First Deus Ex 3 Details Emerge 157
Ostracus writes "Deus Ex 3, the third entry in the influential FPS/RPG series, was confirmed to be in development by Eidos Montreal nearly a year ago — and now the first solid details on the game have finally emerged. UK magazine PC Zone has a cover story on Deus Ex 3 for their 200th issue (which has reportedly just begun reaching subscribers), and CVG has relayed a number of interesting tidbits from the preview: '... this time around combat won't be influenced by stats, but will rely purely on your personal marksmanship skills. Instead stats will influence "a vast array of fully upgradeable and customisable weapons," and you'll be able to tailor your arsenal to your play style with mag upgrades, scopes and other add-ons. What's more, stealth will now rely on a cover system rather than shadows, and damage will be dealt with by a very Call of Duty-style auto-heal.'"
Don't trust this report. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:soo hoping they wont ruin it like dx2 (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. The original formula worked so well. Why do they feel the need fuck it up? I think everyone would be thrilled with a Deus Ex sequel with a great new story and mostly the same gameplay (obviously the AI needs to be smarter and such).
And speaking of DX1 with upgraded graphics, check out:
High Definition Texture Pack
supposedly very close to completion
http://offtopicproductions.com/hdtp/ [offtopicproductions.com]
Deux Ex: Reborn (a UT2004 engine port)
unknown if this'll ever get finished. i believe the creator put it on hold to help finish the HDTP
http://dxr.deusexgaming.com/ [deusexgaming.com]
Re:Deus Ex3 features announced: (Score:0, Interesting)
I read a developer interview (it was probably Warren Spector) in which he talked about how one of the things that stuck with people who played Deus Ex was at the end of the first level, if you were aggressive and killed a lot of NSF members, your brother sternly says, "Yeah, well, pace yourself. You killed a lot of people tonight." It was unexpected (other than Paul in the beginning reminding you that you're police, there was nothing in the game to indicate that it cared either way how you handled the enemies) and set the tone for the rest of the game.
Re:No No No (Score:3, Interesting)
That the player-character is a nano-engineered cyborg superman and that automatic damage repair is the absolute first thing that UNATCO would have installed in all its agents?
Re:Please please please please... (Score:3, Interesting)
Invisible War isn't nearly as bad as many people think it is. It's just not nearly as good as the original Deus Ex. Its main problems were that it was painfully slow even on the fastest computers at the time of its release, despite the fact that the graphics weren't that fantastic. It lacked the sense of freedom and exploration you got in Deus Ex, since the areas were very small and had a painfully long load time, and the story wasn't as good. But in the end, it had an OK gameplay experience. Nothing special, but far from Daikatana.
Re:Deus Ex3 features announced: (Score:2, Interesting)
the various RPG mechanics were a lot of fun, and you had to live with the choices that you made.
See, that's the thing. If I wanted to "live with the choices that I made", I would be living my real life, not playing a game.
"Living with the choices that I made" is not fun. It just creates stress and worry when I am supposed to be enjoying myself.
Hope, fear, anticipation (Score:2, Interesting)
Deus Ex 3 will be hard to really get excited about until we find out how wide of a net the Dev team is casting for a playerbase. I get nervous hearing about 'shedding' more RPG elements from the DX formula, simply because it was the FPS/RPG hybrid elements that made Deus Ex (and System Shock 2) truly unique games to play.
I'm going to be taking Yatzee Crowshaw's tack on this and remain a cynic on this until I have further reason to hope. The risk of watching another beloved PC franchise ruined for the sake of the 'mainstream console gamer' is one that plays very near and dear to my heart. After having been twice dissapointed with Bioshock and Invisible War, I'm wary this time around. They're decent games, just not quite up to the bar set by the games that originally inspired them.
"Critically acclaimed" doesn't mean much (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Unfortunately, "critically acclaimed" doesn't really mean much. It means that at least one reviewer wrote a glowing review, whether because he really bends over that easily for the publisher's ads and freebies, or because he liked the idea lots after playing for 5 minutes on God mode.
Anarchy Online was "critically acclaimed" and it was launched as an unplayable mess of bugs, with bad balance. It lost players hand over fist _fast_ and only stabilized after being turned into a freebie ad-supported game, and even then at a _pitiful_ number of subscribers. So not that many players liked it either.
Aiken's Artefact was "critically acclaimed" and IIRC it sold a pitiful 800 copies in the beginning. (Not sure how many more were bundled later in "top X games" bundles.)
Looking Glass's games were "critically acclaimed" and had such a rabid following that, arguably, it was the "OMG, Eidos killed Looking Glass to keep funding Daikatana" that broke the camel's back and triggered the devastating backlash against what would have otherwise have been merely a mediocre game with outdated graphics. But, funnily enough, Looking Glass had more rabid fanboys, than it had paying customers. Their last couple of games (e.g., the Terra Nova experiment) sold pitifully few copies, and even other publishers (e.g., Microsoft) no longer wanted to touch them with a ten foot polearm. Reviewers and fanboys ranted and raved about how great and innovative the Looking Glass games are, but people didn't actually buy those games.
So aiming for "critically acclaimed" instead of sales, is a bit like aiming to be the ugly girl with a great personality.
Now I'm not saying that DX1 was "bad", so hold yer horses. But if it didn't sell great, it didn't sell great, and that's that. I can see why a publisher or developper would try to change a few bits and see if it does better.
2. And part of its problem was that it wasn't really anything anyone could put their finger upon. It was barely even an FPS, but it required FPS skills to get out of a firefight alive. It wasn't a forced stealth game, but mostly you had to anyway... except when it wouldn't work and you'd be back to needing FPS skills again. It was barely even a CRPG, but it tried to tell CRPG fans that it was one. Then they'd need FPS skills or have to deal with forced stealth, instead of the usual concentrating on the semi-interactive storyline while letting the computer roll the targeting dice. Etc.
Now I'm not saying that _only_ FPS skills worked, but... let's put it like this: from all that bewildering array of possibilities for solving any problem, there'd be at least one point in the game where _your_ favourite approach just didn't work and you had to do something else. For each category of players, a different one.
Basically instead of catering to the union of FPS, stealth and RPG fans, it really catered to an intersection of the three sets. You had to be the kind of guy who enjoys all three, to go through the whole game and like it. Because otherwise sooner or later a section of the game would come up which forced you to do the one you dislike.
Now if you were indeed at least semi-comfortable with all 3, I'm not going to say you shouldn't like it. In fact, I'm happy for you. But, well, that's one possibility as to why it had only mediocre sales. Because it really catered to a minority.
And from that point of view, again I can see why a publisher would try to enlarge that target market segment.