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"

Comments

I think I speak for everyone ...

[k_187]

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

Re:I think I speak for everyone ...

[Elemenope]

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.

Re:I think I speak for everyone ...

[montyzooooma]

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.

Re:I think I speak for everyone ...

[CronoCloud]

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?

They learned a lot from Deus Ex 2

[roystgnr]

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)

Re:They learned a lot from Deus Ex 2

[Kirijini]

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

To the developers...

[MattHawk]

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.)

It'll suck as bad, or worse, then then 2nd did...

[Zenin]

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.

DX2 crappy by comparison to the original.

[nrjyzerbuny]

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.

It's All in the Design.

[Plekto]

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.

Re:It's All in the Design.

[MikShapi]

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.

We still have the HDTP...

[andrewd18]

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

Nope no Spector

[OneMemeMofo]

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/

Re:It'll suck as bad, or worse, then then 2nd did.

[Plekto]

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.

D'oh!

[45mm]

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

Remake Deus Ex 1

[doublefrost]

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

Re:I'm surprised

[rishistar]

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?

Re:I'm in the minority here -- did not like Deus E

[PresidentEnder]

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.

The Missing Moment

[jacobw]

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?"

Re:The Missing Moment

[lazyl]

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.

Re:The Missing Moment

[Elemenope]

*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.