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Spector Comments On Deus Ex 2 Demo, Game Now Gold 47

Posted by simoniker from the not-so-much-with-the-changing dept.
Thanks to VE3D for pointing to an Ion Storm forum post containing Warren Spector's comments on the reception of the Deus Ex: Invisible War demo, which was released a couple of days back, and has garnered considerable controversy over perceived console-centric design and over-simplification. Spector, the project director on DX2, and creator of the original Deus Ex, comments: "We're as dedicated to the PC as we are to the Xbox", but agrees: "We've heard the comments about some of our UI choices on the PC side and we want to address them, whether through an updated demo or a PC game patch or both." He concludes with a clear message: "We stand by our game design choices... We honestly feel we've delivered a more focused, purer version of the game we set out to make the first time." Meanwhile, Blue's News is reporting that the game has officially gone gold, and is due in stores December 3rd for both PC and Xbox.
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Spector Comments On Deus Ex 2 Demo, Game Now Gold More

Spector Comments On Deus Ex 2 Demo, Game Now Gold

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  • Headshots... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why don't headshots with a pistol take out enemies in one shot? That isn't very realistic.

    This is another balance issue we're reevaluating. ... The goal with the current setup is to get the player to use more appropriate weapons if they want a one-shot kill. ... Also, we want weapons like the sniper rifle to serve as the best 'head shot' weapon.

    Because, as we all know, pistols don't kill people; people kill people. I mean, sniper rifles kill people.

    • Re:Headshots... (Score:4, Funny)

      by MikShapi ( 681808 ) on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @08:05AM (#7567516) Journal
      Why does it take 5 pistol rounds to the head to take out a guard?

      Makes you wonder. The first four. You think the guard noticed?

      • Re:Headshots... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Lightwarrior ( 73124 ) on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @10:18AM (#7568718) Journal
        It would be less funny if you knew that shooting a guard once in the face elicits a confused cry, the second time prompts a stern warning, and only on the third time do they attempt to set you on fire.

        Throwing large steel drums at a guard only results in a stern talking to, no matter how many times you do it.

        In the world of Deus Ex, those are the two chief concerns - a totally nonsensical damage model and an absolutely abysmal AI (it's worse than the first one).

        There are no silent stabs in the back, no sharp-shooting headshots. But it doesn't matter, because the AI doesn't quite achieve the competancy of a brain-damaged dog.

        -lw

        • Re:Headshots... (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Then there's the wonderful ragdoll physics. You know, I never realised that stabbing a corpse in the foot caused its arms to flail around like that. A bit overdone, perhaps?
      • Splinter Cell demo on Gamecube:

        Sneak in the back way, use the fiber optic under the door so you're not spotted. Creep in, aim carefuly with the silenced pistol, and cap the cook in the back of the head.

        So what do you get out of this painstakingly realistic game? The cook freaks out and hits the alarm so that the soldiers come in and kill you. Funny, a headshot seems to kill everyone else in the game.

    • Re:Headshots... (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The problem we were trying to avoid was the case where the player could simply run directly towards an enemy at top speed and shoot them once in the head with a pistol, thus conserving other types of ammo.

      With this kind of thinking, Bruce [Willis] and Arnold [Schwarzenegger] would be out of business pretty quickly...
      • Which problem is he addressing here?

        The 5 headshots required, or the unified ammo system?

        I'm sorry, I figure if the player is good enough run directly toward an enemy at top speed and manage to pull off a pistol shot to the head without the alarm being raised, they deserve some kind of reward for that. Conserving their other ammo seems like a good one to me.

  • The Deus Ex demo suxor! Here's why! (Score:4, Funny)

    by superultra ( 670002 ) on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @10:38AM (#7568923) Homepage
    So I downloaded the demo [fileplanet.com] and am playing this Liberty Island level with the statue of liberty destroyed. I've got an AMD k6-2 380 with a TNT2 card. This sucker runs horribily! It's like a freaking slide show! This is supposed to be the Unreal engine, but there's nothing here. I mean, the statue of liberty level looks cool and everything, but honestly. It takes a 600 with a Voodoo5 to get any kind of decent framerate. Who at Ion Storm thought they could get away with just supporting 3dfx cards? This should work just as well on my nvidia card as it does on my brother's 3dfx card. Just because nvidia is new to the game doesn't mean Ion Storm should drop it! Unreal Tournament runs no problem, so what gives?

    And the gameplay design. What horrible AI! You can shoot Bad Guy A who's standing beside Bad Guy B, and Bad Guy B freaks out for a minute but if you hide, he's goes back to business as usual, even though his smoking buddy is laying knocked out cold on the ground. How realistic is that?!? Wouldn't the guy go get friends or something? Wouldn't he call up his supervisor on some kind of futuristic radio? Give me a break, this is completely non-real Ion Storm. All you have to do is kill the guys one at a time, hide, and then kill the next guy. Whoopie. And there's more! Like the bad guys would actually leave a vent hole with boxes at the side of the building that you can climb up into. Honestly. The AI sux Ion Storm! They don't even dodge behind buildings, and all you have to do to run away from guys is enter a vent. You can shoot a guy with a poison dart, walk away and come back 5 minutes later and the guy is still standing there like you never hit him. Wouldn't he be looking for the bastard that shot him with the poison dart? Whatever. Don't give me this "Guess it was the wind crap."

    The skill system SEEMS neat, but it's so unrealistic. As if within a period of 5 minutes gametime and a helicopter ride to a different level you suddenly become a better swimmer. Riiiiiight.

    And let's not even talk about the inventory system. Sure, I got used to it within an hour, but it's like a freaking jigsaw puzzle! Why can't they just use what 's worked FOR THE LAST 10 FREAKING YEARS since Wolf3d and just give me 10 weapons, 1-10. None of this number slot crap. It's like they completely ignored everything that has been done before. Why do I have to inventorize all this freaking ammo! I'm like a walking weapons depot or something. good grief.

    This is definitely not as scary as System Shock 2 either. Which, I might add, runs completely FINE on my system. They should have just made it like System Shock 2 and stuck with what works, throw in some conspiracy theories and leave it at that.

    Let's not even talk about the physics.

    I hear that halfway through the game you can't even sneak around anymore because there are these near-invincible commandos! sup wit dat Spector!?

    I don't understand why I have to upgrade my computer just to play this game. It's like Ion Storm was just ignoring their customer base from System Shock 1 and 2 and Thief, which all run fine on my PC. This demo will definitely stop me from buying Deus Ex!
    • You may be modded troll, but your post is the most insightful I've read since this demo was released. Its a beautiful piece of ironic prose.

  • I couldn't run the demo (Score:3, Informative)

    by TerryAtWork ( 598364 ) <research@aceretail.com> on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @12:07PM (#7569993)
    And I have a geforce mx 440 card with 64 MB - didn't like my pixel shader....

  • Disappointed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MikeMJH ( 699234 ) on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @12:13PM (#7570059)
    DX2 was a big let down for me. I was expecting something like DX1, with reasonable performance. I've got a 1.33Ghz Athlon and GF4 ti4200, and the game ran very badly. Also, the UI made me feel like I was playing on a console. Lately there just doesn't seem to be any good games being released. . .

  • To the naysayers (Score:2, Informative)

    by gmhowell ( 26755 )
    Athlon 1800+, GeForce3Ti500

    Demo ran 'fine'. No tweaking, straight out of the box. If people are honest about the game not running for them, then I will admit that there must be some problems somewhere. What they are, who knows?

    the UI problems can be tweaked. Surf around, and you can move the HUD out to the border of the screen a bit.

    The controls are a little floaty. Again, surf around, things can be tweaked.

    Have a little bit of faith. The dude says they'll patch. With any luck, it'll be a day and date p
    • If this was a start-up company releasing their first game then your points would be valid - you'd expect to tweak. But for $diety's sake, this is ----ing Ion Storm, a well established company employing some very famous figures in game development! For them to put out a demo that basically requires you to dig around in the ini files just to make it playable is unforgivably unprofessional - it doesn't feel like they have made any effort whatsoever to polish the demo. It actually makes me wonder whether they e
  • I haven't perused the 11 pages following the post, but that post answered somewhere between jack and crap. Everything he mentioned we could fix OURSELVES in the ini or knew about already. Basically it was like taking credit for the ini-modders.

    What he DIDN'T address was how lack of reloading, locking down weapons(Including the KNIFE and blunt objects), unified ammo, a mouse-less UI and removal of experience points isn't dumbing down the game.
    • you can use the mouse in the UI...i know i do! but they do need a better UI. i like drag and drop, not swap by clicking. this was obviously how theyve done it on xbox and have been to lazy to make it good for PC. I really liked the way they handled thhe bad press the demo gave them, and Im totally looking forward to DE2. I like the one ammo for all idea, it simplifies the gameplay allowing me to get onto thinking about how to play the game as opposed to manage my ammo consumption. the damage does suck, b
    • Taking credit for the ini-modders?

      They could have designed it without any ini-settings, just hard wired values, like compile time defines. It's still much more their product than anyone else's, including ini-modders.

      If it were binary game patches to fix these issues, that would be something worth describing as "taking credit".

      Anyway, I do agree with the rest of your post.

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