D'Juhn Keep on 12/10/2008 at 17:02
Seems like we might as well have a separate topic devoted to the augs that could well be controversial. Ooh!
To start things off, the ones that have been mentioned. I'm quite looking forward to, for instance, punching through a wall and crushing someone's throat with my bare hands. However, this seems more like a combination of a vision/SONAR aug and a strength enhancing aug. Say that the Vision aug, when upgraded well, lets you see through walls like in the original. If you spotted someone by a wall and had a sufficiently upgraded strength aug you could then smash the wall and grab them perhaps. Possibly triggering a third person view of you doing it, like the stealth system/martial arts flurry might work from what we've heard/extrapolated. I'd like it if something as useful as that was only available with a considerable expenditure of resources and so more likely to be available at the end of the game.
Doc Ock Tentacle Abseiling Aug. When I imagine this I think of a kind of re-usable Rope Arrow. Fire it at a surface and either wind yourself in to that surface or jump off and abseil your way down a building. Maybe? This too would make a pretty formidable tool.
As for augs that could conceivably be transfered from DX/IW, I was thinking Ballistic Armor, Vision, Targeting, Environmental Resistance, Speed, Combat Strength and Microfibral Muscle (with these last 2 I think I'd rather them be combined). Justifying these, Ballistic Armor could be simply bits of metal/kevlar/whatever bolted to your body. Vision/Targeting would be ocular implants similar to those of Gunther or Anna, though probably more obvious and more so for upgrades. Environmental Resistance could only apply to airborne toxins and be an implant over your mouth to filter out gas, etc. Radiation and Greasel Spit, for example, wouldn't be affected. Speed and the strength augs would be obvious leg/arm mechanical add-ons. Servo motors or whatever. Your light aug would be good as a chest/head mounted torch instead of bioluminescent cells in the retina, I think.
As for reactions to your augs, I think this is the interesting bit. From what we've seen in the trailer and picked up in the first 2 games, the mech augs were probably respected at best, feared and discriminated against at worst. It'd be nice if by improving your systems and upgrading yourself, especially upgrading your augs to higher levels of efficacy, you incur a negative reaction from the public/your co-workers. Penalties could range from people being less helpful or charging you more for items/information to some people attacking you on the street where if you were un-aug'd, they'd be friendly or neutral. I'm sort of envisioning a Baldur's gate 2 reputation scenario whereby if you're evil enough people won't sell you anything and guards and wizards spawn at any area you're in to kill you. I'm not suggesting that precise thing happens as it would penalise you too heavily for improving your rig. But if some random street thug sneaks up and attacks you for being too mech then I'd think it was pretty cool! In the trailer there was that sign saying "Augmented persons are not welcome here" or similar and I'd like it if that was implemented in some places. Not following the advice could result in resentment or violence.
Linked to that would be how much each aug effects your 'mech level'. Arm or leg augs wouldn't be too bad due to their similarity to prosthetics but upgrades to your face and especially eyes would incur a high level of discrimination as they would be seen to be removing your humanity more than augs to your torso or limbs.
As for new augs, some of the pictures would suggest a Robocop-style gun bolted on. A Wolverine-style claw would also be possible I suppose. Something similar to a Thief 2 Scouting Orb would be nice too.
So yeah, thoughts on the whole topic and suggestions for new augs please!
DDL on 12/10/2008 at 17:42
Pretty sure one of the concept shots showed what appeared to be a detachable hand that walks along, spiderlike, and scouts ahead: a spydrone for mechs.
Which I think would be great, given that the DX spydrone was far too expensive for actual spying, and was also a bit...questionable (your head just...builds a floating metal drone?).
Ostriig on 12/10/2008 at 18:05
Quote Posted by D'Juhn Keep
As for reactions to your augs, I think this is the interesting bit. From what we've seen in the trailer and picked up in the first 2 games, the mech augs were probably respected at best, feared and discriminated against at worst. It'd be nice if by improving your systems and upgrading yourself, especially upgrading your augs to higher levels of efficacy, you incur a negative reaction from the public/your co-workers.
This. Aside from it possibly incurring attacks on the street, I'm not too keen on that, especially since I don't think it should be a wide enough spread occurrence. After all, how many of Jojo's punks would have randomly jumped Gunther? But I definitely hope it will reflect in social interaction.
Now, I've seen that concept piece with the blade extending from your forearm, and I think that looks pretty sweet. I would like, however, the option of swapping the blade for a gun, think Batou in GITS2. I realize it would be completely and utterly redundant, but, with the risk of sounding like a very unsophisticated DX fan, I think it would be pretty cool.
Other than that... I don't know, surprise me Eidos. In a good way. The one thing I'd like is for most of these augs to reflect very visibly in your appearance. We should
see the social sacrifice, especially in the context of a society that can be very biased against this sort of thing. After all... "That's the difference right there. Just take a look at him."
Oh, also, a
skul-gun.
The_Raven on 12/10/2008 at 18:58
Honestly, I always wanted to see a strength enhancement in Deus Ex that allowed you to see the shear impact of the force you were wielding; for example, putting dents or taking small chunks out of a concrete wall when hitting it with your fists. I was hoping that the devs would have a little bit more sense than having you burst through walls in order to strangle people in some kind of quicktime event. I might be able to begrudgingly accept this if the option only presents itself once the augmentation was maxed out, however.
For the most part, I would like to see some augs that would flesh out more vertical oriented progression in the game world; however, my suggestion here isn't entirely appropriate for a deus-ex prequel. Basically, it would be nice to have the ability to climb walls using (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_setae) synthetic setae. My thinking for this is more in terms of the wall climbing in the Alien vs. Predator games and not climbing gloves. I think it would allow more interesting stealth elements if you could climb the walls and certain ceilings in order to stay out of sight. The stealthy infiltration of Maggie Chow's apartment and the cathedral were some of my favorite moments of Deus Ex. It was unfortunate that vertical movement in the original was limited if you went for stealth running instead of increased jumping ability with the leg aug.
Other that I would like to see:
* Maybe some sort of sonar ability that would allow you to see sound waves and their propagation.
* The return of the thermal/infrared vision. It would also be nice if you couldn't visually spot laser grids without it being enabled.
* Return of Increased jumping ability or silent movement.
* Aqua lung was nice, too bad it was only really useful in a few missions in the original. If tweaked properly, I would love to see it back.
* Sonic Tranducers. :p This could increase the range of the falloff variable in the sound propagation engine, allowing you to hear things from further way. This, however, puts it at odds with sonar vision.
* Hollow space for concealed objects, might even allow you to sneak weapons past metal detectors.
* Scouting 'bots, maybe even some sort of telescoping vision like in Thief 2.
Ostriig on 12/10/2008 at 20:43
Quote Posted by The_Raven
* Hollow space for concealed objects, might even allow you to sneak weapons past metal detectors.
Depending on the size of the object, augmentations may not be necessary for that. ;)
The_Raven on 12/10/2008 at 21:15
Yes, but it doesn't seem to be possible to roleplay a woman this time around. That means you're going to be short a major concealment area. :p
Matthew on 13/10/2008 at 10:26
If there is no skull gun I will be sad.
Dario on 13/10/2008 at 22:23
I like the current slew of Augs in DX1 (seems to cover almost every corner I can think of at the moment) but what I DON'T like is having to hit F1-12 to activate them. It makes it worse when you play on the Numpad, like me.
I found it kind of neat how you activated suit-abilities in Crysis, holding down a single button, and just flicking the mouse in a direction that's easy to memorize. Wayyyy easier for me. DX3 will naturally have a lot more Augs than Crysis' 5 suit abilities, but my guess is that it would still be far easier than having to pause what you're doing, and look down at the keyboard to find an F key. (though you'd naturally still have the ability to use hotkeys)
I just never liked having like 20 augs smeared across all those keys. I think that's what prompted me to never use more than half of them, and keep things down to my favorite two or three.
DDL on 14/10/2008 at 10:38
To be fair, you never had 20 at once, and a decent percentage of them were very situational (you're unlikely to be desperately trying to activate a spydrone in the middle of combat). At most you'd only need to panic activate two or three anyway (the shield/protection ones). Plus F-keys usually have natural breaks every four, which made it a lot easier to activate by instinct rather than by stopping to look down at the keyboard..
So while not ideal, I don't think they could've done any better. :)
D'Juhn Keep on 14/10/2008 at 11:20
I would rather like the ability to reassign the augs to whatever key you'd like. Having especially useful ones close to WASD would be pretty handy.
