Deus Ex Examined
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- Опубліковано 24 сер 2024
- A teardown of the two games in the Deus Ex series, and the one and a half games in the Eidos Montreal Nostalgia Cash In series.
Sometimes I think my old video game consoles are malfunctioning, but then I remember the framerates have always been that bad, and I just started caring recently. Oh PC gaming, you spoil me.
EEGG:
Caldwell-Gervais is the laziest Noah on Patreon, and I say that with every awareness.
Keeping a cough in your video is like turning in a term paper with your own name spelled wrong.
You didn't call it 'Deus Ex-amined'...
Aw shit, missed opportunity!
ayyyyyyyy
dang only after now it seems so obvious...but hey great video overall!
I also thought Invisible War was pretty good and i'm glad to see a video giving it a fair shake.
It could also be called Deus Ex re-re-re-re-re... examined.
There have been a few, but another is always welcom!
Is that a reference to -amine drugs? Like tryptamines?
In-depth breakdowns of gameplay, sarcasm, and a reference to the Langoliers; glad to see Examined Life of Gaming back.
Hello.
Everyone who does in-depth game reviews on UA-cam is aware of everyone else who does in-depth game reviews
Raycevick dude! Please do an 18 years later of the first one!! Love your stuff.
Raycevick You need to make a video on the Deus Ex series.
Yes I loved the langoliers reference. The greatest Stephen King movie that wasn't a movie at all lol
"I have no enemies, merely topographies of ignorance." - J.C. Denton
It's completely heretical, but my favorite Deus Ex game is VtM: Bloodlines. Sure, it's completely broken and the ending is abysmal (the damnable boss fights especially. In fact, mandatory boss fights at all in either of these games), but carving out my own niche in the nightlife of L.A. was one of the most satisfying experiences I've ever had in gaming, alongside becoming a god in Morrowind. Unfortunately, Bloodlines has been eulogized so often anymore that any attempt at a sequel now would probably fall into the same traps as Human Revolution. Sucks, because there simply aren't any other games like it that I know of.
It's funny how I poured 100s of hours into Morrowind yet never actually beat the game. I do not even want to know what happens at the end, I just want to see how well certain character builds work. I amaze myself with the amount of experimentation I did on that game.
It helped that the game insisted you take time off of the main quest and explore a lot to level up. Morrowind was all about getting sidetracked with guild quests, pilgrimages (that always ended in miserable failure), fruitlessly trying to pickpocket the pants right off a man, attempting complex rituals to summon ancient Daedric princes, blatantly flattering the locals, or even just losing track of time in a bookstore. It was the first RPG I ever played, and I don't think I'll ever be as immersed in a game world as I was in Jobasha's Rare Books. Or in that mead hall in the Bloodmoon expansion. Good times.
Oh man, talking about pickpocketing, I remember discovering the "Calm Creature" spell, altering it into "Calm Humanoid". I would look at them right in their face, steal from them, they get pissed and then calmed them down right after. _(Whoa, calm down bro. It was just a prank.)_ Oh the hilarity!
Morrowind was also my first RPG, outside of a few JRPGs but they do not count, and I could not have asked for a better introduction. My experience with Morrowind must have been like when cavemen saw fire for the first time. The realization of what I was capable of expanded bit by bit, changing the game almost entirely for me every time I discovered a new ability.
See, I never even messed with magic (I was an obsessed crusader, but I've always wanted to take a crack at witch-hunter), and I feel like I missed out on one of the coolest aspects of the whole game. I spent more time desperately trying to find someone willing to buy my moon sugar and ebony before the guards showed up. Darn it, now I want to play Morrowind again. And now that I've seen this comment and video again, I'm going to have to reinstall VtM:B and Deus Ex again as well, maybe throw in Daggerfall for good measure. It's a vicious circle, I tell you.
Damn, I should try out Daggerfall again. I tried playing Daggerfall once but it was too much for me. I recently watched a video of somebody playing the first few hours and I felt like an idiot watching it. I was not ready for that type of experience first time around. And this was after 100s of hours of Morrowind.
I think the problem was that I was using my knowledge playing Morrowind and trying to incorporate it into Daggerfall. I should treat it like the first time I played Morrowind. Babysteps.
"Adam Jensen wears sunglasses to look cool."
And also to hide the fact his eyes are creepily augmented. Need to do a bit more examination of Adam Jensen's design.
His eyes are normal in appearance.
@@alexanderwamsley5846 yeah, at least in directors cut you can see his normal eyes in the first level
Glad to find that there are others who enjoyed Invisible War as well. The sequel looked a lot better despite the bite-sized maps and constant loading screens. Some trivia? The voices of Vegeta and Kid Trunks from Dragon Ball Z were also the voices of male and female Alex D.
There will be some spoilers here, but here goes. The second game made me feel that I've actually accomplished at times, especially in Cairo. I did enjoy being able to save Cairo from a nanite plague Deus Ex-style -- doing favors, making bribes, and infiltrating hidden areas. Because of such moments, I'd be happy to play that game and the original again.
Long live Deus Ex. Candy bars, soy food, and orange sodas all around.
Dat augmentation tho'.
Calling Human Revolution and games like Fallout 3 fan-fiction is a bit unfair. Invisible War and Deux Ex may have both been made by Ion Storm Austin, but there wasn't actually much continuity in terms of the individual people working on it. The director, writer, lead designer, lead programmer, and producer were all different between the two projects, as were two of the composers. Similarly, both Simcity (2013) and Simcity 2000 were made by Maxis, but I doubt there was a single person who worked on both teams. There's pretty extreme mobility in the gaming industry compared to many others, so I'm not sure how useful looking at studios as if they are teams with a stable style and ethos really is.
Christopher Britton This. Reminds me of the Fallout fanboys who hate 3 and 4, but don't realize the creators actually praise them and hate Interplay.
HR is not a Deus Ex game? Just because the original devs are not involved? wut dude
Is this Matt Groening's Deus Ex analysis?
I disagree on so many things here:
* firstly, just because a sequel isn't made by the exact same team that made the previous entries in the franchise, doesn't make it an invalid sequel or a tribute. Human revolution took the deus ex formula and went its own way with it.
* secondly, you don't have to explore. Experience isn't a must have to progress and just because you are rewarded for exploration doesn't mean the incentive to explore is hollow. Taking alternative routes can give you a tactical advantage. In the very first mission, you could take the ground approach or the above approach, both having their own advantages for your playstyle. Granted deus ex had more advantages for varying playstyles, but human revolution isn't completely devoid of them.
* thirdly, I do read books because I'm interested in the world. I never even noticed I got XP for it & for a lot of the things the games give it for. If you go into the game with the simple agenda to win, then of course your missing the point of it all. Deus ex is the kind of game you play to lose yourself in the world it offers.
Someone Saying Deus Ex Invisible war is not as bad as you think.
I needed this. Thank you.
I absolutely agree with DE: HR being a tribute game. But it was some of the best gameplay for the 360 that year it came out. A saving grace for floundering sales and a slap in the face to fans. We still bought it. Same can be said about Fallout 3, the game wasn't designed for PC and certainly waters down what made it good and kept the dust from gathering on the 360.
There's just too much demand and intrusion from publishers as pointed out in the art direction. Not every dystopian future has to look like you vomitted out some Blade Runner with Cloud Strife. They've got an interest to succeed in sales and implement there bullshit formulas through strategic marketing efforts. Like, cutting out a random chapter and selling it later for DLC or tacking on a microtrasaction for one-time use paraxis.
I haven't bought Mankind Divided because squeex went from pulling a chapter for later retail to selling half a game and then cut THAT in half for full price. EA didn't even get that much shit over TitanfaIl
> I absolutely agree with DE: HR being a tribute game
Tribute? You steal men's souls, and make them your slaves!
ThePreciseClimber What is a tribute? A miserable pile of pixels.
Your words are as empty as your Steam library.
ThePreciseClimber Still befriending consoles? I'll ask you not to return to the PC master race but I demand you cease your attacks!
I love you guys.
I think that Ross Scott properly said about HR that it really wants to be it's own thing and SE/EIdos should give it a chance at that and they really should have called it, quote: "Metal Ghost in the Akira: Yellow Blade Runner Edition". I agree on that. I've enjoyed HR for what it was - a cool cyberpunk game, but it's not really a Deus Ex game... Or it tries not to be.
GOG has a Invisible War port that works on modern systems. So no real need to make up an XP machine to play it...
Good to know. Last time I tried it it was very unstable and ran pretty badly.
Lonely Driver God damn I76. Won't run on my XP machine, won't run on my 95 machine. One of the reasons I built a Win 98 machine too, because some games just hate OS and hardware combinations like no tomorrow.
I personally don't care if DXHR is a "fanfic" or not. The only thing I cannot forgive, is that although Eidos were trying to mimic Deus Ex so hard, they completely forgot to mimic the core principles on which Deus Ex and the whole "immersive sim" subgenre was built. Same shit with abominable Thi4f.
If you’d expand on what this core principles are, your comment would make some sense
Like the eerie similarity to our real world in terms of actual conspiracies and inter-twined webs of influence between the would-be financial elites?
@@mikeexits I'm pretty sure he's referring to the game mechanics, like how deus ex 1 gave you substantially more options to solve any one problem.
I don't disagree with many of your actual game criticisms, but some comments make no sense to me. In particular, your claim that a game must be made by the same studio in order to be a "true" successor is unqualified, and brings up obvious parallels to the Ship of Theseus (i.e. how many members of the studio can be replaced before it isn't the same studio, and therefore not a "true" successor?). You could maybe argue that because HR didn't have Warren Spector it wasn't given the same vision, but he wasn't even the director on Invisible War, with Harvey Smith stepping up to that role. Video games aren't like book series, because they're made by teams which change and even if they are mostly the same, they might not preserve the same aspects that make a successor feel authentic. Even if they were like book series, I think you can still argue that the Dune sequels written by Frank Herbert's kids are still "true" successors.
Rather, the reason HR feels like fanfiction is because it tries so hard to be. As you say, the entire plot is practically a rehash of DX1, Adam Jensen is JC, and the mechanics are a mishmash of DX1/2. The only real innovation comes in the form of the third person aspects, but the takedowns are broken to the degree they need to take energy. And you are right on about how HR's incentivization and hacking/stealth-centric progression is a perversion of the original "play as you want" philosophy. Those are the characteristics that we should study to judge how much of a "Deus Ex" game it really is, not who made it. Similarly, the reason Thief is a shitty reboot is because it's shit and doesn't actually preserve the things that made the original Thief games stealth masterpieces (HR is a much better iteration of its predecessors and a better game in its own right, though). While it's more likely that the original dev team will create something closer to its roots, it's actually the design philosophies employed that matter, not who came up with them.
It's for that reason I consider the GMDX mod a more authentic way to experience Deus Ex 1 even than the vanilla game. It's made in the context and vein of the Looking Glass/Ion Storm legacy, and as such tries to logically continue the design philosophy of the original team while also correcting a lot of flaws that plagued the original game.
I don't think of it in black and white terms, but I think gamers can generally "feel" when a sequel isn't holding true to the series anymore.
For example with Halo, I think it started to "feel" not quite right around Halo: Reach, and by Halo 4 it was clearly a totally new thing.
I certainly agree, but I think it's on the basis that the game actually feels different in significantly departing from previously held design principles. Even if it's "caused" by the transfer to another developer, that's not the case by definition.
Anyway, I didn't really disagree with any of your points in comparing DX1 and DX:HR. I have some differing opinions on IW, but that's to be expected and more personal preference and what I feel to be the important aspects to DX which were not upheld. My earlier point was a philosophical one. I liked your perspective, though. And the video structure.
Here's my two cents. I've barely played Deus Ex 1 and Invisible War due to hating my windows laptop so much I barely use it, but I beat Human Revolution on my iMac. I went through Human Revolution and said "This is a good game."
When I finally got around to playing Shadow Mose-I mean Liberty Island, the whole time I was going "why did Human Revolution suck so much?"
I'm sure it was good in the context of console Stealth-Shooters at the time, or in the context of third person games at the time, but comparing it to the previous Deus Ex games? It's a slap in the face. If you want to play correctly, you have to kill the pace to look for secrets, knock out every enemy and loot their corpse and complete every side quest. Even in the Directors Cut which fixes a few issues, it's still not that impressive.
I've only really ever played one other cover based shooter in my life, and that was The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. While I thought it was bland in some areas and some of the gameplay mechanics are fidgety, heart oozes from every pore of the game, and the guns manage to feel powerful. In Deus Ex 1, the guns managed to work because you can't pop a few shots then sprint into cover like Half-Life 1, you earn that privilege. In Human Revolution, you get a pistol at the start of the game that lets you pop guys in the head for one-shot kills, it's just trash in every other way. You don't start with the strategy of having to snipe with it until your aim and ammo capacity improves, you just get a pistol that fires slowly and you have no ammo for. Your strategy doesn't change.
The GEP gun. Because you never know when you'll need to make a silent takedown.
*Universal VS Specialized ammo*= I feel like you ignored one of the most important parts of what's "good" about having specialized ammo. It's an another layer of game/level design, it pushes you into a more inventive playstyle, albeit a bit more clunky, you can find yourself in positions that you have to make more strategical decisions and adapt to the current situation, where when you have universal ammo everything is streamlined and you play according to how you feel like instead of taking a more strategic/tactical approach. Said that I'm not in fauvor of neither, I just felt like you dismissed specialized ammo as just something clunky.
*References*= I don't know if you played deus ex HR with the developer commentary on. If you didn't I gotta say you basically NAILED everything you said reguarding references and the feel they were trying to capture in the game. A lot of developers specifically talked how they tried to make as much as Deus Ex references as possible, making the referencess themself soulless and bland.
*Fallout 3*= I don't know under how many layers of irony were you when you said that it was your fav Fallout game, but I hope you wasn't serious.
About six billion layers.
Favorites are Fallout 2 and New Vegas. :)
I don't think it would have been so bad if they didn't put an ammo cap on it. I ended up just using melee attacks most of the time because ammo felt like a once off powerup you'd get in one of the old survival horror games, and not an every day necessity.
@@chrishunter8305 I agree, non the less thanks for reminding me of this 5 yr old comment I made. Time flies I guess.
30:27 Well, they could've done something like the Batman gadget selection. But that would mean they would need an extra button for activating the selected augment.
Oh my God... Human Revolution is just as pander-y as The Force Awakens...
Whaaaaat Deux Ex art style is awesome.
Not presenting second hand information/opinions as your own first hand info (about games especially) is a great advice for anyone on the internet. A good example is the Ghostbusters game on C64, loved by many fans of the system. A common response to someone liking that game is a "how can you like that game? Haven't actually tried it myself but AVGN said it was shit." Doesn't even matter that he was talking about the Nes game. :D A lot of what you said here are things I haven't really thought about, but upon hearing make a lot of sense to me. Great episode dude. Can't wait for the MW4Mercs one!
Invisible war is hard to make cool when you dont have a guy in a trenchcoat and shades, but play as patrick monahan :D
Exactly! It's like Superman flying around with out his cape! Lol! There's no bad assery here. I know Alex Denton starts out as this young, wet behind the ears cadet but they should of had him don a black trench coat & shades at some point early on in the game! Style matters in a game like this, so yeah keep it traditionally cool, otherwise he's walking around like some half lost Opie the whole game.
One of the greatest video game examination videos I've seen!
Two thumbs up from me. ;)
Lol at the noah reference. What a trip i started watching both of you just recently. Youre awesome man you make me laugh out loud a lot.
"No alternative to Hacking"
What about those (albeit rare) unlocking devices?
Were those added by the Director's Ed? I played through the game start to finish again before making this video and didn't pick up any of them.
No, you do get extra if you preordered/buy the Missing Link DLC, but they were always available through exploration or the weapons dealers.
Burkhart 4192 Hmm. Maybe they're not in Realistic difficulty? I seriously never saw a single one.
Just checked the DX wiki, apparently they're were included in the Explosive Mission Pack before the Director's Cut came out...which is seriously scummy, now that I think about it. Of course they go on sale all the time bundled, but that's not the point...
deusex.wikia.com/wiki/Automatic_Unlocking_Device
Incidentally, I always picked Illuminati since they're the only ones that don't want to radically modify humanity into either extreme - the Templars want to destroy all augs and JC's so far gone he wants to force them on everyone.
Burkhart 4192 I never got the Dir Ed, because it seemed not only shady (to buy a piece of the game separately, OR rebuy a game I already owned) but also not that appealing. I certainly never felt like I needed to play the bland piece of midquel content.
And yeah, if they included a one-off hacking tool as a pre-order bonus... fuck 'em. That's super lame.
I find myself hating invisible war then i go back to playing it,have some fun with it then it crashes to the desktop for no reason then i go back to hating it
It's the circle of liiiiiiiife
What I really dislike about Human Revolution is the world and art design. Deus Ex was futuristic but grounded and felt familiar. HR feels like some fantasy bs. Are they seriously expecting me to believe that we're gonna have all the technology from HR in less than a decade from now? Come on. And I really hate the binary, played-out "people vs technology" bullshit. You know, the stuff like religous characters hating on augmented people because hurr, god doesn't want us to change our bodies. There's no depth to it, it's just trying to push the message that people who disregard new technologies do so for no reason and are religous zealots. Remember in the first Deus Ex how it explored the idea of augmentations, giving out your body for better performance, etc? Yeah it's all gone in HR. It's now all about "technology good, religion bad" bullcrap and I hate it.
And what's with this stupid idea that all of the world would suddenly turn on the augmented people and become 'racist' towards what is basically the world's equivalent of handicapped people, all of it without anyone running an investigation on why what happened at the end of HR happened? Like people in 21st century would really not second guess themselves about running concentration camps for augmented people, because some canadian writer throught it was clever social commentary? It's so ridiculous and it comes off even dumber when you consider that in Deus Ex 1 no one remembers about that incident anymore.
Also the ending which pulls out zombie apocalypse and a twist that makes no sense if you don't play the Missing Link DLC.
I've only played Mankind Divided, but I totally have to agree about the heavy handed Aug hate. It kept bothering me at the back of my mind and your comment made me think about it more. The augs going crazy story line doesn't make sense in the DX lore as a whole and it definitely doesn't make sense for a prequel. Also, Ross from Accursed Farms makes the excellent point that it seemed like the devs really wanted to make a different game based on more artsy Cyberpunk like Akira. He was like (reworded because I don't remember exactly what he said), "I really wish they would have made that game instead of trying to force those elements (like the fashion show clothing) into a Deus Ex game. I really would have like to play this other game. It just didn't make sense for Deus Ex."
@@joelmilten I agree with his point, I watched his Game Dungeon videos on Deus Ex games and he did well exploring those games
That's interesting. I was about to start playing the original for the first time after hearing about how it basically predicted 9/11 and Covid 9/11 - 2: Electric Boogaloo.
I played Human Revolution a few years back before I had the intellectual capacity to draw parallels between fantasy and reality in any meaningful sense. It was fun but the story felt so shallow.
I definitely don’t like the way Mankind Divided handled its plot but I really enjoy Human a Revolution, part of that might be because it’s really nostalgic to me and I am completely in love with the graphics and art style though. I really love the gold and orange seared cyberpunk world, and it never really bothered me that it’s so different to the first game since I’ve kinda always seen it as an alternate universe. The whole thing about them having all that tech in just 20-ish years after release never bothered me either as it’s a game and isn’t exactly meant to be realistic. I definitely love the original game a lot and some things it does better than HR, but HR is great in its own ways and does a few things better than the original.
HR really feels to me like some Canadians wanted to make a Deus Ex-like game, but wanted to use a different world. So they basically did, but it was marketed as a sequel. So I just consider it an alternative universe. I definitely do feel the augments did have some missed potential story wise, in the original it really felt like they were scary in a way, it was like sacrificing your humanity to make yourself more powerful, but it was something you would do out of necessity rather than by choice, especially the augmented people before you, who had older technology and almost looked like robots. In HR on the other hand in 2027 the augments are higher tech than the ones in 2052 and most of them look so good that I wouldn’t mind getting them. That’s another reason why I’ve always taken it as an alternative universe. I think they should’ve go r even more into the Deus Ex 1 idea though, using the better graphics to show how scary and inhuman the primitive components looked before augmentations had properly evolved.
Anyway, that probably won’t change your mind or anything, but I love HR & the original because they’re both great games in different ways.
This is a really young sounding Hop.
Though I am glad I found this channel. You have a gift of giving me sensible chuckles all throughout the video.
Another great review. I really enjoy your videos. Your uploads anr quite possibly the thing I look forward to seeing most in my youtube feed. Please keep it up.
it actually scares me how much i agree with your opinions every time you post a video
I thought jensens augmented vision displayed thru his glasses.
Keep up the good work, always enjoy your effort and analyses.
This seems to be "Deus Ex Examined As If It Was Call On Duty"...
Which is the farthest thing from what these games are about, but hey some people are only into that.
Are you misrepresenting my argument on purpose or on accident? Just curious.
I haven't gotten around to playing Invisible War but this video is making me want to. At least, it seems better than Human Revolution. I liked HR when I played it but I forgot just about everything about it until I watched this video and remembered, "oh yeah. That's a thing." I liked it better that way, because I forgot how mediocre parts of the game are.
Invisible War is better IMO
I'm making a second comment just in appreciation of the Noah Caldwell-Gervais reference. I fucking love that guy. I'd pay that lovely gangly fuck to cough in my ear and then thank him for it.
21:00 Isn't that Chinese word their way to refer to white foreigners anyways? (if I heard correctly it does translate into "white ghost")
Invisible war has ruined my career.
Dude - love your commentary, but your overall point about "proficiency" in vehicle types vs weapons types if flawed. Try driving a subcompact vs a cargo van. THERE'S A REASON THEY PUT THE 'WIDE RIGHT TURNS" SIGN THERE. Same thing with shotguns - I've shot both assault rifles and shotguns - BOTH ARE DIFFERENT. They would require different "skill trees".
I drive trucks sometimes for work. If you can already drive it takes about 5 minutes to figure it out.
Deus Ex was middling as a
shooting action based fps rpg,but extremely strong as a stealth based fps rpg,I usually spend most of the game using the bowcaster ,prod and gas grenades and just Batmanning my way through the levels..DEIW was great at some things,lighting,physics,and yes the weapon mod system,I also like crouching beside a repair droid and using a maxed out emp drone to clear the whole level free of charge.taking out bots ,organics and cameras with the emp attack....as the repair bot will always recharge your bioenergy...Aternatively,maxing out your combat strength biomod and punching everyone unconscious with the baton was a good time,The Nightclub music was good,If you like Alanis Morrisette impersonators ,I prefer The original's Cyberpunk 1980s tones. ...The earlier levels in IW were great,apart from being chopped up into console sized bites.....Meh...the later levels,not so much,and the ending,terrible.>I always shoot JC in the face....Just don't wan't humanity to become that thing with nanites..Hate what they did with his character.Still,a few rockets and a sniper round to the face,problem solved.
Human Revolution took me a couple of playthroughs to warm to,but is a decent enough game,even if Jenson wants to be NEO from the matrix...the ending sucks though...That machine with the chicks,Just nope.....
Mankind Divided was a better game in tone and mechanics,with some memorable side quests,but ended just as it was getting interesting and highlights for me that the series needs to return to New York and UNATCO..
I want to see one more Jensen Game to close the trilogy,and after that have a reboot,featuring Paul Denton as he graduates,a carbon copy in some ways of Deus Ex 1.The game would introduce Paul to UNATCO,and all it's cast and explore the roots of his relationship with JC, Lebedev,Tracer Tong,Manderley et al...That would set the Scene for THe Reboot of Deus Ex,a faithful remake with cinematic graphics and improved mechanics across the board..
I doubt square can tone down the manga long enough though to get the story,tone and tech level right...
Solid takes. The Paul game would be spectacular, as would a DE reboot where maybe there could be some levels where you can choose to stick with Unatco after The 'Ton raid.
I disagree that that is all you lose with a unified ammo system, because you also lose the possibility of weapons like the tube you mentioned just minutes earlier to exist. No longer can specific weapons be balanced by the availability of their ammo, instead the only way to balance them is with a simple computation to see how much ammo a weapon uses per metric of usefulness.
If they wanted to include a LAW Tube in IW, they could have. It could be a one-shot item that doesn't use universal ammo.
Balancing weapons by availability of ammo is the same thing as them using different amounts of ammo. The rocket launcher in IW would be overpowered, except you can only get a few shots off before you drain your supply, which means it stays as a special purpose weapon (like in DX and most other games).
And as for the other weapons in the game, they're all pretty much balanced against each other. So the game doesn't "let" you use the best gun all the time, because there is no "best" gun.
It is not the same thing at all, because the developer can control which types of ammo they give you at which points in the game, but they can't control how you distribute your ammo with a universal ammo system. I'm not saying they can't make something a special purpose weapon by making it drain a lot, I'm saying they have only one specific way to make it a special purpose weapon which leads to less tools for them to craft interesting scenarios with.
Exactly, there is and could not have been a "best" gun with the universal ammo system. With the old system there could have been a best gun that you could only get ammo for at really specific moments. Any number of creative things can be done by the dev with an ammo system, that aren't possible with the universal system which enforces strict balancing of the guns in just their usefulness to bullet ratio.
I agree that the LAW Tube could've been emulated that way, but it's obviously a bit crude and still doesn't allow for other special weapons that might have more than one shot.
Having a best gun with limited ammo just feels artificial though. I don't think either is really better, they're just different styles of gameplay. I happen to like the way IW treats each weapon as a tool, and expects you to switch between them regularly.
Of course the final judgement is subjective, I just think the extra dimension of possible balancing and decision making it can bring is something that deserves to be mentioned.
I don't think limited ammo for specific weapons, especially if it makes sense within the setting, would necessarily feel artificial at all. If you have an experimental weapon it makes sense that normal stores wouldn't have ammo for it in stock. A "best" weapon is just an example of course, as is everything I've talked about. I just think it's an intrinsic property you lose when you switch to universal ammo types. I'm not saying one is better than the other, I agree with you on the pros of universal ammo, I just think it should be mentioned if you're comparing the two.
I admit I fell into the same trap- Hating on IW despite playing and loving it.. I never finished both the latest DX games since I always... got bored with them, and finishing DX 1 was a serious commitment to me. But hearing you talk about IW brought this all back up again and... I have to admit, I had the most fun with IW..
Hey, that's some thorough content. I now want to watch all of your stuff.
Excellent video my wonderfully underrated UA-camr!
I actually feel inclined to play Invisible war...a bit! Good analysis and a conclusion i agree with, also great jab at you know who.
Please make more, inb4 "you look 16" comments
disagree about ambiguity. Mark of the Ninja worked hard to remove all ambiguity..it's one of my favorite stealth games of all time.
Classic stealth games weren't ambigous either.
It's the overabundance of artifical interface assists (that literally play a stealth game for you) is a problem.
Once again you are worth the wait.
I try.
16:34 Indeed. JC is an elite agent. Cheating to get maxed skills from the start makes perfect sense plot-wise.
Have you played Deus Ex on the PS2? It's mostly the same as the PC version from what I've seen. The differences I've seen with my limited time on the PC are some of the menus, more loading screens, and obviously the controls. It's still an awesome experience on the PS2.
Only thing I disliked about this video is that it's not the review of Mech 4: Mercenaries. Keep up the great work, every vid you put out is a treat!
Human Revolution looks Final Fantasy alike? No, HR looks realistic. From the cities to the weapons. And the augs look the way they look, since the modern low profile nano augs from part 1 and two are not invented yet in 2027 in Deus Ex universe. And by the way, I never ran out of ammo in HR, for not a single weapon^^
I have been playing invisible war through steam. All I had to do was change the resolution manually in the .ini file as well as the fov to make the HUD fit into 16:9
Works just fine for me
Nice video, really insightful.
Glad to see someone else likes Invisible War as well.
I have played only the first Deus Ex and was totally amazed with the openess and non-linearity of the maps, besides many other things. I didn't found time yet to play the rest, I almost started IW regardless if I heard negative comments about it. Now after your video, I have to revisit at some point. But to tell you the truth, the most important aspect to me was the complexity of the maps. If IW proves to have really small areas then it will be disappointing to me. But I might just complete it to see more of the story and move on to the next of the series.
Totally agree with the nostalgia harvesting of newer games, having culture references of the old games but neither giving something unique nor having the flair of the classics, like a fake copy of the original.
So recently decided I'd shill out money to get a copy of invisible war but I don't know where to obtain the patches you mentioned in this video. Are they already installed with the steam version or not?
Steam version should be fully patched to 1.2
As much as I appreciate the writing in the video holy shit there are a lot of hot (and wrong) takes.
If it was something you heard before it wouldn't be worth making a video about.
I enjoyed the video but thought most of the criticisms were unfair, basically what he said would happen in the beginning of the video lol
Man I hate the battery system in deus ex HR n MD because of that battery u can't do alot of things u want like perform more than 1 take down. I think the take downs shouldn't use battery power.
Agree! That doesn't make sense. It would mean that it also runs him low on juice just walk down to the end of the street or do every day tasks.
Good to have you back, mate.
Some of the copying is fan service. The HR people are huge DX fans and knew [most] people would get a grin out of it. I sure did when I heard some of the old soundtrack on the radios. These things are callbacks and homages. And *I* liked them, and I can separate a publisher trying to cash-in from the developer and doing it for fun. There was no "Contains an actual 451 code! Buy NOW!" on the box. Certainly nothing to risk a TIA over. It's a statement of the kind of game and gameplay that you like.
It's not like Half-Life stealing the exact plot of the original DooM, but that's OK because of skeletal animations and in engine exposition and cut-scene-like-events.
And taking over a franchise is not stealing it. You now own the IP. You didn't steal it, and they (the devs) don't pretend they created it. And where are the branching paths in IW? You can do every mission for every faction and all you get is a tsk, tsk. It's not really a branch if all paths can be taken and all end up in the same place.
DX is great. IW sucks, even with Harvey Smith at the controls. HR and MD are ok, but I prefer MD. There are more interesting things to do around town, and I like the mods'n'weapons more.
Other than DX, they all count as disappointments. They had stuff to do. DX had stuff to discover.
I like exploring so I will play Human Revolution
Interesting video, even though I agree that the game deserves a better reputation I think you are being a little too easy on IW. The endings of IW themselves are good, but the game has no persistence and you can align with any faction in the last level regardless of your actions to that faction in the previous levels (granted this is still much better than HR's endings). You make some good arguments when it comes to universal ammo, but I think you have overly discounted both the immersion that comes with ammo types and the importance of ammo types in the Deus Ex's economy/design. The biggest issue with IW is the level design, there is nothing in IW that comes close to the quality of Liberty Island, Hell's Kitchen, Hong Kong, Paris, or the Pasadena ocean labs.
On a side note I reinstalled IW after this video, installed a community patch, and did a few tweaks and the game runs fine on Win 10 @ 4k. Unfortunately there is no fix for the HUD and UI.
Also I like the call out on Noah, he has interesting and detailed content but really needs to invest time and effort into production.
Aw, listen to little baby Hop!
don't you fucking dare touch my boy max pin 3 !!!
The use of 451 may not be a reference to System Shock 2. Actually, it was originally a reference to Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. It was also the actual code to get into Looking Glass's Office in the early-mid '90s. Shock 2, being made by Irrational Games and NOT Looking Glass, used it as a reference to the original System Shock. Bioshock, Deus Ex, Final Fantasy, Gone Home, Dead Space, Elder Scrolls series and I think F.E.A.R. ALL used "451" as a reference to System Shock 1. (not 2)
Fans today do make too big a deal of callbacks. It's like what you pointed out in HL2- everyone's like "OMMEEGOD!!! They made references to HL1, a game I never was into enough, and because they ands references, that makes me esthetic as a fan!!!!!" It's bullshit. The Splatterhouse reboot did the references really well- it was an entirely new game and story first, callbacks and references to the original games second and used sparingly (some are easy to miss).
Then castlevania- so many "fans" who haven't played most of the games but claim they're mega fans who know everything. Just kinda annoys me to say you're a CV fan when you've only played maybe SOTN, a few of the DS games and claim ROB is amazing without playing it
I don't know, are you saying that people who played the Castlevania games past Symphony aren't Castlevania fans? That just smacks of sheer elitism to me. I've played a few of them and did enjoy them, but I never claimed to know everything there is about Castlevania. However, I do think I can safely call myself a fan of the Castlevania games post Symphony, atleast some of them anyway, since something about those style of games appeals to me.
Dev of Anj My bad, I did sound assholish. I mean more the ppl who claim to be hugely into everything in the series but clearly aren't. Nothing wrong with being a Metroidvania fan or enjoying the games in general, it's just "posers" that get me, and I've seen them on forums. I don't lose sleep over it but it just irks me when I see it, and this video reminded me of it with the "Oh luk, references to the Deus Ex I've never played!!!! I know that cus I readz it on gumfaqz and ign, I'm such a hardcore Deus ex fan!!!"
I understand. Well, references in general are mostly used as a cheap way to evoke nostalgia in fans, but there are references that can make the work in question more evocative and elevate the context of the scene they're in. It's hard to do that though, and more often than not they just feel distracting or cheap.
I love your sacasm!!! Great video. Human Revolution Director's Cut is actually my favorite game of all time lol.(And there are some amazing mods out there!) I started gaming back in 1985 and have come to love a really wide range of games. Example, Secret of Mana is my number 2 game and Uncharted 2 is my number 3 game of all time, so I am not stating that from perspective of someone who only played Human Revolution Director's Cut. As a business owner working at times 120 hours a week, I hardly have time to game anymore, but I am a Sci Fi Noir writer on the side, and I just love the depth of the Deus Ex world...All of the Games. They might not be perfect, but anything made by humans will never be, but I love the real world issues Deus Ex dives into in a way no other game series has. Also, Architects and Engineers have the same problems as artists and programers have when collaborating on a given project. Thank you for this video. Watch out for those Langoliers! Stay awesome.
neat video but if you really go through all of Human Revolutions levels knocking out all the guards and then backtracking for all the XP bonus you have bigger problems to worry about. What's all the XP for, even if you play stealthy? You really only need Hacking Level 5 and can access everything in the game with no problem at all
9:46 - That had me cracking up
Also, my favourite Elvis Presley song is 'Rock around the clock' by Bill Haley and the Comets. :))
Excellent analysis. Now please do a review on the Thief series.
I go to work really early in the mornings, So seeing this was one of the most exciting things recently. Thanks man.
I agree with 98% of your review here. One of the only things I disagree with was that I liked the hacking mini game in HR. It was a logical evolution from the Lock Picking mini game featured in Thief: Deadly Shadows. Other than that, I'm a new subscriber.
Hated the gunplay in Deus Ex. You say guns don’t matter but that just isn’t true when you’re playing a first person shooter.
DXHR fixed all that though. Great game that turned me into a fan.
It's too bad they seemed to do away with all the story nuance and eerie predictiveness of the original.
Muh racism
what's wrong with racism?
Good question.
what isn't?
+LN2233 what is?
Racism is part of us
Literally everything
I played about 50% of the game before realising there were skill points in original DE... Was easier after adding skillz
lol You are complaining about having options. If you like ambiguity and prefer suspense and no radar, there are options to not use it :P
Before watching this video I watched your critique of Marathon: Durandal. You have greatly improved in your critical skills since 2016. I enjoy the fact that in Marathon you use no profanity. I consider public profanity to be one of the heights of unprofessionalism. You are more sarcastic in this video, but your asides in Marathon (frame rate decided by coin-toss is priceless!) are delightfully cheeky and FUNNY! Profanity can be funny, but most often it's simply crude and detracts from one's work. I was a US Navy Corpsman, and I can curse like a sailor, but I don't use profanity in public. Your rhythm and pacing is nonetheless fantastic in this video, and is further complimented in your review of Marathon by your improved skills acquired over time. Well done.
Awesome review. Definitely shined a new light on Invisible War. I liked the dig at Noah Caldwell-Gervais...you should join forces sometime for a video.
"I hate the takedown system because you're watching it happen, not playing the game."
"I hate the hacking minigame, because I'm active and not just watching a bar fill up."
...What?
The hacking minigame is live, you're still playing (insofar as you're avoiding detection, for example) while the bar fills up. You can't just go AFK while the hacking happens.
Also there is the difference between playing the minigame and playing the actual game.
i don't think the "exploring" argument is valid honestly , people who just explore so they can get exp points are casuals who dont give a shit about the game and game design at all, you can find alot of hidden quests by exploring or reading an email, passcodes to be found , so yes you get rewarded with more content when you explore. no one cares about reading a codec for just 200 exp thats stupid lol
Not saying this negatively but the video feels closer to a defense for Invisible War rather than anything else. Still enjoyable and insightful all the same.
Loved this examination. Hope you are well and alive.
"I'm an cool nihilist, i'm so nihilistic and my game opinions reflect how much of a no-bullshit nihilist i am"
"btw don't put characters with asian accents in games, that's racist "
epic bro
Is that suppose to be him?
You'll need to explain how an accurate asian accent is racist if you want any credibility...
The "any piece of a series not made by the original team" thing is like, a really weird idea for me? It just kinda feels like a way of distancing the games of a series you don't like from the series itself by virtue that it wasn't made by the same people. I'm not saying you don't have to like those games, but they are still proper games in their respective series. Plus, if you really follow that logic down to its core, then any game with even a minimal change in staff from the prior game could be considered "fanfiction" to the "original series" as well since even a minor change to a game's team could allow the influences, philosophies, and techniques of those who replaced other team members to show through in the final product when they wouldn't be there before, and then you get into this whole Ship of Theseus argument where you'd have to draw the line between what counts as the originals and what doesn't.
I guess the idea you're going for is that these teams should've made their own games instead of sullying a beloved license (in your eyes) , but a) our culture and society don't work that way, businesses see value in these licenses and will want to incorporate it into one of their products if it means drawing in an old crowd (For another example that doesn't follow the model of "team from a different company makes continuation to an older, likely dormant series", the only reason Quake II had the name it did was because they couldn't think of another name for it, so they ended up piggybacking off an unrelated franchise to help the game achieve success.), and b) even if given the chance to make their own IP, sometimes people just want to be able to contribute to something they're a fan of, whether or not you feel it's a good thing, and given enough time, there will be more and more of a chance that a fan would come onto a future project.
It's the same reason that nobody likes the Dune sequels written by Brian Herbert.
Businesses can do whatever business-y things they want, but we as purveyors of "art" can shit all over it when they do. God bless America.
The Examined Life (of Gaming) So is that only the case when it’s bad? Is it really art when it’s good despite being made under the same conditions as these other games? (The answer is yes, and that both are still art, even when not made for those arty, oughty auteur reasons.) A _lot_ of people like the new Donkey Kong Country games despite it being made by a different team than the first three, so is that a fluke, were there secret artistic intentions within the team members, was there some spanner in the works from the original team preventing the evil new director and his corporate overlords from making any sweeping changes to the formula, or were they just good at their job?
Plus, within our current economic system, if you mean to make money from it, then art is never purely made for art’s sake. Hell, I’d argue even if you do it for free, you still somewhat do art for capitalistic reasons, just not explicitly for money; us online artists crave likes, favorites, and followers instead. If that wasn’t the case, Frank Herbert wouldn’t have had to turn to a car manual printer for distribution, because the printers want money, too, and they didn’t see any money coming from them publishing Dune. Books may have it easy with one person working on them and a handful of niche publishers that could take basically anything as long as it was interesting, but movies, games, TV shows all can have tens, hundreds, even thousands of people working on them, so there’s a certain resistance that comes with wholly uncharted territory. Marathon was made in the wake of the success of Doom and Wolfenstein, Deus Ex was piggybacking off of Thief, Max Payne was mimicking bullet time from the Matrix; the raison d’etre for games didn’t go from making good art to making good money one dark night in a back alley in Redmond, it was always a mixture of the two.
I am a PC gamer.. and I fart at consoles when I see them.. I also put mayo on sandwich
19:05 Good God, it's The Force Awakens all over again. Why do these franchises keep getting picked up by people who enjoy less than half of what it offers?
so fallout 4 is ...like hitman absolution
we at the codex want to let you know that you are wrong
Noted!
For the love of god pronounce deus ex correctly! Its not dayoos its dayUS
I salute you , had pleasure listening to your arguments. Subscribed.
In my head a metal beat started to join the tv noise at the end...
Mix in a bit of that "radio noise" from the comm truck by UNATCO HQ, and you've got yourself a slammin' track.
Well written sir.
I liked Invisible War alot, i play the OG Xbox version, I'm a console gamer, I know PC is better just never had the money for a primo rig.
I honestly think invisible war gets a super bad rap. More then it should to be honest. I get it wasn’t Deus Ex 2000 but it still was a great game. Invisible war was a great console game I should say, like you said.
YEY now I don't have to feel like the only person on the goddamn planet that actually liked Invisible War!
100 bonus points for working in a Langoliers reference in a Deus Ex video. Well done, sir. Well done.
I'm 28 years old. My "whole" life I was told Invisible War is bad. Thanks for educating me. I'll play it, though that console ui is seriously going to trigger me since I'm a hardcore PC purist.
@Apples speaking about remakes, I just played through (except last boss yet) Black Mesa and that remake is brilliant except Xen, they expanded Xen levels tenfold to the point that it just became tedious and boring.
@Apples Nah, the lore of HL2 about inter-dimensional, intergalactic nazi empire Combine, 7 hour war, most of humanity destroyed, suppression field that makes embryo development impossible, east themed totalitarian city, genocide of human race, destruction of Earth's fauna, immigration of alien life forms, depletion of Earth's resources (giant teleporter in the ocean that steals our salt water to the point that water levels are significantly dropped) IS EXTREMELY FUCKING GOOOOD!!!
"You actually thought I was gonna bash on the greatest PC game of all time?"
Uh, this is not a Quest for Glory 4 video...
lol
ThePreciseClimber *age of empires 2
That's an interesting way of spelling the Thief trilogy.
It's actually a Thief pentalogy.
And a Magic User pentalogy.
And also a Fighter pentalogy.
Have i said that you are one of my most favourite youtubers out there? This is one of the best videos i have ever seen on deus ex. You are fucking legendary. Also what did you think on deus ex mankind divided? I personally enjoyed it, most especially the gameplay.
Depth Jacks I covered it in the 2016 Year End Review video.