Sulphur on 22/6/2010 at 15:00
It's been common practice to halt the proceedings around a cutaway animation in games for a while now. What you're proposing is that a guard sees you during the double takedown and opens fire right in the middle of the animation - realistic, but something that'd cause some amount of grief to the player.
However, and interestingly enough, that's what happens during the claymore aug scene. They might not be swarming the point of impact, but at least one of them is definitely shooting at Jensen during the time slowdown bit where the guards around him are thrown back from the blast.
Eldron on 22/6/2010 at 16:27
Quote Posted by Sulphur
It's been common practice to halt the proceedings around a cutaway animation in games for a while now. What you're proposing is that a guard sees you during the double takedown and opens fire right in the middle of the animation - realistic, but something that'd cause some amount of grief to the player.
However, and interestingly enough, that's what happens during the claymore aug scene. They might not be swarming the point of impact, but at least one of them is definitely shooting at Jensen during the time slowdown bit where the guards around him are thrown back from the blast.
I'd imagine it's like in fallout 3 or avp3, where they'll still be able to shoot and hit you.
Some of those takedown scenes are way too long though, especially the wallbreak thing, should definately be shortened down.
Papy on 22/6/2010 at 16:56
Quote Posted by Eldron
Weapons were mostly spray and pray
I'm guessing you're not really into action RPG and more into true FPS that only pretend to be RPG with some superficial elements. To me, the "spray and pray" shooting is essential to an action RPG.
Anyway, without it Deus Ex would have been just another mindless and "fun" (read boring) FPS, with a clunky story, extremely bad AI, bad level design... Personally, I overlooked all those flaws while playing in big part because of the combat system. Without it, instead of always concentrating on trying to find solutions in order to minimize my chance of dying, I would have spent my time doing a few fun and easy headshots while noticing every flaws of the game... and I would have ended up thinking the game was bad.
Just look at Invisible War. Part of its failure, at least for me, was because it tried to "improve" the combat system and make it more FPS player friendly. Because of that, it ended up lacking the tension associated with combat unpredictability. So every other flaw of the game became obvious.
As for having "really little visual feedback on the weapons to make them feel really good", let's say I really don't care about how "cool" a game looks. I guess I'm just to old for that. For me, "cool" has a negative connotation (i.e. dumb and superficial).
thiefinthedark on 22/6/2010 at 17:18
Well, I must say, It seems that every prediction I made in my thread to Rene some years back has succinctly come to pass. Vindication feels very, very bittersweet for once though. God how I wanted this game to not suck as hard as it is evidently going to.
Th4if, I weep tears of agony at the thought of the torture that you are being born from at this moment. Will none of the games that inspired me to enter this industry remain sacred?
Nihilism on 22/6/2010 at 19:07
Quote Posted by thiefinthedark
Well, I must say, It seems that every prediction I made in my thread to Rene some years back has succinctly come to pass. Vindication feels very, very bittersweet for once though. God how I wanted this game to not suck as hard as it is evidently going to.
Th4if, I weep tears of agony at the thought of the torture that you are being born from at this moment.
Will none of the games that inspired me to enter this industry remain sacred?Not the games; they're just a point of familiarity for fanatics. What won't be defiled, are the developers behind them. Warren Spector is hard at work at Epic Mickey, which is looking to be an awesome game. After that, as he claims, Disney may grant him the chance to create a pet project -- it might not be called Deus Ex, but we'll all know what it is if/when we see it. I'd much rather play Deus Ex not named Deus Ex than a game called Deus Ex that plays nothing like Deus Ex.
Eldron on 22/6/2010 at 19:15
Quote Posted by Papy
I'm guessing you're not really into action RPG and more into true FPS that only pretend to be RPG with some superficial elements. To me, the "spray and pray" shooting is essential to an action RPG.
Anyway, without it Deus Ex would have been just another mindless and "fun" (read boring) FPS, with a clunky story, extremely bad AI, bad level design... Personally, I overlooked all those flaws while playing in big part because of the combat system. Without it, instead of always concentrating on trying to find solutions in order to minimize my chance of dying, I would have spent my time doing a few fun and easy headshots while noticing every flaws of the game... and I would have ended up thinking the game was bad.
Just look at Invisible War. Part of its failure, at least for me, was because it tried to "improve" the combat system and make it more FPS player friendly. Because of that, it ended up lacking the tension associated with combat unpredictability. So every other flaw of the game became obvious.
As for having "really little visual feedback on the weapons to make them feel really good", let's say I really don't care about how "cool" a game looks. I guess I'm just to old for that. For me, "cool" has a negative connotation (i.e. dumb and superficial).
I bet you'll get a kneejerk reaction if I say gears of war and modern warfare.
But then again, I'm flawed in the way that I can enjoy the deepest roleplaying game to the most visual shooter.
It's dumb saying that a more polished segment of a game makes the rest of the game worse, but as I've said with bioshock, it's never a reason to remove the rest of what made a game good, and it's not the cause.
I got some really good examples of what made deus ex combat deep, even though I think it lacked the visual, audio and control polish that could've helped it, but saying that "cool" is something you associate with something bad is not a good example as to why you dont want it, it's just backwards behavior.
I mean, you walked around in a trenchcoat and sunglasses, and even that didn't ruin the fantastic things about deus ex.
Ps. the joke is probably on me soon enough anyway, since my weak area is the inventory stuff, if they simplify that, then I might become all grumpy aswell.
Ostriig on 22/6/2010 at 19:42
Cheers, both of you!
Anyway, visuals look good as far as I could tell from the cam. Interesting styling and use of light. And a very old-school "skul gun" look to Tong's arm there. Pleased to say I didn't get the feeling the conversation system was anything like Oblivion's persuasion minigame, thumbs up on that. I didn't care for the third person cover, but that's hardly surprising or new. And I'm curious whether that quick-selection interface that appears to replace the toolbelt pauses the game or not. Also look forward to seeing the inventory screen proper. While I'm at it, I thought it was a nice touch to bring interactive keypads back, and the security terminal interface is looking delightfully familiar.
Quote Posted by Eldron
Some of those takedown scenes are way too long though, especially the wallbreak thing, should definately be shortened down.
Yeah, that's definitely the impression I got as well, way too long. I timed 3 seconds for the punch knockout, 5 seconds to punch through the wall and break the guard's neck, and a whooping 8 seconds roll time for skewering those two guards. When they announced it originally, I was thinking it would be something like a second or two, a quick animation and then back in control. And what the hell's with that blue light around his fist just before punching the wall, anyway? Just seems out of place and gaudy.
Quote Posted by Eldron
Nothing out of the way wrong, it just wasn't something that was too fun, but I guess that even further promotes the fact that everyone was better off avoiding it.
Weapons were mostly spray and pray [...]
On this I'm not too sure, though. I definitely agree that there was plenty of room to improve on DX's combat component, but I also do love tying in character building with weapon handling, including accuracy. Though the original's range of evolution was probably too wide, I don't necessarily disapprove of having a hard time effectively using weapons your character's not specialised in.
Quote Posted by thiefinthedark
Th4if, I weep tears of agony at the thought of the torture that you are being born from at this moment. Will none of the games that inspired me to enter this industry remain sacred?
I'm not sure I follow. I can totally understand disappointment and frustration at an unworthy sequel, I've been there, but I'd much rather have a developer try and fail than not try at all. At least if they try, there's the
possibility of something good coming from it. And if they screw up, it's not like that will detract from my enjoyment and appreciation for the original title, I'll just scoff at the botched opportunity.
thiefinthedark on 22/6/2010 at 20:01
Quote Posted by Ostriig
I'm not sure I follow. I can totally understand disappointment and frustration at an unworthy sequel, I've been there, but I'd much rather have a developer try and fail than not try at all. At least if they try, there's the
possibility of something good coming from it. And if they screw up, it's not like that will detract from my enjoyment and appreciation for the original title, I'll just scoff at the botched opportunity.
The issue that concerns me is that with both of these games, we are looking at series' that have already had relatively sub-par sequels that did not sell nearly as well as their predecessors and received a lukewarm reception at best.
If they screw up again on either of these, do you think we'll see another any time soon? Not likely. The developers will look at the reception and, as always, blame it on piracy or a poor market rather than admit "We really, really screwed the pooch with this one". As a result, publishers will shelved the series in question permanently as the suits in control presume that they just don't have enough "Mass market appeal".
Which, in and of itself, will create a downward spiral that results in the next entry in the series being even more pathetic than the last.
No, no I would much prefer for them to not bother making a new entry into either series until they sit down and agree to not sacrifice what made the originals great in the name of higher sales figures.
I am all for innovation. I am entirely against artistic license with established properties, or shoe-horning useless eye-candy into a formula that does not need it. These "Killscenes" are useless eye-candy that will have no effect other than to create a stilted narrative, jarring the player out of immersion every step of the way.
Which is sad, because Deus Ex is one of the very, very few games that I consider to have ever reached a level of narrative immersion approaching that of a novel. More eye-rot for the fratboys, less enjoyment for the intellectual gamers. That is HR in a nutshell.
Eldron on 22/6/2010 at 20:34
thiefinthedark, I guess you haven't played any new games recently, considering they might all rot your intellect, that and consoles are the spawn of satan, am I right?
Ostriig, the parts I did like with deus ex related to the combat was infact how it was tied together with the rpg part of the game, skills effecting my aim, damage being different on different bodyparts, damage on the player affecting him in different ways, what I guess I am trying to get at was that I wouldn't mind it being more immersive, which yes, involves even takedown sequences (however, shortened).
If the game will fail on anything it's not the combat or even these takedown sequences. It'll fail on the story, exploration, freedom in choices, items, and how you develop your character.
Papy on 22/6/2010 at 20:47
Quote Posted by Eldron
It's dumb saying that a more polished segment of a game makes the rest of the game worse
Obviously, you really don't get it. If for some reason I'm busy thinking about something in particular, then I don't have the leisure to notice other secondary things. Maybe you've already seen (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTv4yD6BKlA) this example.
In the case of Deus Ex, there was an awful number of flaws in the game, but I didn't noticed them while playing because my mind was busy thinking about surviving. Make the combat more predictable, make me more in control of the outcome and suddenly I don't have to think as much about what could happen. The solution to every problems become more or less "mouse precision"... which means that I now have time to think about how bad level design is, how ridiculous the story is, how dry the atmosphere is... Making a "more polished" combat system (whatever you mean with that) would not make other part worse, but it will give me the leisure to see how bad the other parts already are.
You talked about BioShock, but if there's one lesson BioShock should have thought us compared to System Shock 2, it is : never say "yes" to the player. Don't give too much control to the player.
And again, "cool" is dumb. I don't mind it if it doesn't interfere with the game, that's why I didn't care about the trenchcoat and the sunglasses of Deus Ex, but when the game fuck the gameplay in order to look "cool", then I have a problem with it. You really think this is a backward behavior?
