Briareos H on 27/3/2010 at 14:51

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(http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3178507) Here's a short interview with Jonathan Jacques-Belletete, art director.

There are some interesting bits of info in there, like the ability to finish the game without killing anybody.
What he says sounds rather sensible, with a good grasp on a coherent pre-DX world; This : "You'll be facing a lot of human opponents. In terms of robots, we looked at what Deus Ex had, and stuck to that in terms of format, size, and how many there are. We went that same route, and made it more 'current-gen' -- like making them work with our cover system. But yeah, you have your walkers and your patrolling robots." hits the right strings as well.

Still optimistic.

Nameless Voice on 27/3/2010 at 17:51

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Maybe that means that human enemies will hide behind robots' legs to shield themselves from your fire?

EvaUnit02 on 28/3/2010 at 03:23

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Really there shouldn't be any boss fights at all. They're are fast becoming an ever increasingly outmoded concept, at least in Western game design. They're usually accompanied by a sudden unneeded difficulty spike. Fewer games feature them these days, like Bioshock 2 and Gears of War 2. (They've also become glorified cutscenes in some games, littered with "Press X not to die" QTEs).

He might be mean that they're taking a more Japanese approach to bosses (ugh). To be fair, the DX1 bosses suffered from the archaic PC FPS boss design of "just strafe around and keep pumping ammo into him until he dies".

Why is everything in DX3 either sepia or orange? *shrug* Beats the gunmetal grey or shades of brown in many contemporary games, I guess.

EvaUnit02 on 28/3/2010 at 16:22

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I disagree, there's been plenty in Western games, but they are becoming more and more uncommon. The thing is though bosses can seem out of place depending on the game and its setting. Imagine if say FEAR 1 had a boss. All throughout the game you're fighting brutal squad-based AIs who work together:- flanking to get the drop on you, adjusting their strategies to your actions (eg, try to flush you out with grenades if you're camping behind cover; they start camping and blind firing if you're Rambo'ing) etc. Picture how out of place a Japanese style boss would be, with a limited cyclic set of attack patterns that to countered or avoided in specific ways, cliched weak points (eg BLINKING FUCK ME LIGHTS)... etc.

As for an example of Western games with good boss battles, there's the God of War series. They are often very "cinematic" though, after you've drained a certain portion of the enemy's health bar you have to take part in QTE sequences, if you fail them then their health recharges a bit.

Darth Malak in KotOR comes to mind too. He's a pretty powerful opponent who utilises his force powers well. There's Jedi in cryo chambers around the room, he occasionally uses them to recharge his health with a life drain power. Dark side affinity players can make use of this same strategy as well.

Jashin on 29/3/2010 at 00:03

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That has nothing to do with this Japanese/Western dichotomy fools made up. It has everything to do with the type of game it is. The reason bosses seem out of place is cus they're copy&pasted from other types of games and they're not an extension of the basic underlying gameplay.

Megaman, for example, emphasizes shooting and dodging. The megaman bosses feature extensive shoot dodging while giving the enemy an enhanced array of movements, higher HP, and damage conditions. Suddenly a boss is born. Metroid focuses on the same thing, plus specialized attacks - lazers, freeze beams, missles, giving bosses different immunities and vunerabilities. Star Fox 64, same thing, plus locational damage. RPG bosses is all about extending the basic turn-based gameplay. BTW God of War is western-made, but it's hardly a western-style game.

Western games heavily rely on reaction-based gameplay. You can't dodge, you shoot the other guys before they kill you, then you grab some med packs. This basic underlying gameplay doesn't lend well to shoot-dodge-style bosses, and frankly bosses in general. If your bottom-line is to take something out quick, it makes no sense to have an enemy with massive health. That's why there's bosses with QTE that're complete departures from the basic gameplay, whereas the traditional shoot-dodge bossfights are an extension of it.

So the task for western devs is to do for reaction-based gameplay what traditional boss fights did for shoot-dodge gameplay or turn-based RPG gameplay. No one has been creative enough to completely figure it out yet, and the recent trend is to have no bosses at all. That's not the right course of action, that's just giving up.

Finally, this Japanese/Western dichotomy thing is trending toward some very ugly non-gaming related, almost-nationalist BS. Western game development picked up its pace and suddenly people are drawing lines and talking like they don't overlap a copious copious amount, like Nintendo and Sega didn't create a culture of gamer, that somehow Japan /West game development evolved independently. Nobody needs this kind of revisionist horseshit when it should be and largely is a culture of learning and sharing ideas.