ewan on 30/1/2024 at 20:40
So with the sad, but not unexpected news that Embracer has laid off 97 Eidos Montreal staff and cancelled the new but unannounced Deus Ex game, what now?
This is really just a thread for wishful thinking, a bit of fun.
My ideal would be for Nightdive to give us a remaster of the original, and then for Microsoft to buy the IP and let Arkane have a crack at a re-imagined sequel. Harvey Smith has spoken about a lot of regret with Invisible War and a desire to work on the series again. Imagine he and the Arkane team could deliver Invisible War for modern times with all the experience and resources they have now.
Again, wishful thinking but what would you guys fancy?
heywood on 30/1/2024 at 21:15
They dumped Core Decay recently too.
Embracer has certainly turned into an industry wrecking ball and I feel bad for all the developers and studios who were acquired in their buying spree. It's extra frustrating that this is happening because of Saudi oil money.
henke on 31/1/2024 at 10:26
Dunno if I'd lay this all at Embracer's feet. Layoffs are happening all over the games industry at the moment. I don't know the cause behind it, and I'm no expert analyst at these kinda things, but more and more I'm starting to wonder if Squeenix at-the-time cheap-looking $300M sale of all those IP+companies might've been a good idea after all. If they'd held on to them they might be the ones having to do tons of layoffs right now.
Anyway, this sucks.
rachel on 31/1/2024 at 10:43
I'd love to see Arkane Lyon have a go at it. I loved MD but it felt incomplete, it would be nice to have a third game for closure.
ewan on 31/1/2024 at 13:39
100% agree with the Arkane Lyon part!
I've got very mixed feelings about the Jensen games. On the one hand, HR and MD had great gameplay and felt like they were really carrying to ideas of the original forward in that sense.
But I also felt that in terms of story and tone they missed the mark. The original game was about big ideas, but it was also fun and silly in the right places. It had a lighter touch. The new games seem awfully morose and serious. They're just not as fun, somehow.
Invisible War's.coffee war and NG Resonance are hitting the tone bullseye for me.
I'm also painfully aware that Jensen was meant to die at the end of HR, but they brought him back for his popularity. The story in MD seems to be a bit meandering and sets up a lot of plot threads that seem to be a symptom of the ill-fated Deus Ex universe they were trying to set up.
Kieron Gillan in PcGamer once said that he would have liked the series to be an anthology. Each game set in its own reality, using the same concepts and ideas. After the decisive endings of the first 2 games I find that pretty appealing
heywood on 31/1/2024 at 15:15
Quote Posted by henke
Dunno if I'd lay this all at Embracer's feet. Layoffs are happening all over the games industry at the moment. I don't know the cause behind it, and I'm no expert analyst at these kinda things, but more and more I'm starting to wonder if Squeenix at-the-time cheap-looking $300M sale of all those IP+companies might've been a good idea after all. If they'd held on to them they might be the ones having to do tons of layoffs right now.
Anyway, this sucks.
I think the industry is in a post-pandemic correction. There was excess investment in 2020-2021 due to the change in people's habits during the pandemic, and now there's not enough demand for all the projects that were started.
But I single out Embracer for criticism because they've done the most damage, and it started before the pandemic. Their business strategy was to get big fast through acquisition. It was fueled by a 2016 IPO and historically low borrowing costs. It left them with a whole bunch of companies and whole lot of debt that needs to be refinanced periodically. In 2022, the cost of refinancing debt went up and that should have put an end to their buying spree. But that year the Saudi Public Investment Fund put $1B into Embracer in a special private stock purchase, which they used for yet another wave of acquisitions including the former Square Enix properties and businesses relevant here. So they created a predictable cash flow crisis, got a bailout, then borrowed more. Last year, they were negotiating a new deal with the Saudis for $2B more. When the Saudis pulled out, the bubble burst and the layoffs began.
heywood on 31/1/2024 at 17:31
Quote Posted by ewan
100% agree with the Arkane Lyon part!
I've got very mixed feelings about the Jensen games. On the one hand, HR and MD had great gameplay and felt like they were really carrying to ideas of the original forward in that sense.
But I also felt that in terms of story and tone they missed the mark. The original game was about big ideas, but it was also fun and silly in the right places. It had a lighter touch. The new games seem awfully morose and serious. They're just not as fun, somehow.
Invisible War's.coffee war and NG Resonance are hitting the tone bullseye for me.
I'm also painfully aware that Jensen was meant to die at the end of HR, but they brought him back for his popularity. The story in MD seems to be a bit meandering and sets up a lot of plot threads that seem to be a symptom of the ill-fated Deus Ex universe they were trying to set up.
Kieron Gillan in PcGamer once said that he would have liked the series to be an anthology. Each game set in its own reality, using the same concepts and ideas. After the decisive endings of the first 2 games I find that pretty appealing
The problem I see is that Deus Ex is grounded in quasi-near future Earth, and if every story has a huge world-changing ending, you can only do so many of those before you're boxed in. That might have been what Mary DeMarle was trying to avoid with Mankind Divided. Or there was a big ending coming in the next game that we'll not get to now. You could do a James Bond sort of thing, keeping some common elements and characters while changing the villain and conspiracy up, but the world has to go back to normal at the end of each story in order for that to work, and Deus Ex games are all about changing the world.
Story wise, the original is still the best, and nothing will live up to the experience of playing it for the first time at the end of
X-Files first run and right before the terrorist attacks of Sep 2001.
But I think Mankind Divided has the best gameplay and the level design is brilliant. I miss the stronger RPG elements and scarcer resources of the first game, but I don't miss the awful AI.
I would have liked to see the same team make another.
Lockpicker on 15/2/2024 at 15:04
I reinstalled DX:MD last night for my annual playthrough. I find DX:MD to be an exceptional game. Isn't this the second game (story) in a trilogy?
Hoping someone picks it up and finishes the Adam Jensen storyline.
ewan on 15/2/2024 at 23:34
It was, but kind of in a bogus way. Human revolution was meant to be a complete story arc, but jensen was so popular that they resurrected him and aimed for a trilogy instead. It means we've been left with a bit of a limp ending story wise. MD was.tremendous though in terms of gameplay.
ASPYR'S recent tomb raider remaster is a treat, I'd like to see something like that done for the first game. Probably prefer nightdive though.
