I like the takedowns the way they are. If you’re going to do a stealth game with combat, the player must have some way of reliably taking down enemies without alarming anyone. That means one-hit kills. The most limiting thing you can do to such an attack is make it melee range. About the only additional drawback I can think of would be to require that the target be unaware, but that rather conflicts with the “augmented super strength” nature of the main character. Unlike Deus Ex, your character is superhuman from the start of the game, if not overpoweringly so.
I agree that they really needed more interesting stuff for sale, and that I never felt interested in anything except the Praxis kits. I didn’t find ways to cheese as much money as you did, though, since I couldn’t afford all the Praxis available for sale, let alone having 20k Cr at the end.
Not everyone is as l33t as you are. I appreciated the improvements to the stealth, which I did not find “too easy.” My problem with some of those augs (sound display, mark and track) was that they didn’t help stealth enough to justify the points.
That one isn’t really to protect you from enemy grenades, it’s to protect you from your own grenades. The concussion grenades / mines have a huge area of effect. You can be halfway across a good-sized room and get caught in the blast. There are a couple of bits where you have to defend against an oncoming army of hostiles, and this relatively cheap upgrade gives you a powerful option.
There’s no question that while DE allowed multiple approaches, DE:HR strongly favors stealth over all other solutions.
I agree that resources needed to be more limited. Very early on Pritchard says to you that “guards are best avoided,” but in truth the best solution is usually to take down every guard you can safely take out without alerting anyone. It doesn’t cost you anything but time, and you get XP and material rewards.
DE did something that very few RPGs have done before or since: you got no XP for taking down enemies. Enemies therefore were obstacles you had to overcome or avoid to reach your goal, rather than a goal in themselves. I wish every RPG would take that approach.
Charles
2942
Seriously. I broke in to a guy’s house in china. Walked right in front of him and stole his credit chip. WTF?
That’s one of my big sticking points in this game, is how little they’ve done in terms of world simulation. It’s almost as static as a Mass Effect game.
I’m probably going to write another post about how DXHR has completely failed to keep up with the game industry as a whole. DXHR, if it had added a lot of the simulation stuff that other games do nowadays, probably would have been even better.
WarrenM
2943
The AI really is dumb as a stump. I love the game, don’t get me wrong, but man … every enemy in the game is missing some very critical brain cells.
I also pretty much agree with Naeblis lengthy writeup.
I also felt that the a lot of the game’s story and structure hewed a little too close to the first Deus Ex. For example:
whole game spoilers
[spoiler]
- American inner city hub, followed by asian city hub.
- Optional ‘save your pilot’ moment.
- Main character’s voice acting.
- Crazy Chinese CEO lady villain.
- Merging with an AI super computer end boss fight.
I almost felt I knew what was going to happen before it did by the middle of the game.[/spoiler]
Yeah, it feels like they did a great job capturing a lot of what was good about Deus Ex 1 with competent modern art, but learned only about half the lessons of other games from the intervening years… I guess minor spoilers ahead maybe:
the illuminati don’t want you to look
I really wanted them to start from a Deus Ex 1 sort of level and then build on that with more simulation; a more interactive world, more difficult and interesting choices. Instead the AI is as wonky as it was 10 years ago, there is no incentive not to hoover every level almost dry of content on the first pass, there is little fun plot benefit to reading all the emails you can hack into (I’m thinking mostly of the kill phrases in the first game here and the useful codes - in this game I always hacked even if I had the code because it gave XP, items and money) and there are no new ways to interact with the world.
Charles
2946
Yeah I agree. The game is pretty sparse in terms of things to find which actually have game meaning.
Grifman
2947
This and more. Yeah, right now I don’t look at enemies as obstacles to be eliminated or avoided (depending upon the circumstances) but way of mining XP for aug upgrades. And the extra XP for non killing take downs forces me further down another road. I’d much prefer no XP for kills, just missions/exploration.
The same goes for hacking. I’ll hack even if I have the password because of XP gains and goodies gained. Again, hacking should be one option for dealing with a locked door/computer. The game does give other options but the XP/other rewards pushes you in the hacking direction.
Razgon
2948
I’m no developer, but to me it seems either laziness or funding that is causing things like this.
Of course, it could be that they tried to implement it, and in the name of gameplay (The game is VERY playable from a consumer standpoint) they decided it was too impeding on how the player interacted with the world.
We have games like morrowind with quite a few years on it by now that does this kind of thing better, if somewhat annoying.
I still am completely in love with the game, but there are some things that could have been even better.
Right, this is another one of my annoyances. There’s a ton of e-mails to read but they don’t get sorted chronologically by subplot – instead they are stored by location, in the order you found them! Result? I immediately forget them and never look at them again. They could have been a nice way to flesh out the plot… if only there was a good interface to access them.
Charles
2950
Yeah, I’m sure it was a budget decision for time/cash constraints. But ultimately, it’s frustrating to see something like that left out.
Tony_M
2951
I haven’t finished yet but I’m loving the game so far. One of my highlights of the last few years of gaming.
I like that stealth feels predatory and powerful. Combat is dangerous (especially when caught mid stealthing), and thats enough to inject a real feeling of danger and risk into the sneaking. For me DE1 was never really about “mastering” the sneaking or combat, like you would in a pure shooter. As long as it delivered the feeling of danger, the chance to be a augmented badass, and the playground for emergent solutions to problems, that was enough for me. Its doesn’t have to be a difficult test of skill.
As much as I love DE3, the question of freedom of action made me realize that gaming has moved on, and maybe I look back on DE1 with some rose tinted nostalgia. When DE1 came out we hadn’t seen games like GTA3 and Far Cry 2. So at the time DE1 was the pinnacle of sandbox gameplay and freedom to do what you want.
In some ways DE3 is the height of freedom. It offers the most different solutions to problems. But compared to a true sandbox game, the solutions feel very “canned”. I felt like the options were clearly presented to you by the game designer. I walk into a room, look around and think “ok I can go hacking, vent, sneak or shoot” as I look around the room (other rooms offer other options, thats one example).
In a sandbox game there are fewer ways to solve problems, but the solutions you come up with feel truly yours, not canned and presented by the game designer.
I’m not trying to say that every game should try to be a sandbox game. I’m just trying to explain why in a modern context, DE3 can’t be the answer to everything I want from a videogame, as DE1 felt back when it was released.
Tony
Far Cry 2 and GTA 3 are in the other side of the possible spectrum of the “freedom of action”. They give the player big quantities of freedom on movement in a huge scenario, but said freedom is an illusion, as the possible actions to be executed by the player is very limited, as in the end the gameplay barely changes wherever you are. You may look at the map and say “woow, huuge freedom!” but in the end the encounters with the enemy or the possible missions are more or less the same, it doesn’t matter if you have traveled 1 km to the south, or 2 kms to the west.
Something like that happens in the RPG genre, if we compare Oblivion with PST. PST have more options, more reactitivy, even if at first Oblivion seems much more sandbox-y. It’s just a different type of sandbox.
I can’t say it bothers me at all that I can occasionally take a credit chip from somebody’s desk while they’re standing there. Gamey? Sure. Not “disappointing” or “annoying.” And I haven’t even noticed stuff being hidden under boxes–I guess that’s down to play style. I move boxes if I’m looking for a vent or stacking them to get somewhere high up. I don’t move them around searching for loot because that sounds boring. I do look in lockers sometimes, but I don’t obsess over it.
That reminds me - I would have loved the ability to walk under a box, and have it NEVER EVER WORK. :)
Tony_M
2956
Yeah thats what I was getting at with my previous post. Sandbox games offer fewer “ways” to beat a challenge, but your solution is not prescribed the same way it is in DE3. DE3 feels more towards the Portal end of the spectrum. “Heres a room, heres your tools, how do you solve it?”. DE3 offers many more ways through the room than Portal, but I can still see the options signposted there for me by the game designer.
I enjoy both types of freedom. I’m just trying to explain why DE3, as good as it is, can’t inspire me the way DE1 did. At the time of DE1s release, you played a bit, and then called your friend and said “You have to play this game, you can do anything you want in it, its not just shooting monsters”. But now after playing true sandbox games, I see what its like to have 360 degree freedom and no signposts from the designers.
Yes in some ways a sandbox games freedom is wider and shallower than the depth of options in DE3. But you cannot unsee what you have seen. So DE3 feels much more “gamey” now than it did before I saw sandbox games in action.
Tony
I’d like to just say what an awesome PC port this is. Great graphics, great performance. I’m at 54 hours total played (second playthrough) and I’ve had one crash - while loading a save game. The only other bugs I’ve seen was once a body fell through the floor, and when you do a double-takedown the clipping gets weird.
Lack of a quicksave sucks, though.
WarrenM
2959
Yeah, F5/F8 … works fine for me!
I can attest to good performance and no bugs so far, but… great graphics? Are all your other PC games from GOG and you skipped both Witchers? Did they release a hi-res texture pack that I missed? Have I forgotten to turn on some important option? The graphics I’m seeing are really rather mediocre. Great sense of scale, sure, but there’s a general lack of detail, textures are blurry, and animations are pretty bad.
Lack of a quicksave sucks, though.
Although Squenix for some reason forgot to ship a manual with the game, there’s one on Steam and it has a handy hotkey list!
