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First Deus Ex 3 Details Emerge
Ostracus writes "Deus Ex 3, the third entry in the influential FPS/RPG series, was confirmed to be in development by Eidos Montreal nearly a year ago — and now the first solid details on the game have finally emerged. UK magazine PC Zone has a cover story on Deus Ex 3 for their 200th issue (which has reportedly just begun reaching subscribers), and CVG has relayed a number of interesting tidbits from the preview: '... this time around combat won't be influenced by stats, but will rely purely on your personal marksmanship skills. Instead stats will influence "a vast array of fully upgradeable and customisable weapons," and you'll be able to tailor your arsenal to your play style with mag upgrades, scopes and other add-ons. What's more, stealth will now rely on a cover system rather than shadows, and damage will be dealt with by a very Call of Duty-style auto-heal.'"
So...Deus Ex 3 is getting aim bots?
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
... please don't make it ANYTHING like Deus Ex 2. The original was fantastic, but the sequel was a horrifying dumbed-down heavy-handed console mess. Ugh, and the stupid intrusive HUD... I played through the original 3 or 4 times, but the demo of Deus Ex 2 was way more than enough.
weeee!!! im a turtle!
I have re-played original deus ex upwards of 20-30 times ...sometimes just for the pure reading joy, sometimes for discovering new/hidden stuff i always seem to stumble upon and sometimes to just try something different (I did give up one attempt after I got out of Paris catacombs without directly killing a single enemy in combat)
deus ex 2 was piece of crap. i had none of the depth, none of atmosphere (despite obvious attempts at it), it had none of the fun game play, none of the re-playability. The only two good things I liked about dx2 was: machine supremacy soundtrack and the idoru.
If they want to make successful sequel, they could have went into more detail about how they have learned from the mistakes of the 2nd one, not just saying "oh yeah the universal ammo was bad but we still think console game ideas are good so we'll be putting more of them in"
personally, i would love to see an expansion pack for deus ex 1 - upgrade engine/graphics, maybe add some additional content, incorporate some half-finished mods/add-ons,etc.
Also, a real prequel where you play Paul Denton - that would be awesome! Especially all the adventures that are alluded in hong kong, miss chow, tracer tong, etc. Maybe starting with the formation of unatco - the statue of liberty being bombed, the start of grey plague, the climb to power by illuminati, and let us not forget a certain young french lady and her chatteau :)
Oh well, there is still time, the released information was not much to go by ...maybe all of these things will be part of the story line.
CVG is a Versalife PR front. Posted anon. cantlet them find me.
* Sinister voice of Simons will be returning to announce ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKS !
* mulitplayer death match via XBOX LIVE
* development focusing on volumetric 3d shadows.
* all NPCs that can offer quests will have a yellow exclamation mark over their head so you don't waste time talking to pointless NPCS!
* 2 ammo types. better than 1/universal ammo (see? we learn/listen to feedback)
* reading is for intellectualfags/pc fags. you play console games for fun, so there'll be none of that rubbish in dx3!
* It is a prequel where you play a character completely unrelated to the original game, in circumstances only vaguel related to the original game, in a storyline completely separate to the original game. It is a prequel.
* You will not be going anywhere near a certain chateau in France.
* maggie chow and tracer tong storylines unlockable via paid downloadable content.
* One install per device guaranteed by SecuROM
"Deus Ex 3, the third entry in the influential FPS/RPG series, was confirmed to be in development by Eidos Montreal nearly a year ago â" and now the first sordid details on the game have finally emerged.
Fixed that for you.
One of the main reasons Deus Ex 2 was such a let down was the removal of the skill system affecting marksmanship. It was and extremely pivotal game device that affected how you'd play the game from level 1. You could not run in gun in the end game unless you were trained to run and gun.
~
NoName
Shoot Yourself In the Foot
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What are they thinking with Call of Duty style regenerating health? Seriously... Deus Ex is not a run and gun game, it's a game that rewards resourcefulness and steathiness. The COD-style recharging health mechanic has *no place* here. The sole reason for recharging health is to keep the game pace up and allow the player to keep charging into frenetic combat in action games. Deus Ex is not one of these games.
I was looking forward to this, no longer following this now. Wake me up if this turns out to be good somehow.
"stealth will now rely on a cover system rather than shadows", eh?
It looks like they got my letter about adding the ubiquitous cardboard boxes as an inventory item!
TFA says that DX2 will have 20 different biomods, some pretty far-out. If this is a "prequel", why didn't they exist in the "future"?
Property is theft.
* One install per device guaranteed by SecuROM
if this is true, are any of us going to buy it?
One of the points of a FPS being first person is to add immersion; you're looking out of the protagonist's eyes, so you *are* the protagonist. Even if most of the time it's really just a floating camera, at least it's a floating camera where your eyes should be.
Now, cover systems.. fair enough. They can be done well; see, for example, GRAW. All first person, with your body actually modelled so you can see yourself, and when you enter cover you get the impression of actually.. entering cover.
But noooo, that's too hard to get right, so they're going to do what everybody else does and give you an out of body experience every time you lean against a fucking wall. None of this nonsense where entering cover is an important tactical decision because it blocks your line of sight just as much as it blocks bullets; this is a console game, so we'll make it easy and let you look around corners with magic floating vision.
And why bother spending time balancing the game when they can just give you magic regenerating health? *sigh*, they could at least make them optional augmentations, you know, like in the critically acclaimed original?
I don't understand why developers apparently have a hard time understanding what made Deus Ex great, especially when they could just play the original and see for themselves. The mechanics of the original game were perfect. Why did DX2 abandon them? Why is DX3 doing the same? I think we must accept that Deus Ex was a one-time thing and that the sequels aren't up to the level of quality required to be considered canon.
Removing the effect of stats on markmanship is removing something that was fun and cool from the original game, coping with your character's wobbly sniper shots which disappeared over time as you upgraded his sniper skills--if you decided to play a sniper, of course. I don't even know what to say about recharging health other than, of all games, Deus Ex is not the franchise to implement it in.
Oh wait.
#emerge --sync
Nevermind.
The PC Zone coverage of Deus Ex 3 on the Intarwebz seems to come from one source of quite sloppy scans. More information will be released as October's magazines hit the shelves. I'd take it all with a grain of salt. "We got Health Generation" could be a quote from the Deus Ex 1 jewelcase, as well. It's implementation is just not clarified further. Here are some facts from an Eidos Montréal representative named "René". RPG Deus Ex 3 is an RPG. An action/RPG like the first one (Deus Ex). FIRST PERSON OR THIRD PERSON The game is FIRST person, but automatically switches to third person for some contextual actions. You, as the player, do not have the ability to swap between views...it's a first person game but there are times where we want you to see Adam doing cool things. STORY/PLOTLINE The story and conspiracy elements are every bit a Deus Ex game. It's awesome. The writing team at EM is made up of many talented and experienced people. And did you notice the Sheldon reference...? MULTIPATH/NON LINEAR It's still based around making decisions which have consequences, selecting from a multi-path, multi-solution approach in a non-linear space (think DX1 not Invisible War), and you're able to customize your character (Adam) as well as your weapons. DX3 is an action/RPG just like the first game. When it comes to freedom, having space to search and roam in, and to run the streets and sewers, don't worry - we have that. This was just a magazine first look. That stuff will come next time. AUGMENTATION & TIMELINE Adam has mechanical augmentations. Paul and JC were the first of the nano augmented. That's why it makes sense as a Prequel...remember Anna and Gunther were mechanically augmented. And with mechanical augmentations, you will actually be able to see Adam look awesome whereas JC looked pretty normal. LOADING/LEVEL CHANGE Our tech supports streaming of data so the transition from indoors to outdoors will be seamless. FETUS IN TRAILER I don't think it's a character in the game. I think it has hidden meaning... HACKING Hacking is a major pillar of gameplay and is certainly not a mini game. (Sorry Bioshock) Hacking in Deus Ex 3 is a significant gameplay option which you can modify with augmentations if that's the way you develop your character. Our hacking is well beyond a "mini game" and is really freaking cool. CHOICE & CONSEQUENCE The social aspect of the game is extremely important. Do not fear. Choice and consequence is a major design influence. This is still a Deus Ex game. GLOBAL/LOCAL/SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT Don't worry - we know that traveling the world is one of the core values for Deus Ex... You have city hubs to explore in a non-linear fashion. There are different routes and different ways to complete an objective. The social element is huge. There are tonnes of characters to interact with and the story is massive with a global conspiracy. CHARACTER/AUGMENTATION DEVELOPMENT You do gain experience points throughout the game which you can use to either upgrade yourself or your weapons. It's a choice. There are many augmentations in the game so like the first one, you can choose how your character (Adam) develops. Source: http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=80786
it's been well over 5 or 6 years since the last legacy of kain.....ummm how about we finish that series off finally?
eidos should complete their best games series finally since it's obvious they wont do another for almost 10 years.
DX3 has been a huge wildcard in my mind, simply because it offers so much promise, and as a result, even greater chance of dissapointment. DX2: Invisible War was a dissapointment because it felt like a 'dumbed down' distilled console version of the basic premese offered by Deus Ex, much as Bioshock offered a distilled version of the System Shock experience. This is not to say that Invisible War was a bad game, as I found it quite entertaining. It just didn't seem like a sequel, and it certainly didn't deliver on expectations. Deus Ex was not without it's faults, having very clunky combat mechanics, but that's not why I enjoyed playing it.
Deus Ex 3 will be hard to really get excited about until we find out how wide of a net the Dev team is casting for a playerbase. I get nervous hearing about 'shedding' more RPG elements from the DX formula, simply because it was the FPS/RPG hybrid elements that made Deus Ex (and System Shock 2) truly unique games to play.
I'm going to be taking Yatzee Crowshaw's tack on this and remain a cynic on this until I have further reason to hope. The risk of watching another beloved PC franchise ruined for the sake of the 'mainstream console gamer' is one that plays very near and dear to my heart. After having been twice dissapointed with Bioshock and Invisible War, I'm wary this time around. They're decent games, just not quite up to the bar set by the games that originally inspired them.
of the first two games just prior to the release of DX2. 3DActionPlanet was trying a new interview thing, in which we interviewed game characters by sending questions to their writers and project directors. The second game was disappointing, because of the pandering to console gamers. From what I've read of TFA, they're promising to try the same kind of a thing again. The problem is that developers are being pressured to make games that work on a variety of different platforms. These games are limited by the number of buttons, the lack of a mouse, small level sizes, and the (assumed, rightly or wrongly) lack of intellect of the player base. I'll buy the game, but as far as more Deus Ex fun, it looks like I'm going to have to settle with being content with being the only person to interview JC Denton.
What? DX Had the best multiplayer i've seen yet, the depth from all the skills and augmentations available made it incredibly complex and forced players to become incredibly skilled in at least one specific tactic, a day playing dxmp is worth a year or more in any other game. To this day the tone of a LAM beeping makes me jump reflexively.
The only problem was the expert and small player base combined with complexity made the learning curve an overhanging wall.
The cover game? Deus Ex 3 - the long-awaited return of the world's favourite nano-augmented RPG-shooter.
Awaited by who? Anyone that bought and enjoyed the original dreads every attempt they make at sucking money out of the franchise.
Why is it when they clone bad games they're practically identical but they cant copy a good game without ruining everything that made it good, interesting or different. Are they just incapable of making a good game?
Somewhat on a tangent, but thinking back to why I liked the first so much, one of the things that comes to mind is the number of completely optional areas, each of which has just as much detail as the necessary parts. Things like the MJ12 base in the sewers, the flooded tunnel, the prototype AI...
My other favourite game, FFVII, was very similar -- you could reach the credits in under 20 hours, but even after playing for so long that the in-game timer ran out of digits, I was still finding new bits.
I wonder if this is actually a secret to making an awesome game? If you have an optional huge, high quality stealth bit, an optional puzzle bit, an optional run & gun bit, optional snippets of background story all over the place, etc; people will pick & mix and "complete" the game while actually only having played the 20% of the content which particularly appeals to them~
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
1. Unfortunately, "critically acclaimed" doesn't really mean much. It means that at least one reviewer wrote a glowing review, whether because he really bends over that easily for the publisher's ads and freebies, or because he liked the idea lots after playing for 5 minutes on God mode.
Anarchy Online was "critically acclaimed" and it was launched as an unplayable mess of bugs, with bad balance. It lost players hand over fist _fast_ and only stabilized after being turned into a freebie ad-supported game, and even then at a _pitiful_ number of subscribers. So not that many players liked it either.
Aiken's Artefact was "critically acclaimed" and IIRC it sold a pitiful 800 copies in the beginning. (Not sure how many more were bundled later in "top X games" bundles.)
Looking Glass's games were "critically acclaimed" and had such a rabid following that, arguably, it was the "OMG, Eidos killed Looking Glass to keep funding Daikatana" that broke the camel's back and triggered the devastating backlash against what would have otherwise have been merely a mediocre game with outdated graphics. But, funnily enough, Looking Glass had more rabid fanboys, than it had paying customers. Their last couple of games (e.g., the Terra Nova experiment) sold pitifully few copies, and even other publishers (e.g., Microsoft) no longer wanted to touch them with a ten foot polearm. Reviewers and fanboys ranted and raved about how great and innovative the Looking Glass games are, but people didn't actually buy those games.
So aiming for "critically acclaimed" instead of sales, is a bit like aiming to be the ugly girl with a great personality.
Now I'm not saying that DX1 was "bad", so hold yer horses. But if it didn't sell great, it didn't sell great, and that's that. I can see why a publisher or developper would try to change a few bits and see if it does better.
2. And part of its problem was that it wasn't really anything anyone could put their finger upon. It was barely even an FPS, but it required FPS skills to get out of a firefight alive. It wasn't a forced stealth game, but mostly you had to anyway... except when it wouldn't work and you'd be back to needing FPS skills again. It was barely even a CRPG, but it tried to tell CRPG fans that it was one. Then they'd need FPS skills or have to deal with forced stealth, instead of the usual concentrating on the semi-interactive storyline while letting the computer roll the targeting dice. Etc.
Now I'm not saying that _only_ FPS skills worked, but... let's put it like this: from all that bewildering array of possibilities for solving any problem, there'd be at least one point in the game where _your_ favourite approach just didn't work and you had to do something else. For each category of players, a different one.
Basically instead of catering to the union of FPS, stealth and RPG fans, it really catered to an intersection of the three sets. You had to be the kind of guy who enjoys all three, to go through the whole game and like it. Because otherwise sooner or later a section of the game would come up which forced you to do the one you dislike.
Now if you were indeed at least semi-comfortable with all 3, I'm not going to say you shouldn't like it. In fact, I'm happy for you. But, well, that's one possibility as to why it had only mediocre sales. Because it really catered to a minority.
And from that point of view, again I can see why a publisher would try to enlarge that target market segment.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I wonder if the Real secret to making games like DX1 in the future will be for them to be created by non-profit game companies?
There are already some older games, like the Star Fleet Command series, that are now held in trust to be run by the fans in Non Profit org's.
I think this model has an awesome potential - with freshmen game developers perhaps donating their time to (and building rep's with) groups like these - instead of working on over-ambitious mods like Black Mesa which never quite make it to fruition before the team is all hired away by Mega Corps like EA.
I was a huge Deus Ex fan and played through it repeatedly like many of you. Recently I picked up Half-Life 2 Episode 1 (from the Orange Box package from Valve) and started playing it, and I was reminded of Deus Ex. It is a little heavier on action-based gameplay and puzzles, but it does sort of follow the Action RPG model in the sense that you're not just mindlessly blasting away at things. There's a real story going on there with NPCs to talk to, etc.
Plus there are some cool weapons, and you've got the whole ammo conservation thing going on throughout the game. And the graphics are much better than Deus Ex of course.
I'd recommend it for any of you Deus Ex lovers who are looking for a new game.
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If I get my money back when I've had enough of it (after all, they've gotten use of my money and they can resell the game themselves too, so why not give me my money back?) then I'll consider it.
But while they pretend to sell it I'll pretend to buy it.
It is, really. The health system in DX was awesome, but I guess it caused too much trouble for console gamers.
Now they're stepping into the same shit again, all for the sake of console gamers.
"... this time around combat won't be influenced by stats, but will rely purely on your personal marksmanship skills"
The marksmanship skills of my aimbot are second to no other aimbot.
You hit the nail on the head, but you must understand than the people who make the decisions for a developer of ANY size are NOT interested in "making a living". They was to make as much money as possible, and thus have absolutely no interest in catering to the original fans.
One-two man shops can afford to make niche games for their rabid fans. I'm a big fan of Dominions (Illwinter - two guys), Geneforge (Spiderweb - one guy), Mount and Blade (man and wife) I love their games, buy every new release, and get exactly what I expect. But these guys are not getting rich, nor really trying to. Their graphics are at least five years behind the curve, their engines are worse than what I could built in an year, and their games are not selling enough to support more than a few people.
A company that can produce a AAA title needs dozens of millions. They cannot afford to go for anything but the lowest common denominator. And most of such games fail. Serves them right. The one-two men shops release games faithful to the franchise, and are assured a welcoming audiance... of a few thousands at best. I have no idea how new people get hooked up.
Actually here is how you should get hooked up: (I'm linking to demos)
Dominions A insanely complex, turn based, fantasy strategy. Crappy graphics, retarded AI. Awesome multiplayer, if you are willing to play a game that can take a few months to resolve itself, and if your self-esteem take accept that each game produces one winner out of up to sixty players. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Illwinter/DOM3/DOM3_page.html
Geneforge/Exile/Avernum Old style RPGs with an extremely involved story, very detailed multiple endings - the kind you can replay a dozen times if you can imagine a dozen characters with different morals. http://www.spidweb.com/geneforge3/index.html
Mount and Blade First person slasher. The one and only mounted combat simulator that reaches for the right feel. As someone who has used a saber from a horse, and trying to shoot a bow, I can tell you it does an incredible job. It is ngreat at modeling hand to hand combat and archery on foot as well, but that's been done. http://www.taleworlds.com/mb_download.html
No good deed goes unpunished...
So it sounds like they are getting rid of what I liked about the original game... you can't hide in the shadows (which I guess makes the programming easier), you can't invest training in a particular weapon and get better at it... it sounds like it's just going to be another run and gun shooter.