Deus Ex Human Revolution

And yet we jump to conclusions before playing the game.
 
Jump to conclusions? "Oh wow, now that I have a controller in my hand the highlighting isn't obnoxious, pointless, and immersion breaking at all."
 
Gargantou said:
Yes it's all the console-lovers fault, the PC community surely isn't also filled with young gamers who want "casual" experiences and hence also encourage simplification . . .
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Young people can afford computers now? I thought they were mega expensive so parents bought their kids consoles.
 
I lost where the sarcasm went in and out of vogue in the thread, but did you guys not buy your own machines when you were younger? I must have only been about 14 when I purchased my first PC with my paper round money

Reminiscence over.
 
kupocake said:
I lost where the sarcasm went in and out of vogue in the thread, but did you guys not buy your own machines when you were younger? I must have only been about 14 when I purchased my first PC with my paper round money

Reminiscence over.
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I think the joke was about how one of the many bits of rhetoric used by console fans is that PCs are too expensive and that, now, to defend consolitis, the argument is that computers are all of the sudden cheap enough for them to afford en masse.
 
Gargantou said:
Yes it's all the console-lovers fault, the PC community surely isn't also filled with young gamers who want "casual" experiences and hence also encourage simplification . . .
Click to expand...


Yes it is. If anybody is holding back the advancement of technology and innovative gameplay, it's the consoles. Hence the term "consolitis". It has nothing to do with casual gaming.
 
Goddammit all of you, I keep thinking there is more news about this game. Quit yer bickering.
 
I dont find whats the big deal whit the higligthing
 
<RJMC> said:
I dont find whats the big deal whit the higligthing
Click to expand...

Two reasons stand out, the first is that it looks rather garish and the second is that it smacks of 'hand-holding' to an extreme, when considering that every single interactive objective glows.
 
Kyorisu said:
Young people can afford computers now? I thought they were mega expensive so parents bought their kids consoles.
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I don't know what's going on in this thread, but I noticed something related to this recently. I got an e-mail from Nvidia or somthing pushing a specific video card. It was touted as "the $150 video card that can run Crysis 2 on Advanced." Honestly that's a pretty good marketing theme. Crysis was the gold standard for "is my computer good enough" for a while. They also had a link to a computer to build for under $600 including that card. Now $600 is still twice what you'd pay for higher end console bundles these days, but considering the how much the gap has shrunk, I'm fairly interested in how it will affect the future of PC gaming.
 
Don't forget that PC games are cheaper and that the $600 computer will be able to pump out better graphics since graphics are so critical.
 
Quixoticism, that depends on when you are buying the computer.

I'd love for you to show me a comp that cost 600 USD in 2005 that were able to run Metro 2033 at graphical settings equal to the ones the 360 version of Metro 2033 runs on.
 
Show me Metro 2033 in 2005 first please.

The cost per performance ratio is so much closer now than it was then. And while your argument would have been meaningful 6 years ago, is isn't now.
With the advancing technology being developed by the CPU makers, integrating the GPU onto the same chip, it's just going to make low end PCs much more robust in their graphics and gaming potential to make PC gaming more accessible.
When the next wave of consoles come out PCs will be much more competitive in terms of price and performance.
 
StarBob said:
I don't know what's going on in this thread, but I noticed something related to this recently. I got an e-mail from Nvidia or somthing pushing a specific video card. It was touted as "the $150 video card that can run Crysis 2 on Advanced." Honestly that's a pretty good marketing theme. Crysis was the gold standard for "is my computer good enough" for a while. They also had a link to a computer to build for under $600 including that card. Now $600 is still twice what you'd pay for higher end console bundles these days, but considering the how much the gap has shrunk, I'm fairly interested in how it will affect the future of PC gaming.
Click to expand...

This has been the case for several years. $500-600 is the figure I last worked out and I've seen someone do it for $300 with used parts. Computers aren't that expensive but still require a bit of technical knowledge to get a good deal for your money. Heck I can replace my current video cards with more powerful ones that cost less. Computer hardware has been getting more powerful and cheaper while console games have stayed as console games. For the average user there isn't a need to spend thousands of dollars.

Still my current build was $1600 + $380 + $150 + $60 + $50 plus some misc crap (Keep in mind this is a complete system inc Monitor and all peripherals). Just shy of $2300AUD. Could have shaved a few hundred with a 1156 i7 870 or 2500K if I waited. Top end performance costs big bucks. The cheap low end not so much.
 
StarBob said:
I don't know what's going on in this thread, but I noticed something related to this recently. I got an e-mail from Nvidia or somthing pushing a specific video card. It was touted as "the $150 video card that can run Crysis 2 on Advanced." Honestly that's a pretty good marketing theme. Crysis was the gold standard for "is my computer good enough" for a while. They also had a link to a computer to build for under $600 including that card. Now $600 is still twice what you'd pay for higher end console bundles these days, but considering the how much the gap has shrunk, I'm fairly interested in how it will affect the future of PC gaming.
Click to expand...
It won't affect anything, because people still have some dumbass mentality that PC gaming is overly expensive. Almost any $140 GPU alongside a decent CPU will run any modern game smoothly.

My $450 upgrade (not spent on just a GPU) 2 years ago plays Crysis 2 MP demo on mid (I didn't try any higher) flawlessly, and Bad Company 2, Mafia II, etc.
 
Kyorisu, what spec were it that you paid for? I have a feeling it'd cost a lot more if you lived in Sweden, it always seems to do.

Whenever my US friends give figures for their components and I compare them with European/Swedish costs we seem to end up with a lot higher.

The new comp that I am looking at getting which is very high-end and includes a new high-end monitor and speaker system, keyboard etc is gonna cost me around 4800 AUD. Now a bit of that price is because it's pre-built but it's not Dell or anything, it's a good computer-oriented store that let you choose all the components and they put it all together and slap on a good warranty. The difference isn't really as big as say if you buy a Dell, the difference if I bought all the components separately in Sweden from the cheapest(but still good) stores over here would maybe be 600-800 AUD.
 
LDnqB.jpg
 
http://www.shacknews.com/article/67899/nixxes-partnering-with-eidos-montreal

Oh joy, pretty much officially a port.

When asked whether or not the PC version was developed in-house, Dugas told Shack: "No. Well, it was done in-house, but with a partnership." According to Dugas, Eidos Montreal will utilize the services of Netherlands-based developer Nixxes Software BV to bring Human Revolution to PC gamers this August.

For a number of years, Nixxes has been the go-to team for Eidos' multi-platform release calendar. Most recently, Nixxes helped deliver the PS3 and PC version of Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, a "full featured PC port" of Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, and porting the PS3 and PC versions of Tomb Raider Underworld.
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no buy




oh wait, I wasn't going to buy it anyway. nixxes is known for their shitty console ports.
 
Christ. If you guys buy only pure-bred PC games, you must play all of two games a year.
 
I heard their ports are fine.

I'm much more worried about derp in the base game than anything else.
 
Reposted from an argument I had with a friend on facebook, in response to the recent narrated video:

The video is supposed to show us something of the creativity the game allows us. What I see is a fairly simple choice of options (including the obviously signposted ALTERNATE ROUTE). I hear the voiceover lady taking the opportunity of completely unexceptional dialogue and bog-standard characterisation to sing the writing's praises. I hear her emphasising, as if it is unprecedented, the fact that we'll NEVER BE FORCED (egads!). I see a small environment with painted-on detail: "you might even be able to create an alternate route", says voiceover lady, as the player places a crate instead of climbing up a stepladder that's in the background. And let's just focus on that: the lady is extolling the virtues of crate-shifting. And when we get up on the roof, she tells us...that the pet nerd on the radio has (gasp!) variable responses depending on our actions in the game!

I realise that this is actually a tutorial level (there's a message on the right-hand side of the screen that says "tip: Guards", so it must be pretty early). I realise that this is just ludicrous nonsense hype that you see all the time (I'd very much like to play Brink but if I have to hear their developers praise its "revolutionary storytelling" one more time just because the enemy forces "are more than just black or white", I will actually freerun my way over to their building and blow it up). And I realise that there will be a whole system of long-term change and decision-making (e.g. plot decisions) that layer on top of this low-level gameplay. But that doesn't change the fact that this video is apparently aimed at people who have never played the first fifteen minutes of MGS. That game's successors offer more freedom of expression in a single encounter with a guard than this video showcases in ten minutes. Human Revolution: press buton to initiate a takedown cut-scene. Snake Eater: press button to do a take-down (except it's actually a bit hard)...or hold them up, mess them around, interrogate them, use them as a human shield, shoot from over their shoulders, punch them and run...

I realise also that this is quite representative of what the original was like. Multiple routes, crate stacking, secret vents. And you're right: it's been so long since I've played a new stealth game that I've nearly forgotten how to tiptoe. It looks like it will be a pretty fun game, and a big-budget, well-produced remake of DE1 (or, perhaps more accurately, IW) is hardly something to be ungrateful for.

But so much more is possible. In the latest incarnation of a series intended to be revolutionary, why aren't we seeing long-term persistent feedback mechanisms? Why aren't we getting demonstrations of fantastic guard AI on a level we've never seen before? How about alert states changing the nature of the next HOUR's play? How about enemies calling in reinforcements to and from different areas of a non-linear base in a manner that I can impede or endanger on my own terms? How about enemies that have political pull being able to chase me down randomly on a freeform street if in an early mission I let them see my face and get away? How about missions that aren't segregated into bubbles so that the borders between the freeform hub areas and the enemy castles are permeable by police forces, reinforcements, helicopters, allies, angry civilians - how about big, broad-scale abstract feedbacks like district-by-district measures of political sympathy, meaning that I could end up swaying half the city against an enemy faction? Can I seriously disrupt the enemy AI by jamming their communications? Can I fool them into shooting each other by messing with their friend-or-foe computers? Can I play off factions against each other? And can I do this in the context of a SIMULATION rather than a choose-your-own-adventure?

I realise this is quite a shopping list, but when your game has 'revolution' in the title - not to mention DEUS EX - shouldn't you even TRY to do something that nobody else has done before?

(I should mention by the by that I find the view switches and the long-winded takedown moves very obtrusive, and the latter tiresome, but that doesn't really affect anything else I've said)
Click to expand...
Talking of AI, interesting question: when was the last time anyone heard AI hyped in a game? Is it just me, or has AI stopped being a thing you advertise? If so, it's confusing, because AI is actually one of the most important things for any kind of game in which you're supposed to have choice and feedback against multiple enemies. Maybe we're so deep into Modern Warfare land that Halo-style battles of wits just don't matter anymore.


ZT said:
http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/action/deusex3/news.html?sid=6268913
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This is right back from the beginning of the thread, but I just had to laugh:

The narrative will center around two "unlikely heroes"; Anna Kelso, a Secret Service agent, and Ben Saxon, a special-ops soldier
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Haha, what? In what sense are these "unlikely heroes"? Now if the quiet, timid, well-meaning teenage daughter of Baroness Warsi had to team up with a one-armed Yugoslavian dwarf who formerly worked in Baghdad as a 'fixer' arranging prostitutes and army contacts for western journalists...that would be a pair of unlikely heroes.
 
Sulkdodds said:
Haha, what? In what sense are these "unlikely heroes"? Now if the quiet, timid, well-meaning teenage daughter of Baroness Warsi had to team up with a one-armed Yugoslavian dwarf who formerly worked in Baghdad as a 'fixer' arranging prostitutes and army contacts for western journalists...that would be a pair of unlikely heroes.
Click to expand...

They have anguish, okay, Sulk? And like, personal problems. It's going to be deep.
 
Man, I would be anguished too if I was in a science fiction book written by someone whose primary influence was by necessity an unimaginative Quebecois developer's copy of a classic old videogame whose futurism hasn't dated well - rather than, say, Neuromancer, or even (gasp) the world.
 
Sulkdodds said:
Talking of AI, interesting question: when was the last time anyone heard AI hyped in a game? Is it just me, or has AI stopped being a thing you advertise? If so, it's confusing, because AI is actually one of the most important things for any kind of game in which you're supposed to have choice and feedback against multiple enemies. Maybe we're so deep into Modern Warfare land that Halo-style battles of wits just don't matter anymore.
Click to expand...

I think you're right. Better AI means more thinking involved in order to deal with enemies (ie: more difficult). The most profitable subset of the gamer market is people who buy Modern Warfare and Halo, who just want simple shooting to distract them for a few minutes. Thus designers interpret this as people not wanting complexity. I think that interpretation is incorrect though, as the reason for the popularity of those games are the multiplayer components. So when a singleplayer game's designer doesn't push for better AI since he knows how bad it is in the most popular games, he makes that decision not realizing the best part of those popular games is playing against real people with real intelligence. Not the part with the bad AI which he is comparing himself to. I think if anyone truly gave a damn about the SP in Modern Warfare, we'd hear more about how shit the AI is.

Also, I can imagine your facebook page being the most insightful, civilized and well written page on the entire site. In comparison, my page is just downright barbaric. What with talk of things like vagina vanquishers and my avatar being a dude with a huge snot hanging out his nose.
 
It's really just me and a friend have a tendency to never stop talking once we meet. And while he is away at university this tends to outlet either in massive phone bills or in voluminous facebook threads. We're the real reason they made it so that pressing enter in the comment field made the post rather than beginning a new paragraph. They just didn't reckon on us having Shift keys. Project MKULTRA, that is. Poor bastards - once someone accidentally hit capslock they knew no way back.

You mention Halo, but I think people forget that the first game had quite intricate freeform tactical combat. It was very much about positioning and timing, manoeuvring around squads of enemy soldiers and with plenty of driving vehicles round large landscapes. AI was absolutely crucial to its appeal. And AI doesn't necessarily mean a game is more difficult - just more interesting. Difficulty can be (as it were) artificially raised through giving the enemies exacting reaction-times and punishing weapons, but good AI means the player's mind becomes as important as her aiming reticule. I think it's less about the AI being shit in ModWad and more about it never being given the opportunity to prove itself - that is, it's never required. Who needs AI in a tunnel?

But AI is absolutely crucial to having emergent gameplay and emergent consequences that go beyond the bloody result of a sniper's bullet. Consider the MGS example: there are defined rules about how guards can spot you and what will happen if you do. This means that you can play within those rules and have all sorts of interactions with them. So in MGS2, a guard who spots you will fire off a few shoots at you and/or retreat to call an alert on his radio (depending on factors like how close you are). While he's doing this, you can disrupt him, and stop him from calling. You can also disable his radio beforehand so that he's unable to use it. Once he does call an alert, however, other guards will descend on you, special heavily-armed units called in from outside the map to fight you. If you're able to evade them for long enough, those units will start sweeping the area with a much more rigorous set of actions than they usually do. They'll bend down to look into vents or shelving units that guards on normal status would simply pass by. And if you can weather that, they'll relapse into caution: the heavies will stick around, but keep to tight patrol roots. Finally, once caution evaporates, the heavies will be called back out of the area and things will be as they were before. Meanwhile, there are also guards who give regular radio updates, so that if you kill them you have to get them out of the way quickly, because a search team will quickly come looking.

These things might not sound like they're within the province of 'AI' but that's only if you make an unsustainable distinction between a single person and a kind of gamey group-mind. Better call it SI, or Simulated Intelligence, because at the end of the day it's just a decision tree with various contextual factors. Modelling individual enemies as part of a big, wide-scale decision tree would produce really interesting results, especially in a game with loads of customisable cyberpunk powers. You could put the player in a position where there were certain feedback mechanisms that she had countermeasures for, but others that would always put her on the back foot. You could also build in a difficult curve with access to powers.

Consider a version of the previous 'radio message' technology. When an enemy spots you he will call it in (audibly) through his headset, and all guards will be alerted to your position. Take them out if they're more than one second into a message and a search team will be dispatched (really, in game, with a real ETA based on their ability to navigate their environment) from the nearest of many deployment stations. Hide the body and yourself in time and you'll be okay. But it wouldn't just be a matter of individual incidents: your being spotted will also be held in a sort of central brain which ensures all guards for the rest of the mission will act a little bit more suspicious, a little bit more ready. When you exert firepower against the guards, or when they find bodies that you've killed stealthily, that too will go to the central system, and result in higher levels of readiness and fortification during the level. A violent guns-blazing player, then, will quickly encounter extra danger. Let's say that you quickly invest in the "Signal Eavesdropping" augmentation. This allows you to hear what the enemy are saying not just when they're in audible distance. Of course you could have gained that power by hacking into their computer systems, but that only works on an area-by-area or group-by-group basis and you want to have that capability from the start. Of course, if there was some way for the AI to realise that you were eavesdropping, they could move to a secure channel - prompting the necessity of taking out a guard so as to get the information from his personal computer.

Let's say you cause a big alert and end up shooting a bunch of guys before hiding. You can hear that they're searching for you, but, using your Free-Running aug, you've made off across the rooftops into a hub zone. Then you hear that they're going to put a helicopter in the air to search for you. Maybe that means you need to hide out in a building, either by breaking in or knowing somewhere safe. But maybe break-ins are a risky business because homeowners have the capacity to phone the police. Maybe the bars you know are all problematic because within the next hour's play police teams will deploy (again simulated in-game) from stations to check them all. But luckily, you've done missions for the owner of a particular bar in the undercity, who will let you hide in his cellar if necessary. Or maybe you've got the Camouflage aug, which means the helicopter won't see you if you stay still when it comes. Perhaps you have even taken the precaution earlier in the night of visiting the corporate landing pad and leaving a remote bomb there, and as soon as you hear the order to put choppers in the air you grin and blow them up before they've left the ground.

Maybe none of this happens, though, because maybe you've invested in the Electronic Countermeasures aug. That jams their communications in a wide radius (though it can only jam one 'channel' - i.e. one faction - at a time). After one successful mission, you arrive at the next to be told by your contact that the enemies are all now communicating with lasers. That means they can only talk to each other if they're within view of a giant, obvious antenna atop a nearby building. Destroying this antenna naturally now becomes your chiefest priority. But if you're spotted before then you could always temporarily disrupt their LOS by throwing smoke grenades.

This would all be a lot of work, but then it has been ten years. And I doubt it's cheap - either in money or in hours - to employ rambling 'narrative designers' to write mediocre dialogue and yap on your videos about how innovative it is that you've managed to do what somebody else did better last decade.
 
Now I'm sad. A game that played like that would be phenomenal, but chances are it will be another decade before cash-in games go out of style and we get something even remotely like that. Unless Kojima is making a MGS5?
 
Sulkdodds said:
How about missions that aren't segregated into bubbles so that the borders between the freeform hub areas and the enemy castles are permeable by police forces, reinforcements, helicopters, allies, angry civilians - how about big, broad-scale abstract feedbacks like district-by-district measures of political sympathy, meaning that I could end up swaying half the city against an enemy faction?
Click to expand...

I am inclined to agree with you on your earlier points, but this part is just so, so, soooo silly. What game (other than maybe an RTS) have you played that could implement even half of the above quote properly into a game? Especially a FPS RPG? Games that attempt to do such things even on a small scale end up being awkward and totally meaningless. Ones that come to mind are Red Faction Guerrilla, Stalker: Clear Sky, and Fallout: New Vegas. Basically what you are asking for are interchangeable factions, and factions are usually arbitrary and lame. To start, these gameplay mechanics aren't what Deus Ex is about, at all. Having these mechanics in a game like Deus Ex would be so far from the tradition, that it would be equally as weird if they were implemented in a Half-Life game. I think I would lose my mind if a Deus Ex game included missions permeable by worldly, faction based NPC's. That would be a total cluster**** of nonsense AI.

I think you should imagine what a game with these mechanics would actually be like. There would be gun fights between enemy and friendly NPCs. Any surviving friendly NPCs would stand there staring fisheyed at you repeating the same line you've already heard 40 times. That would be just about the extent.

I realise this is quite a shopping list, but when your game has 'revolution' in the title- not to mention DEUS EX - shouldn't you even TRY to do something that nobody else has done before?
Click to expand...

No, I don't want a large redesign of existing gameplay, I don't want factions, and respect points, and notoriety, and all the silly willy things this sort of game would entail. I want the same thing I have already played and enjoyed, but improved. Just like when I played the Half-Life sequels or the Metal Gear sequels.
 
I'll admit that those mechanics are the ones that would be hardest to effectively implement in that long list of random things I'd like a game to do. They weren't necessarily intended to all fit together - just directions you could go to be innovative.

But long-term persistent consequences were part of the essence of Deus Ex. When you did something in the gameworld, it mattered to people, and affected your future chances. Factions, too, were always an important part of it - the NSF, the Illuminati, MJ-12, whoever else. In IW much was made of your decisions as to who to work for and who to piss off; there would always come a point where the desires of the organisations trying to sway you became mutually exclusive. So actually the mechanics you're talking about are just different ways of reaching towards a very similar vision. However it was accomplished, the possibility of truly turning different groups against each other in a permanent and game-affecting fashion would surely be within DE's purview. One hopes they would be implemented rather better than the examples you cite, and in a way that does not come off as arbitrary. This might be done by integrating number-based measures with very complex branching 'choose your own' story trees (as have been used in previous games).
 
Try making a mission for Fallout/Oblivion and realise how much of a mind**** it is to do a simple conversation with multiple outcomes. Have fun keeping track of the variables.

Then people still moan about the game.
 
Games have to be fun. The gaming industry has no interest in researching new mechanics and complex gaming patterns as long as they sell and gain money. Actually, I think that games are moving towards the "more accessible" and "more casual" way. No exception.

Stop comparing modern games with past glories, it's a no-win scenario.
 
Gargantou said:
Kyorisu, what spec were it that you paid for? I have a feeling it'd cost a lot more if you lived in Sweden, it always seems to do.
Click to expand...

I bought just before Sandy Bridge came out (sort of glad I did after the whole broken Intel chipset fiasco).

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d142/Kyorisu/pc.jpg
All the stuff in the image + $380 for a 23.5 120hz monitor, $150 mech keyboard, $60 Razer mouse, $50 metal pad thing for mouse, and some other items.
 
The $ being AUD I assume? If so holy crap, us Europeans really are overcharged, at least here in Sweden, for comparison that Asus mobo at one of the best computer-retailers which is my fav is priced around 1900 SEK, that's close to 300 AUD.

Maybe I should move to Australia, not sure it'd be worth it what with the shitty ping I'd get playing with my friends over here though.:p
 
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