Deus Ex 3

[Morgoth]

Click

"You're cast as average joe Adam Jensen, who works as a private security officer at a technology lab specialising in biomechanical augmentations, a forerunner to the sort of nanotechnology shown in the original Deus Ex. One day the path of his life is unexpectedly altered as a team of black ops commandos break into his company's HQ, and using a security plan from Jensen's own hand, a mass slaughter ensues and the conspiracy begins.

 

"Deus Ex 3's vision of the future sees holographic screens flicker atop ferries moving back and forth in front of the Shanghai skyline, now split into two layers with the rich on the top and the poor in perpetual twilight below," says PCZ.

 

Eidos Montreal says it's more than aware of fan reaction to controversial second game, Invisible War, and promises mistakes, such as limiting ammo types to just one, won't be repeated.

 

This said, they are doing their utmost to please newcomers as well as existing fans. Perhaps controversially this time around combat won't be influenced by stats, but will rely purely on your personal marksmanship skills. Instead stats will influence "a vast array of fully upgradeable and customisable weapons", and you'll be able to tailor your arsenal to your play style with mag upgrades, scopes and other add-ons.

 

What's more, stealth will now rely on a cover system rather than shadows, and damage will be dealt with by a very Call of Duty-style auto-heal. There's probably going to be some debate over those two.

 

Augmentations have been bumped up and sound fantastic. 20 have been promised for the final game, ranging from 'bungee jump' tentacles that shoot from your back and anchor to a wall when you jump off a building, and the ability to punch through walls to grab enemies in neighbouring rooms.

 

Deus Ex 3 certainly sounds very, very promising - if a little controversial for die-hard PC fans. And just wait until you see the shots..."

 

Since this game isn't made by the original developer, I'm not too excited about it. And that Auto-healing thing sounds just horrible.

[Meshugger]

If i got that right, then stats will not affect my gameplay. I can wear any type of weaponry and thus, shoot a rocket propelled grenade launcher with the same accuracy as with a laserpistol. Instead my stats are useful for upgrading my arsenal and (maybe) doing more damage. Sounds like empty fluff to me.

[Morgoth]

Well I just saw some of the scans and it looks....interesting. But I fear this game won't bring back the rather intelligent gameplay that DX1 had. Seems like Eidos is striving for a fast-paced action game, but that doesn't surprise me at all.

[mkreku]

Hmm.. I really hope the upgradeable weapons will weigh up the loss of stats influencing aim. I really liked the aiming in Deus Ex as it made it feel like a role playing game. Without it, it'll feel more like a shooter.. I think.

 

Auto-heal? Guess there's no use for health packs or health bots then? Still.. better than unified ammo!

[Morgoth]

Hmm.. I really hope the upgradeable weapons will weigh up the loss of stats influencing aim. I really liked the aiming in Deus Ex as it made it feel like a role playing game. Without it, it'll feel more like a shooter.. I think.

 

Auto-heal? Guess there's no use for health packs or health bots then? Still.. better than unified ammo!

Deus Ex was never a Roleplaying game, it's a FPS with plenty of room for player expression.

[Pidesco]

The stealth system sounds idiotic.

[Gorgon]

Aiming based on stats, I don't like it, particularly when it means that you can simultaneously be a Mozart with a handgun and completely useless with a rifle. It don't seem right. Better to have the RPG elements focused somewhere else, and make the shooting a better gameplay experience.

 

I like autoheal as it will take focus away from heath pickups and hoarding them.

[Slowtrain]

I've never been fully clear as to why medkits or health packs are better than a gradual autoheal or health regen.

 

Autoheal time can be influnced by a player characters stats or equipment as can max healthpoints, giving a nice level of tactical gameplay considerations.

 

Unless you are going for a semi-realistic health/damage system, in which case neither autoheal or medkits is going to suffice, autoheal seems preferable to me than medkits in inventory or health pickups.

 

ANyway, if they can make the augs a lot more interesting than the last game and add some degree of skill development, I think it at least holds promise.

 

Of course, it won't come close to the original Deus Ex in terms of game content, but that's par for the course these days.

 

Still, a Deus Ex 3 shouldn't have much problem being a better game than DX:IW

Edited October 4, 2008 by CrashGirl

[Enoch]

You know, if I keep hearing all youse people talk about how great Deus Ex was, I might have to go try it one of these days.

 

And it's now $9.99 on Steam... And I do happen to have a mostly-free weekend...

[Tigranes]

Neither healing systems are anything special... but for me, with healkits/medkits, you can have some enjoyable situations where, say, you know you've got this big room of enemies left, but only 2 medkits, can you do it? I've had some very fun challenges with that kind of situation (escaping military base, mutants waylay me, only 1 stimpack...) in RPGs. Autoheal *is* less hassle, of course. I think I'd just prefer the manual heal because I'm used to that hassle and don't mind it.

 

I still haven't got around to getting a copy of the original Deus Ex.... one day, one day.

[Gorgon]

You can play it for nothing at gametap though.

[Slowtrain]

Deus Ex will probably feel pretty dated at this point if you haven't played it before. Also, at this point, its bound to disappoint anyone who goes into the game with expectations built up from hearing so much praise for the game over the years. Still, at the time, It was a pretty amazing game experience.

 

@Tigranes: I'm not saying that the medkit system is bad. I've played plenty fo great games (including DX!) that used medkits and pickups. I just think either a medkit or regen system can work just fine if the game is designed for it.

 

edit: didn't Deus Ex have a health regen aug anyway?

Edited October 4, 2008 by CrashGirl

[Gorgon]

yes but it cost bioelectric energy, which was just as limited as health packs, so same difference.

[Humodour]

I'll believe it when I see it. Sounds like a load of douche.

 

I doubt anything can come close to Deus Ex 1 these days without being based on an independent concept, and independent universe, and made by independent developers.

[Moatilliatta]

This is obviously an early look and as such it is hard to communicate the entire idea but it sounds like they're falling into the same trap that IW fell in, which is a lack of complexity. I mean, the original had weapon customization so how can the prequel's weapon customization make up for that AND the skill system in order to give the expected level of complexity?

 

This sounds to me like it's gonna turn out mediocre at best. Again though this could just be because it's early on in the infostream.

 

@Crashgirl

I always thought that the difference between medpacks and auto-heal was that the former allowed for a sorta survival/horror kind of gameplay, this didn't work in the original Deus Ex obviously as Medpack and general healing was handed out gratuitously, but that's a balancing question.

 

Sorta the same reason that bullets were finite.

 

yes but it cost bioelectric energy, which was just as limited as health packs, so same difference.

AND a (supposedly, can't actually remember) very important augmentation slot.

 

Edit: read through post before posting, read through post before posting, read through post before posting, read through post before posting, read through post before posting, read through post before posting, read through post before posting, read through post before posting, read through post before posting, read through post before posting, read through post before posting, read through post before posting, read through post before posting, read through post before posting, read through post before posting, read through post before posting, read through post before posting, read through post before posting, read through post before posting,

Edited October 4, 2008 by Moatilliatta

[mkreku]

I'm actually not too bothered by the change in aiming and regenerating health. Neither of those things (or lack thereof) was what made Deus Ex so great. I'm just hoping that Deus Ex 3 will provide an equally good story, a billion different ways to complete maps/missions and the same (admittedly fake) sense of freedom that Deus Ex provided.

 

The biggest mistakes (in my opinion) that Deus Ex: Invisible War made was the decision to remove ammunition types, combine skills and augmentations and cramp up the maps. I think they called it "streamlining" the game.. If this new Deus Ex 3 has bigger maps, allows for some more character customization than Deus Ex: Invisible War and makes your equipment important again, I think it can be good.

[Slowtrain]

yes but it cost bioelectric energy, which was just as limited as health packs, so same difference.

AND a (supposedly, can't actually remember) very important augmentation slot.

 

 

 

IIRC, it took a torso slot and was paired with energy shield. Since energy shield was the only real defense against the plasma rifle, I almost always took energy shield over the health regen and just developed my medical skill to make those twenty medkits last as long as possible.

 

One of the fun aspects of Deus Ex was balancing your skill set with your aug set with your gear set with your weapon mod set. No one set could do everything, but you could balance them against each other and makem up defencies in one area with another area.

 

FOr example: for swimming you could either a) take the aqualung augmentation or b) develop your swimming skill or c) use inventory space to carry a couple rebreather units. Or you could overcome a poor weapon skill by modding the crap out of a weapon.

 

I know that DX received some criticism for this apparent "redundancy", but I always thought it made developing your character much more interesting.

Edited October 4, 2008 by CrashGirl

[Humodour]

This is obviously an early look and as such it is hard to communicate the entire idea but it sounds like they're falling into the same trap that IW fell in, which is a lack of complexity. I mean, the original had weapon customization so how can the prequel's weapon customization make up for that AND the skill system in order to give the expected level of complexity?

 

Yep. Sick of people making games that suck these days because they think "Hey, I have a brilliant idea! If we make the game simpler, it'll be so much more fun!"

 

And what scares me is that it seems Josh Sawyer thinks like that. But hey, the verdict's still out on that one.

[Moatilliatta]

Another thing to remember about auto-heal (can't remember if it's been mentioned and I'm not reading the thread again) is that it controls stuff like pacing, which means that slow auto heal will lead to a person standing still a long time while healing (genuinely bad design here) and fast healing will lead to faster paced gameplay which is very uncharacteristic of Deus Ex.

 

Auot heal instead of medpacks is also another area of complexity that they'll have to make up for and I honestly don't believe that they have it in them.

 

@Krezzy the damn, dirty socialist

I can't remember what J.E has specifically answered in various interviews, but I seem to remember that he is a fan of not making things unnessesarily complex or introducing things that bring the player out of the game. Removing the skill system in Deus Ex is a sound choice the question is what to replace it with to bring it up to an equally fun level of complexity.

[Slowtrain]

Removing the skill system in Deus Ex may have seemed like a sound choice. And Harvery SMith certainly PR'd the crap out of the idea for IW. But during development of Invisible War, Smith made it sound like the replacement BIoMod system in IW would be much more complex than the aug system in DX. Which, according to SMith, meant that gamers would not miss the skill system.

 

Unfortunately, what ended up in IW was no skill system and a biomod system that was FAR less complex and interesting than the aug system in DX. COnsequence: a huge loss in gameplay fun.

 

IW was such a colossal failure in game design, the mind boggles.

[Moatilliatta]

That doesn't mean that removing the skill system is anything less than a sound choice. What it means exactly is that you need to be careful that you're actually replacing it with something of equal worth, IW obviously didn't.

 

Edit: I saw some good videos a couple of weeks ago involving Warren Spector and Harvey Smith that sorta gave an idea of why it failed.

Edited October 4, 2008 by Moatilliatta

[neckthrough]

Yep. Sick of people making games that suck these days because they think "Hey, I have a brilliant idea! If we make the game simpler, it'll be so much more fun!"

Agreed, but it's easy to err on the other side too. Complexity doesn't always translate to fun... Final Fantasy 8's insanely complex GF system completely turned me off. Having never played any PnP RPGs, I also hated the first few DnD CRPGs I played (including BGII). I definitely appreciated the simpler system (D20?) used in the KotORs. But then again, there's a balance point - I thought Mass Effect's system was way too simplistic.

[Humodour]

@Krezzy the damn, dirty socialist

I can't remember what J.E has specifically answered in various interviews, but I seem to remember that he is a fan of not making things unnessesarily complex or introducing things that bring the player out of the game. Removing the skill system in Deus Ex is a sound choice the question is what to replace it with to bring it up to an equally fun level of complexity.

 

How can you call it a sound choice when there was nothing wrong with and it provided a necessary feature (complexity) which was not accounted for? If it ain't broke, don't fix it seems to apply well here.

 

Re J.E.: I know J.E.'s justification is 'unnecessary complexity' but I often find myself wondering just how unnecessary a lot of the things he's against actually are. Obsidian's track record and IWD2 have failed to convince me either way so far (this issue is often obfuscated by bugs and lack of polish). So as I said, verdict is still out. It looks like Aliens will be his real baby in this regard, so we'll know soon.

[Moatilliatta]

So you haven't heard about the detachment that most people feel when they try Deus Ex's combat system on lower skill levels?

[Humodour]

So you haven't heard about the detachment that most people feel when they try Deus Ex's combat system on lower skill levels?

 

I played it the first few times on the easiest settings. It quickly became one my all time favourite FPS (alongside HL1) and RPGs (alongside PS:T). I later replayed it on the hardest settings and, again, it was immensely fun.

 

What point are you trying to make? That difficulty levels have something to do with justifying removal of the skill system?

 

Also, you use 'most people'. What's your source? I'm not fond of weasel words.

Edited October 4, 2008 by Krezack