BlackCapedManX on 9/12/2003 at 01:46
So this is (hopefully) going to be a thread for those of us who have played and beaten the game (though a select and esoteric few of us as it may be). What I essentially want to do is start a thread which will be about our experiences with the game (namely, as the title would suggest out reflections, experiences, and ponderings about the goings on of it all).
So yeah, lots of spoilers. Don't read if you haven't played or beaten the game.
Anyway, the first thing I want to address is this:
Has anyone seen a red greasel? There are two data cubes that I've found (one in the Greasel Pit Bar and one in somewhere else) that say the same thing about them being hard to train, and then one in antarctica talking about how they've made the meanest greasels yet (who the females are attracted to, and about how they need to find out how to stop making them eat their young, I found humourous). You can also find a Red Greasel Hunter pistol in the sewers in lower seatle. But has anyone ever seen one? I haven't seen one, and I was pissed because I figured those would be pretty cool to see, and fun to fight.
2nd Thing: What is that jail break about with those thugs near the inclinator in upper seatle? I killed them the first time around, but I don't know if keeping them alive means Saman (I'm assuming Mr. P is the same Mr. Paladin that the guy in the GPit Bar is talking about to the seeker, which would make him either Saman or one of Saman's allies) gets an ally against you later on? And interesting tidbit I'll need to look up on.
3rd Thing: Second time in Cairo, if you go to maintenance below level 107, they say they have an important prisoner and the guard outside tells you to go see Morgan (I think that's her name). Well I kill the guard and hack the panel to go in (I didn't get the code earlier by sparing what's his face from the Harvester), and then kill the now-hostile WTO guard on the inside, but no-one's in there. I drop down to the lower area to find the corpse of a SSC guard, but nothing of any real significance. This is of particular interest to me because the loading screen for the map "levels 107-108" shows morgan in that little area, but she's not there when I show up. Can anyone tell me what's supposed to be there (as we know the game has a tendancy to forget to load characters sometimes)?
4th Thing: Anyone else put off by how weak the Dragon's Tooth Sword is in this game (anyone else managed to find it for that matter? devious minds these level designers have, devious minds)? It felt kinda like the difference between the Laser Rapier in SS and the LR in SS2. Apparently the one in SS wins indiscriminately (flavorfull language, it's uposed to be a really good weapon from what I hear is what I mean to say), so when I found it in SS2 I was like, wow, I can go kick some ass now. And then it sucked. I felt the same way here, when it did a negligably greater amount of damage than the energy blade (for that matter anyone else pissed about how weak that thing is? I take down people faster with the baton!) I felt like I was being ripped off. Feh.
Anyway, comments, remarks, whatever, just trying to get a thread going.
ESpark on 9/12/2003 at 23:07
Red Greasels were prolly simply just not put in. I rationalized it that those datacubes at the base were pre-Collapse cubes, and the Red Greasels might've simply died out since then, for some reason or another. Sure, I'd have liked to have seen them too.
The thugs? Damned if I know. Prolly some path that doesnt go anywhere, or was supposed to go somewhere else.
The 'special prisoner' thing is if you don't go with the Illuminati dudes - they capture Klara and you have to rescue her.
Dragon's Tooth? Yeah, kinda weak. I heard it does do more damage than a normal energy sword, tho.
HB8V9 on 10/12/2003 at 02:42
The red greasels are in the abandoned versalife building in antartica.
I've passed DX the Omar way and JC's way. I'm not impressed.
Who wrote this plot? The irony of the WTO and the Order both being run by Nicollete DuClaire isn't lost on anyone who realises their missions are exactly the same. The missions themselves leave much to be desired, the WTO requires you to be in Cairo to destroy Nassif's uncle's illegal garden... come on!
The level design is just terrible. Putting the illuminati base right beside the statue of liberty? Signs telling you where to go, absolutly demolishing the suspension of disbelief? "Aquinas core ---> this way!". I'm pretty sure that sign should read "Alex Jacobson's office". Why on earth must every exit point for a level have a door? Walking into load zones just not good enough? I was excited to go see UNATCO again but suddenly there is this ugly wooden door, of a similar texture to the ones in Lower Seattle. Also, the Inclinator isn't really a plausable mass transit device, especially with all the entrances reading "maintainance". The Cairo level is a slap in the face, reminding me of Vivec from Morrowind, with somehow LESS detail. I'd like just one extranious room, please. If it's in the level, you will be going there for a mission, without fail. "Outside", if you can call the maze with a skybox on top outside, is awful, more blatant signs designed only for you, more simplistic architecture and terrible scale. In the UNATCO ruins, the ceilings must be 30 feet high!
Whatever happend to the conversations of Deus Ex? Hardly anyone can be talked to, and scripted conversations you cannot interact with hold no appeal. At least when JC was talking with no emotion in his voice, he actually had something to say, not like Alex D, who's female version's reply of "I love it when you talk dirty" to Saman is perhaps the WORST DELIVERY EVER. They should have hired Keanu Reeves to put his thespian spin on this dialouge.
Gameplay wise, this game makes no improvements to Deus Ex, it even manages to take many steps backwards. Since when was the choice of many grenades emergant gameplay? Limiting ammo to one type just makes no sense, regulating some weapons to never be picked up. Why carry the pistol after you have the SMG? Weapon mods? The only usefull ones are glass disruption and the various damage improvements, and the turrets activated by ilicitly breaking glass really are no problem for your character. Multitools are garbage without lockpicks and skills, most locked doors have a blatant vent to avoid the door, anyways. Combat is awful, none of the guns feel like they have any punch to them, the SMG seemingly is surgically grafted to your forearm, enemies take bullets like raindrops, but then are blown away like a ragdoll in a hurricane after you kill them. The ragdoll physics are just terrible... I throw a corpse 10 feet in the air for some reason, and then get to watch it descend and bend in ways impossible to the human skeleton. Not having the option to reload takes some skill out of combat, limiting this emergant gameplay that is only present in hacking a turret or blowing it up. You can disable something, control it through hacking or bot domination, or blow the shit out of it.
The one improvement of this game over the original is Tracer Tong's voice acting.
[edit]
Ohh yeah, and I loved going to Cario twice. No, really. The game i passed in 8 hours just wasn't long enough, so we got to reuse a level, awesome!
BlackCapedManX on 10/12/2003 at 04:48
*Thumbs Up*
Excelent rant, I'm glad I'm not the only who dispised Cairo.
I think the story was good, but fairly obvious, and with what plot twists it had (Saman being a templar for exaple) being of much less significance than the ones in DX1. What makes the plot good are all the little subtleties that the game makes. The difference between how Plauge 11 is address in the medina and in the arcology, for example, though I think the forshadowing with the guy in the coffee shop in Trier is excellent ("next thing you'll find out the WTO and the Order are working for the organization!").
The last level pissed me off in more ways than I can mention. First of all, Liberty island is and ISLAND, so whether or not JC can control weather doesn't acount for it having grown walls of ice or rock or whatever (especially seeing as how these walls happen to have doors in them). Somehow having all three factions there is a bit excessive to me, and why can't JC download the file things that you need to get for him by himself? Inside of UNATCO was weird, cool because it was totally desolate compared to the first visit, but it seemed too dark, too dead (why did JC put the aquinas hub here again? it's been taken over by bums who apparently had to swim to an island to find somewhere to live), and I agree that it should have said "Alex Jacobson" and not "Aquinas Hub". The last level in DX1 was executed so well and the last level of IW seems like a jumbled mess.
The levels were definately too small. I hear everyone being excited about thief coming out with this engine and whatnot.... not going to be that exciting with maps this size.... not unless they have multiple maps per level in thief. Loading times were a pain, not because they were particularly long, but because there was so many of them.
I like what they did with the grays though, because I hated those things in the first game, and the way they had them not suck in this one was nice contrast (that and when I freed the first one in the Mako biolabs it went and killed the now enemy scientist, DAMN HER and not understanding why I must kill this man who is shooting at me!). I think there could have definately been some more clarification though as to why or how or whatever means JC managed to get them on his side.
Jason Moyer on 10/12/2003 at 14:55
If you talk to all of the Grays you meet, they explain to you what JC did to help them.
Jason
easterlingman on 10/12/2003 at 18:08
Well.. after reading all of that it finally dawned on me that maybe I shouldn't have enjoyed the game so much, and I probably shouldn't be playing it through again now. I mean, with all those flaws, it's bound to be a complete disaster, right?
There were only a few realism shattering flaws that I noticed.
One: Two or three times, ambient AI accidentally set themselves on fire.
Two: Mentioned in another thread, the inclinator is rather impractical as a means of mass transportation.
Three: Traveling to locations from JC's past that were conjured up in his comatose sleep by terraforming nanites seems a bit contrived.
Having said that, Deus Ex: The Conspiracy is by far the better game, but I have high hopes for Deus Ex 3.
And I think DX:IW would have been a much nicer game if it included (
http://eastsdomain.com/mp3/synapse.mp3) more catchy music like DX:TC.
foldy on 10/12/2003 at 23:30
Quote:
Originally posted by BlackCapedManX The last level pissed me off in more ways than I can mention. First of all, Liberty island is and ISLAND, so whether or not JC can control weather doesn't acount for it having grown walls of ice or rock or whatever (especially seeing as how these walls happen to have doors in them). Somehow having all three factions there is a bit excessive to me, and why can't JC download the file things that you need to get for him by himself? Inside of UNATCO was weird, cool because it was totally desolate compared to the first visit, but it seemed too dark, too dead (why did JC put the aquinas hub here again? it's been taken over by bums who apparently had to swim to an island to find somewhere to live), and I agree that it should have said "Alex Jacobson" and not "Aquinas Hub". The last level in DX1 was executed so well and the last level of IW seems like a jumbled mess.
I came away from the final area thinking, "Gee, that was an embarrassement to level designers everywhere."
There was just no sense to any of it. It also felt more like a rejected level from Serious Sam than a Deus Ex map.
terrannova on 11/12/2003 at 05:10
Agreed. A definite 4 out of 5 game and they took steps BACKWARDS in many many areas in this game.. Only the storyline and characters and revisiting areas and characters in the first game made me come back for more.
1. The very fact that JC Denton ending up choosing to merge with Helios pissed me off. I knew he would lose his very identity as well as force others to continue to control the world with machinery, and sure enough in Deus Ex 2 he did just that.
2. What the HECK is with the tiny map size as well as the distance you can see in each map compared with the first game. The first game from 1999 beats this is every way. Oh and Liberty Island actually looks and feels like an island in Deus Ex I.
3. Where's the good music? There's like NO tunage at all this time 'round. Why did they have all the cool music scores of Deus Ex only to be nothing but repetetive and quiet tunes with nothing to them in Deus Ex 2? grrrr...
4. Voice Acting.. ok, the voice acting wasn't actually too bad. But compared with the first game? Ok yeah, it's bad.
5. Alex Jacobsens office.. UNATCO.. This is NOT the UNATCO I saw in Deus Ex.. ok sure, of course it's been through he** and back but why does the architecture look so much different. And why would they replace that nice shiny mirror floor they had in there beforehand?
6. Virtuall NO references to Walton Simons, President Mead, Bob Page, and Morgan Everett. Did these characters have NO influence 20 years later on the events in Deus Ex I? Why is Chad Dumier leader of the WTO?
7. Terrible endings. All 4 of them. Horrible. All evil endings too. JC loses his identity, Paul succums to his brothers fate and doesn't even TRY to convince him otherwise.. The OMAR Empire take of the world? haha. Lets see a group of cyborgs take over the world within 20 years after a disasterous collapse.
easterlingman on 11/12/2003 at 14:16
A couple points:
1. The map sizes were reduced so the game would work with XBOX's limited memory. (yeah, I know)
2. As far as the endings go, the world of DX2 included all of the endings from DX1. IE: JC merged with helios, the Illuminati were back in power, and the Collapse happened. I wonder how they're going to manage integrating the endings of DX2 with DX3.
3. Liberty Island in DX2 is no longer an island.
4. I agree completely about the final map.. but that could just be attributed to deadlines and having exceeded them. I mean, look at System Shock 2's Body of the Many compared to every other map in the game. These people cannot follow a time schedule.
5. Yeah, what's with the absence of Walton Simons? I mean.. he did die in the first game, but wasn't that his voice I heard in the DX2 intro? I am guessing that Chad became the leader of the WTO after sleeping with our little Niccolete.
ESpark on 11/12/2003 at 21:01
Quote:
1. The very fact that JC Denton ending up choosing to merge with Helios pissed me off. I knew he would lose his very identity as well as force others to continue to control the world with machinery, and sure enough in Deus Ex 2 he did just that.
It was an ending in DX. You propose they should've ignored it because you didnt like it? If anything, the "every DX ending actually happened" idea was interesting - that way, everyone can say "JC did my ending". If you loved the Helios-Denton merger ending from DX1, you can look to the Helios-sounding JC Denton in DX2. If you loved Tong's ending, you can look at the collapse. If you liked the Illuminati ending, you can look at how the WTO and the Order, Illuminati subgroups, took over the world in the collapse.
Quote:
2. What the HECK is with the tiny map size as well as the distance you can see in each map compared with the first game. The first game from 1999 beats this is every way.
People whine about the performance with the sizes as it was - if I knew my game had performance issues, I'd not make BIG ASS maps.
Quote:
Oh and Liberty Island actually looks and feels like an island in Deus Ex I.
in DX2, Liberty Island isn't an island - the water is frozen over. Based on the fact that Sid talks about a Nanite Swell over LibIsle, its possible LI is experiencing Nano Winter.
Quote:
3. Where's the good music? There's like NO tunage at all this time 'round. Why did they have all the cool music scores of Deus Ex only to be nothing but repetetive and quiet tunes with nothing to them in Deus Ex 2? grrrr...
:shrug: Difference of opinion.
Quote:
4. Voice Acting.. ok, the voice acting wasn't actually too bad. But compared with the first game? Ok yeah, it's bad.
Yes, I'm
quite eager to believe you. At least Alex has more emotion than JC did in the first game. Hell,
JC has more emotion than JC did in the first game. Need I remind you of "A BOMB!"?
Quote:
5. Alex Jacobsens office.. UNATCO.. This is NOT the UNATCO I saw in Deus Ex.. ok sure, of course it's been through he** and back but why does the architecture look so much different. And why would they replace that nice shiny mirror floor they had in there beforehand?
You sure? Feel free to do some comparisons.
Quote:
6. Virtuall NO references to Walton Simons, President Mead, Bob Page, and Morgan Everett. Did these characters have NO influence 20 years later on the events in Deus Ex I?
Using our own history as a guideline, a great many facts and knowledge was lost during the West's own 'Collapse' - the Dark Ages. People forgot quite a lot, and it had to be re-discovered.
Take the game Fallout 2, for instance. Outside of the Enclave, nobody knew what the US was. Nobody knew what the President was.
The normal people of DX2 aren't going to remember the director of FEMA, the last president of the US, some Versalife bigwig, and some other guy*. Too busy surviving.
Oh, and Chad points out that all the Illuminati families died out during the Collapse. Everett was obviously one of those families.
* These are what the normal people of DX1 thought of these people. We were JC Denton, so we learned about all this stuff. The general public didnt know any of it.
Quote:
Why is Chad Dumier leader of the WTO?
Because Chad and Nicolette reformed the Illuminati during the Collapse. She'd be the Order figurehead, Chad would be the WTO figurehead. Eventually, they'd merge the two groups into a Rule by One - the Illuminati.
Quote:
7. Terrible endings. All 4 of them. Horrible. All evil endings too. JC loses his identity, Paul succums to his brothers fate and doesn't even TRY to convince him otherwise.. The OMAR Empire take of the world? haha. Lets see a group of cyborgs take over the world within 20 years after a disasterous collapse.
Well, the basis for the endings isn't as different as DX's - There's a Helios-Centric ending, an Illuminati-centric ending, a "Trash the System" ending..
Sides, The Omar ending makes sense. After trashing all the leaders, there's a 200 year war called the Great Collapse. In the process, the world is basically toast, and normal humans barely survives in small bands. The Omar, who early in the game said they try to increase adaptability, manage to not only survive, but thrive on Earth and in other enviroments.
