|
Toilets are a good example, actually! I still remember the incredible glee I felt when playing Duke 3D for the first time as a kid and finding out that the movie theatre's toilets are there, they work as expected, and you can actually, ahem, interact with them. Such a little thing, but it makes it obvious the developers wanted to make the world detailed and immersive, and for you to have fun with that sandbox you're given. The classic Deus Ex moment where you're admonished for perving the women's restroom made me feel the same thing. I remember those moments becoming less and less frequent in the subsequent games, being replaced with mostly signposted "GO TO THIS 'HIDDEN' AREA RIGHT HERE TO RECEIVE THE OBVIOUS STEALTH BONUS/EASTER EGG/PLOT TOKEN" kind of environments which just didn't feel as rewarding and fun.
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2019 10:08
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 22:23 |
|
|
ilitarist posted:I too agree that classic Star Trek is an immersive sim. Those movies are entirely scripted, and not at all self-consistent. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2019 10:11
|
|
|
The key part of an immersive sim is that elements of the game world are simulated with enough complexity that they can meaningfully interact with one other without the player directing it or even intending it to happen. So what I am saying is monster infighting makes Doom an immersive sim
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2019 15:12
|
|
|
Lmao I just had a civilian with fully auged red arms tell me "I cant wait until the UN passes that drat law so all you people go away". The Xbox version seems buggier, I don't remember things like that happening on my first playthrough on PC a couple years ago. E: I went to give Edward his pass and when I went to deal with the thug Jensen instead kicked the poo poo out of the poor old man on the ground. What a way to fail that. jojoinnit fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Oct 27, 2019 |
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2019 17:36
|
|
|
Replaying the game now and yeah, there are some moments where you can feel more engaged. But they are all so optional. You can play through Golem and you'd have no opportunity to express any opinions or challenge any views. You do some of that with Talos but there you have a clear goal and nothing he proposes looks better than this goal. You are not interested in argument, you're looking for right options that will make him agree with you. But then you have that girl who agitates for a new aug city somewhere in the desert. You can talk a lot to her. And after you return from Golem you can have a new conversation with Jensen being bitter. It's a very rare moment when Jensen seems interested in what happens. For the most part, when he talks about his motivation it's "I'll punish bad people who kill people". Combined with all of that empty symbolism in the trailers (Jensen is Icarus, and he's also an angel descending from heaven, and then he makes Sistine Chapel touch so he's a God I guess) it all feels AAA-style empty. There are small and rare moments when it feels right.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2019 20:46
|
|
|
I tend to separate marketing from the actual product because it’s almost always wildly off base and made by marketing folks who know very little about the product they are selling other than broad themes. A good example is the “this is the new poo poo” Dragon Age Origins trailers.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 07:52
|
|
|
jojoinnit posted:Lmao I just had a civilian with fully auged red arms tell me "I cant wait until the UN passes that drat law so all you people go away". The Xbox version seems buggier, I don't remember things like that happening on my first playthrough on PC a couple years ago. he means americans
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 08:28
|
|
|
chaosapiant posted:I tend to separate marketing from the actual product because it’s almost always wildly off base and made by marketing folks who know very little about the product they are selling other than broad themes. A good example is the “this is the new poo poo” Dragon Age Origins trailers. Most of those things are still in the game even if the context is a little different. You get that god's touch during an explosion in Prague. There are Icarus graffiti all over the city. Meanwhile current obligatory Pacifist playthrough shows me that gameplay isn't that great. Even nice multi-layered maps like aug barracks in Golem city never feel like interconnected ant farms the way Dishonored or Prey or even No One Lives Forever (still dying for this hill) feel like: everyone has only small short routes and you easily get enough ammo to shoot them with non-lethal weapons. In Dishonored going non-lethal feels like a self-imposed challenge, in DXMD you get tranquilizer rifle and shock pistol in the very beginning, and they seem to be even more effective than lethal weapons (not against power armor guys but those are rare). Not to mention how unlike other similar games your melee dispatch works even if the enemy sees you. I also wanted more fighting (for the challenge! Also the difficulty is higher one, but not the one with Iron Man) so I'm not taking any skills that help you evade enemies. It became obvious that the level designers really wanted me not to fight people. I'm not taking hacking and door smashing skills but still when I see a vent that helps me not to risk my life I take it. And it turns out you don't need any skills at all to evade enemies. I stick with mistakes so from time to time I'm noticed but it's rarely big enough mistake to cause an alarm. Also, the game treats hacking as a mandatory skill. I think there are numerous missions where you're supposed to hack lvl 1 security and you don't need skills for that. So now I'm of a lesser opinion of the whole progression system, it doesn't seem to alter the gameplay as much as it looks. Whatever your skills are you'll always gravitate to stealth and taking out enemies in melee cause it's a safe cheap option.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 08:47
|
|
|
Baba is you is an immersive sim
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 13:08
|
|
|
It would be if it were in first-person perspective.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 14:13
|
|
|
at least we can all agree Witch Hunt is an immersive sim. it even has a 0451 code!
|
|
#
?
Nov 1, 2019 16:57
|
|
|
Completed System Rift for the first time. This mission does more to enforce feeling of oppression than the whole main game. In the main game, you only see intolerance in random people on the street. Maybe police too, but when they talk to you they become scared of your cool documents. And everybody you talk to is either fine with augs or says something like "I don't have anything against augs personally, I have some aug friends but you know how the political climate is". McReedy is probably the closest you get to aug-hater among major characters and it's more like a macho confrontation between him and Jensen. But in System Rift you meet citizen militia who just hate augs. And if you evade them you meet barman who doesn't want to serve you. And a guy you have to meet says go on and die there, I don't care about you, robot. This goes far from original game reprimands for using the wrong wagon. Also in this mission, you can actually see Charles Bridge. The river line looks like Prague, they even inserted a smaller version of some of the bridge towers near Palisade. This mission certainly looks like something done by the end of the development when the team knew what kind of story they're telling.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2019 11:14
|
|
|
Yeah I just finished it last week and it was a very enjoyable play through, lots of guard-in-vent stuffing opportunities plus a wealth of cool little details and subplots to reward digging around in the computers, and I like the whole plot about the CEO power couple stealing trade secrets from their clients for insider trading, it felt very plausible yet also deus ex-y
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2019 13:41
|
|
|
ilitarist posted:Completed System Rift for the first time. All of the DLC except A Criminal Past felt like stuff cut from the main game only to be sold as DLC later. The main game even references stuff which happens in the System Rift DLC towards the end. It's a shame because I do think the DLC for Mankind Divided is excellent, they just should have been integrated into the base game.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2019 15:48
|
|
|
Yep, and even reviews tell you so. It's probably the most blatant case of content cut out of the game. System Rift was probably finished after the main game or at the very end; as I've said it fits into game themes much better. But it was obviously planned earlier. All of this results in an objectively worse experience even if you buy it all; those two missions happen in a middle of the game. They don't quite work if you play them after playing the main story but you obviously can't play them before. Shame if Squarenix bad DLC policy resulted in poor sales resulting in series being put on hold.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2019 16:17
|
|
|
It wouldn't even be as bad if System Rift and the Tarvos missions were done like DLC in normal games, where it's integrated into the base game seamlessly upon purchase; but having to start a new minigame to do them really takes me out of it, and if you aren't looking things up ahead of time you will get the chronology wrong for playing them in order with the proper story.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2019 19:29
|
|
|
It's a lesson the industry needed to learn, but story relevant dlc in a plot heavy game never works out well. I would totally buy a deus ex game done in the style of the recent Hitman games - just a string of infiltration missions which for all intents and purposes are unrelated. Alternatively I'd accept left for dead: Shadowrun.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2019 20:10
|
|
|
Alchenar posted:It's a lesson the industry needed to learn, but story relevant dlc in a plot heavy game never works out well. I'm so confused by the last two Hitman games. You did confirm for me what I was thinking, which was that the games very a collection of unrelated assassination missions, but I was going to buy one of those games on at Steam sale and I could not figure out if I was buying the actual full game, so I left off.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2019 20:31
|
|
|
JustJeff88 posted:I'm so confused by the last two Hitman games. You did confirm for me what I was thinking, which was that the games very a collection of unrelated assassination missions, but I was going to buy one of those games on at Steam sale and I could not figure out if I was buying the actual full game, so I left off. There's a loose story tying them together but it's just videos in between missions iirc. Get 1, it's cheap and excellent. 2 is if you loved it and want more of the same. The bigger the screen is the more terrifying Eliza is. Really wish they'd made the news in the early game longer or more varied though. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2019 21:19
|
|
|
Playing through MD right now for the first time. Honestly have been enjoying it so far. I think the core concept of the supermans being the oppressed minority is a bit absurd but so far the story hasn't been bad. I especially am enjoying the side quests and email content. Though I think I'm a bit spoiled by Prey, where if you read something in an email you can be pretty certain you can actually meet that person...'s corpse eventually. Deus Ex has a lot of little stories that are told only in the emails, don't really lead to a treasure or characters, you just learn some tragic personal details from someone's life as you compulsively steal and hack into anything just out of a sick compulsion. I don't need anything in this game, you sneak around and stealth sleep all the mans, as our fathers did before us. The structure of the game is interesting. You do the starter stuff in Dubai, then you're set free in prague. You can basically then get into every single apartment and hidden storage compartment, you are able to get into stuff that is used later, they just don't spawn the story stuff till then. Which is kind of a shame, like, one of the first things I did was sneak into the bank and rob the hell out of everything. 8 hours later I'm finally actually supposed to go there for something, but at that point it's really just a tedious walk back and forth. I just had to walk back into the bank with all of the security disabled, all the guards still asleep where I left them, and the story objective is just sitting in the open safe I robbed earlier. I'm also constantly getting codes to safes and locks I already hacked. I know that's my fault for playing in a way that I do literally every side thing open to me before touching mandatory story progression, but it's not my fault you can basically break into everything as soon as you get into Prague. It feels a lot denser than past games, I know a big complaint is there's only one hub. I do wish for another couple hubs, but I also wish they were rushed out and would be relatively small and lacking things to explore because the same density as Prague might be too much. I also seem to have locked myself out of some content. I broke into the casino and stole the parts, but there's some quests I have now locked myself out of. I'm hoping I might still get to do some of the red queen stuff, but I totally killed Otar so I'm not sure if I still get to participate. I haven't killed anyone else in the game, so I also screwed myself out of pacifist achievement, and he was already knocked out when I killed him. I wasn't really sure what the game was going to do with them and kind of figured it would just acknowledge me dealing with him when it came up. Killing him just seems like the right thing to do, from the side quests and secretarys you read, he seems like a real POS. There's a nameless exposition drone in the TF29 base who laments his death because he thought "he could go far." Okay, rear end in a top hat, who roots for a lovely mob boss? edit: Hacking into computers while someone sits at them, without repercussion, seems wrong. Khanstant fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Nov 3, 2019 |
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2019 22:00
|
|
|
Khanstant posted:
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2019 22:09
|
|
|
Yeah, in the original I tried to be sneaky even if it was abusing the mechanics because it seemed like they at least saw it as an offense. Sometimes you'd get attacked if it was serious.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2019 22:11
|
|
|
Hey I heard there might be a deus ex co-op mod out there. Does anyone know if that thing works in any remotely decent way or is it a horrible broken mess.
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2019 01:42
|
|
|
Glagha posted:Hey I heard there might be a deus ex co-op mod out there. Does anyone know if that thing works in any remotely decent way or is it a horrible broken mess. I don’t know if it ever got finished, but here’s the moddb entry for it. https://www.moddb.com/mods/hx I don’t believe they can hack saving into it because of how DX multiplayer works.
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2019 02:16
|
|
|
Farm Frenzy posted:prague is a great deus ex hub because you can do as many B&E's as you want From a few pages ago. For some reason, I find this aspect of the DX games most incongruous in the original, and in HR. The first half of DX you're a cop, and in HR you constantly return to your office. There is no way Jensen or rookie Denton could justify rooting through someone else's desk and eating their candy bars and taking their coffee change, not until a videogame betrayal plot twist occurs and you go rogue. It's sorta forgivable with the first DX because the developers were sort of making things up as they went. But for some reason this is completely justified in MD, because you are explicitly a double (triple???) agent infiltrating Interpol. And there are full-blown story missions set inside your own HQ where you breach your own security. Jensen will happily justify it to himself. And if the triple agent hypothesis is true then the illuminati would happily tolerate it.
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2019 04:07
|
|
|
jojoinnit posted:There's a loose story tying them together but it's just videos in between missions iirc. Get 1, it's cheap and excellent. 2 is if you loved it and want more of the same. That's a good advice! 2 is better and missions from 1 get imported there. The best deal is getting 2 with Legacy Pack and play the full experience. The point of those missions is that completing each one isn't that hard, but it's just a first step. Then you look for ways to complete those missions in a perfect way, as in never noticed, the target dies in an "accident" so no one looks for you. And then you go for achievements that are just showing off, like do it without ever changing disguise, kill both targets with a single bullet, kill both targets in a single accident, do it with a sword dressed as a vampire (you might think I'm joking here but I'm not). And it's close to immersive sim in spirit: you have variety of gadgets even though using them mostly means it won't be a perfect play, those are things like explosive phones or murder pens. One important improvement over previous games is good and lifelike AI: in most cases if guard sees you where you don't belong they will tell you to stop and lead you to a safe zone; if you're doing something criminal guards will try to arrest you instead of shoot you dead for lockpicking the door. There are a lot of interactions, people with specific schedule - and it's not just targets but anyone. It's easy to see a similar approach working for Deus Ex. And I'd hoped they'd make something like this after Criminal Past which looked like a step in that direction. Make a single playthrough not that hard but give us a lot of bonus objectives and achievements, maybe unlocking stuff for future missions. While we're at it, do you know of similar deus-ex-ish games with approach like this? I'd say Heat Signature. It's a permadeath game where you switch characters on death, equip them with a variety of gadgets and infiltrate spaceships. You use teleporters, timestoppers, switch places with enemies, good old shotguns, rifles, wrenches and swords. There's a progression system through "liberating" systems which unlocks new types of missions and gadgets. You also get more powerful gadgets: early ones have just a couple charges, later ones have more and automatically recharge between missions. Streets of Rogue also looks like this and has an early quote about toilet behavior embarrassing the whole organization, but I haven't played it enough.
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2019 09:16
|
|
|
Khanstant posted:I'm also constantly getting codes to safes and locks I already hacked. I know that's my fault for playing in a way that I do literally every side thing open to me before touching mandatory story progression, but it's not my fault you can basically break into everything as soon as you get into Prague. It's even more problematic than that, I'd say. My recent playthrough I made sure I have no hacking skills and even then you get 1 point of hacking for free and most stuff is locked behind level 1 hack, which means it's not locked at all. I guess they didn't want hacking to be no-brainer augmentation but it means that now you can get almost anywhere without your character even being focused on it.
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2019 09:21
|
|
|
Phobophilia posted:From a few pages ago. For some reason, I find this aspect of the DX games most incongruous in the original, and in HR. The first half of DX you're a cop, and in HR you constantly return to your office. There is no way Jensen or rookie Denton could justify rooting through someone else's desk and eating their candy bars and taking their coffee change, not until a videogame betrayal plot twist occurs and you go rogue. It's sorta forgivable with the first DX because the developers were sort of making things up as they went. You can do plenty of consequence-free B&E in the original DX, it just didn't have as many opportunities because the main hubs didn't have a lot of building interiors. I think the only time there were active negative consequences to it was the convenience store outside of the Lucky Money Club having a burglar alarm. Paris even had the goof where if you break into an occupied apartment the people inside it tell you to break into the one next to them instead since it belongs to a weapons dealer.
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2019 13:50
|
|
|
Doing NG+ in MD and killing everyone feels good  I bought Dishonored 2 and am now in that clinic(?), level after the town, and I am really bored. Should I go on?
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2019 14:32
|
|
|
Maybe change the difficulty? Dishonored 2 levels get to their higher point later, but I can't imagine not being euphoric of those early levels.
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2019 14:42
|
|
|
Sleeveless posted:You can do plenty of consequence-free B&E in the original DX, it just didn't have as many opportunities because the main hubs didn't have a lot of building interiors. I think the only time there were active negative consequences to it was the convenience store outside of the Lucky Money Club having a burglar alarm. Paris even had the goof where if you break into an occupied apartment the people inside it tell you to break into the one next to them instead since it belongs to a weapons dealer. Original has the spook call in Paris where Icarus comes to your infolink and calls you out for burglarizing in a motel, and notes how your ethics are flawed. Icarus was SCARY when you were 13 and on your 1st playthrough ever.
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2019 14:51
|
|
|
Valtonen posted:Original has the spook call in Paris where Icarus comes to your infolink and calls you out for burglarizing in a motel, and notes how your ethics are flawed. Icarus was SCARY when you were 13 and on your 1st playthrough ever. Oh yeah I had the exact same experience. I think I even reloaded because I thought there was some sort of bug because the call comes out of nowhere and is only explained down the line. Going back to Hitman - I think it's a useful game to bring up because it really does show up how for the vast majority of games the story is an entirely optional layer placed atop the gameplay systems.
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2019 17:05
|
|
|
Valtonen posted:Original has the spook call in Paris where Icarus comes to your infolink and calls you out for burglarizing in a motel, and notes how your ethics are flawed. Icarus was SCARY when you were 13 and on your 1st playthrough ever. Observe your motivations for breaking the arbitrary laws of the current government. I always liked this one, it made me feel particularly called out. Like oh yeah, I can see how my approach is not that different from MJ12's, maybe.
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2019 18:53
|
|
|
Regarding the unrepentant B&E in MD, I'd also like to add there are plenty of places you break into where the emails and stuff clearly indicate the person is in dire poverty, like, problems you could solve with a little cash given. Instead you're presented with rewards for breaking in like it's the most natural thing in the world. Doesn't help that guards and police don't seem to notice or care about the break ins, even in their own stations. They seen a high tech aug walk out of a restricted zone and their only reaction is a mild suspicion towards an empty spot in the building.
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2019 19:42
|
|
|
ilitarist posted:Maybe change the difficulty? Dishonored 2 levels get to their higher point later, but I can't imagine not being euphoric of those early levels. Yeah no kidding, the second I saw how many objectives were in that first real level I was blown away.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2019 02:05
|
|
|
Alchenar posted:Going back to Hitman - I think it's a useful game to bring up because it really does show up how for the vast majority of games the story is an entirely optional layer placed atop the gameplay systems. I was always into the game story or choice and consequence stuff but the older I get the more I get disillusioned with videogames trying to be books or movies. If there's any more interactivity than in Dragon's Lair game then the best-case scenario is you get is a decent book/movie with horrible pacing and some reaction to some of your choices. Greatest stories told in videogames are the ones you can't do in books or movies. Just like probably some of the best detective novels (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd) can't be turned into movies without losing their main thing. Even relatively dumb stories that would suit some B-movie action shlock can become powerful when using the medium correctly, like Spec Ops The Line, or even interactive fiction like Galatea or Photopia. The same goes for Deus Ex, a little. There's a grand story in the background, but I'm sure none of us was blown away by the story of prosthetic engineer deciding that zombie apocalypse is better than people using enhanced glasses and wrenches. We remember a joy of glimpsing into other people's stories through their emails, getting scolded for visiting women WC, seeing how a guard went looking for us and found a gas mine instead. And that's the reason to get greater stories out of something like Skyrim, a game full of one-dimensional characters and dumb plots yet allowing for all of its parts to interact on a special level in a huge world. Same with Hitman, there's background plot similar to Illuminati bullshit you see in Deus Ex games but the real story of the game is you discovering everything about your target and Groundhog Day-ing the world around them till you know everything about it. For all I care, it's more original storytelling than any of those Planescape Torment walls of text; those walls of texts still are not as great as conventional literature. But no Homer or Shakespear or Chekhov has ever allowed you to experience the story you get in Hitman; Hitman devs don't try to up those guys but instead realize that they're making a game and it might mean much more than Simon Says with a novel or movie attached to it.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2019 09:02
|
|
|
Continuing my Xbone playthrough of MD and I'm hitting some hilarious bugs. During the first talk with Miller in his office the game kept giving me hacking points (at least the notifications over and over, I don't think the bar kept going up sadly), I'm still seeing the occasional misspellings in subtitles when I talk to people but best of all is that I've somehow got a 10mm pistol permanently attached to me. I noticed there was a weird thing whenever I looked down but it wasn't until I focused on it and moved the camera that I figured out what it was:  ^ that's it floating below me there  I'm enjoying it immensely because it's been long enough that I forgot the story beats from my first playthrough on release but I'm so disappointed (again I guess) that there's zero dialogue for going through the women's bathroom in this one.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2019 09:19
|
|
|
Imagine if in the original Deus Ex the infolink worked like the codec does in Metal Gear Solid and time froze as you were forced to watch an animated GIF of a character's lips flapping while the call played. Or if it was like Dead Rising and you had to actually answer it.jojoinnit posted:Continuing my Xbone playthrough of MD and I'm hitting some hilarious bugs. During the first talk with Miller in his office the game kept giving me hacking points (at least the notifications over and over, I don't think the bar kept going up sadly), I'm still seeing the occasional misspellings in subtitles when I talk to people but best of all is that I've somehow got a 10mm pistol permanently attached to me. I noticed there was a weird thing whenever I looked down but it wasn't until I focused on it and moved the camera that I figured out what it was: That rules. If only you could actually shoot it.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2019 14:47
|
|
|
Foot Gun real.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2019 15:02
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 22:23 |
|
|
From: GHermann//UNATCO.15431.76513 To: JManderley//UNATCO.00013.76490 Cc: ANavarre//UNATCO.9954.1131 Subject: problem with skul-gun
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2019 18:23
|
|
