heywood on 12/9/2016 at 12:53
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
The biggest problem I have with the story so far is that it shouldn't have involved Adam. His story ended with HR and there's really nothing else to say about him. I'm honestly not sure who/what the protagonist should have been, maybe just some shlub working for TF29 (sort of like how JC is just a rookie at UNATCO).
(Actually, if it turned out Adam was actually a clone of Adam made by Versalife or something, I would buy into him being the protagonist again).
That's a good point. The story would have suited a new character better. But Jensen was such a popular and memorable protagonist, it would have been hard to replace him.
Quote Posted by Renzatic
Just tried out DX:MR DX12 OLOL patch.
...didn't make a damn bit of difference, pro or con. The benchmark gives me 44 FPS with my settings using DX11, and 44 FPS with DX12.
The AMD cards got a nice performance bump from the patch. NVidia doesn't really take advantage of DX12 yet, and the faster GTX cards seem to have lost performance under DX12. For example, the RX 480 is now at the GTX 1070 level under DX12 in this game. :wot:
Quote Posted by Vicarious
Oh, and the facial animations... or should I say, LACK of facial animations and a terrible lip-sync... How is this still acceptable in 2016? Last time I checked, HL2:E1 had way better animations 10 YEARS AGO.
Yeah, the lip-sync is really bad. It's particularly noticeable in the pre-rendered conversations. You have these highly detailed character models and then any illusion of reality falls apart once they start talking. It almost seems like they put more effort into hair animation than lip-syncing.
driver on 12/9/2016 at 15:21
character animations in general are pretty bad in conversation. I don't expect everything to be motion captured, but Adam only seems to have about 4 different movements when he's talking. A bit more variety would have given it a more natural feel.
This game very much feels like a setup for the third in the trilogy the way that Adam's mystery augs are treated as a side quest (and an unresolved one at that) rather than a major plot focus give me the impression of a stand-in while they work on the next proper installment. Though they've kinda written themselves into a corner because that means Adam will be the protagonist again and they'll have to come up with another reason to reset his augs again, which is going to feel a little tired by that point.
Pyrian on 12/9/2016 at 17:30
Wasn't Adam's mysterious past an optional side-quest in Human Revolution, too? A pretty big one, but still. I've noticed he never mentions why he doesn't need pozy, which kind of suggests that they're taking into account the possibility that he doesn't know.
froghawk on 12/9/2016 at 18:08
That was one of the main plot points in HR - Megan was using his DNA without consent in her research because he had weird genes that didn't reject mechanical augments, removing the need for Nupoz.
Jason Moyer on 12/9/2016 at 18:31
In one of the conversations at TF29 (the first time you talk to the psychiatrist, I think) Adam explains that he doesn't take neuropozyne because his body doesn't reject mechanical augments, so he's certainly aware of it.
heywood on 12/9/2016 at 18:47
The private investigator's notes you find in that quest, along with other hints and clues found in HR, suggested to me that Jensen might have been a test tube baby, a product of genetic engineering to produce an aug-tolerant biochemistry. But the Deus Ex wiki has a slightly different story, saying he was one of a group of normal infants subjected to gene therapy and he was the only one who survived the treatment. Either way, it's his one-of-a-kind, genetically altered biochemistry that allows him to tolerate the augs without Neuropozyne. If there was a secret recipe for Adam, it was lost when his parents burned down the lab they were working in. So the Illuminati had to start over, and now have Megan Reed's help in trying to duplicate it.
The origin of the Mystery Augs won't be revealed until the next game. I doubt it will be as central to the story as Jensen's physiology was in HR, but who knows. There's theories going around the web about the new Jensen being a clone, which is hinted at by the two-faced background of the top menu screen when you load the game. So perhaps the Illuminati figured out how to clone Jensen from the DNA that Megan took, and then planted the clone in TF29 for evaluation. It's an interesting theory, and explains why you're being mysteriously spied on, but doesn't really explain the mystery augs. If they can replicate Jensen's high end Sarif augs, why would the new augs be a sloppy add-on job?
Pyrian on 12/9/2016 at 18:54
That's just the fact that he doesn't need it (and the direct consequences thereof), it's not why he doesn't need it, or what that has to do with his past. I'm talking about the White Helix lab stuff.
EDIT: Ninja'd!
Maybe they didn't replicate Jensen's Sarif augs. He died, they recovered the body, then used the augs in the clone. Interestingly, the Harvester subplot demonstrates that they have some sort of technology that can replicate the memories of dead people into a new host, which supports the clone theory.
driver on 12/9/2016 at 22:51
You could ignore the side quests relating to Adam's non-dependence on Nupoz, but if you did look into it then it was well fleshed out. In MD you mostly just travel back to your apartment and have a brief chat with Sarif with one quick scene of breaking and entering at the end that doesn't really answer any questions. There's a few little things here and there sprinkled around, but nothing to really get your teeth into. It very much feels tacked on as a precursor to the next game when it could (and should have, I think) been a major plot point. Adam wakes up to find things installed in his body that he wasn't aware of, if they were hidden, what else could be? That would be my number one priority at that point.
Pyrian on 12/9/2016 at 23:21
Speaking of poorly fleshed out quests, what's up with Vincent Black/Czarnobog? That quest just kind of ended for me when I found his body, despite a number of interesting clues scattered about.
driver on 12/9/2016 at 23:48
On a similar note, did anyone find the apartment with a dead body in it and A bullet casing from a police issued handgun? I figured that would be part of some side mission as it was added to my story items listing, but nothing came of it.