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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.
How can it go gold if it hasn't sold a darn thing!??
Why don't headshots with a pistol take out enemies in one shot? That isn't very realistic.
... 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.
This is another balance issue we're reevaluating.
Because, as we all know, pistols don't kill people; people kill people. I mean, sniper rifles kill people.
Are we supposed to know who Linus is for some reason?
He's a legendary game designer and doesn't need any introduction to most up-to-date game enthusiasts.
If you don't know who Warren Spector is, I don't know why you're reading Deus Ex-related stories.
It could be because he/she liked Deus Ex, but didn't care to read every story and interview with the people that made it. Therefore, this person can still enjoy Deus Ex without knowing who Warren Spector is.
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
> Are we supposed to automatically know who Warren Spector is for some reason?
e loperId,127/ (Third hit).
Google is your friend. As always.
http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/dev
If you care about Deus Ex, you know who Warren Spector is.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
RE: Your sig "Fight fire with fire..."
Actually, when fighting large forest fires, they do fight fire with fire, by burning away a fire line to try to starve the main fire and keep it from advancing.
So I downloaded the demo 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 are talking about deus ex 1 not 2. And deus ex 1 even with some of its design problems is considered one of the best videogames in history, quite revolutionary for its time.
From your description and the fileplanet link you sent, I think you're playing the demo for the original game, not the subject of this article..
Then again, the rest of your comments seem arbitrary and trollish. Good day to you.
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.
Read Errant Story.
And I have a geforce mx 440 card with 64 MB - didn't like my pixel shader....
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
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. . .
http://www.gentoo.org http://www.opensource.org/halloween/
Athlon 1800+, GeForce3Ti500
.ini changes I've mentioned.
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 patch, with at least the two
I've preordered, and have every intention of picking up the game next Wednesday.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
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.
There is a difference between being "fan" and "fanboy".
A more accurate question would be, would a news story about football need to explain who Walter Camp is, and I would suggest that the answer is "yes".
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
Warren Spector is still active. Even my John Elway question might not be so good. Perhaps Brett Favre would be better.
Ah, now perhaps you see my point. Walter Camp invented football.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
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.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
It's pretty damn obvious when the demo has a black screen and pops up a windows prompt that says "Sorry this game required a video card with pixel shader support".
I have a GF4 MC 64 meg AGP 4x, so WTF? I bought the card less than a year ago and as mentioned elsewhere here, it's one of the most popular card configurations out there.
That's why I bought the GF3 a year ago instead of the lower end GF4: it was more advanced. The low end GF4 of about a year ago was actually a souped up GF2, not a dumbed down GF4. It was even on /. a few times.
Still, you are right in that lots of people bought the things.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon