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Deus Ex Clan Wars Takes Series Toward Action?
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to an Eidos Interactive financial presentation, originally from late 2003, but only noticed recently, mentioning the development of Deus Ex: Clan Wars, a previously unhighlighted title that continues the popular stealth action series. The game is mentioned in context of an "Example WIP [Work In Progress]", and a newer financial presentation on the Eidos UK site indicates Clan Wars may only be a working title, since it lists 'Deus Ex 'Action' game' on release schedules for the next financial year. Online rumors suggest Clan Wars may be a PlayStation 2/Xbox title that's in development at Eidos-owned Crystal Dynamics, who is also developing the new Tomb Raider title, and elsewhere, the recent Eidos financial presentation lists other unheralded forthcoming titles, including "Commandos 'Tactical Shooter'", presumably an extension of the Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines franchise, and new IPs called "Crash N' Burn" and "25 To Life".
The first Deus Ex was utterly groundbreaking and beautifully crafted. The second was an enjoyable, if failed, experiment; average compared to its peers, dire compared to the original. The third sounds like an outsourced game in the dated Tomb Raider mould (the two games even share the same developer).
Unfortunately it seems that creative games simply aren't as reliable moneymakers as unintelligent sequels.
It's too early to make a pure comparison between Spector and Lucas, but it seems like Spector is moving in that direction. And this is coming from someone who loved Warren Spector so much that I would've had a "re-orientation" if Spector and I met in a bar. And he'd been gay, if he isn't already. Or something.
Now, I'm not so sure. I'm quite certain I would reject any advances, no matter how drunk either of us was. He sounded way too much like Lucas in his post-mortem defense of DE:IW, not at all unlike Lucas in his defense of the prequelogy; oblivious to the fans, tinged with arrogance, and with a sense of justification that what he did was right while everyone else knows it wasn't. It sounds like Spector has surrounded himself with yes people, a Denton Ranch if you will. I used to think Molyneux was like that, but at least Molyneux had the gonads to admit that Black and White wasn't the shiznit everyone thought it would be. Spector, I get the impression he thinks that it was us who was off base, not him.
I remember hearing the president of Lucasarts defend the abomination that was Force Commander with something along the lines of, "This is the future, but the gaming universe just wasn't ready for it." Which sounds a little like Spector now. For shame, for shame.
If it ends up as some Dark Alliance/Brotherhood of Steel PS2/Xbox offshoot, I'm done. I enjoy Dark Alliance, but I'll be damned if I'll enjoy seeing Deus Ex stripped down AGAIN.
It's what you've been waiting for, the ultimate in conspiracy 3d fighting games! Over 160 motion captured combos! Pit your favorite heroes in the Deus Ex universe with your favorite villians . . . or heroes! Use J.C. Denton's flashlight biomod, or the greasels' jumping action! Combine moves! 13 different fully rendered environments, including Paul's Apartment, UNATCO HQ, and inside a black helicopter! Avoid blistering enemy attacks by jumping into vents!
Warren Spector, producer, says, "I think we'll see some very emergent gameplay result out of this very open-ended format. Players will constantly be confronted with choices: do you punch low, or kick high? This is the kind of gameplay that exemplifies the future."
Coming out for Xbox and PC!
(PC version requires Xbox controller. And Xbox. And TV.)
The multiplayer add-on for the original Deus Ex was rather unique. A bit slow, true, but I found it pretty interesting, a lot like the new Splinter Cell's multiplayer missions (except more frantic).
But if this is going downhill into Brotherhood of Steel territory, that's it. Invisible War came close enough to "mainstreaming" the series, and this might kill it.
- - having to take care of type of ammo and the need to change to other weapons when you ran out of a specific type
Warren Spector tried to make us believe that this was non-essential rubbish, that could easily be taken away without damaging the game itself. He was utterly wrong.The original game played (almost) in our time and the things we had to deal with felt like contemporary items (email, PINs, passwords...) and so the whole had an huge immersive effect. As in contrast to DX2:IW, where you feel you play a character in a far future, to which you have no connection to and where everything happens just by right-clicking your mouse on the appropriate item. How sad...
Warren S called it "streamlined experience". I would call it "greatly reduced depth". Others may call it "fiasco brought about by fools tinkering with something they didn't understand".
Excellence: Moderate (mostly affected by comments on your karma)
>> - having to drag'n'drop your weapons into the arsenal, fitting them into the available space
- having to right click your weapons in the description area, and then picking up another weapon of similar size and having them both take up the same space.
And, the venerable:
(>set DeusEx.JCDentonMale bCheatsEnabled True
(>spawnmass 40 hooker2
That being said, I wish there were texture and model packs out there that would make Deus Ex 1 pretty. I've got a 9700 pro here, and Deus Ex isn't making it work very hard. Eidos, if you're listening: I would like some high-quality textures and models, please.
I will now redundantly add my name to the end of my post. You know, in case you forgot me or something.
(since I've already posted, I sure hope someone with mod status tags the parent as flamebait or troll)
Um, you do realize that I was the Lead Programmer on DX:IW, right?
As far as reviews go, DX:IW ended up with marginally worse reviews than its predecessor, see:
GameRankings or
MetaCritic
Note that the vast majority of reviews are in the 80-100% range. And then read a few of the ones that aren't to get a gauge on their quality.
Anyway, sorry that you didn't like the game. I hope that our future endeavors are more to your liking.
Um, you do realize that I was the Lead Programmer on DX:IW, right?
I hate to burst your bubble, but you don't quite yet have the name recognition of John Carmack or Richard Garriott.
As far as reviews go, DX:IW ended up with marginally worse reviews than its predecessor, see:
It's funny that you link the X-Box reviews of the games. The PC reviews are lower.
Note that the vast majority of reviews are in the 80-100% range. And then read a few of the ones that aren't to get a gauge on their quality.
I've never put much stock in reviews. Review sites are dependant on the good will of game companies to get advanced copies of games so they can get reviews out in a timely manner. Not too many are willing to bite the hand that feeds them. Even Daikatana got good reviews. However, if you look at the ratings and comments of most people who've played the game, they're not too rosy.
Warren Spector tried to make us believe that this was non-essential rubbish
You'd think he would have learned from history.
This is the same kind of thing that happened to Origin with the Ultima series (which Spector has worked on) oh so long ago. Ultima 8 was stipped-down and more action-oriented than the previous games, and lost a lot of the interactivity that had been there since Ultima 6. When fans complained, Origin derided them saying Ultima was about more than just "baking bread". They were seemingly oblivious of the effect that the immersion factor has on game enjoyment.
Reviews aren't worth a squirt of piss. Well, except to one's self. IOW, I'm not terribly worried how well a game is reviewed by PC Gamer, Game Spy, or anyone/anything other than gmhowell. Black and White taught me the value (zero) of reviews by 'professionals'.
As far as DX:IW, the levels were just too damned small.
Out of curiosity, how much of your job was 'design', and how much 'coding'? As an example of what I mean, does the decision to have a simplified inventory system (IOW, no Deus Ex Inventory Tetris) come from you, or from 'on high'?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Did I stumble onto BluesNews?
2 7803 )
#1) Most of people, and by that I mean most of you, didn't even realize how good DX1 was until it hit Europe and actually started to sell. So this rabid devotion to the original is near hilarious in light that most gamers dismissed it as a crappy Quake-Killer-Wannabe when it came out.
#2) There were probably as many, if not more, bad reviews of DX1 than there were for DXIW.
#3) Also willing to bet that a lot of people are bitching about DXIW because of the demo, which was poorly put together and technically flawed. The full version definately still had problems, many of which were fixed in an early patch.
Most people I know who actually finished DXIW have two basic complaints: it was short, and it didn't have all the features of the original. I have never, ever heard from someone who completed the game go through all the bile and hate that you see spewed out.
Personally, I found it slightly short but still probably got 20-30 hours of play on it. I lament the cut of Spector's brilliant skill system, which hasn't been really done since, and it annoyed me that I had to hack some ini files to adjust the game to my liking (particularly to get around the evil unified ammo).
But I rather enjoyed it, and played it nearly twice over until I got sidetracked by other projects. It's a good game, possibly not the great game it could have been, but a good game nonetheless.
My biggest complaint: they tinkered with the engine so much that they couldn't ship with an editor. I would have loved to have modded this stuff. Instead, I'm putting aspects into my new mod ( http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?t=1
As for DX:CW, The Deus Ex backdrop is rich enough to cover a variety of genres. I'm more than willing to see what Ion Storm comes up with as it's developed.
Red Alert 1 -> Red Alert 2.
While Red Alert isn't as great as it could be, and while Red Alert 2 is quite popular, those two games are a great example among a significant group of people of a game turning sour.
You can't sell a game just by adding new maps to the original package. There is only one game that did this successfully - Doom. The later games that did this as well resorted to Expansion packs which are now more-or-less harder to find than the original itself (along with whatever "essential" content was included in that pack.)
Also, the engine used for Deus Ex: Invisible War was still the Unreal engine. The only difference is that it was a later version that supports more than just the plain PC platform.
The same can be said about BlueShift. That installment in Half-Life was a fairly unfufilling expansion pack that only contained a marginal amount of new content - new maps only. However bad it may be, BlueShift does not mean that Opposing Forces will remain just as bad. (The same is not true for Half-Life - if you don't like the base game, you won't like it's expansions.)
Your statement can also be stretched over to Dune II and Warcraft I: Since you can only select one unit at a time in these two games, later RTS games will suffer from the same feature.