Donos on 29/5/2002 at 07:35
By the way, I just read about the skill system being dropped entirely in DX2, in favor of a new "bio-mod" system. I'd personally like to know more about it, but either way I still want more of a focus on demolitions. Making things go boom is an art form, much like sniping or hacking, and it doesn't get the attention it deserves.
From the IGN preview:
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For example, the life leech drones, which help gain life back. Only, there have to be dead bodies around in order to use it (they recycle bodies into energy for you). So not only is that just a little bit creepy, but it also totally relies on the fact that there's corpses lying around all over the place.
Did anyone else, when reading this, think that it would be an awfully convenient way to hide bodies of those you kill? There's another bonus, and the only drawback seems to be that you have to kill lots of people - hardly a challenge with some playing styles. Your average deathmatching carnage machine won't think twice about capping a few homeless to boost his health a bit.
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Given that the main plotline of DX is linear, the ending is still very gray. There is no "right" or "wrong" ending, and if I understand correctly, the plot in DX2 will offer even more choices. So I assume DX2 will naturally be less "black and white."
Oh yeah, this has me excited. DX2 is a bit shorter overall, but has about three times as much dialogue as DX1. That's gotta be a LOT of non-linearity.
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Here's a little idea I had...
This suggestion (or a variant of it) will most certainly be in DX2, I'm sure of it. Not being able to move a body because you don't have enough inventory space, or picking up the same damn combat knife that you don't want over and over again, and having to go into the inventory every time you move a body to drop the stupid things you were forced to pick up. It's just one of those annoyances that everyone experiences in DX1. I'm surprised it got into the first game, and certain it won't get into the second. And I'm sure they'll find a very streamlined, easy-to-use method of doing this.
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Currently, in DX one, if you cloak and you fire a weapon, anyone who's in the area can see you.
Can they see you more easily, the way I described, or is it like the cloak just stops working momentarily? My way seems to be more of a black-market aug drawback sort of way, while the second really isn't a disadvantage (seeing as how you're no worse off than you would be with it turned off).
Also from the IGN article:
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For instance in Deus Ex if you went into a public area and you had your gun out, people would just freak out. Players hated that in general. You just don't think about 'that's my gun out and I shouldn't have it.' It's part of your toolset. It's part of your HUD. So people would just be walking into a bar and people would just start yelling and running and players would be like 'oh man I shoulda put my gun away.'"
I loved this specific part of DX1, it made me feel like I was actually in a public place. But when you get to the weapons side of that whole immersion thing, it was really hit-or-miss. I mean, sure the civilians would react, which was good, but my fellow UNATCO agents never blinked an eye when I strode around the headquarters pointing a pistol at them.
And the weapons themselves lacked that immersive quality. Like it was said above, the weapons made me feel like they were just part of my HUD, when it should have made me feel like "I'm pointing a firearm ahead of me, with a 10mm round chambered and ready to fire, should my left finger happen to tense too much, and anything directly in front of me when that happens is going to have a very bad day."
It made me think about the workmanship of the weapon models, but it should have made me think about the four basic rules of firearm safety (#1: All guns are always loaded; #2: Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy; #3: Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target; #4: Be sure of your target). It made me think "What nice little tracer marks those are", not "What is behind my target, what is in front of my target, what is around my target?"
Part of this is the weapon models. The basic pistol felt like a real gun, since it looked, sounded and acted like a real gun. I tried not to point it at innocents. The stealth pistol, on the other hand, looked toyish and fake, and I didn't think twice about shooting smiley-faces in the wall with it (:D).
Another part of this is the way the game environment reacts to the bullets I fling all over the place. Friendly troops look at me a little funny, and might say "That's against protocol, Agent", but that's it.
Suppose I shoot at an enemy, miss, and hit a civilian in the leg. The civilian grunts a little, then runs away. If I'm lucky, a few little blood spurts will fly out of his leg every once in a while.
I'm not sure exactly what I want to happen, though. Should the civilian drop to the ground, clutch his leg and swear loudly? Realistically, yes, if we want immersion. And of course you'd get the morbid deathmatchers kneecapping civilians just to watch them squirm, which I suppose would reward their style of play. And then DX2 would hit the top of Lieberman's list of Ultra-Violent Games No One Should Ever Play. And Warren Spector would shout "We're only trying to realistically show what happens when you give teenagers deadly weapons in a world with no real consequences!", while everyone else shouts "You're training children to be cold-blooded murderers!" and the game would get banned from Germany and Australia.
DX1 certainly has it's moments, and the fact that I only ever play on Realistic anymore certainly helps. I'm in a shootout with some NSF, ducking behind a short wall, when a tracer line goes a few inches over my head and there's a really loud whizzing sound in my ears. Frightened me so much I retreated back behind another wall, thinking that I came
really close to dying immediately. If it weren't for the tracer and the noise, I never would have felt that. And just today, I'm lining up a shot with my silenced sniper rifle (not using the scope, it was a fairly close target), when another enemy that I didn't even know was right next to me opens up on me with an Assault Rifle. I freak out, jerking the mouse sharply to the left and spasming my trigger finger, and my wild shot ends up disintegrating a ventilation grate. Whoa.
I'll write more later, must get to bed. Can you tell that I have nothing better to do with my nights?
Edit: I'll expound more on my weapon modifications suggestion tomorrow... I really need sleep...
