Junction Point Studios -more info

[EnderAndrew]

People need to get over DX:IW.

 

Spector had an obligation to back the game, as he was the studio director. You don't hear Feargus saying, "I've hired people to work on KOTOR:2, and I sign their paychecks but I think they're all idiots."

 

Spector is a professional, and whether in retrospect he feels things were handled well or poorly on DX:IW, he's probably not going to say. If he worked on the game directly he is entitled to self-criticism, but it's really bad form for him to rip a current or former employee when it's not going to suddenly make the game better.

 

What do you really expect from him?

 

He had 20 really GREAT titles, and one that missed the mark that he didn't even work on, but we should all be bitter?

 

Grow up, or change your name to Visceris.

[aVENGER]

When he gets over his vent crawling fetish, maybe I'll be interested in his work.

 

Oh come on, his ingenious use of vents and shafts for "role-playing purposes" in DX:IW almost rivals the fabled application of crates and barrels in NWN. Now, if someone were to combine those two ideas we could finally get the ultimate RPG!

[Child of Flame]

I kind of liked DX:IW.

 

People just rip it harder than it would've been otherwise because it was the sequel to a game that was perfection.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Invisible War would never live up to Deus Ex, even if it did. The problem with the game was that it was disappointing, both as a game and as a sequel.

 

Then again, that's pretty much in the past. I expect Spector learned something of it, but I'm not optimistic.

[alanschu]

I haven't played Invisible War yet.

 

I do plan on it though.

 

I think it is one of those cases where they didn't realize just how much we loved the original design, so any changes to it probably were going to be "negative"

[metadigital]

QUE? The rule of Law? or the sublime justice?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

To each man his rights, to each man his due.

Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Justinianus (c. 482-565 ACE), The Roman Emperor at Constantinople, who rationalised and codified the roman Legal System. Quote from Digesta Iustiniani I.i.10.1 (quoting Dominitius Ulpianus, died 223ACE, one of the last of the leading Roman jurists, who wrote nearly 280 books).

I kind of liked DX:IW. 

 

People just rip it harder than it would've been otherwise because it was the sequel to a game that was perfection.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Exactly.

 

I think they tried to make it less of a "geek's game" and more of a "everyboy's game", so they (almost completely) took out the role-playing and character building elements and over-simplified the interface. If those decisions had been made differently, the game would have been at least as fun to (re-) play.

 

On the plus side, the writing was not entirely awful. (It was always going to be difficult to follow the original.)

[Calax]

I think Meta's got somthing. My major beef with it was that you couldn't jump the 500 feet like Billy does in the intro.

[metadigital]

Yeah, I keep feeling that, whenever I watch the intro, I think "Wow! What a cool looking game!" and then it just doesn't match up to the expectation the game creates for itself, let alone any hype from being a sequel to Deus Ex.

[Guest Fishboot]

When he gets over his vent crawling fetish, maybe I'll be interested in his work.

 

Oh come on, his ingenious use of vents and shafts for "role-playing purposes" in DX:IW almost rivals the fabled application of crates and barrels in NWN. Now, if someone were to combine those two ideas we could finally get the ultimate RPG!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

How about Vampire: Bloodlines, a combination RPG/FPS/Sneaker/2.5 person beat-em-up. With yet more vent-crawling elements. Who knew that going into that first vent on Liberty Island would be the beginning of the iron-fisted reign of the vent crawling overlords.

 

I understand the idea behind vents (it's a quick and easy way to add sneaker elements to a map) but they definitely reek of artifice.

 

Also: Does anyone else think that Bloodlines will feel classic in a couple of years when one can get/afford a a machine that can overpower the performance problems? It feels like a combination of Fallout, KotoR, Deus Ex and a soft-core porn movie and I consider that a good thing. Reading the reviews it seems like "It has clunky combat!" became a critic meme when it came out, when in reality it's perfectly fine considering how many action genres it straddles. Although it's probably too easy for people that grok the V:tM rules, which I went into blind, but a game will never be hard enough for rules-savvy gamers. Unfortunately VtM:B grunts into slideshow mode every thirty minutes on my late 2003 era computer and the save times and loading screens towards the end of the game get fairly absurd.

[alanschu]

The vents exist because they want to try to stay true to their promise of having some sort of open ended story.

 

 

If they made it so that everyone would have to go through some bottleneck, then they would have failed in their project goal.

 

Even Spector was disappointed that there were 3 people that you had to kill in the original Deus Ex.

 

 

Personally, I think it's neat that designers are trying to vary the gameplay a little.

[EnderAndrew]

I have still yet to purchase V:tM, but I probably will.

[alanschu]

Never played Vampire: The Masquerade.

 

 

I heard it was pretty weak though :\

[Guest GroinOfDespair]

Vampire isn't about boobs and a FPS set in LA.

 

Troika got it all wrong.

 

It is a personal storytelling game of horror, where your last remaining vestiges of humanity are peeled away by the ravages of time, and the beast within. It is a game to make Nietzsche proud.

[Guest Fishboot]

Vampire isn't about boobs and a FPS set in LA.

 

Troika got it all wrong.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I would say the sex appeal is much better contextualized than the advertising suggested, if you haven't played it (particularly since as I understand it vampires ain't fully functional in the World of Darkness setting, therefore in a role-playing sense flirtation is wasted on your character) and the game is much less of an FPS than even the relatively non-FPS Deus Ex (and less of a first person sneaker too). Troika did include that Fallout tone where silly semi-easter eggs (the radio show, the emails, oddball quests, etc.) are all over the place yet, as in Fallout, the overarching tone remains serious. And the Source-bred facial animations put the talking heads on a completely new level of expression above any RPG I've seen.

 

As an aside, I think "getting turned into a vampire" is almost as good of an RPG opener as amnesia for storytelling, since it puts your characters backstory and prior personality in a box that the player doesn't have to feel responsible for nor need to know. So when the player is starting off at square one at the beginning of the game, so is the character. Obviously this would work for any transcendent transformation.

 

I'm getting that good vibe where I'm thinking about my next playthrough before finishing my first one (I'm afraid it might blossom into me buying new hardware to feed it). Unless the ending is completely abortive I dunno how Vampire wouldn't get that annoyingly unprofitable long-term word of mouth, as Fallout and Torment did... except I imagine Bloodlines won't ever get the super-cheap jewel case release treatment that made FO/FO2/Torment into full blown nerd fetish licenses/games. If not, mark my words, someone will make a hybrid RPG with the one of the next generation FPS engines, bite a lot of style from Bloodlines, and make a killing by putting it on the consoles and getting a teen rating for it.

[EnderAndrew]

Everyone who I know finished the game said they loved up right up to the horrid ending, assuming they could get the game to run.

 

However, I'm a bit more skeptical as I really love the pen-and-paper rules for Vampire which they completely ditched, and for no good reason that I could fathom. They had them licensed, but instead decided to use different mechanics, and replace the disciplines with random new ones.

 

Mist Form isn't Mist Form, it's Super Wolf Form. Stuff like that.

[alanschu]

Was Bloodlines truer to the PnP?

[EnderAndrew]

Both Redemption and Bloodlines were partially true to the PnP mechanics, but I can't say which was more true to the mechanics until I play Bloodlines.

[alanschu]

It's not a bad game IMO.

 

The haunted house is one of the coolest levels I've ever played in any game.

 

I actually had chills run down my spine :D

 

 

I found the latter half to be a bit more run and gun (or hack and slash if you wanted). But it seems that's always the case in RPGs nowadays. It's not an end-level unless there's hordes of minions to slay and a big boss at the end

[Guest GroinOfDespair]

Isn't that the modern accepted definition of epic?

[alanschu]

It's not Epic until the body count hits 1000, and at least 40% of that number must be in last 10% of game.

[Guest GroinOfDespair]

When do I get my hackmaster +12 sword of disembowelment?

[Child of Flame]

Meh, I usually play as a Noss or a Malk, so I just slink and sneak my way through the last levels, snapping necks as I merrily walk along. Big boss lady was rather annoying though. ^_^

[alanschu]

I played as the "upper class" one. Ventrue I believe.

 

I liked the idea of being a power broker

 

For the last level, I just snuck around stabbing them in the back with my katana! :D And any time things got "tough" I whipped out the killomatic (omg ownage!!!!). For bosses...flamethrower for teh win. It sets most guys on fire until they just die

 

 

It was cool stabbing vamps in the back, since they just sort of disappear into dust after the stab

[EnderAndrew]

I really enjoy playing Gangrels personally.

[alanschu]

They are wack!

 

 

I like how bloodlines had penalties for being spotted as Nosferatu and I think Gangrels (but less extreme). ALthough yet again another idea that wasn't enforced enough IMO (like influence). I imagine in an attempt to make the game not get TOO hard.

 

It is cool talking to people as the Nosferatu, and seeing their horrified reactions....if you can get them to stand still enough to talk to that is