Great analogy at the end - it fits perfectly. Fantastic review in general, you highlighted many things that i never thought of despite playing the game many times.
This is one of my all time favourite games and I spent ages playing it through in deferent ways - sometimes prioritising stealth and hacking, sometimes as a tank etc etc. Great rumination analysis! The original is still much better than the subsequent ones. The depth and scale of the world is just incredible. And I agree that the way your choices play out in different ways is a key part of the game, and it makes each time you play it through different in subtle ways. Granted, the graphics haven’t aged as well as some games, but to be honest that still doesn’t detract from the game play. Oh, and I remember Syndicate too. It had some of the same ideas (augments, conspiracy theories etc) but more from an isometric RPG perspective.
Deus Ex... This is the game that I've discovered by accident many years ago and fell in love with it. I've finished the game many times and what surprised me was that each time I discovered something new. When I first discovered that I could just avoid Anna and defeat her in other way my jaw just dropped. Also when I met Lebedev usually I left him and went out.. .but one time I decided to talk to him and he had a lot of interesting things to say which I missed couple of times. I think that no other game surprised me in so many positive ways like this one did. It has its flaws but many great games (such as KotOR 2 or XCOM2 or Planescape Torment) have them. I hope that one day we will get a proper remake that would improve the game and not dumb down anything in it.
I always felt that the inventory system was a "suedo-diagetic" system like in far cry 2 where instead of pressing a map button and having a map pop up in your screen, your mercenary looks down and you see his hands pull a folded map out of his pockets and bring it up. The inventory is supposed to be like a suitcase with a limited amount of space, and sorting items this way always helped put the item size into perspective by comparison to one another
I don't know if you know that.. but there is actually a way to beat Anna and Gunter (and even Walton Simons) with out kill them ... and without skip them. When you shoot any NPC until it is at it lowest health, where the nest shot will kill them... they get desperate and stop attacking and run away from you. I've done it with success with all bosses in the game.
Arche! Your ruminations always inspire me to reinstall all the great treasures I have in my steam library. This is a classic though without question. I loved your opinions on this one. Keep up the great work. I will get back on Twitch at some point. Promise. R/S fretless_ness
After watching several of these ruminations, I have one statement and one question. These ruminations are extremely entertaining and I am quite fond of them. Why oh why do you pronounce your "I's" that way? "Die-ablo, ocar-eye-na of time". Not trying to give you shit just legitimately curious as you're literally the only person I've ever heard do that in my entire life and my brain twitches every time you do. Great work, good day.
1st, I hate the inventory system. Even if I liked it, it has one fatal flaw: it doesn't show you the geometry of the item. Once I had to move a body. The game will try to loot the body first. If you can't do that, you can't move the body. The body had a GEP gun which I had never used before. I had to keep unloading inventory items, trying to fit it, panicking because another MJ12 trooper was closing on me in the Paris Sewers. Finally, after dropping >1/2 my inventory, I looted it and I could move the body, leaving behind a pile of loot that I would come back for. This was before I discovered that you could take down an MJ12 trooper with a singe zap from the prod from behind. On bugs, I encountered exactly 1, where a character was stuck in a running/panic/whatever state and I needed to interact with her. And this was all on the original day 1 release.
Yes! I've been looking forward to this one. Great rumination as always Arch. Particularly enjoyed your analysis of Bob in the last level and that analogy at the end. Just out of curiosity which ending did you pick in this game and why? I’m going to guess it was the Helios ending. It’s good to have these back. I’m looking forward to Human Revolution next week. It was one of my favourite games of the last generation.
Always love your in depth look at games man, this game has always been up there for a interesting blend of actual social stories and messages and good stealth and RPing.. But ive only played Deus Ex Human Revolution.. The original deserves a play though! Dope Rumination man!
Very cool video! I love Deus Ex (as you know) and hearing your side of things was great. In a way I love how dated the presentation of this game is (voice acting, graphics, some of the interface). Once you play it, these things allow you to immediately place it in the late 90's and early 2000's era, which makes the elements it's truly great (if not top of the class) at all the more impressive.
Zomg...my first First! :P btw Arch, did you ever do a Jade Empire Rumination? I cannot remember, if not, would you ever do one? But as always, some nice insight.
I'm hoping for the same thing. He has mentioned the game in a few of his other Bioware related videos. Plus considering he has covered so much of their work, I really hope he gets to it someday.
A culture's teachings, and most importantly the nature of it's people, achieve definition through conflict. They find themselves or find themselves lacking. -Kreia Envision history as a sequence of dialectical conflicts. Each dialectic begins with a proposition, a thesis, which inherently obtains or creates it's opposite, an anti-thesis. Thesis and anti-thesis, the conflict is inevitable, but the resolution of the conflict yields something new: a synthesis, eliminating the flaws in each leaving behind productive common elements and ideas. -Caesar
I see some ppl refering to you as Jason on the comments (if i recall right).. so forgive me if i'm wrong..Anyway.. Jason, to be honest, i am kind of amazed on John Romero "path", The early ID days, Doom and Quake and his fall on Daikatana (i know there is much more to it than that). So even though it isn't what you do... would you do a Runimation Analyssis on Romero Carrer and mentality? I love to hear your thoughts.
The game doesn't just let you choose between a violent path and a stealthy path. Almost any path you choose is a grey area. Like the mission in Vandenberg Air Force Base, the one where you start on the roof and have to find a way to destroy the 4 military bots that are patrolling the courtyard area. It's the definition of non-linearity. No two approaches will likely be the same. What is "the stealthy path" here? If you have the rocketlauncher and enough ammo, you can take them all out safely from the rooftop. WIth the jump aug you could jump down from the roof without taking damage. Or you go down the stairs, but then you'd have to deal with security cameras and guards. If you can't or don't want to kill the bots yourself, you can activate some friendly bots to help you. But one of the control units you need to access is heavily guarded, which is yet another problem for you to solve. It goes on and on... One of my favorite missions. If anyone is interested in playing this game again or trying it for the first time, I'd recommend the GMDX mod. It fixes many of the old bugs, adds quality of life features and tweaks the gameplay balance (augs, skills, weapons, level design) in many ways. As a DX veteran, who has played the game at least a dozen times, I have to say, this is the definitive Deus Ex experience.
Whats your opinion on Mankind Divided? (If you've played it yet..) Im enjoying it (Beat it already, but going through again) and it has great lore, setting and backstory as always.. But the core story wasn't the best. Cant wait for your thoughts on the game, and any future videos. Keep up the great content man!
I would have liked it if the game was about a quarter the length (which is something I don't want). In other words, found it good but very repetitive. I ended up muting the music and using my own after a while.
I chose the dark age ending because I sure didn't trust the other options and that faction always dealt straight with me. I'm not for anarchism IRL but in the game, litreraly no one depicted is worthy of running the world, and only the anarchists are not asking to.
Of all games, this is one that should be remade, fulfilling all of the original design goals. I would be happy even if it only used something of the graphic quality of Half-Life 2 (source 1 or 2?). Clearly, given the number of people who still play it, graphics aren't a major priority for this type of player. And an older engine should be cheaper. Due to the status of SS3, it might be something to keep him (and some "amateurs") busy. The trailer for SS3 showed too much attention on garish graphics and lighting. I have to disagree that the dog analogy is what makes the game so good. Invisible war had the ability to do that. In all my playthroughs, I never sided with a faction and did all missions. I don't know what it's like to stick to only one faction. HR lets you do the dog through the linear game; same with MD. And Prey and the Dishonoreds. In fact most of them did it better, having had more time to flesh out their world. Gameplay-wise, they beat DX also. But playing DX is much more fun than any of the others. And I think it's because of the plot. While it's not strict definition, in a game I consider the route you take through the world as part of the plot, so your dog analogy is part of it. But none of the other games drew me to them like DX. I needed to know what came next. Walking around, discovering stuff, etc, was the frosting, but the plot was what made it for me. Only in Prey did I have a real curiosity as to what was going on and what would come next. Also, DX made all its story, mechanics, world, etc, without knowing that it would be successful, so it was an integral part of the world. These other games made a point of all of this and used it as a marketing tool and thus they were overdone and done just to do them. For me, a good analogy is prog rock. In the 70s, bands like Yes were doing new things, things they wanted to do, to experiment and to experience. They weren't meant to be complex directly, but the complexity made them more interesting. In addition they understood that fast, slow, loud, quiet, hard and soft were all elements of good music. Today it's how many time signature changes can we have, how many scales can I play really, really fast, how can I do all of the things the 70s bands did to make music they liked, but for their own sake. 70s --> music first, technique second today --> technique first, music maybe. And, lo, I am done.
Lol, I didn't think Invi--the "nonexistent 2nd game" was ALL bad. The gameplay really sucked and nothing was really outstanding, but as a continuation of the overall Deus Ex story I actually kind of enjoyed it. Plus I found the missions fun when judged on their own. On the voice acting in the original Deus Ex, I agree it was mostly lackluster but I actually enjoyed JC's "Dirty Harry" monotony. I feel like it fit his character and made him seem like "more machine than man" (though I do understand with nanotech, his human body was still intact--unlike the mechs). Would like to hear your detailed thoughts on Human Revolution sometime in the future!
Are you related to Anthony Fantano in someway? you look kinda like him and your analysis style is very similar. Also, i also always said that the strenght of deus ex is its peculiar structure, good to know someone else think the same ;)
V-sync for some reason doesn't work for this game, I've tried everything. Forcing it through radeon's settings, setting the fps to 59, and even getting D3DOverrider to also force Vsync, Still nothing. I feel like they should remake it but I know that it just won't be as good as the original. Maybe they could do a redux like Devolver digital did with Shadow Warrior. ua-cam.com/video/okPLF9Ad9ns/v-deo.html Now this is how you do a remake.
I actually love/hate the grid system. It's outdated and sure, it makes people think about what they would have to keep... But an encumber system does too. A grid system just tells me to keep the most powerful weapons and equip. Not the funnest to play.
nice, i cant belive you only have 11k subs and a girl like sexysniper has 3.3mill by making girls get naked and put them on youtube, the world is weird.
it's almost like you didn't play the game, you cannot resolve almost any situation in game verbally, sneaking is also imperfect, you end up fighting, even if you try to sneak, voice acting is not perfect but realistic and not overdramatic, intelligently written dialogue helps to overcome it, it's actually very very good overall, ui is perfect
If you try to sneak you end up fighting? In that case, I'm sorry but you suck at sneaking. You can pretty much go through the entire game without ever having a gun pointed at you. In fact, that's my default way of playing DE.
Buy the game on Steam and use the GMDX mod. Thank me later. Also the voice acting is so bad it is just great.. Having good voice acting would actually lessen the experience.
Great analogy at the end - it fits perfectly. Fantastic review in general, you highlighted many things that i never thought of despite playing the game many times.
This is one of my all time favourite games and I spent ages playing it through in deferent ways - sometimes prioritising stealth and hacking, sometimes as a tank etc etc.
Great rumination analysis! The original is still much better than the subsequent ones. The depth and scale of the world is just incredible. And I agree that the way your choices play out in different ways is a key part of the game, and it makes each time you play it through different in subtle ways.
Granted, the graphics haven’t aged as well as some games, but to be honest that still doesn’t detract from the game play.
Oh, and I remember Syndicate too. It had some of the same ideas (augments, conspiracy theories etc) but more from an isometric RPG perspective.
Deus Ex... This is the game that I've discovered by accident many years ago and fell in love with it. I've finished the game many times and what surprised me was that each time I discovered something new. When I first discovered that I could just avoid Anna and defeat her in other way my jaw just dropped. Also when I met Lebedev usually I left him and went out.. .but one time I decided to talk to him and he had a lot of interesting things to say which I missed couple of times. I think that no other game surprised me in so many positive ways like this one did. It has its flaws but many great games (such as KotOR 2 or XCOM2 or Planescape Torment) have them. I hope that one day we will get a proper remake that would improve the game and not dumb down anything in it.
Name's Tong. Tracer Tong.
JC Denton, Nice to meet you Tong.
Yaaay I asked about this a very long time ago and never got an answer, so glad to see this. Thank you. :)
"I feel like I don't have a lot to say about this game." Video is 48 Minutes Long. K. I WATCHED IT ANYWAY.
Great video Arch! Look at the view count already! Great to see such a large amount of views and shows how the ruminations are your bread and butter!
I don't have much to talk about. Proceeds to talk for nearly an hour.
I raise my eyebrow at you, sir *raises an eyebrow*
I always felt that the inventory system was a "suedo-diagetic" system like in far cry 2 where instead of pressing a map button and having a map pop up in your screen, your mercenary looks down and you see his hands pull a folded map out of his pockets and bring it up. The inventory is supposed to be like a suitcase with a limited amount of space, and sorting items this way always helped put the item size into perspective by comparison to one another
Oh yeah, I've waited so long for this rumination. Can't wait for Human Revolution.
I don't know if you know that.. but there is actually a way to beat Anna and Gunter (and even Walton Simons) with out kill them ... and without skip them.
When you shoot any NPC until it is at it lowest health, where the nest shot will kill them... they get desperate and stop attacking and run away from you.
I've done it with success with all bosses in the game.
Arche! Your ruminations always inspire me to reinstall all the great treasures I have in my steam library. This is a classic though without question. I loved your opinions on this one. Keep up the great work. I will get back on Twitch at some point. Promise.
R/S fretless_ness
After watching several of these ruminations, I have one statement and one question.
These ruminations are extremely entertaining and I am quite fond of them.
Why oh why do you pronounce your "I's" that way? "Die-ablo, ocar-eye-na of time". Not trying to give you shit just legitimately curious as you're literally the only person I've ever heard do that in my entire life and my brain twitches every time you do.
Great work, good day.
Absolutely love your ruminations Arche. Keep it up.
Great vid Arch. Makes me want to play deus ex again. Just wondering if a Rumination on the Thief series is possible in the future?
Very little is on the forbidden list for Ruminations, but Patrons are the ones who decide what's Ruminated upon.
1st, I hate the inventory system. Even if I liked it, it has one fatal flaw: it doesn't show you the geometry of the item. Once I had to move a body. The game will try to loot the body first. If you can't do that, you can't move the body. The body had a GEP gun which I had never used before. I had to keep unloading inventory items, trying to fit it, panicking because another MJ12 trooper was closing on me in the Paris Sewers. Finally, after dropping >1/2 my inventory, I looted it and I could move the body, leaving behind a pile of loot that I would come back for.
This was before I discovered that you could take down an MJ12 trooper with a singe zap from the prod from behind.
On bugs, I encountered exactly 1, where a character was stuck in a running/panic/whatever state and I needed to interact with her. And this was all on the original day 1 release.
Yes! I've been looking forward to this one.
Great rumination as always Arch.
Particularly enjoyed your analysis of Bob in the last level and that analogy at
the end.
Just out of curiosity which ending did you pick in this game and why?
I’m going to guess it was the Helios ending.
It’s good to have these back. I’m looking forward to Human Revolution next week. It was one of my favourite games of the last generation.
I did in fact go with Helios yes. Hubris or no, the other two options seemed provably bad whereas that option was only possibly bad.
Always love your in depth look at games man, this game has always been up there for a interesting blend of actual social stories and messages and good stealth and RPing.. But ive only played Deus Ex Human Revolution.. The original deserves a play though! Dope Rumination man!
Oh I've waited for THIS! Yes. One of my favourite games of all time, yeah!
I wish I could sub or like more than once, your videos are great and you deserve way more views than you get.
Very cool video! I love Deus Ex (as you know) and hearing your side of things was great. In a way I love how dated the presentation of this game is (voice acting, graphics, some of the interface). Once you play it, these things allow you to immediately place it in the late 90's and early 2000's era, which makes the elements it's truly great (if not top of the class) at all the more impressive.
Great Rumination as always Arche, looking forward to Human Revolution!
The main villain's plan sounds like what Ultron was trying to do in Age of Ultron.
Zomg...my first First! :P btw Arch, did you ever do a Jade Empire Rumination? I cannot remember, if not, would you ever do one? But as always, some nice insight.
I'm hoping for the same thing. He has mentioned the game in a few of his other Bioware related videos. Plus considering he has covered so much of their work, I really hope he gets to it someday.
In response to both, while I'm not opposed to a Jade Empire Rumination it's not on the list for the coming year.
A culture's teachings, and most importantly the nature of it's people, achieve definition through conflict. They find themselves or find themselves lacking.
-Kreia
Envision history as a sequence of dialectical conflicts. Each dialectic begins with a proposition, a thesis, which inherently obtains or creates it's opposite, an anti-thesis. Thesis and anti-thesis, the conflict is inevitable, but the resolution of the conflict yields something new: a synthesis, eliminating the flaws in each leaving behind productive common elements and ideas.
-Caesar
Rumination on one of my favorite RPG's of all time? Awesome! :D
I can't wait for Mankind Divided.
Hey, really glad you covered this classic. Here's a comment and an upvote.
6:50 when Oni-Chan refuses to acknowledge your existence! XD
freedom and pain, order and stagnation sounds like instrumentation vs free will from evangelion
My hype is strong for Human Revolution!!
Oh yes ! I'm listening to this asap ! :)
Great video, arch. Is this one of your older videos or did you record this recently? I've never seen this one before.
This would be a brand new episode, yes.
I see some ppl refering to you as Jason on the comments (if i recall right).. so forgive me if i'm wrong..Anyway..
Jason, to be honest, i am kind of amazed on John Romero "path", The early ID days, Doom and Quake and his fall on Daikatana (i know there is much more to it than that).
So even though it isn't what you do... would you do a Runimation Analyssis on Romero Carrer and mentality?
I love to hear your thoughts.
STALKER has both tetris inventory and weight attached to items. STALKER MASTER RACE.
The game doesn't just let you choose between a violent path and a stealthy path. Almost any path you choose is a grey area. Like the mission in Vandenberg Air Force Base, the one where you start on the roof and have to find a way to destroy the 4 military bots that are patrolling the courtyard area. It's the definition of non-linearity. No two approaches will likely be the same. What is "the stealthy path" here? If you have the rocketlauncher and enough ammo, you can take them all out safely from the rooftop. WIth the jump aug you could jump down from the roof without taking damage. Or you go down the stairs, but then you'd have to deal with security cameras and guards. If you can't or don't want to kill the bots yourself, you can activate some friendly bots to help you. But one of the control units you need to access is heavily guarded, which is yet another problem for you to solve. It goes on and on... One of my favorite missions.
If anyone is interested in playing this game again or trying it for the first time, I'd recommend the GMDX mod. It fixes many of the old bugs, adds quality of life features and tweaks the gameplay balance (augs, skills, weapons, level design) in many ways. As a DX veteran, who has played the game at least a dozen times, I have to say, this is the definitive Deus Ex experience.
Have you tried the Revision version?
Great video!
woot! Great to see a Rumination!
Whats your opinion on Mankind Divided? (If you've played it yet..) Im enjoying it (Beat it already, but going through again) and it has great lore, setting and backstory as always.. But the core story wasn't the best. Cant wait for your thoughts on the game, and any future videos. Keep up the great content man!
8:12 lol, I wouldn't mind you doing one of your ruminations like this.
If you talked about the music, I didn't notice. What do you think of the OST?
I would have liked it if the game was about a quarter the length (which is something I don't want). In other words, found it good but very repetitive. I ended up muting the music and using my own after a while.
Is there a video where you explain what you think currency should be based on instead of gold?
Good rumination,thanks.
I chose the dark age ending because I sure didn't trust the other options and that faction always dealt straight with me. I'm not for anarchism IRL but in the game, litreraly no one depicted is worthy of running the world, and only the anarchists are not asking to.
Thank you for this. :)
You look a hell of a lot like me. Poor guy.
Of all games, this is one that should be remade, fulfilling all of the original design goals.
I would be happy even if it only used something of the graphic quality of Half-Life 2 (source 1 or 2?). Clearly, given the number of people who still play it, graphics aren't a major priority for this type of player. And an older engine should be cheaper. Due to the status of SS3, it might be something to keep him (and some "amateurs") busy. The trailer for SS3 showed too much attention on garish graphics and lighting.
I have to disagree that the dog analogy is what makes the game so good. Invisible war had the ability to do that. In all my playthroughs, I never sided with a faction and did all missions. I don't know what it's like to stick to only one faction.
HR lets you do the dog through the linear game; same with MD. And Prey and the Dishonoreds. In fact most of them did it better, having had more time to flesh out their world. Gameplay-wise, they beat DX also.
But playing DX is much more fun than any of the others. And I think it's because of the plot. While it's not strict definition, in a game I consider the route you take through the world as part of the plot, so your dog analogy is part of it. But none of the other games drew me to them like DX. I needed to know what came next. Walking around, discovering stuff, etc, was the frosting, but the plot was what made it for me. Only in Prey did I have a real curiosity as to what was going on and what would come next.
Also, DX made all its story, mechanics, world, etc, without knowing that it would be successful, so it was an integral part of the world.
These other games made a point of all of this and used it as a marketing tool and thus they were overdone and done just to do them.
For me, a good analogy is prog rock. In the 70s, bands like Yes were doing new things, things they wanted to do, to experiment and to experience. They weren't meant to be complex directly, but the complexity made them more interesting. In addition they understood that fast, slow, loud, quiet, hard and soft were all elements of good music. Today it's how many time signature changes can we have, how many scales can I play really, really fast, how can I do all of the things the 70s bands did to make music they liked, but for their own sake.
70s --> music first, technique second
today --> technique first, music maybe.
And, lo, I am done.
I like to use the GEP gun for a silent takedown
Lol, I didn't think Invi--the "nonexistent 2nd game" was ALL bad. The gameplay really sucked and nothing was really outstanding, but as a continuation of the overall Deus Ex story I actually kind of enjoyed it. Plus I found the missions fun when judged on their own. On the voice acting in the original Deus Ex, I agree it was mostly lackluster but I actually enjoyed JC's "Dirty Harry" monotony. I feel like it fit his character and made him seem like "more machine than man" (though I do understand with nanotech, his human body was still intact--unlike the mechs). Would like to hear your detailed thoughts on Human Revolution sometime in the future!
Are you related to Anthony Fantano in someway? you look kinda like him and your analysis style is very similar.
Also, i also always said that the strenght of deus ex is its peculiar structure, good to know someone else think the same ;)
lol he just has a buzzcut dude
Invisible war next?
Fuck yea rumination on one of my favorites!
Why did you stop doing ruminations?
V-sync for some reason doesn't work for this game, I've tried everything. Forcing it through radeon's settings, setting the fps to 59, and even getting D3DOverrider to also force Vsync, Still nothing. I feel like they should remake it but I know that it just won't be as good as the original. Maybe they could do a redux like Devolver digital did with Shadow Warrior.
ua-cam.com/video/okPLF9Ad9ns/v-deo.html Now this is how you do a remake.
So glad u did this deus ex is king
Why is this dude’s zipper the size of a Kingdom Hearts game?
I never got around to playing invisible war, is it really that bad?
No, it wasn't that bad.
It's only horrible in comparison to Deus Ex.
I actually love/hate the grid system. It's outdated and sure, it makes people think about what they would have to keep... But an encumber system does too. A grid system just tells me to keep the most powerful weapons and equip. Not the funnest to play.
nice, i cant belive you only have 11k subs and a girl like sexysniper has 3.3mill by making girls get naked and put them on youtube, the world is weird.
Er... Daggerfall did the three endings before Deus EX.
it's almost like you didn't play the game, you cannot resolve almost any situation in game verbally, sneaking is also imperfect, you end up fighting, even if you try to sneak, voice acting is not perfect but realistic and not overdramatic, intelligently written dialogue helps to overcome it, it's actually very very good overall, ui is perfect
What's wrong with the sneaking?
If you try to sneak you end up fighting? In that case, I'm sorry but you suck at sneaking. You can pretty much go through the entire game without ever having a gun pointed at you. In fact, that's my default way of playing DE.
Stay out of the women's bathroom JC.
*You want some Soy Food?*
Sorry, Invisible War was still a decent game.
Buy the game on Steam and use the GMDX mod. Thank me later. Also the voice acting is so bad it is just great.. Having good voice acting would actually lessen the experience.
WTF INVISIBLE WAR DOESNT SUCK
The voice acting is terrible?
What a shame...