Jason Moyer on 31/1/2017 at 05:43
What a load of shit. And, at least on PC, I bet a lot of those lost sales were due to their stupid microtransaction model. So basically Squeenix tried out an experimental feature, everyone hated it (while the game itself reviewed well), and now they're killing the final prequel game because of their own stupidity.
froghawk on 31/1/2017 at 06:05
So much of what they did with MD was an insult to the fans and a huge disservice to a wonderful game, and now they're gonna respond with even more of the same. When will they learn?
Melan on 31/1/2017 at 09:54
Quote:
Eurogamer reports that inside sources have said that developer Eidos Montreal has moved the majority of its efforts towards developing the next game in another rebooted series, Tomb Raider.
The more things change...
heywood on 31/1/2017 at 23:06
Hopefully they recognize that the poor sales were due to problems with their vision and execution, and not a lack of interest in Deus Ex titles.
There are a lot of lessons to be learned I think.
/rant on
One problem was the long wait time between DXHR and DXMD, which was exacerbated by the publisher’s indecision. Remember they wanted to get away from making big, expensive, high stakes AAA titles, and focus more on tablet gaming and episodic gaming? They sunk time and resources into The Fall, which was to be the first of a spin-off series, then abandoned their plans for further episodes. Afterward, it seemed to take a while to get going on Mankind Divided because the key people were busy on other projects. The franchise lost momentum and the long wait caused fan interest to wane somewhat.
Another problem was their vision of creating a Deus Ex “Universe” of cross-marketed products including apps, mobile games, books, and clothing. This isn’t Star Wars. I doubt they made any money off of that stuff, and the time and energy wasted producing it could have been put into the game. That’s especially true of DX GO and Breach Mode. If you want to fashion DX into a mobile puzzle game, fine. If you want to make a free-to-play arcade version of the game, fine. But please Eidos Monteal, prioritize your developer resources to make sure the main game gets finished. The extra stuff rides the coattails of the main game.
Cutting missions out of the campaign to sell as DLC didn’t help either. Nor did the obnoxious pre-order pyramid scheme they first announced. And they were kind of deceptive in how they marketed Breach, which led to a lot of teeth gnashing when people became aware of all the microtransactions in the game. A lot of people jumped to assume that the main game was afflicted with advertising push, or you’d have to keep paying more to get all the content. By the time it became clear to everyone that Breach mode was really a separate F2P game and the main game was fine, it was too late because a lot of potential buyers had already passed on it due to all the bad-mouthing on Steam. If SE had messaged it differently, e.g. “hey, we created a F2P game based on Deus Ex and we’re going to bundle it with Mankind Divided” it would have been less of a controversy. All of the bad marketing decisions added up, and generated a backlash with a bunch of users (many who hadn’t even played the game) piling on negative reviews to drive the Steam score down.
I know the marketing bothered a lot of people, but to me, a bigger problem with Mankind Divided was the design of the game which seemed to prioritize the virtual tourist experience over a compelling main plot. The development team over-achieved on world building and under-achieved on the story. And I’m not saying it’s short on gameplay. I spent about 40 hours in my first (and so far only) playthrough, but a completionist who does a lot of ghosting could probably get 60 hours out of it. That’s roughly similar to Human Revolution or Deus Ex. The problem is that most of the game content is in side quests and points of interest, most of which don’t really advance the narrative. And some of the side quests don’t even do much for the world building, e.g. Cult of Personality. I would have happily given up some side quests, POIs, and even some world detail for more meat in the main quest. And maybe an actual climax?
Finally, the writers just didn’t come up with anything interesting to say on the major themes of game. Everyone in the target audience for this game knows that racism is bad. Everyone in the target audience understands that terrorism is not the right response to oppression. If you’re going to tell a story based on those themes, you need to offer something more insightful or thought provoking than putting the player into apartheid so they can see it’s bad. District 9 did a much better job of running with a similar allegory. Human Revolution was also more effective in its use of racism. And it had a better conspiracy to figure out.
froghawk on 1/2/2017 at 00:47
Well, there WAS a microtransaction store for the main campaign, and while the game wasn't balanced in a way that required the store (in fact, I never once opened it - it was easy to ignore). The fact that it was available for the main campaign at all made a lot of people question it. Not to mention the pre-order bonus/DLC consumables being one time use.
Also, Go was developed by a different studio. I don't think that game or any of the other tie in stuff factored into the budget of the main game or even had anything to do with Eidos Montreal (aside from them having to implement the praxis kit rewards from Go), so calling that a misuse of resources seems misguided. Breach is a bit less clear - that was developed by a different team, and I can't tell if it was a team within EM or not. There are rumors that a different team in EM was working on the sequel to MD (which was either untrue or it's now been cancelled?), and another team there was working on the multiplayer for Rise of the Tomb Raider. I doubt there are 4 separate teams at EM, so either Breach, the sequel or both were not being developed there. Anyway, what DID divert resources from the main game was Square's insistence on adding a store.
As for your story criticisms - that's actually EXACTLY how I felt about HR, so this was no surprise to me. It seemed to be building up to something epic, and instead of making a point, it ends with zombies and a caricature antagonist. Actually the same way I feel about District 9, to be honest - the documentary half of it is AWESOME, but then it turns into a generic action film and fails to actually say anything beyond the parallel it's drawing.
Also, I think you're drastically overestimating gamers by saying all of them know that racism and oppression are bad... there's a lot of racism in the tech community.
Many also complained that Jensen didn't really belong in this story, and having him as the protagonist instead of a new interpol agent was a mistake.
Anyway, since I didn't expect the game to say anything, the real problem was obviously that the story was cut in half, not just for the main quest, but for most of the side quests as well. It suffered greatly from middle-of-a-trilogy syndrome, and despite the long run time, there were only 3 large levels outside of Prague and the story didn't have much movement. And people were vocal about this and the game's many other problems. So instead of doing the right thing and trying to address the complaints, they just put the series on hold and insult everyone further, which is awesome.
Renault on 1/2/2017 at 15:46
Ouch, kind of bittersweet. It's amusing to see all of EM's poor decisions come back to bite them, but in the end, no more Deus Ex games is a bad thing. And I'm guessing sales must have been really bad for them to cancel, considering they were obviously looking to build a huge franchise with the Dawn engine and the whole Deus Ex universe thing.
So, I guess we won't be getting any more Thief game either, eh?
Edit: Just saw this, it might make people cry a little bit:
(
http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/01/30/deus-ex-sequel-was-originally-going-to-be-made-by-obsidian-a-ign-unfiltered)
heywood on 1/2/2017 at 16:40
froqhawk - I felt the same was as you at the end of Human Revolution. But when holding it up against Mankind Divided it looks rather better. When playing Mankind Divided, I felt like the developers were trying to beat me over the head with simple and self-evident messages to the point where it seemed like caricature. The conspiracy was also a rather tired and obvious one: the Illuminati are secretly supporting a terrorist organization to get their security measure passed. Yawn. I'm not going to hold up Human Revolution as an example of great writing, but the main story did have more pieces to put together and more twists. Enough to keep me engaged with the story anyway, which Mankind Divided didn't do.
To some extent it did feel like a middle episode of a series, and I'm sure that's what Eidos Montreal intended it to be. But I'm not convinced they had a full story arc written that they chopped in half to make two games. One reason is the ending: The enactment of the Human Restoration Act depends on whether you save Brown. The ramifications of the Act would be really big, so it would be a major fork in the story line. If they did cut a longer story they would have known one ending was canon and one wasn't. If they knew which way it was going to go then why introduce the fork? Also, the ratio of filler content to story content is pretty high for a Deus Ex game. The main story line could easily have been 50% longer, maybe even 100% longer, and still fit within the same game time and development budget, just with less filler. That could be the result of a conscious decision to make a smaller, richer, more sandboxy setting. Or it could be the writers only gave them so much to work with and they had to fill it out until they had enough gameplay to justify a AAA price tag. I'm also not sure what to conclude from revealing the Illuminati are using Jensen to get to Janus. It was an obvious setup for the next game, but also seems like a big spoiler.
Regarding the resources, you're right in that if they skipped all of the extraneous stuff it wouldn't necessarily have meant more resources would be available for the main game. However, I think you also have to consider the bottom line; how much did Square Enix spend on the Deus Ex "Universe" and how much did they get in return on sales? We don't know how much SE spent on Go, Breach, The Fall, all the novels and comics, the apparel and other merch. But given the relative lack of interest, I suspect they all lost money. In any case, it seems like Square Enix isn't content to make great games that sell millions of copies. If they can't milk the franchise through sales of ancillary stuff, they're not interested in continuing it.
Pyrian on 1/2/2017 at 17:34
Quote Posted by heywood
The enactment of the Human Restoration Act depends on whether you save Brown. The ramifications of the Act would be really big, so it would be a major fork in the story line.Eh, Deus Ex has a long history of basically ignoring its optional endings.
heywood on 1/2/2017 at 17:59
So what? DX, IW, and HR were all written as standalone stories, not written as an episode of a series, as has been suggested of Mankind Divided.