Deus Ex Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

[Nekot-The-Brave]

And yeah, you can tell the developers were really passionate and dedicated to giving the game a social message, but their approach to it has the subtlety of a brick to the face, and as a result it comes across as extremely obnoxious and preachy, not to mention the fact that it doesn't really fit the tone of a Deus Ex game.

What's interesting is that people are criticizing it for giving too much voice to the other side - i.e. for what some perceive as a "both sides are equally bad" message because the oppressed class may or may not have resorted to terrorism, while the game was simultaneously using BLM slogans. IMO it was a major mistake to invite comparison to Black Lives Matter because the situation and movements in the game are really not similar on any level. It's probably got the most similarities with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, then with some added overtones of Apartheid and Jim Crow laws. The ARC feels like it's halfway to become a PLO/Hamas style organization.

DX: MD used 'Augs lives matter' before BLM movement was created.

 

[Ash]

You buy that bullshit? We shall never know what the truth really is, but it's highly suspect material nonetheless.

Deus Ex: 9.5
Human Revolution: 9

Uh, no.

Deus Ex: 9.5
Human Revolution: 7.5. Or 8 to be generous.

Human Revolution is a bastardized, non-canonical, dumbed down pseudo-Immersive Sim. Still good enough for a playthrough or two but has absolutely nothing on the design genius of the classic Immersive Sims, including Deus Ex.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

DX: MD used 'Augs lives matter' before BLM movement was created.

I'd want to see the receipts on that one. The movement dates to 2013 which would correlate to the early stages of development on MD, before the Thief team had merged with the people doing preliminary work on MD. Considering how the only time it seems to appear in the game is on little brochures littering the game world that could easily have been inserted during the final few months of development, it doesn't feel like it was tightly integrated in the game. I'm a bit over halfway and nothing so far has made it into dialogue as far as I can tell.

Even if by coincidence a concept artist or something had used the slogan or something very similar to it in their work, they still had several years of overlap to realize that maybe it probably wouldn't be a great idea to include it since it was now going to have all of these real world connotations that they didn't initially expect.

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

Skip to 2:51 or thereabouts to avoid rambling. Micro-transactions were mandated necessary about two weeks before final submission, producing a mad scramble. Breach was created (by a separate team at SE's behest) to keep people from growing too bored playing the main game, Square Enix's management doesn't give a shit about beta testing or quality control but are real sensitive to market trends. Also their game tracks everything you do. Weird.

 

[HoboForEternity]

meddling corporates are such piece of shit

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Pretty much confirms that the game was balanced without the micro-transactions in mind. Which is what it feels like in game too. You actually have to go out of your way to find them which is nice I guess. Amusing that they expect people to pay for cheat codes though. This industry, lol.

 

[HoboForEternity]

anyway, did they took out the conversation/persuasion puzzle in MD?

in human revolution i am really really impressed by it.

the core system is really awesome. instead of your usual skill check, it is some kind puzzle and the animation/direction/voice really do it justice.

for example the first "dialogue boss" you find in the game. you have to figure out what he wants, what he did and what he don't want, use it to exploit it, whether it is trying to reason with him, make him feel bad, etc.


the success isn't also just told by a huge [SUCCESS] sign in the dialogue box, but telegraphed trough body language and facial expression. like everytime you make zeke feel bad about the casualties/hostages, he would shrug and lower his gun, looking down to try and reinforce his conviction in doing all these until he get up again, with renewed spirit and for jensen to break it again.

the only game that has the same level of cool dialogue is alpha protocol where we have to analyze the person we're talking and speka the appropriate response to manipulate/convince them.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Those persuasions all still in the game.

 

[Black]

anyway, did they took out the conversation/persuasion puzzle in MD?

in human revolution i am really really impressed by it.

Yes, that was a fairly good thing about the game. Beneath it all it was pretty much just rock-paper-scissors but there are other games that don't handle rock-paper-scissors dialogue system that well.

 

[Somberlain]

The writers were so fucking desperate for all this to be "socialy relevant" that they forgot to make it to make sense first.

And this is the stuff that mainstream media and average gamers think is truly mature and intelligent storytelling in games. Because just like Bioshock: Shitfinite, it looks deep, mature and intelligent if you are either stupid or just don't think about it at all.

 

[Junmarko]

Skip to 2:51 or thereabouts to avoid rambling. Micro-transactions were mandated necessary about two weeks before final submission, producing a mad scramble. Breach was created (by a separate team at SE's behest) to keep people from growing too bored playing the main game, Square Enix's management doesn't give a shit about beta testing or quality control but are real sensitive to market trends. Also their game tracks everything you do. Weird.

5:00 - Ughhh. I knew it. Split into two games. Fuck Square Enix.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

5:00 - Ughhh. I knew it. Split into two games. Fuck Square Enix.

The source did not corroborate that, only stating that there was a team that began working on the next game in the series at some point in 2015, and that some of those staffers got pulled back onto the original team to get the MD shipped on time. If MD had content stripped out for the future sequel then the original game must truly have been huge. This source happily spilled info about the inner workings of the company, them not knowing about a major overhaul in the game seems a bit unlikely.

 

[Coma White]

Actually, the whole aug vs. normies thing is bizarre, if all augs around the world go crazy right at the same time just after everyone getting a new chip from a certain company, the result wouldn't be the creation of a bizarre division of augs vs. non augs but everybody questioning this company and wanting it burn to the ground, Illuminati or not. Instead Tai Wong Medical just gets bigger.

I think it's implied the underlying issue is the fact that the aug industry was, in the eyes of those who could not afford or obtain them, a transhuman vanity strictly for the wealthy. Though unlike luxury cars and the like, augs actually grant distinct physical and mental advantages to those who possess them. So the backlash towards augs isn't really about the Incident so much as it has to do with divisive economic and/or class sentiment. The Incident was just the tipping point for a pot full of boiling unrest and jealousy.

 

[Junmarko]

5:00 - Ughhh. I knew it. Split into two games. Fuck Square Enix.

The source did not corroborate that, only stating that there was a team that began working on the next game in the series at some point in 2015, and that some of those staffers got pulled back onto the original team to get the MD shipped on time. If MD had content stripped out for the future sequel then the original game must truly have been huge. This source happily spilled info about the inner workings of the company, them not knowing about a major overhaul in the game seems a bit unlikely.

"They could not corroborate that much." Meaning split into two games, not three as Jim presupposed last week. Just look at what Square has done to Hitman, why is this even surprising?

 

[HoboForEternity]

They killed sleeping dogs too. First they wanna turn into some shitty fremium MMO shit, then the fad gone, and they abandoned it.

I dont thinj they will do anything else to the series as well uuuhg

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

"They could not corroborate that much." Meaning split into two games, not three as Jim presupposed last week. Just look at what Square has done to Hitman, why is this even surprising?

You've got it back to front. As Jim himself says moments later:

"This doesn't prove or disprove indeed that the recent Deus Ex was intended to be a larger game and subsequently split up. But it does point to there being at least two Deus Ex games in development simultaneously."

Overlapping development cycles in itself proves nothing of course, since that's a classic time honoured technique in industrial scale game development (i.e. 3 Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed games will be in development at any one time, giving 3 studios a 3 year dev cycle each staggered by 1 year). Although the next game being in dev only about six months prior to it's intended release date (remember, this was supposed to be out Q1 2016) is a fair bit different than the usual staggered development cycles, particularly when this last game had a 5.5 year dev cycle.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Actually, the whole aug vs. normies thing is bizarre, if all augs around the world go crazy right at the same time just after everyone getting a new chip from a certain company, the result wouldn't be the creation of a bizarre division of augs vs. non augs but everybody questioning this company and wanting it burn to the ground, Illuminati or not. Instead Tai Wong Medical just gets bigger.

I think it's implied the underlying issue is the fact that the aug industry was, in the eyes of those who could not afford or obtain them, a transhuman vanity strictly for the wealthy. Though unlike luxury cars and the like, augs actually grant distinct physical and mental advantages to those who possess them. So the backlash towards augs isn't really about the Incident so much as it has to do with divisive economic and/or class sentiment. The Incident was just the tipping point for a pot full of boiling unrest and jealousy.

Rich people who got the augs to enhance themselves are only a fraction of the total augmented population in universe. From the games, the majority of voluntarily augmented seem to be working class people, construction workers, soldiers, that kind of thing. In DX:HR we had a sidequest about prostitutes getting forcibly augmented by their pimps in China and the characters seemed to think that was becoming more and more widespread in 2027 prior to the incident. The other major group, and I would suspect the largest overall are the ones who suffered injuries or disabilities, where an augmentation was the only way for them to have a "normal" life. The most common augments we see are people with one or two limbs augmented, often quite rough looking ones especially in Golem city.

Those with augmentations would be members of most every class except the poorest, depending on the state of state funded medical support in any given country. The wealthy people would make up the lion's share of those who just decided to get an aug one day, but that group in itself isn't what most augs are.

 

[Junmarko]

"They could not corroborate that much." Meaning split into two games, not three as Jim presupposed last week. Just look at what Square has done to Hitman, why is this even surprising?

You've got it back to front. As Jim himself says moments later:

"This doesn't prove or disprove indeed that the recent Deus Ex was intended to be a larger game and subsequently split up. But it does point to there being at least two Deus Ex games in development simultaneously."

Yes, something that has never been done before with this franchise, and thus, has lead to the release of the first Deus Ex game with an episodic-like conclusion. Coincidence?

Every DX game before this has essentially been a self-contained experience, closing off the protagonists'/player's role by the end and essentially giving complete narrative closure, should the game not be a success.

Overlapping development cycles in itself proves nothing of course, since that's a classic time honoured technique in industrial scale game development (i.e. 3 Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed games will be in development at any one time, giving 3 studios a 3 year dev cycle each staggered by 1 year).

When games are developed at this rate, the quality diminishes greatly. I mean really, Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty? The fast-food equivalent of video game series, no single entry being anything near memorable and not exactly what I would call prime standard. But then everyone has different taste...

Personally, I would rather not see Deus Ex go down this road, thank you.

 

[veevoir]

They killed sleeping dogs too. First they wanna turn into some shitty fremium MMO shit, then the fad gone, and they abandoned it.

I dont thinj they will do anything else to the series as well uuuhg

The way they killed Sleeping Dogs is just an art. I am sad for the team, even this freemium shit it seemed they at least tried to make it good for what it is (disclaimer: did play and tested it). And then got axed.

What a fucking waste, it was a better GTA clone than GTA. And at least as campy as source material they were inspired by.

 

[jimmy_pvish]

:russiastronk: 10/10 лучшая игра

 

[Coma White]

The wealthy people would make up the lion's share of those who just decided to get an aug one day, but that group in itself isn't what most augs are.

But they would be the most visible, right? The ones Sarif liked to put on his posters before the company went bust. I dunno, maybe I'm just trying to make sense of a plot convention that, when it comes right down to it, doesn't actually make a whole lot of sense.

depending on the state of state funded medical support in any given country.

Shit, my ignorant American ass :patriot: didn't even consider this. Here I am thinking about augs like we think about chemotherapy -- as something only the economically privileged can afford without bankrupting themselves. I totally neglected to consider the idea of TAXES PAYING FOR AUGS in a state-mandated system.

... which, by the way, would create a MASSIVE uproar in my country.

 

[Joni Odin von Hassenstein]

... which, by the way, would create a MASSIVE uproar in my country.

Rightfully so.

 

[Junmarko]

Also their game tracks everything you do. Weird.

This is good, perhaps their data will reflect that no one is playing Breach and they'll get it through their fucking skulls that no one asked for this (pun intended).

 

[Infinitron]

Micro-transactions were mandated necessary about two weeks before final submission, producing a mad scramble.

Insane.

But it explains why they were a complete surprise on release.

 

[imweasel]

The first DLC will be released on September 23rd, just one month after the game has been released.



Kind of obvious that the game was intentionally chopped up so they could sell a portion of it as DLC. But at least it has Pritchard.