New Deus Ex Not "Dumbed Down" for Consoles

[mad825]

You're right, I'm sure the cover system makes you totally invisible *rolls eyes several times*.

...........

:|

that wasn't my point..I'm just saying it's going to be as stealthy as any other GoW clone.

 

[smeghead25]

I'm sick of this 'dumbed down for console' shit.

It's just some bullshit way of shifting blame to consoles when elitist PC gamer snobs are disappointed when a game they like gets dumbed down because the developer's were too lazy to implement a more complicated system.

Seriously though, the regenerative augmentation came late in the game, had to be turned on and off and consumed electrical energy which didn't regenerate alone either. Dumping all that for halo-like regeneration is still a dumbing down, sort of an insult to the players' intelligence.

I fail to see how keeping that sort of mechanic would not work on a console though. It hasn't been dumbed down FOR CONSOLES it has just been dumbed down. The developer's could spend time programming the bio-energy recharge stations and balancing their frequency through the game and finding the right balance of energy points to health regen and other augmentations. Or they could just stick regenerating health in and make their job a tonne easier.

Dumbing down of games has NOTHING to do with consoles. Would everyone PLEASE get that through their thick heads?

If you ported Deus Ex to a console, all you'd NEED to do is put augmentations in radial dials. Nothing else in the game would lose anything at all. Same with any game except perhaps RTS's. They work better on a PC. Just like platformer's work best on console. BUT that doesn't mean either don't work on both platforms, adjustments just have to be made. Look at the original C&C games on the PlayStation, they were fantastic.

 

[smeghead25]

...Take Left4Dead for instance, it would take a HUGE element of that game if people would be able to auto-regenerate

Also, it's a fact that designing a game for consoles (also) leads to dumbing it down... see the stuff about Duke Nukem Forever for instance:

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/65442

Unfortunately, I was only able to carry two weapons at a time. I was hoping to carry Duke's full arsenal, but it looks like we're going to be dealing with weapon juggling. I'm not sure how this will play out. It could encourage using a variety of weapons, but it could fall flat, angering fans of classic PC FPS games. The other warning sign is that I was only fighting two to four enemies at a time, maximum. I hope this is based upon that level that I played and not a larger issue.

Yeah, blame us for it if you want. It may change in the future and I don't know what will happen with it, but it was us. I stand by it too, as you cannot discount designing games for a modern world and part of that world is consoles where the bulk of the sales can be. And on those consoles you have a controller. We tried for a long time to support lots of guns but we simply could not find a nice way to map it to a controller, despite trying 4-5 designs. We gave it enough time and decided to stop swimming against the current and adopt what was basically the "standard".

It's not 1996 anymore.

Okay... *another lengthy ***** incoming*

You can fight way more than 4-5 AI enemies in a console game too so "The other warning sign is that I was only fighting two to four enemies at a time, maximum..." is NOT because it's being dumbed down for console. Look at Halo, there's heaps of enemies on screen at once and of different types too. Seriosu Sam HD as well has lots and that's perfectly playable. So again, don't blame that shit on consoles!

"I was only able to carry two weapons at a time." Also not consoles fault. Ever played Resistance or Ratchet & Clank? Ever heard of fucking radial dials? Duke hasn't been dumbed down for consoles, it's just been dumbed down.

And I get your point about L4D and regenerating health. But they didn't do that on console did they? So they didn't comletely change the game for console. And it worked perfectly fine...

 

[octafish]

Why is everyone focused on the health system and electronic wack-a-mole? Revolutions won't let you make stealth kills. Sneak close to the enemy and get a stealth kill prompt and *bang* cinematic... Bullshit. A QTE by any other name would suck just as hard.

Really? Didn't the main character land on two dudes and stab them Ezio-style in the trailer?

I just checked and yes it shows a cutscene kill, no actual player involvement, which is something I've read from people who have had hands on experience with the game. I don't want to set something up, press a button and then have a camera change and watch the game take over. I want to participate in the game, do the actual hitting, stabbing whatever. I want to stay in first person damn it.
Please, it isn't a prequel either it is a reboot, you can't have a character like the one in Revolutions and then have the next stage in mechanical augmentation Anna Navarre and Gunther Herrman two clunky semi-robots. Bah Humbug I say.

 

[aaron552]

[snip]

I'm saddened that people are agreeing with you.

You had to sacrifice a very valuable augmentation slot to get "regenerating health." You had to use even more valuable energy to regenerate your health.

If you chose the cost-reducing augmentation as well, it was actually fairly cheap, in terms of energy use. Cheap enough that you could "run and gun" with it, if you wanted to.

The fact health doesn't seem to matter anymore, that game design is all about leading people by the hand through a series of vicarious spectacles, designed mostly to make the player feel awesome despite the fact s/he doesn't really accomplish anything is an insult to everyone.

And that is exactly what the lead designer said he was trying to avoid

The fact people lap up such design like its innovative or progressive is an insult to game design as a whole.

Easy has come to mean "fun." People just want to make effortless strides of progress. A game [http://www.progressquest.com] designed to mock this became more popular than the game it as originally mocking (everquest).

I absolutely agree with you. However, regenerating health is more of a symptom than a cause.

Cover systems and passive regenerating health (to hammer a point, deus ex's late game regenerating health augmentation was activated, and really, only similar in name) aren't designed to make the game more realistic, enriching, or whatever. They're designed to dance around the limitations of console controls by reducing the amount you, the player, actually needs to play. Regenerating health so you don't need to move, look, and explore to heal. Cover systems so you don't need to do... anything to avoid incoming fire. They were all about changing first person gaming from a series of tandem actions (strafing towards a health pack while shooting at the big thing that was also shooting at you) to a series of simple actions separated by audible clunks (run to cover, hit b, aim, hit a, take damage, release a until the blood falls off your face, lob nade, repeat). Yea, its somewhat more realistic than doom, but at least in doom making it through levels was a testament to you, not the placement of chest high walls by a benevolent and loving [dev].

Not to mention, if you're playing games hoping for realism, you're completely missing the point of video games and need to go join the fucking army or something, you gungho moron.
[sub][sub][sub]this last bit not directed at anyone in particular, you paranoid and overly zealous mod; that last bit in jest, you overly sensitive individual[/sub][/sub][/sub]

I, for one, am not particularly bothered by the inclusion of regenerating health, on principal; however, it's how it's used that matters. If it regenerates so fast that you literally can't die unless you stand still and do nothing, then I will have a problem. If it regenerates so slow (and only out of combat) that you have to sit in a corner for 5 minutes between battles, will you be happy?

It's possible that the base level of regeneration is slow enough to be useless for all but stealth-based characters and that you have to upgrade it to allow for the kind of gameplay you obviously despise. If this is the case, I have no problem, as it's allowing for player choice, which is a very good thing.
[sub][sub]This is all speculation[/sub][/sub]

 

[Diligent]

Regarding the quote,

"But it's important that if you want to just jump in to it, you can jump in to it. It's not about removing complexity or cutting possibilities: it's about the way the complexity is introduced."

Game looks like it will be cool, but dare I say, if you want an experience where you can just jump in then why would you play a game that involves conspiracies in a dystopian future that is famed for is freedom of choice, and not just play Geometry wars or something?
Sure, it's not about cutting possibilities, but it is something that will inevitably happen if you try to make a game appeal to more casual players.

Not that I'm complaining about it, I'm looking forward to it like crazy.

Deus Ex had a regenerative health augment anyway, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.

You just won at the internet.

 

[Cynical skeptic]

-snip-

My problem with regenerating health is that it is passive. No matter how it is tweaked, at the end of the day, I'm still sitting around waiting for the game to let me continue playing.

This works okay for console games, as console controls suck on an objective level, and any time you don't have to rely upon them is good.

But I've been spoiled by PC games.

 

[FURY_007]

There are some people that just seem programmed to never 'get it'. But I'll try to explain.

As the example was given earlier: a shack you need to get into with a keypad that can be hacked or a number hidden somewhere nearby, a grate behind it leading into the door beneath it and a window that can be lock-picked. That is not Deus Ex. Hell even if you put this shack in a large area populated with lots of distractions and made the shack itself an obstacle to easy access, it wouldn't be Deus Ex.

Some people say Deus Ex is about choices. I disagree: Deus Ex is about freedom and choices are the antithesis of freedom. If you have a choice between A and B, that isn't freedom. If it's A, B and C, that isn't freedom. You can keep going adding choices but you could add thousands of them and at no point will you be giving someone any freedom; they must still decide from a pre-determined set of paths graciously offered to them by the designer. Deus Ex is when in Mario 64 you get a bob-omb to follow you and make it crash into another bob-omb. The bob-ombs are not designed to do that, a programmer simply thought that explosives should set off other explosives and didn't realise that this situation wouldn't apply to any designed experience at any part in the game. It manifested as a fun meta-game players discovered where their wits and skill was strongly tested by trying to get two bob-ombs to collide without touching them.

Deus Ex is where you lay down some simple rules and they populate the entire game and you let them do their work. Freedom is not choice, freedom is simply what enables choice otherwise a choice would be nothing more than a calculation you make for the best possible outcome, a decision on which you are wrong or right. The moment you realise there is no wrong and right in Deus Ex, only consequences, is when the game lives for you. Consequence is freedom. Not simply the consequence of doing one thing and changing a part of the story(something the designers intend to happen no matter which way it goes), but of how early choices affect your later choices. If you choose to use a lockpick over an explosive to get through a door, there could be a reinforced door later that requires a lockpick you don't have so you must search for one(uncovering things you never would have seen otherwise) or find another route(ditto). You could try alternating between your resources to make sure you never run out of any single type of them; you will always have one. But then you could come up to a door that requires five lockpicks, five multitools or three explosives and you only have one or two of each; where as if you specialised in lockpicking and stuck points in it to make good use of picks, you would find you have abundant explosives and multitools to use even though you have no skill invested in them; you can still use them.

In Pac-Man and Bomberman you can only go in four possible directions in total at any time and in many situations those directions are not available whilst in others the wrong turn will cause you to lose. You have few choices but huge freedom in those games. They are Deus Ex.

Deus Ex:HR won't be. Everything I've heard from the developers so far suggests their understanding of the original is painfully simplistic and not anywhere near sentimental enough.

Damn, wasn't expecting that deep of a post, but definitely QFT

Every friggin level of Deus Ex made me say Damn I wish i had this or saved that. Why? Because every level was a culmination of what happened previously, because it all depended on what you invested in augmentation wise, what you used, say lockpicks, explosives, whatever. At the surface, yeah they're choices, but beneath that, they represent total freedom to react in any sort of in any situation. Yeah could I have picked the enemies off with a sniper rifle, but my accuracy is awful because I got shot in the arms, so I lockpicked my way through a couple doors and got close enough to kill them. No lockpicks? I created a situation where enemies opened up a door and I killed them and walked in.

While regenerating health isn't so much a bad thing, but having it in there takes away a kinda big little thing, which someone earlier said which i kinda agree on, but not having to worry about health wont really allow (new) players to learn from their mistakes. I've been in probably only 4 or 5 situations in DX where I've had like 30 health, my one leg was gone, and one of my arm was getting there, and i had to survive on that til the next mission, which kinda wasn't fun. I fucking learned from that though, and learned to analyze situations I didn't think was possible in games at that time. And the above applies to a lot of games, especially old games that were med-pack based like HL1 and such. Regenerative health is like eh, that sucks, but I can still get through it so I'll just continue to do the same, doesn't teach you anything about consequences, which like Alec Balrin said, is apart of freedom

 

[NoNameMcgee]

Dugas said that Eidos Montreal had looked at the first two games, and tried to preserve the essence of the Deus Ex series, while building a title that would appeal to a modern audience.

Sounds good. The first game plays like crap these days compared to anything modern and when I first tried playing it early this year I found it painful trying to play past the first couple of levels.

Taking the basic idea and making it more modern and intuitive sounds like a good step to me, maybe I'll even pick this up if it gets good reviews

 

[duchaked]

umm well it sounds good? been interested in the game since I saw the trailer
didn't play the original, so we'll see how this one turns out

 

[Atmos Duality]

One thing I noticed: If the player has regenerating health now, it's ok.
If the the enemy has it (in significant proportions like the player), it's a colossal pain in the ass and most people will *****.

Ultimately, this boils down to Limited vs Unlimited Resources.
The former is harder to design around and still make it fun, but it's more challenging and engaging.
The latter is good for games that need to keep their momentum. When your game is a "Railroad Logic Shooter" where one and only one path is possible it is best to not force the player to deviate from that path beyond your initial intentions.

This is one major principle that separates Left 4 Dead from Halo 3.
Left 4 Dead is designed to provide a fairly linear path, but with several side stops for exploring so that you can acquire items that make the trek easier.
Halo 3 has enemies drop loaded weapons so that the player should NEVER have to backtrack, nor explore to beat the game.

Does Left 4 Dead take more skill to beat? Oh hell yes. It's much harder to fight unlimited enemies with limited health than to fight limited enemies with unlimited resources*.
(*caveats with both, namely that I'm talking single-player-only here, but I found Halo 3 mildly annoying on Legendary, whereas it took me several weeks to complete all the campaigns in L4D on Expert, mostly for these reasons).

So what does this all mean?
Well, Deus Ex 3 is made to appeal to modern audiences (all trailers point to this fact, as does this very article), who for the last 10 years have played Railroad Shooters.
This STRONGLY SUGGESTS that Deus Ex 3 will be made with the Virtually Unlimited Resources school of thought; which means it must, by practical definition, have been dumbed down compared to Deus Ex 1.

This means that players of the original are probably going to be disappointed, even if it turns out to be a great game.

Moral of the story? A tired cliche: You can't please everyone and expect to succeed.

EDIT: Well well. My long sequence of babbling about L4D was ninja'd already.

 

[Radelaide]

Just because someone plays a game on a console does not make them stupid.

I should probably sit down and try to get into Deus Ex again... I failed at it the first time

 

[Souplex]

I feel so sorry for this man. The amount of *****-fitting that goes into them having a regenerative health system and cover-system is beyond ridiculous.

It's 10 years later.

I dare say that the amount of effort put into whining about such things shows how much supposed fans don't seem to understand; if you think the heart of Deus Ex lays within it's health-system you are sorely mistaken. Deus Ex had a regenerative health augment anyway, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.

I, for one, cannot wait for this.

While I agree with you for the most part, FPSRPGs are better with normal health, or the CE system. Straight up FPS needs some form of regeneration or you will encounter points where it's impossible.

 

[Signa]

That's cute.

Isn't that what Gas powered said when they were making Supreme Commander 2? They changed publishers to Square Enix iirc.

Oh wait. Deus Ex is being published by Square Enix as well.

I'm not holding my breath here.

I think this is WAY more relevant than anything anyone else has said, or cares to notice. Square used to have the Midas touch, but that touch now just turns everything to shit.

Seriously, if you've played the first, you don't need me to point out everything that is wrong with this trailer

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/702811.html

But if you haven't, let me point out a few flaws that are sticking out. The augmentations are ridiculous. Blades in the elbows? Micro grenades attached to the suit? Transformers style morphing arms? What happened to JC Denton being the latest in augmentation tech where only his eyes showed that he was anything but fully human, but he covered those with glasses. Going around the world, you could find civilians with augments, but it was almost a fashion statement, like a piercing or a tattoo. All the augments shown in the trailer are exclusively combat oriented. Nothing about this trailer seems like the first Deus Ex to me.

I still really need to try out the first Dues Ex, it sounds very, very interesting.

Just a few months ago is when I started playing it. I've only gotten as far as the generator on the second level, but I can see why people love the game so much. It really breaks your preconceptions on how to play a first person game. On the surface, it feels like a standard FPS, but if you play it as such, you are going to have a bad time. The game challenges you to find different ways to play the game, and once you get a feel for what they expect you to do, the game becomes AMAZING. I tried playing it years ago with the standard run-and-gun approach, but it felt really dry and boring as such. It turns out the game is much better played like an Elder Scrolls game, where you talk to everyone and get as much exploring and side quests done as you can before you head to your objective.