Spector Comments On Deus Ex 2 Demo, Game Now Gold

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.

Headshots...

[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...

[MikShapi]

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...

[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...

The Deus Ex demo suxor! Here's why!

[superultra]

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!