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Deus Ex 3 Announced

Gamasutra has the news that Eidos is already hard at work on a Deus Ex 3 . The company announced this project along with a brand-new studio in Montreal, which will be developing the title. "According to [General Manager Stéphane D'Astous], Eidos Montreal currently has two groups -- a Q&A group that is responsible for testing all of the developer's games from anywhere in the world, and an in-house development team that D'Astous says has just passed proof of concept for Deus Ex 3. 'This game was very highly rated at its release in 2000, and we have this great huge mandate to do the third one, and everybody is very excited,' added D'Astous"

138 comments

  1. I think I speak for everyone ... by k_187 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When I say "please don't suck, for heaven's sake, please don't suck."

    --
    11 was a racehorse
    12 was 12
    1111 Race
    12112
    1. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 1

      Maybe it will be a true sequel to Deus Ex (2000), and not a knock-off capitalizing on the franchise.

      --
      Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
    2. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by Toridas · · Score: 1

      Agreed. Deus Ex 2 was horrible. I couldn't get past the first half hour or so. I have a computer perfectly capable of running Half-Life 2 smoothly on high settings but somehow, Deus Ex 2 just barely chugs along on the lowest settings possible, complete with aiming lag. Not to mention the terrible menu interface made for console controllers instead of for PC gamers.

    3. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by Elemenope · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I guess I was one of the lucky ones who had no problems running DX:IW smoothly. (Vampire Bloodlines, OTOH, can suck my...). I loved the original DX with a passion, as one of the few games that broke through the glass ceiling into art from mere entertainment. I liked the sequel very much (from the looks of the comments around I'd say I was one of the few), and while it wasn't quite art the way the first was, it had its own charms, and FWIW in my opinion it did not sacrifice the philosophical and environmental richness of the first, but merely extended it in a direction most people didn't care for.

      The "Pequod's/Queequeg's" mini-story was fantastic, and previewed the main plot twist without being clumsy.

      --
      All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
    4. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by boobavon · · Score: 1

      If you didn't like the first half...the end was horrible. It was like the programmers slapped their dicks on the keyboards and voila, there's the ending.

    5. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by johannesg · · Score: 1

      Agreed. Worst case: simplified interface, simplified gameplay, just a plain shooter without any storyline or depth (I'm looking at you Bioshock!). Give us a deep story that has relevance to the world as it is (that *really* shouldn't be hard, given the state of the world), and don't dumb down the ruleset. Add some good locations and you are all set for a fantastic game. And don't give us the fake choices of Deus Ex 2. I'd rather play through a good story with a small choice at the end then having a choice in every level, only for it to make no difference at all in the end...

    6. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by Neon+Spiral+Injector · · Score: 1

      I played the first title on the PS2. The controls were great, I could circle strafe and everything.

      I tried Invisible War on the Xbox. The look stick was backward from the PS2 layout, and I couldn't even move well enough to get out of my bedroom. Never tried it again.

      How hard is it for game makers to allow the configuration of the controls?

    7. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by Danse · · Score: 1

      I played the first title on the PS2. The controls were great, I could circle strafe and everything.

      I tried Invisible War on the Xbox. The look stick was backward from the PS2 layout, and I couldn't even move well enough to get out of my bedroom. Never tried it again. Actually, DXIW was one of the first major tragedies brought on by the attempt to develop console games while simultaneously porting to the PC. You think the interface was bad on the console? You should've tried the PC, it's like they didn't even attempt to make it work there. That along with the tiny levels and several other bad design decisions were responsible for the dumbing-down of the game and the beginning of the consolitis that we started seeing all over the place.
      --
      It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
    8. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by Seumas · · Score: 1

      I don't care if it sucks. I bought what was purported to be Deus Ex (the original) at the store awhile back. It was cheap, but it had been out for a long time so I thought nothing of it. Nothing about it suggested that it was anything but the full legitimate game.

      I got home. Inserted the disk. Played for about five minutes . . . and then it told me that this was a demo and if I'd like to play the entire game, I should order the full $50 version on top of the $20 I already paid for it.

      Since then, I have never touched Deus Ex. It could get an 11 out of 10 on every game review on earth and be endorsed by Xenu himself. Not gonna give them a dollar.

    9. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by urbanriot · · Score: 1

      I was thinking more along the lines of, "Please, for heaven's sake, don't fuck this one up!" The last one was horrid for so many reasons, but primarily because it was consolified and not at all optimized for the superior PC hardware (vs. Xbox), in regards to graphics and controls.

    10. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Torrent it.

    11. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It got worse when (not happy with trying to adapt complex game genres to simplistic console interfaces) they started trying to adapt the gameplay to suit console players (typically kids, or people whose idea of mental exercise is finding the blue keycard in Doom).

      The result was embellished crap like Oblivion (and oblivion is exactly where it pushed the fundamental principles of the RPG genre).

    12. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, your local retailer scams you out of $20, but somehow this is Eidos' fault? Yeah, right.

    13. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by dougmc · · Score: 1
      Yes, you were ripped off. You should complain, loudly, and get your money back. Or should have, whenever this happened. A picture of the screen saying `this is a demo!' and the package that does not say it's a demo should be more than enough to convince any retailer (even places like Wal-Mart with `no software return' policies to refund your money.)


      However, that does not change the fact that Deus Ex rocked and Deus Ex 2 sucked.

      Also, note that $20 for an old game is not *cheap*. $5 would be cheap, and $10 seems to be the normal cost for their bargain-bin games like that. I know the packaging you're referring to -- the size of a CD case, with minimal if any documentation included. The full game packaging is larger.

    14. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by Txiasaeia · · Score: 1

      "Nothing about it suggested that it was anything but the full legitimate game."

      I had that version as well (only paid $5 in-store). It had the words "demo" on the cover and back of the jewel case. I know, because I did the same thing you did (although I remember playing it a lot longer for five minutes...) and I was pretty choked when I came to that screen. I still went ahead and bought it, and did not regret it at all.
      --
      Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
    15. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Eidos plans to leverage other properties & add Lara Croft to the plot... for dual wielding.

    16. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by buffer-overflowed · · Score: 1

      It's going to suck, it's a forgone conclusion. They're going to pull an Invisible War/Bioshock and make the primary target consoles, thus dumbing it way the hell down, again, for the console crowd, who will go gaga over it because they think Halo is a fan-fuckingtastic(as opposed to ho-hum average) FPS with a fantastic story(as opposed to incredibly convuluted and shitty and needs books to explain).

      This is how these things work. Unless it's PC only, I have no hope for Eidos making a real sequel to Deus Ex. They've already proven they can't do it. In fact only Bethesda, Epic to some degree, and Valve have managed not to absolutely castrate games by embracing the path of the XBox.

      I repeat, it is going to suck. Get used to it now and maybe be pleasantly surprised by how little it sucks compared to Invisible War.

      --
      The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
    17. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by buffer-overflowed · · Score: 1

      It's going to suck. It's a foregone conclusion. They're going to target consoles as the primary platform, and thus it's going to be incredibly dumbed down like the majority of games fitting that description have been. Stillborn by catering to the console crowd.

      Eidos has already proven they can't do it.

      So yea, at best it will be less of disappointment than invisible war was, but still more of a disappointment than Bioshock.

      Call me when it's PC exclusive and I might hold out some hope of it improving upon the genre or it's progenitor in any way other than fluff-wise.

      --
      The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
    18. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bethesda Lol wut? They didn't castrate the Elder Scrolls games right away; Morrowind easily being my favorite of the series, but if Oblivion isn't castrated I don't know what is.

    19. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by buffer-overflowed · · Score: 1

      Bethesda's always done that(also they are always buggy on release). Morrowind is in many ways less complex than Daggerfall(what was it, half a million NPCs, 6 endings, and a far more complex skill/crafting/etc system?).

      --
      The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
    20. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by montyzooooma · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'd rather play through a good story with a small choice at the end then having a choice in every level, only for it to make no difference at all in the end...

      You might want to try The Witcher. FWIW I had no problem with DX2 but I played it before DX1 so I wasn't influenced by nostalgia. DX1 was epic mind you, while DX2 was just decent.

    21. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by Seumas · · Score: 1

      What I purchased was boxed and hadn't seemed to be opened (so I'd be skeptical of any in-store switcharoo where someone might have returned the product with the wrong disc for a refund). And $20 was reasonable at the time, because this was within a couple years of release and just prior to the sequel coming out. As I recall, the game came out in 2000 and the sequel came out around 2003.

      Shareware and demos (why people would PAY for a demo, I don't know) tend to be kept in a separate section of most places, so it's easy to tell that you're getting a demo simply by the shelf it's on.

      And of course, once opened, you can't return software . . .

    22. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      But here's the thing, the PS2 port of the original isn't dumbed down, so why did they think they had to dumb down the sequel? There's also other games that made the PC to console jump quite well because it IS possible to change the UI to suit the console controller without changing gameplay.

      The fault lies with developers under-estimating (and essentially insulting) the console players.

    23. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      Don't judge all console players by the standards of the Halo obsessed Xbox fans.

      I'll say this again but it is possible to tweak the UI for a PC to console port so that it works well on a console without upsetting PC players.

    24. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by mcvos · · Score: 1

      (Vampire Bloodlines, OTOH, can suck my...).

      The original release of Vampire Bloodlines was riddled with bugs, but there is an unofficial patch that fixes nearly all of them, and it's a really amazing game now.

      In fact, there are two competing unofficial patches, one is a bit more extensive than the other, and the other is hosted by an 18+ site, but both improve the stability of the game significantly, and open up a lot more content that used to be inaccessible. Seriously, if you haven't finished it back then, reinstall, patch and play again.

    25. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by cduffy · · Score: 1

      Someone ripped you off pretty bad, there, yes. I don't see any evidence that that someone is Eidos, however.

      In any event, Deus Ex and DX2 are available through GameTap, and (given that UbiSoft and GameTap have a good working relationship) I expect that DX3 will be as well not far from its release. Consequently, you can play the games without needing to trust any reseller to give you what believe that you're paying for.

    26. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by Elemenope · · Score: 1

      Oh, I used the unofficial patch, and while for my compy it moved Bloodlines from almost completely broken to merely jerky and painful, I did suffer through the gameplay to enjoy the story. I really, really liked the interactions and the storyline; particularly playing as a Malkavian and trying to puzzle out what it was that *I* just said.

      But something needs to be said for killing all the bad guys without a framerate of 3 fps. I suffered through Bloodlines twice, and there is no way I'm doing it again without a smooth gameplay experience.

      --
      All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
    27. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by Zeio · · Score: 1

      Yes, you do. I thought, for me, that DX1 was the best game ever. From the skills, to the inventory system, to the great plot. The game was perfect, a lot of people I know thought the same, and it still is.

      DX2/DXIW was the worst game I've ever played due to the huge letdown factor. That coupled with the fact its a mediocre game.

      For posterity's sake, I argued with Chris Carollo , the Lead Programmer for Deus Ex. here:

      http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=102757&cid=8756222

      He was not supported, and he whined and called for my criticism to be called a troll and called for moderators to attack me.

      He was childish, unable to defend his console sellout and had the nerve to try and say it was popular while ignoring the dissatisfaction of the original Deus Ex fans.

      I really wish I had a huge sum of money so I could buy this franchise and hire the original DX1 staff. It has a great plot, could easily spawn a decent line of movies and could continue to be engaging and great. If DX3 is set in the time right after the first one, and we can pretend the second one never existed, it could be a great sequel.

      --
      Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
    28. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by buffer-overflowed · · Score: 1

      Outside a straight up multiplayer shooter interface it's not. The limitations of the interface automatically mean the PC interface is going to suck if you make design decisions based on a console. On a PC you have at least 104 keys, at least 2 buttons and a pointer. With key combinations that allows an interface orders of magnitude more complex than is possible on a controller. This isn't even adding in macro keyboards.

      So yes, the very act of targetting a console means the interface must be simplified, generally greatly. Which has thus far come at the cost of complexity in the game. Bioshock for example, was greatly simplified compared to System Shock 2(No inventory management, incredibly easy because difficulty was scaled by the limitations of a console controller, etc.). Invisible War was nigh-unplayable. Oblivion had to be modded by the PC community.

      In addition console demographics are inherantly less sophisticated than PC demographics. A console player puts disk in, plays. A PC player checks requirements, updates drivers, patches, installs and/or creates modifications and/or maps, and in general is willing to spend FAR more intellectual effort on a game than a console player.

      Not that there aren't certain genres that are better on a console for various reasons, there are. But when an age-old PC franchise or PC genre makes the leap to what is for those franchises and genres an inferior demographic, it invariably suffers. PC gamers get quite justifiable pissed about that.

      --
      The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
    29. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by mcvos · · Score: 1

      Which version of the unofficial patch was it? The latest one is 4.3, and stuff is still getting fixed. There was a lot broken, but now they're up to some really subtle and obscure bugs. Not sure what caused your jerky framerate. It works fine on my cheapo Dell laptop. Not the smoothest gameplay ever, perhaps, but I thought that was just because I suck at twitch games. I still managed to kill all bad guys, though.

    30. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by holophrastic · · Score: 1

      I'm glad to hear that someone liked the sequel. I have yet to play it, but it's on my list of games I still need to play.

      DX1 was absolutely incredible -- which was obvious from the very first level that I replayed about six times to discover that it could be finished in five minutes by scaling the outside of the building, twenty minutes by going in the back and killing everyone, an hour by crawling in through the front and following the greater story, or three hours by exploring everything and acquiring everything there was to get.

      What's more, the body upgrades only added to this. Allowing you to skip, or change, different parts of just about every level based on your skills and upgrades.

      It was just incredible alll around. I'm not expecting the same from DX2, but I am from DX3.

    31. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by bigman2003 · · Score: 1

      I'm not expecting the same from DX2, but I am from DX3.

      Wise choice.

      I played DX2. I thought it was okay, but it only reached about 50% of the potential.

      I did enjoy it though- the worst part for me were the frequent stops in the game for loading new areas on the map. Sometimes it would be 3 or 4 loads just to run around the map looking for something, then 3 or 4 loads to get back.

      In my opinion if the first game was a 10 (I agree, it was the first game I considered to be 'art'), then the second one was a 7.5.

      --
      No reason to lie.
    32. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by CronoCloud · · Score: 2, Interesting

      On a PC you have at least 104 keys, at least 2 buttons and a pointer.


      I have 12 buttons (4 face buttons, 4 shoulder buttons, select and start and L3/R3) and 2 analog sticks. Surely with properly designed UI, that should be enough. Just because one has 104 keys, doesn't mean that a game should use them all, that's just bad UI design. I remember the old days when games couldn't assume one had a joystick and defaulted to keyboard control. Keyboard control...for action games. It didn't work then, it doesn't work now. Sure, if you're playing a turn based game like Nethack using the whole keyboard works, but why have UI more complex than it needs to be, when it comes to UI, simpler is better. Which makes more sense, having ";" as reload or clicking down the left analog stick for L3. Holding Ctrl + W for move slowly forward and Shift +W for running or actually having analog movement. Having functions that are rarely used assigned to keys, or putting those functions in a menu that one accesses with a menu button and joypad/stick.

      Notice how I haven't said anything about mice, I like mice, I own the SNES mouse, PSone mouse and I hook up a USB mouse to the PS2. I like having mouse support as appropriate in games where it fits. It's the keyboard as a game controller (especially in action games) I dislike.

      In addition console demographics are inherantly less sophisticated than PC demographics. A console player puts disk in, plays. A PC player checks requirements, updates drivers, patches, installs and/or creates modifications and/or maps, and in general is willing to spend FAR more intellectual effort on a game than a console player.


      Intellectual effort spent getting the game to actually work is not the same asl intellectual effort on playing the game. Wouldn't you rather spend more time actually playing games, and less time downloading patches, updating drivers and whatnot? You and I both know that there are console games every bit as cerebral as the most supposedly cerebral PC games. Now you might have had a point back in the 80's when there was a higher proportion of graybeard table top gamer/wargamer/ flight sim grognards among PC gamers, playing the latest from Jim Dunnigan, SSI, and whatnot. But these days when the most popular PC game genre is FPS, I don't think there's much difference in "intellect". Really, is there that much of a difference between a Halo obsessed fanboy and a PC FPS fanboy?

    33. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by Elemenope · · Score: 1

      I used 4.3; Bloodlines came to mind because I picked it up pretty recently. My compy is, by all reasonable metrics, a complete POS and so it didn't surprise me that I had some FPS issues. I just wasn't expecting a box that could run HL2 (the same engine, no less) at 17 fps to choke so badly on Bloodlines.

      --
      All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
    34. Re:I think I speak for everyone ... by mcvos · · Score: 1

      I have no experience with HL2, but the engine isn't all that matters. It could be that Bloodlines has more detailed models or has a lot of extra code to run for various stuff, but I really don't know. Besides, 17 fps, while sufficient, isn't spectacular either. It's on the edge on what you might start to notice. Get swamped by a horde, and your fps might halve, and the game gets jerky just at the moment when you need it to be smooth and responsive.

      Maybe I should try to play HL2 on my laptop to see how that plays. Come to think of it, I did turn some of the detail and particles down a bit when I had too much other programs running in the background, and while I didn't notice any significant graphics changes, the game did seem to get a bit smoother after that. You might want to give that a try.

  2. heheh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    notice they talk about the acclaim for the original, released in 2000, not the crappy 2003 sequel--so they aren't ragging on it and talking about what they'll do different, they're just not talking about it at all :P

    1. Re:heheh by j35ter · · Score: 1

      Well, let's give 'em another shot. But before I run into a store and buy this game, I'll sure so something illegal so I can try it out first!

      --
      Delta-Mike November Bravo Tango
  3. Honestly... by Tom9729 · · Score: 1

    A lot of people knocked Invisible War, but I had a lot of fun playing it. It wasn't as good as the first game, but honestly if they stick to the basic Deus Ex formula, I think it'll be a pretty good game.

    I'm just hoping that it isn't Vista-only...

    1. Re:Honestly... by Enlightenment · · Score: 1

      Really, even "Vista-only" games aren't Vista-only. See for example Halo 2.

    2. Re:Honestly... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I thought it was so realistic in IW when you shot someone with the sniper rifle and they'd... do a 360-degree cartwheel (maybe two) before the body would flummox to the ground.

      In DX I liked the story and the characters. In IW I just wanted to kill every one of those lame excuses for NPC's you encountered. Seriously, a giant pyramid?

      I join the chorus on DX3: Yes please, but please don't fuck this up.

    3. Re:Honestly... by Jaysyn · · Score: 1

      Can anyone point me to a WinXP / 2000 fix for Rise of Legends?

      --
      There is a war going on for your mind.
    4. Re:Honestly... by Txiasaeia · · Score: 1

      Okay, I'll bite. What fix are you talking about?

      --
      Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
    5. Re:Honestly... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Can someone point me to..." apparently he doesn't know of a fix either... so what does 'okay Ill bite' do? Someone needs to take a second before they respond and learn some reading comprehension.

    6. Re:Honestly... by Jaysyn · · Score: 1

      I should have said Windows 2000 fix. It will install in Windows 2000 (using the /a switch) but you can't play it. It does a OS version check for WinXP, which I have on my laptop, but was really wanting to play it on my desktop.

      --
      There is a war going on for your mind.
  4. I'm surprised by Schmapdi · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    After the disaster that was Deus Ex 2. Both it and Theif III were ruined by simultaneous Xbox development a few years back. Here's hoping they make a Thief IV at some point as well and don't screw it up.

    1. Re:I'm surprised by Dunkz · · Score: 1

      Agreed. I still put DE1 as one of my favs of all time. I couldn't play DE2 for more than about 2 hours before I gave up on it.

    2. Re:I'm surprised by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Oh c'mon, Thief 3 wasn't THAT bad. You just had to spend an hour or two de-consolizing the UI before you could play it. Afterwards it was actually kind of fun. And lets not forget that Thief 3 is home to one of the best horror levels to ever grace a FPS (The Cradle).

      Unfortunatly, Deus Ex 2 was beyond redemption.

    3. Re:I'm surprised by toad3k · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Thief 3 was horrid. The graphics sucked. Every stage was broken into 10 different subareas with a 30 second loading screen in between each. Even on the hardest settings, there were times I would walk right up to a guard and breath on his eyeball only to elicit, "Hello? Is anyone there?" Inane puzzles with no plot to speak of as far as I could tell. That game fucking blew. I only spent $20 on it and I still felt ripped off.

      In fact when I heard deus ex was using the thief 3 engine, I decided not to buy it, and based on a cursory glance at the rest of this forum, I made a wise choice.

      Thief 2 was actually many times better than 3 on many levels despite being archaic. At the very least, it had competent level design.

      And on topic, while I'm happy to hear they are making a new deus ex, I'm not holding out any hope of it being good. Because when it comes down to it, what can they do in an fps that hasn't already been done to death? Nothing really. The game is doomed to be mediocre out of the gate.

    4. Re:I'm surprised by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not a fair comparison. Deus Ex 2 was crippled in too many ways to count; Thief 3 only really suffered in that its levels were too cramped, and it still had some fine moments, even if it never really lived up to the greatness of its predecessors.

      Apparently there were plans for a Thief 4, but it was going to be set in the present day. Thank God they shelved that, and long may it stay shelved...

    5. Re:I'm surprised by rishistar · · Score: 2, Funny

      Well even if this game gets terrible previews and people slating it before it gets released, I reckon the game still has a chance of being brilliant thanks to last minute unforseen intervention. I mean, thats what Deus Ex Machina is for, right?

      --
      Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
    6. Re:I'm surprised by Schmapdi · · Score: 1

      I tried using that Thief III mod that was supposed to fix the UI issues. It helped a little. The real problem though was that Thief III was supposed to be played in the third person (for some insane reason) and the awkward implementation of that caused Garret to move like a linebacker. In addition - Thief III was verly poorly coded - and thus it ran like crap on my system (a system that ran the technically superior Doom 3 just fine). In fact - I even tried playing it a few times later after upgrading some hardware, so even well exceeding the recommended specs it ran like poo. I'm afraid I never got to the level you mention - the aformentioned problems made me quit with disgust a few levels in.

    7. Re:I'm surprised by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thief 3 graphics were obviously better than Thief 2, most levels were broken into 2 (not 10) different areas, AI was better than Thief 2 (only real problem was they couldn't see your shadow). The plot was quite clear (but obviously still too subtle for you too understand). And I don't remember "puzzles" in other thief games either. You are a fucking idiot.

    8. Re:I'm surprised by jfodale · · Score: 1

      I must be wrong in the head. #3 is probably my favorite of the series.

      Also had no performance issues with running the game (although Doom 3 proceeded to run like crap on my system).

      --
      Waiting for Warhammer Online.
  5. Woop woop! by Medenus · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Hm, working in their Q&A department might be a nice cushy job! *rummages around his desk* WHERE'S MY RESUME?!

  6. Re:I'm still trying to figure out... by CRiMSON · · Score: 0, Troll

    It's called cheap labor, by native (reletivly altho in quebec dual lang) speaking english people. Canada is the new India.

    --
    oogly boogly!
  7. They learned a lot from Deus Ex 2 by roystgnr · · Score: 5, Funny

    Although getting rid of those nasty complicated parts like "complex plot", "skills" and "unique ammo" did make Deus Ex 2 more accessible to console game players, there were still people out there who lacked the higher cognitive functions and opposable thumbs necessary to really immerse themselves in that first sequel. So, some of those innovations will just have to be taken farther:

    Linear plot: Although Deus Ex 2 successfully obliterated the choices that players could make in the first game's ending, mushing them all together into some sort of hybrid plot, some players were confused by the residual choices available in the sequel. Deus Ex 3 will prevent further confusion by standardizing the "auto aim" features and adding "auto move", as well as by replacing the "choose your own adventure" style conversations with a new "we chose your adventure, now shut up and listen" interface.

    Gun: The unified ammunition, one-size-fits-all inventory, and reduced upgradability of weapon skills in Deus Ex 2 really made that game more accessible to the "can't tie their own shoelaces" audience. Deus Ex 3 will build on this success by replacing the varied and confusing weapon selections from the previous games with "Gun", a generic rifle which will shoot shiny graphics effects and will be the only weapon equipped by the player and all NPCs at all times. Gun will never hurt anyone friendly, will automatically correct your aim when shooting at anyone unfriendly, and will expend no ammunition. Gun will therefore double as a convenient way of eliminating from the game confusing questions about which characters are really good guys and which are really bad guys - shoot 'em all and let Gun sort 'em out!

    Box: Because of the wonderful reception that the Deus Ex 2 levels and textures received, we now know that it's just fine to scale back level design for console systems with limited RAM. Accordingly, Deus Ex 3 will be even able to run on all popular handheld game systems, with a few minor plot and setting adjustments to fit the limited level files into available memory. Can you fight your way past the defenders of Square Tunnel and make it to the enemy's hidden Box base?

    Length: Although Deus Ex 2 was significantly shorter than the first, it was still way longer than the average movie, and what kind of person wants to sit in front of a screen that long? What are you, some kind of gamer geek? Deus Ex 3 will be 90 minutes; 95 minutes in the "Directors Cut" version.

    (disclaimer: Deus Ex: Invisible War was actually an okay game; it just really disappointed by comparison with the first)

    1. Re:They learned a lot from Deus Ex 2 by Dahamma · · Score: 1

      Hah, wish I had mod points (but then I'd have to choose between "funny" and "insightful").

      Deus Ex was one of the best games ever made, IMO. You'd think given that opinion, I'd have played Deus Ex: Invisible War even if it was mediocre, but I gave up on it after a couple hours. I guess I realized there are a ton of shooters out there, so why would I want to play one that can't even come up with its own original ideas (ie it was a mediocre shooter based on an amazing first person RPG).

      Honestly, Bioshock did the same thing - dumbed down the RPG elements and created a very linear story line (admittedly with an extremely well written story). I guess that's the future of "first person RPGs" in the age of the "next gen console". Gotta be accessible to the masses...

    2. Re:They learned a lot from Deus Ex 2 by Digitus1337 · · Score: 1

      Well said. Deux Ex still stands up as the best game I've ever played. The second one felt like a made-for-consoles tech demo mocking the original. There were so many things done wrong. I talked with the lead and writing staff of the second game, some of which worked on the first game, and they did not seem very happy about having to dumb it down to the new audience. I can't say I appreciate the story all that much, and the controls and some of the game features (universal ammo) were just terrible.

    3. Re:They learned a lot from Deus Ex 2 by Kirijini · · Score: 3, Funny

      I managed to find a screenshot for Deus Ex 3! Based on your description, I mean. Oh, and a release date of 1980.

    4. Re:They learned a lot from Deus Ex 2 by Von+Helmet · · Score: 1

      I bought DX2 for similar reasons - I felt obliged to, given how awesome the first one was. DX2 sucked. After a few levels I gave up trying and just played through it with cheats. I never use cheats to get through a game, but I had to with this. It was just shockingly poor and so dull after the first one, but I felt I had to play it one way or another. I mean, it couldn't be that bad, given that the first was such an epic, right?

    5. Re:They learned a lot from Deus Ex 2 by GenP · · Score: 1

      I need to try it again on my 8800GTS to see if their 'dynamic performance reduction' technology still works. In my experience you couldn't get it to run smoothly on *anything*, except maybe an XBox.

    6. Re:They learned a lot from Deus Ex 2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hell, they could go a step further and replace all guns with flashlights!

  8. "Q&A" by FrancoMcNeil · · Score: 1

    As a Quality Assurance Engineer/Coordinator/Lead/Manager for 10 years, I believe I must stand up and complain about the superfluous "&". I heard [a high-ranking person] of the IGDA call it "Q&A".

    1. Re:"Q&A" by Azarael · · Score: 1

      They are probably mixing up Q&A(Question and Answer) with QA, those short-forms are all the same right..

    2. Re:"Q&A" by Sta7ic · · Score: 1

      I think they're saying that to explain that your job is to try to both maintain quality standards AND assure the devs that they're putting together a quality product, even if 1 & 2 do not match up.

  9. To the developers... by MattHawk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have a few words for the developers.

    See that 3 in the title? That's just a number. Ignore it. Look only to Deus Ex for inspiration. There never was a Deus Ex 2 - that was all just a figment of the darkest parts of your imagination.

    (fwiw, for those who haven't played, Deus Ex 2 wasn't a horrible game, so much as it didn't nearly live up to the first game of the series. It suffered from a massive case of being dumbed down for simultaneous console/PC release, from the original's PC-only origin.)

    1. Re:To the developers... by TeraCo · · Score: 1

      No, seriously. It was a horrible game.

      --
      Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
    2. Re:To the developers... by theMerovingian · · Score: 1


      See that 3 in the title? That's just a number. Ignore it.

      Highlander fans have this same problem, but we have to say "Ignore Movies # 2,4, and 5, seasons 5 and 6 of the TV show, and anything to do with The Raven."

      --
      "If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
    3. Re:To the developers... by Synonymous+Bosch · · Score: 1

      > See that 3 in the title? That's just a number. Ignore it. Look only to Deus Ex for inspiration.
      > There never was a Deus Ex 2 - that was all just a figment of the darkest parts of your imagination.

      You mean, like Highlander and Highlander 2?

    4. Re:To the developers... by chrisb33 · · Score: 1

      Check out the Deus Ex 3 teaser trailer at EA's website. It's pretty vague, but I'm hopeful that they can turn it into an interesting game. There's a nice analysis of the series of images flashed in the trailer over on wikipedia - notice "Lament for Icarus," a reference to a cool part of DX1.

  10. It'll suck as bad, or worse, then then 2nd did... by Zenin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I remember reading all the articles and developer interviews as the 2nd game was being designed and built. What was clearly apparent more then anything else was how completely blind they were to what made the first game such a huge hit. They gave themselves credit for a long list of aspects of the first game that barely had anything to do with its success and completely ignored everything that made the game great. The file result was no surprise to anyone that read those interviews and dev blogs.

    And then...in the aftermath of the sequel...their interviews again showed they had no idea why their game was a complete and total flop.

    They'll screw it up; There's really no chance in hell of them not completely screwing the pooch again. They haven't a clue what they did right or what they did wrong. Go replay the first game; It was great, it's still great, but it was a fluke. The industry isn't setup to create great games like that anymore.

    --
    My /. uid is better then your /. uid
  11. DX2 crappy by comparison to the original. by nrjyzerbuny · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Like most of the people who will comment here, I really enjoyed the original Deus Ex. Yet I was also very disappointed with DX2. Whenever the discussion of great single-player games comes up, there's usually someone cheering for Deus Ex, closely followed by another comment warning potential players to stay away from the sequel.

    The most often cited reasons for the sequels 'suck factor' seem to be the (relative) brevity of the game, small areas with constant loading, as well as the simplification of the interface, inventory management, ammunition/weapon system, and character development. Many of these issues can be seen as the problems inherent with developing for the console market. The original Deus Ex was PC/Mac only, whereas DX2 had to get by without a mouse and keyboard. Those issues are the ones that everyone seems to cite when talking about 'what went wrong', and why DX2 is widely seen as inferior to the original. I believe that this is the case, but it's not the big problem.

    The big issue I see is that people know what they are getting in to. The original Deus Ex was long and involved, with a plot that was interesting and unique. When I started the second Deus Ex game, I knew what I was in for. Not the specifics obviously, but the general outline of the game was pretty much known to me within the first hour. While there were some interesting changes made in structure between the first and second games, they were not enough. This is still the story of an augmented special agent, unraveling massive conspiracies, lies, and backstabbing, and ultimately deciding the fate of the world.

    Long post short, what I thought was great about Deus Ex was the plot and how it was revealed to the player over the course of some fairly long gameplay, combined with very ambitious (for the day) interactivity. The second game had much the same overarching plot, but the surprise was gone and it didn't pull it off as well. Repetitive plots are the bread and butter of gaming, but the direct comparison between the two makes DX2 suffer.

    I could be a great artist, and if I paint a nice half portrait of a young woman seated, dressed in dark colors, and appearing to look back at the viewer, it could be very good on it's own merits. Hang it next to The Mona Lisa, and tell people that there is some connection between the two, and it will garner nothing but scorn.

    How to fix these issues for DX3? Good luck.

    1. Re:DX2 crappy by comparison to the original. by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      The original Deus Ex was PC/Mac only


      No, it wasn't. You forgot about the PS2 version.

      http://www.gaming-age.com/cgi-bin/specials/special.pl?spec=deusps2&pagenum=1

      They had to tweak the maps, and they simplified the UI, but in a good way. If you have a passcode for a door, just activate the keypad and the door opens, you don't have to input the passcode manually. (or have to go into your inventory to find it before hand)

      But get this, they could have thrown in a "enter passcodes manually" option for hardcore players anyway, because Deus Ex on the PS2 has mouse and keyboard support.

  12. It's All in the Design. by Plekto · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The two biggest problems with Deus Ex 2 were the levels and the perspective.

    - The levels were cramped and very much like Doom 3. You didn't get the feeling that you got in the original, where long-range sniping and so on was possible as well as being way out of the hearing range of others. The original also had a lot of locations, almost reminiscent of Hitman. Multiple ways to get places and do things(and screw up as well), and a dead-simple interface.

    We would rather figure out our levels and make things happen and have a lot less DOOM push the button, go through the twisty maze. Otherwise, I might as well play MYST. Pretty pictures... find the button in the room...

    - The perspective in the second game as a disaster. It made everything look oddly semi-first person, but not really. So distance and movement was just off. A good example is to compare it to the original Halo. If you get this wrong, you end up with something that feels like you're playing in a PS 1 game instead of a simulation.

    - #3 (there are way more than two things wrong with the second game)- The graphics in the original were fantastic. They had a simplicity and a lot less eye-candy, but game designers need to understand that raytracing and applying visual effects to everything just doesn't cure poor design. A good example of this is to compare Halflife 2 to FEAR. HL2 has a look and feel that is crisp and clean and low on silly blooming and effects, and FEAR is a CPU destroyer despite having tiny levels - because they put four tons of eye-candy in it. A good example of this is a game like Gran Turismo. Our eyes don't change how they operate short of silly speeds and acceleration, yet if you compare this to Need for Speed, where they artificially introduce motion blur...

    Well, you see my point.

    #4 - make it for PC only and THEN port it. Console games that end up on PC are essentially crippled right from the start.

    1. Re:It's All in the Design. by nomadic · · Score: 1

      The graphics in the original were fantastic.

      I don't know if I'd go THAT far. The character designs especially were very crude, even by the standards of the time, and while the textures were definitely serviceable, they weren't really above average. Not that it matters, by the way, Deus Ex is possibly my favorite computer game of all time, but I definitely think that graphically it could have been better.

    2. Re:It's All in the Design. by MikShapi · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Agreed on #4.

      I think you've missed out on #0 though:
      DE was an RPG. A REAL RPG, not some wannabe with two and a half RPG elements a-la NOLF or Bioshock. Not only did it have XP and a level-up system, it had an extremely developed weapon customization system. AND, it was PERFECTLY balanced and tuned.

      DE:IW was a DISASTER in this respect. The leveling system had you reach the peak of your profficiency on the second level of the game and was as balanced as a scale with me on one side and a cathedral on the other.

      Weapon customization was bastardized and crippled into oblivion. And one of the MOST IMPORTANT aspects of RPG's - resource management (in shooter RPG's, that's mostly ammo), was simply removed and replaced with a "universal ammo" (which never runs out, hence "neverending universal ammo") under the assumption that the player couldn't be bothered with the challenging game, and is nothing but a potato-brain redneck that wants guns to be shooting.

      It wasn't an RPG. It wasn't even a shooter with RPG elements. For what it claimed to be, it was dumbed-down. For what it actually was - a vanilla shooter a-la quake and doom - it was not a very good one.

      Advice to DE3 devs:
      GO BACK AND HAVE A VERY HARD THINK ABOUT WHAT MADE THE ORIGINAL SO GOOD.

      The Short:
      REWARD THE PLAYER FOR BEING SMART,
      (rather than bringing down the level of the game to the lowest common denominator of gamers who couldn't be bothered by anything except running an outlined path so as to complete the main plot in as little time as possible, shooting stuff while doing so.)

      The Long: DE1 It was BALANCED WELL. What people like is not getting the ubercustomizedweapon as soon as possible (level 2) in the game. They like going through the process of upgrading it (through lots of things that are hard to find and require combinations of skill-use, creativity, hard-to-get money, role-playing and NPC interaction and player perception to attain) and gradually specializing in it using XP that is, you guessed it, hard to obtain as well.

      Most importantly, make hard-to-find stashes have LUCRATIVE stuff, not trivial "health packs" or upgrades for a weapon nobody needs anyway cuz a weapon can only accept two altogether, and they're already being used). Reward the player not for having bought your game (putting everything worthwhile to be found in the game in his path, without even the possibility of side-stepping it), but reward the player for TRYING HARD.

      DE1 was built so well, I replayed it 4 times, and I kept finding new secret niches and caches I haven't found on previous times I've played.

      Alternatively, assume the general casual-gaming console public is who you are building the game for, that the public can't have any not-completely in-your-face-easy challenges imposed on it lest it be scared away, turn your game into Yet Another Typical Shooter, and try to squeeze six more sales from the piece of art you bastardized by greed (like was done last time).

      But from us people who actually facilitated the rise of the first game into the top games ever and allowed you to make it into a franchise, PLEASE, PRETTY PRETTY PLEASE,

      DON'T.

      --
      -
  13. Modable + Online gaming by SplatMan_DK · · Score: 1

    Whatever they do, I hope they make it somewhat modable (maps, weapons, AIs, objects, graphics, simple game mechanics). Giving the gaming community the ability to enhance the game, is a good recipe for adding value for both the simple end-customers and the more serious fans.

    In addition, they should ensure that the game plays well in online scenarios. Allowing players to connect on a 16-player server is not enough these days - server admins must have tools, scripting platforms, dedicated game servers, etc. in order to ensure continued success of the product.

    Both are elements present in every successful game in recent years.

    Using an existing gaming platform could ensure these criteria. Using Halflife2/3, CRY Engine or similar is probably costly, but if they implement their work well, the revenue stream will continue for much longer.

    - Jesper

    --
    My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
    1. Re:Modable + Online gaming by slserpent · · Score: 1

      I think they should stay away from multiplayer or let it be an afterthought like with the original. I've played the original game ten times now and never even considered playing multiplayer, because well...it just didn't need it. Many great games have snubbed the MP aspect and created better singleplayer games because of it...Bioshock, Hitman, HL2, NOLF, Deus Ex, etc.

    2. Re:Modable + Online gaming by halycon404 · · Score: 1

      If you want multiplayer in Deux Ex... the only way I'd go for it is if the developers hosted the games, with record keeping and everything that entails added in. Then add in the same progression system from the game for skill points, a kill is worth so many points, then after a round you may be able to buy a skill if you have enough points, if not, more rounds. At the end of the round if your team won, you're allowed to buy a weapon mod off the severs, or shelve the point and buy a more expensive biomod later. Space it all out so it takes awhile to top off a character, add in a skill point cap so everyone specializes. Large spacious levels with lots of choke points and several stealthy was in, some of which can only be used if you have the right skills or mods.

      In short, I want my character in multiplayer to mean just as much to me as my character in the single player game did, with just as much thought planning and care given to advancement.

    3. Re:Modable + Online gaming by tygerstripes · · Score: 1
      Oh, dear god, no!

      Modability, fine - if people want to fuck about with the game after they've bought it, that's their choice. Maybe good things will come of it, I dunno.

      But online multiplay? For Deus Ex?? There are good online mulitplayers, and then there is Deus Ex. One of the reasons the original was so good is that it was such an intensely protagonist-driven FPS, with massive scope for different, less combative styles of play. An absolutely critical element was that you got to generate your own unfair advantages - many of them non-combat biased - by making intelligent choices. Trying to shoe-horn decent MP into that idea would break one or the other - they're just so profoundly incompatible.

      I appreciate that MP is popular, enduring, en-vogue, but seriously, it has its place!

      --
      Meta will eat itself
  14. We still have the HDTP... by andrewd18 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well, even if DX 3 is a massive failure, we'll still have the High Definition Texture Pack to keep us going.

    http://offtopicproductions.com/hdtp/about.php

    1. Re:We still have the HDTP... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      thanks for that, I was actually contemplating finding my old copy of deus ex to replay it before I heard any of this news, now it's almost a certainty with that hdtp

  15. What platform? by LarsWestergren · · Score: 1

    They don't mention which platform it is for....

    Deus Ex 2 was really awful. I read about the "mixed" reviews, but I thought I should give it a chance. I tried to like it, but it was just....awful. Maybe the plot picked up later in the game, but I couldn't continue playing it past the first couple of levels. The performance on PC was dreadful, levels were tiny to accomodate limited console memory. Everything about the interface screamed "console" - the text font was huge so conversations were always very short. When moving things in the inventory you couldn't drag and drop with the mouse, you had to move a square around slowly with the arrow keys, press space to select and deleselect items. Foes ran up to you and then stood still, firing one shot every ten seconds or so. There were multiple paths through obstacles, but unlike the first game the solutions were always glaringly obvious and no challenge.

    I personaly believe that designing for console doesn't HAVE to mean dumb down, but this is one title where they clearly had done just that, in spades. It made for a really crappy PC game, and a game that insulted console players' intelligence.

    The title that made thousands of PC players familiar with "consolitis". The Deus Ex 3 makers will have an uphill struggle I'm afraid.

    --

    Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die

    1. Re:What platform? by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      Ever play the PS2 port of the original? Now that's how to do a PC to console port. Simplify the UI a bit but keep all the customization and plot options. And throw in keyboard and mouse support.

      The problem with DX IW was Xbox-itis, not really console-itis.

  16. Nope no Spector by OneMemeMofo · · Score: 3, Informative

    An article over on bit-tech.net talks about how Warren Spector has no ties to this one. So I wouldn't really expect a return to the exceptionally immersive world of the first Deus Ex. I hope they do take into consideration how badly the second one was rated and sold compared to the first one. However I don't have very high hopes for it. bit-tech.net story: http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/07/24/warren_spector_not_bothered_about_deus_ex_3/1/

    --
    Sure that web-site has content.. But so does a garbage can!
    1. Re:Nope no Spector by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      An article over on bit-tech.net talks about how Warren Spector has no ties to this one. So I wouldn't really expect a return to the exceptionally immersive world of the first Deus Ex.

      Warren Spector was responsible for a lot of the dumbing down in Deus Ex 2, so not having him involved may be a good thing this time around.

    2. Re:Nope no Spector by Enderandrew · · Score: 1

      Warren Spector was a legendary developer, and he is a main reason why the first was so great, and the second title so terrible. He had little influence on the second title, and often apologizes for it.

      Spector had a big hand in:

      Wing Commander
      Ultima
      System Shock
      Crusader
      Deus Ex
      Thief

      and more.

      Maybe the studios should listen to him every once in a while. No Warren Spector means no Deus Ex for me.

      --
      http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
    3. Re:Nope no Spector by Alzheimers · · Score: 1

      Nobody should hold IW against Warren Spector, in fact a lot of the changes in the game he objected to.

      The travesty that was DX:IW can be laid at the feet of one Harvey "Witchboy" Smith. I will never buy another game he's involved in, even if it's hyped as the greatest game ever.

      I just hope they get Tom Hall to do some voiceover work again. His Walton Simons is one of the creepiest characters ever (right up there with Terri Brosius' Shodan) and his voice in the trailer was the main selling point for IW (too bad it turned out to be an incredibly insignificant character in the game)

  17. Re:It'll suck as bad, or worse, then then 2nd did. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Deus Ex was a critical success, but did not made much money. People who made Invisible War were not blind, they had a clue, but they were only more interested in making money than making a critically acclaimed game. Of course, Invisible War still did not make much money, but that's because as easy and simple as it was. it was still too challenging for the average gamer.

  18. Re:I'm still trying to figure out... by Evangelion · · Score: 1

    Hi, umm, welcome to 2007. Our dollar is worth more than yours.

  19. Stéphane D'Astous by Selfbain · · Score: 1

    This guy needs to add a few letters to his last name so that he can be Stéphane Disastrous. Now thats a game developer's name.

    --
    Well, it has never been successfully tested.
  20. Well I am not getting my hopes up by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 1

    I loved Deus EX, the sequel sucked, Console dumbification. DO you know the difference between a console player and a dead duck? No, you must be a console player.

    Yada yada, others have said it, and I repeat it, but my main point is that while there is the slightest glimmer of hope in that they refer to the ORIGINAL as the one that sold and was reviewed well, they don't mention the sequel. This could be good, they realize it was a huge mistake but company politics prevents them from being negative of one of their own products, OR they simply don't realise that for gamers there is a huge difference between the original and the sequel.

    I fear they learned nothing, that when they talk of Deus EX being great they mean BOTH games. Yes it is scary but this EA. Remember, they pulled a Deus EX 2 on us before, what is to stop them from doing it again?

    TO learn from your mistakes, you first got to admit them.

    Will this game be the miracle of gameplay that was the original or the console dumbness of the sequel. Considering what consolites did to the spiritual sequel to System Shock, I am not getting my hopes up.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

    1. Re:Well I am not getting my hopes up by MozeeToby · · Score: 1

      Yes it is scary but this EA. No... this is Eidos along with a new studio named Montreal.
    2. Re:Well I am not getting my hopes up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      DO you know the difference between a console player and a dead duck? No, you must be a console player.
      Shut it, child. Good games are to be had on all platforms. Fanboyism is for losers.
    3. Re:Well I am not getting my hopes up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nope, only dumbed down PC ports, a few capcom games, music games, some sports games and uhh, that's it on the 360. On the PS3 there's nothing. On the Wii, you better fucking love Nintendo games, quirkiness, niche genres and dead genres, or else you have nothing.

    4. Re:Well I am not getting my hopes up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Backpedal a little faster, kiddo, you just might go back in time.

    5. Re:Well I am not getting my hopes up by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      Don't blame all consoles for the faults of the Xbox. Remember, the original with all the plot points and character options was also ported to the PS2, they even threw in keyboard and mouse control as an option.

  21. Re:It'll suck as bad, or worse, then then 2nd did. by Plekto · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Probably so. The levels in the original are not merely large. They are a "You are here... what you going to do next, punk?".

    Hong Kong in the original was excellent. You had an entire section of the city to explore and when you got there, you had no real idea where to go. "find person X" as opposed to "here's a glowing dot on the GPS". Hitman does this well, especially in the later levels. Your target is in this hotel or other large structure. Find him, get out undetected. That's ALL you know the first time playing.

    And the skills were trainable. It had RPG elements and paths and options that forced you to not change. It was common to hold onto an upgrade or even half a dozen of them in order to modify and use that new weapon you knew was coming (Sniper Rifle usually). And if you wanted to say, jump a mile high and do levels easier and in unique ways, well, stealth was forever not an option.

    But this is lost in designers from what I can tell. Looks great and less filling? We can't survive on light beer forever. We also need some real thinking games in our diet.

  22. Re:I'm still trying to figure out... by bj+bignell · · Score: 1
    I don't really know the details, but it goes something like this:
    • Ubisoft is a big gaming company based in France
    • Ubisoft sets up shop in big, modern Montreal because of the language and a favourable exchange
    • Everybody else follows suit
    • ???
    • Profit!
    We like our games up here, but I don't think there is really anything "special" about the scene up in Canada. Unless, of course, you believe everything Gabe and Tycho say...
  23. D'oh! by 45mm · · Score: 2, Funny

    Just when I thought I had forgotten all about DX2 ... you all had to remind me!

  24. Re:I'm still trying to figure out... by CRiMSON · · Score: 1

    You don't say? Sure am glad I live in canada then.

    Actuall in Montreal (up the street of ubi mtl).

    I also work for an Americian Company for the exact reason I said.

    It's cheaper to employee Canadians to do a job, then to hire the equivilant Americian.

    My counterpart in the US who does the exact same job I do, makes 35k more than I do, so I do the same work, but cheaper). Hence, cheaper labour.

    But hey, thanks for pointing the obvious!

    --
    oogly boogly!
  25. They learned a lot from slashposters. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Well said. Deux Ex still stands up as the best game I've ever played."

    Well I can't speak to the "best game ever made"* since I couldn't finish the GOTY version due to a "unable to save" (that means autosaves too). But I will give it an original idea nod and note that while the sequel wasn't all that, the multiple endings were OK.

  26. Re:It'll suck as bad, or worse, then then 2nd did. by Zenin · · Score: 1

    Deus Ex's problem was lack of marketing mostly, and maybe a bit to ahead of its time. Ion Storm was in a huge internal mess at the time and didn't really try to do much of anything with Deus Ex. The game got great press because it was a truly, undeniably fantastic game (a rarity...in a game press climate where the review of a game hasn't anything to do with the quality).

    It's also much more of a thinking game and quite a bit of it was lost on people that weren't well educated. The story and story items (like the fantastic newspaper articles in the game) relied heavily on real events, conspiracy theory, etc. Most of the story just went over people's heads, most especially gamer teens (the "only" market anyone was looking at at the time).

    Now...the industry is well aware of the older, better educated gamers. A game like the original Deus Ex, with the convincing, deep, thought provoking story line and detail oriented game play (the inventory and skills management, the tactical choices to make at every step) would do quite well. Of course...they'd have to market it...and they'd have to stay the hell away from the craptastic FPS shooter experience that is any console.

    Which is about as likely as Bush pulling out of Iraq for xmas.

    --
    My /. uid is better then your /. uid
  27. Remake Deus Ex 1 by doublefrost · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Honestly, I'd be very happy if they remade Deus Ex 1 with the graphics, gameplay, and physics of Halflife 2.

    1. Re:Remake Deus Ex 1 by CommunistHamster · · Score: 1

      Yes, it's strange that games don't get remakes.

  28. It'll suck as bad, or worse, than 2nd did. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "The industry isn't setup to create great games like that anymore."

    Yeah! The open source community is like that.

  29. Deus Ex? by niteice · · Score: 1

    Crap, I should reinstall it...

    --
    ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
  30. Re:SLASHDOT SUX0RZ by megaditto · · Score: 1

    Funny thing, doesn't this ASCII figure remind anyone of the Helios AI (post-merger)?
    Judge for yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Icarus.jpg

    --
    Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
  31. No Warren Spector? by mbourgon · · Score: 1

    If Warren's not involved, then let me reiterate the FP: please don't suck, please don't suck, please don't suck
    (yeah, I know - he was involved with DX2 and Thief 3, but still...)

    --
    "Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
  32. Re:I'm still trying to figure out... by 0123456789 · · Score: 1

    Just curious; is part of the difference that the employer has to pay for healthcare in the US?

  33. Gun: the game by Wilson_6500 · · Score: 1

    I would play a game where the hero's main weapon is a telepathic, sentient rifle known as "Gun," being the hero's (and thus the player's) only method of reliably separating good from evil. The game would be a dialog-heavy adventure and involve no direct combat. Even better: make the player take on the role of Gun, being toted around by a high-functioning psychotic with no inherent sense of rationality or morality; the player's job is to instill in the hero these senses, saving him from his mental deficiencies while destroying those who mean to exploit him or do him harm. It'd play like Wonder Project J meets Mass Effect, only the player character is a rifle.

  34. Wow by balthan · · Score: 1

    Where'd this game come from?

  35. Q&A? by raiderx · · Score: 1

    What the hell? I guess they have both Quality AND Assurance.

  36. Nice UID. by Cryptnotic · · Score: 1

    srsly.

    --
    My other first post is car post.
  37. No Spector, no Deus! by hackshack · · Score: 1

    You bastards.

    It's not enough that you dumbed down DX2 for consoles, ruining the maps, the story, the weapons, etc. but now you have to make a THIRD game? Listen, the first one was great because of the conspiracies within conspiracies. But it's done! Run its course!

    What the hell is the next big surprise in the next big DX remake? We find out JC was a woman?

  38. I'm in the minority here -- did not like Deus Ex by jollyreaper · · Score: 1

    A lot of people did. I'm not faulting them for it. I came by Deus Ex several years after it came out and had some problems with it.

    Ok, for starters, the graphics were crappy. Yeah, yeah, a game is more than the graphics alone but there needs to be a good storyline there to make you overlook that. Doctor Who can impress with craptastic sets while a polished turd like Transformers with $300 million in glitz will bore me to tears.

    The storyline, as I mentioned, was not engaging. I never really felt seated in the Deus Ex universe and the plot did not grab me. I played as far as a major spoiler point concerning a sibling (being vague for those who might want to play) and I was less than whelmed. Again, this is a matter of opinion.

    What really clinched my negative impression is that everything just felt clunky. Combat felt clunky. The skills system felt clunky. The level design and layout was very confusing. When I feel like I have to resort to a cheat guide to get through the game the first time, that feels like bad design. I'm not talking about spoon-feeding the details to the player, I'm talking about providing enough clues so that someone of reasonable intelligence can make their way through the game without undue confusion from poor design choices.

    When it comes down to it, this is the sort of problem I had with many of the adventure games from the past like the old Sierra ones. You have to think like the designer in order to solve the puzzles. If you are not working on their same insane wavelength, you will not beat it. The worst example I ever heard was I think from one of the Gabriel Knight games. You had to construct a fake moustache to get into a hotel to see someone. This involved pilfering some scotch tape to place on a hole beneath a wooden fence that you would scare a cat through. Hairs would be caught on the tape and you would use that to create the false moustache and sneak into the hotel. The counter-intuitive steps involved in completing that task beggared the imagination. Nobody questioned putting this into a game?

    --
    Kwisatz Haderach
    Sell the spice to CHOAM
    This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
  39. Re:I'm in the minority here -- did not like Deus E by PresidentEnder · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What really clinched my negative impression is that everything just felt clunky. Combat felt clunky. The skills system felt clunky. The level design and layout was very confusing. When I feel like I have to resort to a cheat guide to get through the game the first time, that feels like bad design. I'm not talking about spoon-feeding the details to the player, I'm talking about providing enough clues so that someone of reasonable intelligence can make their way through the game without undue confusion from poor design choices. I have to say, my kid brother made it through Deus Ex when he was thirteen and loved it. Now, he's bright, and I'm not saying that you aren't. My sticking point is that you pick intelligence in general rather than perceptiveness or just willingness to pay attention. You said pretty early on that the game felt clunky, and I take from that that you were distracted by your dislike for the game. Everything seemed straightforward to me.
    --
    I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
  40. Following on from your points by FoamingToad · · Score: 1

    I also have to comment on the stability of DX2, which was absolutely dreadful.

    I got the game shortly after its release, prompted more by its predecessor's success than any great hope in the sequel. I uninstalled it rapidly - the bog-awful performance on my machine at the time (AMD 3200+ / Geforce 5600 / 1GB RAM) discouraged me to the point of uninstalling.

    A patch came that was supposed to improve performance. From it being unplayable it dropped to merely molasses-slow. No real improvement. Uninstalled again.

    Short of entertainment, earlier this year I decided to retrieve DX2 and give it another go. I'm onto my second 64-bit twincore, there's 3GB of decent DDR2 behind it and an SLI rig. Installed and yes, it plays - reasonably. It doesn't seem as fast as HL2, Prey, Oblivion, or even Bioshock (all of which came much later) - but hey, that's maybe just me.

    I got out of the early stages and into the Arcology in Egypt. Ok, the game isn't as good ad DX but I was in the mood for some hokum. While wandering about the city the game crashed. Hard. Gah.

    Reloaded a number of times, and went back a couple of saves, but while wandering around Cairo the game would crash to desktop with appalling regularity.

    Ok, the machine I'm trying to play DX2 on is not what the game was designed to run on, but I'd have thought I'd have been able to play through once. But no, it's been consigned back to electronic oblivion again.

    I hope that the development team have their hearts in the right place and look towards Deus Ex for inspiration as this was one of the defining moments of PC gaming for me. But for god's sakes:

    [1] No tiny levels. If I see the loading screen more than two times in a fifteen-minute period, then the levels are FAR too small.

    [2] Don't steer me through the game. If I want to play something 'on rails', I'll go back to Half-Life 2.

    [3] For god's sake, test the damn thing. On a current PC - not a godsdamned console.

  41. Re:I'm in the minority here -- did not like Deus E by fozzmeister · · Score: 1

    I agree with what your saying, the cat mustache example is stupid, I've had experiences with similar other games, but Dues Ex? There's hardly ever only one way to do a puzzle in that game, and you don't even need to do them all. I guess it's possible the open nature of the game found you with none of the items you needed to do something, but I can't think of anywhere where that's possible atm

    Oh and the storyline was amazing IMHO.

  42. Re:It'll suck as bad, or worse, than 2nd did. by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

    All I see the opensource community do is make clones of successful games and improve them, innovation in terms of basic design doesn't seem to exist.

    --
    Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
  43. The Missing Moment by jacobw · · Score: 2, Interesting

    For me, everything that was so impressive about the original DX can be summed up in one moment of the game. (SPOILER coming for the original Deus Ex--although if you're reading this thread, I'm sure you've played it through.)

    For the first part of the game, you spend a fair amount of time killing bad guys. Or, at least, you have the option of killing them; you also have the option of knocking them out. And, indeed, the NPC character of your brother urges you to take this non-lethal option. But if you're like me, you took the easy way out, and killed most of the bad guys.

    Then comes a scene in a warehouse. As you enter, you banter with various friendly NPCs. And inside the warehouse, you discover that the folks you thought were the bad guys are actually the good guys. And those friendly NPCS you chatted with on the way in--they are now your enemies, and you are probably going to have to kill a bunch of them to escape.

    Suddenly--for the first time ever in a videogame--I actually thought about all the people I was killing. In fact, I actually felt guilty about killing all those (entirely imaginary) people! Deus Ex had managed to make me question one of the fundamental tenets of videogaming--that it's OK to kill bad guys. And from that moment on, I found myself wrestling with the ethics of every choice I made in the game.

    DX2 never managed to achieve that level of moral ambiguity. It never even came close. Sometimes it would make me ask, "Should I do the wrong thing?" But it never made me ask, "What is the right thing to do here?"

    1. Re:The Missing Moment by lazyl · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I agree. But as well as that, for me, this was the only game where there were moments when I felt I was really, truly, role-playing - pen & paper style.

      -spoilers here-

      My favorite example was the scene where you're in your brother's apartment and the bad guys are on the way. You brother tells you jump out the bathroom window and get away. He can't follow for some reason I don't remember (he was wounded maybe). He tells you repeatedly to get out. The first time I played it I felt compelled to obey based on my experience with purely linear games. So I jump out, run away, and the scene ends. I immediately regretted it and reloaded. I decided to RP the scene and see what happens (despite the voice in my head saying that never works). All the furniture in the game is movable so I pushed the couch over in front of the door to block it a bit. Then I pushed the two chairs over by the wall opposite the door to provide cover. Then I crouched behind one of the chairs and waited for a while. I actually had to wait longer than I expected with my brother repeatedly telling me to leave. Eventually though the bad guys busted in and the fire fight started. It was sweet. They were blocked in behind the couch as I intended and I had great cover behind the chairs. Eventually, after you kill enough of them, your brother says something like "Ok, I can handle it from here, you get going".

      Along with a good story, that's the sort of thing that makes a great RPG in my mind - it's not about the number of choices, it's about having a situation that forces you to actually role play in order to even *identify* the choices.

      --
      Aw crap, ninjas!
    2. Re:The Missing Moment by Elemenope · · Score: 2, Informative

      *Spoiler alert* for those precious few of you still haven't played these two games.

      DX1 had several of those "oh shit, I'm on the wrong side" moral moments (NSF are fighting the good fight?!, the Red Arrow are merely duped pawns?!, Tong wants me to end civilization as we know it?! Sonofabitch!!), but one thing I didn't appreciate about DX1 was that besides recognizing those moments, there are precious few choices that *matter* that follow from them (such as saving your brother in the Hotel escape). The other thing I didn't like about DX1 was that the sides, once they are clear to you, are fairly cleanly cut 'good guy'/'bad guy', and the good guys were not willing to go as far as the bad guys at achieving their ends.

      For all its ways in which DX:IW fell short, its moral universe was more realistically grey, and the choices were among parties that were *all* fairly ruthless and were asking for your allegiance not on the basis of warm cuddlies, but actually making a philosophical or ideological appeal. And you were free to choose between the radical direct democracy managed by the AI, the syncretist fuzzy-wuzzy religionists who were secretly partnered with the radical capitalists, the Luddites (who of all the factions are played the least sympathetically, if only to be fair, because the entire world around your character is one giant argument in their favor), or the fucking Borg.

      I also liked the moment in DX:IW where you catch up to Tong to here him regret destroying civilization as we knew it. It was a cute moral note to the point that everything didn't turn out as neatly as the characters at the end of DX1 described it would (if you took their respective sides).

      DX1 had fantastic gameplay, its characterizations were richer, and of course it was longer and more absorbing, and for those bits it will remain a head above its sequel. I just don't think that the charge of a lack of moral immediacy and ambiguity can be rightly lodged against DX:IW.

      --
      All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
    3. Re:The Missing Moment by jacobw · · Score: 1

      For all its ways in which DX:IW fell short, its moral universe was more realistically grey, and the choices were among parties that were *all* fairly ruthless and were asking for your allegiance not on the basis of warm cuddlies, but actually making a philosophical or ideological appeal.


      I think you've described the difference between the two games very well. But, actually, I liked the way DX1 handled morality better.

      The way I would put it is that DX1 was morally ambiguous; DX2 was amoral.

      What I mean is that, in DX1, for any given moment of decision, you had a reason to believe that one choice was more moral than the other. In DX2,you tended to find yourself choosing between two morally neutral options (or two morally wrong options). In DX1, therefore, there was always room for surprise, when it turned out that your moral decision was wrong. By pretty much eliminating morality from the decision making process, DX2 also eliminated that moral surprise.
    4. Re:The Missing Moment by Elemenope · · Score: 1

      The way I would put it is that DX1 was morally ambiguous; DX2 was amoral.

      I thought that too right up until the *very end*. Personally, I found JC Denton's arguments about "fixing" democracy the most intriguing of the four, but not all that convincing. I found the Illuminati's answers wholly unappetizing; benevolent dictatorship doesn't "do it for me". So the first time I played through I eventually chose the Templar luddites as a sort of default, and *surprise, surprise* the game's endings do portray that option as being an *actually* bad one (I believe the vid was a lynch mob hanging some guy...perhaps you?...overlaid with Saman's drivel about purity as voice-over, IIRC). Well, that had a moral punchline, and so I says to myself I says "Well, that wasn't the right choice".

      Reload.

      So then I figure, well none of the four are very appealing, so, why not just kill all of these aspiring emperors and let humanity go its own way. So, I waste them all (what I figured, ironically, as the second most moral option). Well, sonofabitch!, it turns out that if humanity goes its own way, the Omar (the fscking Borg!) win by default. Also not portrayed as a pleasant future. So I says to myself I says..."Huh".

      Reload.

      So I thought about the moral lesson being about choosing amongst unappealing but ultimately bright futures instead of succumbing to the natural instinct to reject all options because they don't fit one''s own preconceptions exactly. The other two endings are portrayed as morally positive, as humanity survives in some non-Dark future. Not a moral lesson I particularly agree with, for sure, but certainly a non-neutral outlook.

      I think you are right, though, in that DX:IW fosters a somewhat mercenary, amoral stance until the very end (instead of DX1 hammering you with moral choices pretty consistently until the big reveal) and so it seems less fair when the consequences finally are revealed as being different and mattering on the moral plane.

      --
      All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
    5. Re:The Missing Moment by Magada · · Score: 1

      You left too early - there are three (I think) baddies lurking in the lobby with LAM's by that point. If you don't bust our with your brother (or booby trap the lobby on your way in) they usually manage to whack him.

      --
      Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
    6. Re:The Missing Moment by lazyl · · Score: 1

      It's been a while since I played so my memory isn't prefect but I'm pretty sure I did go down to the lobby with him and fought some more guys there. I just didn't mention it because it wasn't important to my point and I couldn't remember exactly.

      --
      Aw crap, ninjas!
  44. It is console-itis. by Dimensio · · Score: 1

    No, the problem is definitely console-itis.

    Deus Ex started life as a PC game and was then ported to a console (the PS2). To make the game more accessible to the console interface of a gamepad, certain system elements (such as the inventory system) were streamlined down to fit the platform. The elements had worked fine on the PC, but they were hard to manage without the keyboard and mouse interface not standard on game consoles. Additionally, some of the larger levels were broken up into smaller areas to fit the memory limitations of the system.

    Deus Ex was a PC game that was ported to consoles and adjusted to fit the new platform during the porting process. That is the appropriate means of handling a port.

    Deus Ex: Invisible War was designed as a console game from the beginning. The developers admitted as much during production; they claimed that it would first be built for the XBox. As a result, the interface was built for a console gamer using a gamepad rather than a keyboard and mouse. The levels were designed to fit the memory of the specific game console for which it was built. The developers claimed that the PC version would feature larger contiguous areas where the XBox version was broken up into smaller areas for memory limitations. They lied. Instead, they didn't adjust the game for the PC at all. They maintained the tiny, console-designed levels even on the PC version. They did not adjust the interface at all. Version 1.0 of the game barely involved the mouse in the inventory and biomod management screens, a terrible design element so unpopular that it had to be fixed in a subsequent patch.

    Without even getting into the gameplay elements "streamlined" down, obviously for the purpose of making the game more "accessible" to console gamers not used to as much intense inventory and character development management, Deus Ex: Invisible War was a console game that was dumped, not ported, onto the PC without any consideration for the differences in the two platforms. This is a perfect example of how not to "port" a game.

  45. Some examples ... by SplatMan_DK · · Score: 1

    I respectfully disagree :-)

    I have played a number of online games which offer great team-play experience and where the winners are the players who think/plan/analyze the game and find alternate solutions to their problems.

    I am not suggestion yet another Team Fortress / Counter Strike clone. There are a gazillion of those already. But I honestly think Deus Ex 3 could have the potential to bring something new to the FPS MP arena. Here are some examples, which could differentiate (or revolutionize) the online gaming experience:

    - Headquarters with central planning and perhaps a commander to coordinate the team activities (like the commander-role Natural Selection or Battle Field 2)

    - Non linear side plots embedded in the multiplayer game, and with many different possible sideplots enabled/disabled for each round of the game. This would certainly make each round a different experience - greatly reducing the problem most other online FPS games has: repetitive gameplay.

    - Mixed environment with both real players and bots/npcs in the same game

    - Advanced augmentations and/or the "infolink" embedded directly into the gameplay (similar to the Khaara "hive mind" concept of Natural Selection)

    - Reuse of the same player character over time. By keeping the same character at player respawn, and perhaps making an online service which could host the "personalities", the players use of rare augmentation/upgrade canisters suddenly becomes an integral part of the online gaming experience. Similar to Diablo/Diablo II and others.

    - Limited loss of inventory items at respawn

    - Map round-time of more than 30 minutes, and a game play designed to evolve the player into a "mission" with unpredictable parameters from game to game

    - Reuse of door codes, computer hacks, security systems, etc. within the same mission/round but automatically changing the codes/parameters for each round. This would support the players experience of playing a "mission" each round.


    I can think of a lot of ways in which Deus Ex 3 could offer new aspects to online gaming. And I think they could be implemented without loosing the "spirit" of Deus Ex.


    :-)
    - Jesper

    --
    My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
  46. Re:I'm in the minority here -- did not like Deus E by jollyreaper · · Score: 1

    I have to say, my kid brother made it through Deus Ex when he was thirteen and loved it. Now, he's bright, and I'm not saying that you aren't. My sticking point is that you pick intelligence in general rather than perceptiveness or just willingness to pay attention. You said pretty early on that the game felt clunky, and I take from that that you were distracted by your dislike for the game. Everything seemed straightforward to me. That is a huge factor, the more engaging the game, the more likely you are to get fully immersed and directly engaged in what you're doing with it. Deus just lacked that factor for me. But it's funny how tastes vary. I have friend that have very similar tastes to mine, close enough that I feel I can predict what they'll like, and they'll end up hating what I think was a sure bet. Likewise, friends whose tastes are quite divergent will end up liking something I never bothered showing them because I was sure they'd think it a waste of time.
    --
    Kwisatz Haderach
    Sell the spice to CHOAM
    This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
  47. Re:I'm in the minority here -- did not like Deus E by jollyreaper · · Score: 1

    I agree with what your saying, the cat mustache example is stupid, I've had experiences with similar other games, but Dues Ex? There's hardly ever only one way to do a puzzle in that game, and you don't even need to do them all. I guess it's possible the open nature of the game found you with none of the items you needed to do something, but I can't think of anywhere where that's possible atm Dunno. It's a matter of whether or not the story is engaging. I like RPG's in theory but have found very few that were engaging. I liked Betrayal at Krondor way back in the day but did not find another one that really engaged me until Oblivion. With Krondor, the plot and characters were excellent. Of course, I was also in high school at the time so everything felt fresh and new then. With Oblivion, I don't find the plot itself as engaging as the environment and design of the game itself. The plot seems bog-standard for RPG's and there's not a lot of compelling characterization there but just watching the environment, crawling the dungeons, that's still vastly entertaining. It's new and I've never seen anything like it. Haven't been gaming much in recent years so that really helps. Back when Return to Castle Wolfeinstein came out, I yawned because it was just another shooter and brought nothing new to the table. A friend of mine had just come out of years of schooling with no time for gaming. He picks this up as one of his first post-graduation games and is impressed as hell.
    --
    Kwisatz Haderach
    Sell the spice to CHOAM
    This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
  48. Obligatory DX1 links by west.to.east · · Score: 1

    Project HDTP: better looking textures
    enhanced OpenGL renderer: allows the game to take advantage of your newer card
    Shifter mod: adds some gameplay tweaks

    I'd like to add "conversation logs" to the DX3 xmas list.

  49. "Setup" is not a verb. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Seriously, I hope that was a typo. Now I have to turnoff my computer, goout the door, getin the car, and drivedown the street.