Deus Ex Is Deus Ex an RPG?

[Sigourn]

this thread is embarrassing to read...

Is it? Or is it that you guys can't admit you have a problem?

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Of course it is, you play the role of JC Denton.

 

[ghostdog]

JC Denton is just the code name. His real name is Adahn Jenson.

 

[DraQ]

^ What that really describes is a good system. But a TRVE RPG definition that excludes D&D is p. funny

Make it cRPG then. PnP has excuse of having limited resources to spend on mechanics and GM always having the last word if the mechanics proves unsatisfactory or insufficient.

Nevertheless D&D does have common stat framework in the form of ability scores. It also has provisions for giving monsters class levels and so on.

PS:T isn't a real rpg.

You start the game without knowing so much background and even without the name

Exactly.

I could extend my definition of RPG further while encompassing my previous point: a game that, through your actions, allows you to develop an unique personality that is recognized by the game world and affects how you interact with it.

Based on this:

- Deus Ex isn't an RPG.
- Final Fantasy games aren't RPGs.
- Skyrim isn't an RPG.
- The Witcher isn't an RPG.
- ULTIMA 1 isn't an RPG.

- Baldur's Gate is an RPG.
- Fallout is an RPG. Fallout 3 and 4 are just really poor RPGs.
- Morrowind is an RPG, but again, one that is very shallow in how you develop a personality.
- Planescape: Torment is an RPG.

I think I'm getting close to something.

Doesn't really make sense.

First of all games pretty much never react to personality. It's either some sort of reputation system (in practice, not in name), or a bullshit karma system. Or an ugly patchwork of case by case scripting but this tends to gravitate towards the former.

Now:

• Deus Ex allows you to express yourself via actions (for example propensity for deadly force) and the game does react.
• Morrowind has completely wooden character interaction, but it nevertheless has reputation system and some individual quest scripting. It also slavishly adheres to systemic symmetry.
  
• Witcher allows a lot self-expression given that it all needs to fit specific character. I wouldn't class it as cRPG because of stat system only affecting Geralt, not because it doesn't allow self expression - it does.
  
• Skyrim, as shallow and streamlined as it can be, gives you opportunities to make lasting choices in quests (mainly daedric ones, but also DB and some others) and generally recognizes, if superficially, a lot of stuff you do.
• BG1 doesn't really allow for much self expression beyond mentally impaired karma system. You can be selfless good or stupid evil. Yay. I'm pretty sure binary choice doesn't really count as unique personality. Pretty much all of the above already wreck BG1 in terms of RPing (no need to pull out FO or PS:T for that), and no, biowarean dialogue "choices" don't count, besides, Skyrim has those too.
• How about Wizardry 8 - by your own criteria is it an RPG?

 

[Excidium II]

Make it cRPG then. PnP has excuse of having limited resources to spend on mechanics

lmao

in what niggerworld do you live? FFS

I wanna live in that world where CRPGs systems get at least 10% of the design effort and playtesting that any pnp goes through

 

[DraQ]

Make it cRPG then. PnP has excuse of having limited resources to spend on mechanics

lmao

in what niggerworld do you live? FFS

I wanna live in that world where CRPGs systems get at least 10% of the design effort and playtesting that any pnp goes through

Me too.

The thing is in cRPG there is no tradeoff to grinding full stat blocks using full detail for all the participants. It's just numbers and computers can grind a lot of them fast.
In PnP everything is tradeoff, if every mob has essentially a full character sheet and there are no shortcuts to take (like ignoring dying/stabilization for monsters) it will bog the gameplay down.
OTOH in a game like Morrowind every single character, no matter how minor and dully written, has full character sheet with all the skills, usable inventory and so on.

PnP and cRPG are completely different beasts requiring completely different design.

 

[Excidium II]

Aaaand? PnP NPCs can have a full character sheet when it matters, or half a character sheet, or one skill. It's the magic of having intelligence creating stuff on the fly. Besides it's irrelevant whether everyone has a full character sheet if them stats are not being used in any way. They have a full character sheet more for the sake of programmer convenience than anything.

 

[Ludo Lense]

JC Denton is just the code name. His real name is Adahn Jenson.

Wasn't the JC for Jesus Christ? Or is that unconfirmed?

 

[DraQ]

Aaaand? PnP NPCs can have a full character sheet when it matters, or half a character sheet, or one skill. It's the magic of having intelligence creating stuff on the fly. Besides it's irrelevant whether everyone has a full character sheet if them stats are not being used in any way. They have a full character sheet more for the sake of programmer convenience than anything.

Aaand cRPGs have no intelligence creating stuff on the fly, no magic, and no fragmentary depictions and descriptions that can be fleshed out as needed or left alone. They do have a lot of raw computing power to crunch shit. Draw your own conclusions.

 

[pippin]

Software is only as "smart" as the people who makes it.

 

[Morality Games]

The real question is... are action RPG's really RPG's? I always argue they're not really part of the genre, despite the name.

The idea of units of art as things that belong to one genre was sort of superseded in the post-90s era criticism. 'Genre' got reinterpreted from 'entry in filing system' into 'group of shaping influences'.

Sort of similar to how the line that separates 'dialects' from 'entirely different languages' is often challenged by reality, or how the line that separates biological species from one another is also challenged by reality.

 

[Sigourn]

First of all games pretty much never react to personality.

Technically no game reacts to anything you do. It's either some sort of response generated beforehand by the creator, or a procedurally generated response by the creator.

But some games decidedly react better to how your character is behaving in the world.

• Deus Ex allows you to express yourself via actions (for example propensity for deadly force) and the game does react.
• Morrowind has completely wooden character interaction, but it nevertheless has reputation system and some individual quest scripting. It also slavishly adheres to systemic symmetry.
  
• Witcher allows a lot self-expression given that it all needs to fit specific character. I wouldn't class it as cRPG because of stat system only affecting Geralt, not because it doesn't allow self expression - it does.
  
• Skyrim, as shallow and streamlined as it can be, gives you opportunities to make lasting choices in quests (mainly daedric ones, but also DB and some others) and generally recognizes, if superficially, a lot of stuff you do.
• BG1 doesn't really allow for much self expression beyond mentally impaired karma system. You can be selfless good or stupid evil. Yay. I'm pretty sure binary choice doesn't really count as unique personality. Pretty much all of the above already wreck BG1 in terms of RPing (no need to pull out FO or PS:T for that), and no, biowarean dialogue "choices" don't count, besides, Skyrim has those too.
• How about Wizardry 8 - by your own criteria is it an RPG?

- Deus Ex allows me to express myself via actions as much as Excitebike allows me to express myself. And the game reacts by punishing me.
- Morrowind has shit character interaction, but at least and outsider can look at me playing and figure out what kind of personality my character has based on what he does.
- The Witcher, unlike Morrowind, has me acting as Geralt almost all of the time.
- Skryim barely gives you any opportunities to make meaningful choices, and if by "superficially" you mean "random greetings from NPCs", you are right. But random greetings hardly constitute consequences to my actions. I murder the Emperor of Tamriel, and no one bats an eye. And there's little personality building in Skyrim when 99% of the quests boil down to "do it like the game wants you to do them, or don't start the quests at all". Morrowind at least gives me the opportunity to fail quests, turn them down, or complete them in different ways.
- BG1, for as little as I played it (around 10 hours), was more interesting than Skyrim has in regards to developing a personality.

I haven't played Wizardry 8, yet.

 

[pippin]

- Deus Ex allows me to express myself via actions as much as Excitebike allows me to express myself. And the game reacts by punishing me.
- Morrowind has shit character interaction, but at least and outsider can look at me playing and figure out what kind of personality my character has based on what he does.
- The Witcher, unlike Morrowind, has me acting as Geralt almost all of the time.
- Skryim barely gives you any opportunities to make meaningful choices, and if by "superficially" you mean "random greetings from NPCs", you are right. But random greetings hardly constitute consequences to my actions. I murder the Emperor of Tamriel, and no one bats an eye. And there's little personality building in Skyrim when 99% of the quests boil down to "do it like the game wants you to do them, or don't start the quests at all". Morrowind at least gives me the opportunity to fail quests, turn them down, or complete them in different ways.
- BG1, for as little as I played it (around 10 hours), was more interesting than Skyrim has in regards to developing a personality.

Citation needed on the DE punishment. You should at least be able to deduce what will happen when you do this or that.
Although I'm kind of disappointed that the in-game restriction about killing only matters when you're in UNATCO.

Morrowind's character interaction is alright, it has lots of factions and the social minigame can be helpful at times. The game is designed to be broken, yes, but it's a single player game, so who cares?
Still, Geralt does what you tell him. In a way, you *are* Geralt. You can decide how the game plays and it changes dramatically, especially in TW2. Who cares if you can't create your own self insert?

 

[DraQ]

- Deus Ex allows me to express myself via actions as much as Excitebike allows me to express myself.

You can choose, for example, how to handle JoJo or Johnny.

- The Witcher, unlike Morrowind, has me acting as Geralt almost all of the time.

Yes, but you decide HOW you act as Geralt. Who you side with, what you do, how do you solve dilemmas that appear, etc.

- Skryim barely gives you any opportunities to make meaningful choices, and if by "superficially" you mean "random greetings from NPCs", you are right. But random greetings hardly constitute consequences to my actions. I murder the Emperor of Tamriel, and no one bats an eye. And there's little personality building in Skyrim when 99% of the quests boil down to "do it like the game wants you to do them, or don't start the quests at all". Morrowind at least gives me the opportunity to fail quests, turn them down, or complete them in different ways.

Most daedric quests give you opportunity to do that. It's usually a tradeoff between power and not doing something heinous - Grimoire of Pestilential Thought style. It's also not devoid of Morrowind's style freeform decisions, despite streamlining - for example you can go with the cultists' plan only to betray and slaughter them in Namira quest.
And superficial or not the world will react - characters will comment on the dead ones, living will take over the businesses of the dead, etc.
This sort of reactivity doesn't have that much impact in the big picture, but there is quite a lot of it and decently implemented too.

- BG1, for as little as I played it (around 10 hours), was more interesting than Skyrim has in regards to developing a personality.

And how do you even develop one in BG1? Some examples? My memory might be blurry but I don't think it's that blurry.
And no, I don't consider either "I will help you for free because I'm good, even though it costs me my time, supplies and I risk my life" VS "I will help you, but demand compensation because I'm evil and evil people want to get paid for hard and dangerous work" or "I will murder random people and have Flaming Fists chase me around" VS "I won't be murdering random people and Flaming Fists won't be chasing me around" meaningful development of character's personality especially given that all incentives are on the same side - the most selfish thing to do is being selfless so the opposite is just stupid evil.
Both Witcher and Skyrim do better as they put material incentives against moral ones - you could really use that werewolf derived mutagen, but it so happens that the werewolf is actually a pretty nice guy; you could really use the Ebony Mail, but will you sacrifice a friend for it?

 

[pippin]

Witcher 1's characterization migh be pretty tricky because it's the opposite of the average fantasy rpg. As DraQ points out, most of the problems you'll find there are normal stuff happening to normal people (within the context of fantasy ofc). It's a very "human" game, in a way, not really a grand adventure.

Also the reasons to side with the squirrels or the knights actually have some sociopolitical depth and go beyond that "A good B bad" stuff you often see in games.

 

[Sigourn]

Citation needed on the DE punishment. You should at least be able to deduce what will happen when you do this or that.
Although I'm kind of disappointed that the in-game restriction about killing only matters when you're in UNATCO.

Morrowind's character interaction is alright, it has lots of factions and the social minigame can be helpful at times. The game is designed to be broken, yes, but it's a single player game, so who cares?
Still, Geralt does what you tell him. In a way, you *are* Geralt. You can decide how the game plays and it changes dramatically, especially in TW2. Who cares if you can't create your own self insert?

What I meant to say is that Excite Bike punishes you for your style of play, or rewards you accordingly.

To me it is important to be in full control of my character's personality to define a game as a roleplaying game. And Geralt is far too womanizer and we can't do anything about it.

 

[DraQ]

To me it is important to be in full control of my character's personality to define a game as a roleplaying game.

What if your personality puts you in trouble or costs you something?

And Geralt is far too womanizer and we can't do anything about it.

Would not fucking everything that moves help?

No one forces you to.

 

[Zanzoken]

You can't create your own character, you are always JC Denton

This is why it's not an RPG

 

[asfasdf]

No.

 

[Sigourn]

Would not fucking everything that moves help?

No one forces you to.

I'm not even trying and I still get laid in-game. I'd say the game pretty much makes me fuck everyone.

Being nice to women in this game = fuck them silly.

 

[Lios]

Deus Ex is a great rpg.
I never played pen and paper stuff so I am perfectly happy to declare that I can pump whatever I want in my computer CHARACTER SHEEIT.
Of course I can imagine the programmers drunkenly chest bumping when they added "swimming" in the whole process, but no matter.

Also I was extraordinaringly happy when the game recognized in the dialogue that I smashed that worker's back (that opens the gate in the cemetary stage where you meet that fat Illuminaty guy) with the batton because he seemed fishy to me and I was right of course, even though this doesn't change the upcoming raid.
Rpgs are an illusion in general anyway.

And the story is amazing, sincerely can't understand those that think otherwise.
I say, the fact that Deus Ex exists, makes the conception and existence in general of games like The Witcher even easier. And im' not talking about the open world stuff of course.