and abilities to personalize your character like in Deus Ex. It is a lot broader in scope though, and a lot more free, like Oblivion as well, and it has Action Point based combat whenever you want, like the original Fallout. It also has gibs like Quake, but with better graphics and slow-mo cut scenes to show them off. It is also a lot like Stalker, but done RIGHT.

So one game that is the best of Deus Ex, Oblivion, Quake, Stalker and Fallout 1 and 2.....

Should be farking unbelievably good.
 
mass effect, sorta. gameplay is better than average but gets really, really repetitive. RPG aspects are good. story-line is good. your decisions actually impact the storyline and game, which is similar.
 
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