heywood on 31/8/2004 at 04:40
I just finished playing DX:IW a second time. I wanted to give it another shot before HL2 came out - in part because I had performance problems the first time (have since upgraded) and also because I was too filled with frustration and disappointment to really enjoy the game last year. Anyway, since this forum is almost dead, I figured I ought to start a new discussion by offering up some of the things that left me puzzled this time around. I'd love to hear some other people's take on these.
- Did anybody else find the WTO and Order missions totally arbitrary and unsatisfying? The WTO wants to enlist somebody as important as Alex Denton and then waste their time on completely irrelevant missions like uploading schematics of lame weapons and destroying greenhouses? It's a good thing the game doesn't handle large open areas, because I was half expecting Donna Morgan to send me out into a city park with a pooper scooper to clean up after the unauthorized dog walkers. And why was Lin May Chen so intent on assassinating people when she otherwise seemed like a fairly altruistic person? The purpose of having these early missions seems to be to encourage the player to develop an allegiance to one side or the other, but the irrelevance of the mission goals makes it way too easy to figure out that you're just being given false choices.
- There were too few likable characters in DX:IW and no real allies. In DX1, you had a certain cadre of people who you could trust like Alex, Jaime, Sam, and later Savage. And there were a lot of characters throughout the game that you could respect or empathize with. It even made me feel sad in a way for people like Gunther and Manderley. Overall, I found it much easier to identify with the people of the DX1 world. In the DX:IW world, it seemed like most of the characters you meet are bastards, the rest are pathetic, and you can't trust anyone except Leo.
- Why did they give you the option of leaving Billie alive in Antarctica? I left her alive this time hoping for a little more conversation at the end kind of like with WS in DX1, but she didn't want to talk, only shoot. Speaking of which, I never got a chance to choose the Templar ending on the last level either time I played. Do you have to give the doctor your blood to unlock that ending? I didn't hear another word from Saman after unfreezing Paul in Cairo, so I went to his bunker first on Liberty Island and the only greeting he offered was to suck rockets.
- The endings all seemed like variations on hell rather than competing altruistic visions of what's best for the future of the human race. You can either choose to join any one of three meglomaniac despots to rule the world in tyranny or you trigger the extermination of the human race in a 200 year holocaust. Honestly, I can't remember ever playing a game whose overall tone was so depressing and cynical, so by the end I really just didn't care anymore. It didn't help that Liberty Island was one of the most poorly designed levels in recent memory. I haven't experienced such an unsatisfying ending since Half-Life.
Sorskogen on 31/8/2004 at 11:41
This forum's not dead, i'm here!! *cough*
It's funny you posted such a post because i just played all four endings last night and decided they were all crap. Regardless of what you do each faction still wants a piece of you and will forgive all your past tresspasses providing you go with them at the last second.
I think you can get the templar ending by going straight to the aquinas machine and uploading to the templars rather than going to talk to Saman. Or did you not even get an option to do that when you played?
It was very "Trust no-one" wasn't it? That could have been intentional. The cynical tone is possibly meant to be all clever and relevant to today's society or some such.. blah blah blah... It really encourages a "Bang bang shoot everyone" approach, which i don't usually go for. I didn't even like the precocious Tarsus brats in Cairo. Freaky little annoying older-than-their-years creeps. (I did, however, stop short at mindlessly slaughtering children.) I don't know if you could really trust Leo either because he was such a moron and clearly being manipulated by the Omar who are dead scary and intimidating and they talk funny so they're obviously bad guys. Or something. To start with i thought Klara would be a candidate for a shotgun to the head ("Hey! I'm a hyperactive muppet!!") but in the end she was the only character that i felt sympathy for. Poor little poppet.
The mag-rail only seems lame when Alex uses it. When other characters have it it's devestating. Why is that?? Miserably unfair cruelty.
I didn't understand why Chen wanted to kill everyone either since she was so upset about the rogue seekers in the beginning. Perhaps she was secretly a templar but had to keep putting on a front? It's impossible to like the Order. At all. Whiny hippies. I didn't like the first part of the game one bit. It felt too much like a half-assed re-run of the first game with crappy terrorists. Crappy hippie terrorists. Diediedie!!!
I also left Billie alive and she didn't even show up at the end as far as i know. What was she up to then?
I think one of the best parts was getting to kill Paul Denton because he was such a whiny bitch in the first game. I unfroze him first so that i would get the opportunity later on for a ROCKET TO THE FACE!! In first person view.
Sumgai on 31/8/2004 at 18:48
I just finished playing last night, and overall I was disappointed. It played OK but looked terrible. Makes me wonder if the reviewers and I were playing the same game. (AMD XP2500+, 9800 pro 1Gb RAM, with 1.2 patch)
IMO the WTO see Alex as an unfinished project, an unknown quantity, so those odd missions were more of a test , and also to bring Alex into direct conflict with the other groups in the game.
Lin May Chen is/was a true believer, so she will do what needs to be done for her beliefs.
Leo is a bit thick isn't he :) . True I didn't care about any of the characters, for the most part they were presented one-dimensionally. In DE 1 the guys you refer to supported you in some way, and expressed an empathy for your situation. The only comparable character is Dr Nassif.
Maybe they intended some other action for Billie, but didn't get around to including it, to me the whole game didn't seem to be finished off.
I still had the option to upload to the Templars at the Aquinas comp, even though I didn't give blood or kill Paul.
I didn't think the endings were depressing or cynical (sure the leaders in the game were), it is just the nature of power - no one rules by accident, and those leaders probably genuinely believe that their vision is the best way to go, after all they have spent lifetimes working on them.
The Omar one seemed a bit unfair - it gave the impression of desolation, but given the Omar would be technically sophisticated to have the enhancements they did, and they were traders, would life have been so bad?
I don't think any Illuminati visions were ever altruistic, more a sense of Noblesse Oblige . Maybe you should check the endings of DE 1 again.
I cheated with the alternate endings, I played through to the JC ending then used my *bik viewer to watch the other endings. I couldn't be bothered doing the last parts again. It took me 14 hours to run through the game and I went everywhere except the Illuminati camp on Liberty Island.
Speaking of which I couldn't help feel the contrast between the first time I saw Liberty Island in DE 1 and IW. It was so devoid of any sense of place in IW, that's what makes me feel like it was an unfinished game.
I think a large part of my unhappiness is because I have just come from playing games like Halo and Far Cry, which looked great and were engaging with open spaces, to IW where levels were ridiculously small and the AI not particularly good. (Playing on Realistic BTW). The removal of the skill point system means there is no reason to complete secondary goals, you get all your biomods too soon, I didn't get the only 2 upgrades per weapon rule (as I finished with 5 modded weapons and plenty of mods to spare) and the conveniently place vents if you needed to crawl into a locked room. It just didn't seem that challenging.
heywood on 31/8/2004 at 18:50
I actually didn't try going through UNATCO before talking to Saman. Based on previous discussions I thought you could go and talk to him first like you can do with Paul & JC and Chad & Nicolette. I'll reload a save and try it.
I think you're right that the game was intentionally cynical. Too cynical for me. DX1 makes you feel some pity for the world, gives you a clear enemy to defeat, and sets you up to make a moral choice. In DX:IW, everybody is an enemy, most of the ordinary people aren't worthy of pity, and in the end you basically get to choose which way you want to #%@! over the world.
Speaking of Klara, I found the last encounter with her to be weird. After taking down Morgan and the gaurds to rescue her, she's so squeamish that she stays in panic mode and won't talk until you move the dead bodies out of her sight. I know she decides that she doesn't want to fight anymore, but come on... I wonder whether Dumier follows through on his threat to kill her if you unfreeze Paul first. And now that I think about it, that rescue was the only time I fought any SSC gaurds. They stay pretty much on your side throughout the game.
If you leave Billie alive, she shows up again at UNATCO on Liberty Island. Maybe if I had gone straight there instead of trying to talk to Saman first I would have gotten some conversation out of her.
You're right that the mag rail does seem to do a lot of damage in the hands of the Illuminati Commandos. I was really dissapointed in the mag rail after the way it was hyped up on the Mako mission. It seems to use as much ammo as the sniper rifle but doesn't do as much damage and really pales in comparison to the rocket launcher. And I thought it was kind of weird that the WTO was sending you to investigate and upload the schematic for a weapon that they were actually contracting with Mako to build.
heywood on 31/8/2004 at 22:06
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I didn't think the endings were depressing or cynical (sure the leaders in the game were), it is just the nature of power - no one rules by accident, and those leaders probably genuinely believe that their vision is the best way to go, after all they have spent lifetimes working on them.
The Omar one seemed a bit unfair - it gave the impression of desolation, but given the Omar would be technically sophisticated to have the enhancements they did, and they were traders, would life have been so bad?
I don't think any Illuminati visions were ever altruistic, more a sense of Noblesse Oblige . Maybe you should check the endings of DE 1 again.
In DX1, the western nations were still democratic republics and the Illuminati preferred to work by placing people in key positions where they could influence the course of nations and facilitate cooperation behind the scenes. It's still a conspiracy but not such a sinister one. On the other hand, in DX:IW, the Illuminati sought to exercise power in a dictatorial way through a heirarchical system, like MJ12 did. Another difference was that the DX1 Illuminati professed to believe in individual liberty, achievement, and pursuing spiritual illumination. The DX:IW Illuminati believed in centralized control through corporate monopolies, economic regulation, and spiritual dogma. And to contrast their motives, consider that in DX1, Everett helps you cure the Gray Death while in DX:IW, the WTO is covering up a cure for Nanite Swell 11.
And I was never comfortable with the Helios ending in DX1, but at least in that case the AI was only proposing to become a world administrator. In DX:IW he's talking about forcibly turning the people into the Borg. And although I could sort of agree with the Templars motives (eliminate conflicts over biomodification by eliminating the technology), they were also a heirarchical organization under the command of a ruthless dictator. The renegade ending was a disappointment because it seemed like the only morally acceptable choice - and when you make that choice you get punished with the worst possible outcome.
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Speaking of which I couldn't help feel the contrast between the first time I saw Liberty Island in DE 1 and IW. It was so devoid of any sense of place in IW, that's what makes me feel like it was an unfinished game.
I totally agree. That whole level was a huge dissapointment. First of all, no water? OK, so it's frozen by JC, but how did the island get surrounded by mountains? If they couldn't put water in the game for technical reasons, then why not revisit one of the other areas from DX1? Second, there was basically no level design at all. Aside from UNATCO, the rest of Liberty Island featured a total of five rooms split over three levels. And if you engage the Dentons, the final showdown was neither challenging or particularly interesting.
Having you revisit the ruins of UNATCO HQ sounds like a good idea, but it was really poorly done. First of all, what's an Aquinas router doing there? The only Aquinas router in DX1 was the one you destroyed in Area 51. Second, what's with the signs "Aquinas Router --->" plastered around the building. Also, the layout more or less followed the layout of UNATCO in DX1, but many of the room dimensions and proportions seemed wrong and it just didn't feel right. And the wall, ceiling, and floor textures were all wrong as well. It's not like they didn't have the original levels to build from, so I can't figure out why they didn't do a more convincing job. I did enjoy some of the DX1 easter eggs though (soda machine, skull gun, raised floor in Jacobson's office).
Quote:
I think a large part of my unhappiness is because I have just come from playing games like Halo and Far Cry, which looked great and were engaging with open spaces, to IW where levels were ridiculously small and the AI not particularly good. (Playing on Realistic BTW). The removal of the skill point system means there is no reason to complete secondary goals, you get all your biomods too soon, I didn't get the only 2 upgrades per weapon rule (as I finished with 5 modded weapons and plenty of mods to spare) and the conveniently place vents if you needed to crawl into a locked room. It just didn't seem that challenging.
Well, the AI was at least an improvement over DX1, although it's still pretty bad. I agree that there were _way_ too many biomods and weapon mods available in the game, which cheapened their value. But in hindsight I like the 2 upgrades per weapon rule. DX1 allowed for too much weapon specialization so you ended up building one or two super guns and using them more or less exclusively. DX:IW encouraged you to mod and make use of the other available weapons.
Sorskogen on 31/8/2004 at 22:12
I wonder if JC is insane. It's really hard to decide. You probably want to give him the benefit of the doubt since you played him in the first game but it's never quite how it seems is it?
I swear Billie is not there!! I've looked all over and she's just not there. [SPOILER]Just like when you're supposed to meet her in the mosque to help with the plague victims. She wasn't there for my character who was siding with the WTO but this afternoon (I'm on holiday!!) when i played with a character who did the whiny order quests (i see this one siding with the Templars all the way) there she was. I'm going to play this through following her type of path and see how many differences that makes. [/SPOILER]
I don't know if that warranted a spoiler thingy but better safe than sorry i suppose. Ooooh, that was my first spoiler!! How exciting.
I think the heaps of biomods were so that you could chop and change, as it were, as the situation required.
ilweran on 31/8/2004 at 23:14
Quote Posted by heywood
And I was never comfortable with the Helios ending in DX1, but at least in that case the AI was only proposing to become a world administrator. In DX:IW he's talking about forcibly turning the people into the Borg.
I didn't see the Helios ending like that at all. I suppose it depends on your opinion of Helios, whether you think JC is still there at all. Not that I was particularly comfortable with any of the endings, but I felt the same about DX as well.
ilweran on 31/8/2004 at 23:18
Quote Posted by Sorskogen
It was very "Trust no-one" wasn't it? That could have been intentional. The cynical tone is possibly meant to be all clever and relevant to today's society or some such.. blah blah blah...
Maybe it's just reflection of todays society. Look how depressing and pessimistic Terminator 3 was compared with the second one. Not that DX had happy endings either. And T3 was a really really bad film.
Sorskogen on 31/8/2004 at 23:24
I didn't go and see Terminator 3 because it looked really poo!! But that's probably me being pessimisstic and modern. :cheeky: Was it good then?
Edit: "Was it good then?" :o Sorry. Didn't read properly. Must polish glasses.
cadaver on 1/9/2004 at 14:57
At least Terminator 3 (though it mostly sucked IMO too) [SPOILER]had a sad & powerful ending: it'd be an asskicking & brutal era of rebellion, but with humanity perhaps winning some day[/SPOILER] But in DX:IW you had no chance of being a heroic rebel, you'd always mess up the world *while* being someone's puppet, and that's what makes it so cold.
On my second playthrough I thought DX:IW would have made more sense as a self-sufficient piece of work if the relationships between the trainees would have been more central, and it would have had more teen angst feeling a'la Dark Angel or Buffy. :)
It's as if the creators wanted to go down that road but didn't dare to do that fully, in order to preserve even something of the DX legacy..
