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GuyUpNorth
Apr 29, 2014

Witty phrases on random basis
And that ammo requirement killed it for me in tutorial already, so I just stuck to baton - which was incredibly annoying unless I hit exactly lower back. Should probably at least reinstall on this rig and continue, but that one guy behind hotel counter always gets me in the first levels.

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Party Plane Jones
Jul 1, 2007

by Reene
Fun Shoe

chiasaur11 posted:

It's still a massive objective flaw. The game loving reboots itself every level transition! That's Sonic '06 levels of lovely programming.

The excuse for that is they took the Unreal 2 engine, modified it heavily, put a dynamic lighting system on top of it, and then the guy who modified it so heavily and made the lighting system quit/got fired. So they had like 9 months to program a game in something that had no real documentation for the changes over the original engine. The Thief game that came out on the same engine ended up having another year of development time to work with the problem.

The_Franz
Aug 8, 2003

Party Plane Jones posted:

The excuse for that is they took the Unreal 2 engine, modified it heavily, put a dynamic lighting system on top of it, and then the guy who modified it so heavily and made the lighting system quit/got fired. So they had like 9 months to program a game in something that had no real documentation for the changes over the original engine. The Thief game that came out on the same engine ended up having another year of development time to work with the problem.

I'm still not sure what you could do to the lighting system that requires killing and restarting the process with every level transition.

Among the many technical problems already mentioned, they also shipped the demo and original PC version with the Xbox config files so by default the text was comically huge and the FoV made it look like you were looking through a telescope. On top of that the first release suffered from constant crashes to desktop during level changes. The game should have flat-out not been released in the technical state it was in.

It was also one of the earlier games to use Havok physics, but everything in the world just ended up feeling like it was made of Styrofoam.

Let us also not forget that Deus Ex 2 had the most obtrusive and obnoxious HUDs of any game, ever. Thankfully they included an option to make it invisible most of the time.

Basically, Deus Ex 1 was a game where everything went right, and it shows. Deus Ex 2 was a game where everything went wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGIdYl2oN74

The_Franz fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Dec 11, 2014

Beast Pussy
Nov 30, 2006

You are dark inside

The_White_Crane posted:

It's almost never glitchy at all.

Just checking: you're aware that the Stun Prod is a melee weapon, not a ranged one?
And that it requires ammo? Because that caught me out the first time I played too.

Maybe that was my problem? I'll definitely give it another go.

Scalding Coffee
Jun 26, 2006

You're already dead
You really need to upgrade a weapon skill twice to appreciate the combat or else you will spend forever trying to kill the target. The difference from unskilled is huge.
Try to mess with the physics in this game. You can't do much for rear end in a top hat physics, but strange things can happen.

THE PENETRATOR
Jul 27, 2014

by Lowtax
contrary to popular belief, invisible war was good. exhibit a:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTLMUOQbT_4

DeadFatDuckFat
Oct 29, 2012

This avatar brought to you by the 'save our dead gay forums' foundation.


Lucius Debeers says he's cold.

Rookersh
Aug 19, 2010

The_Franz posted:

I'm still not sure what you could do to the lighting system that requires killing and restarting the process with every level transition.

Among the many technical problems already mentioned, they also shipped the demo and original PC version with the Xbox config files so by default the text was comically huge and the FoV made it look like you were looking through a telescope. On top of that the first release suffered from constant crashes to desktop during level changes. The game should have flat-out not been released in the technical state it was in.

It was also one of the earlier games to use Havok physics, but everything in the world just ended up feeling like it was made of Styrofoam.

Let us also not forget that Deus Ex 2 had the most obtrusive and obnoxious HUDs of any game, ever. Thankfully they included an option to make it invisible most of the time.

Basically, Deus Ex 1 was a game where everything went right, and it shows. Deus Ex 2 was a game where everything went wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGIdYl2oN74

Yes, it was a buggy mess.

Yes the FoV/text was too big, and yes the menu was godawful.

Yes the combat system was different.

None of that adds up to the amount of vitriol that game gets on a regular basis. The world was interesting, well defined, and the themes they pushed did actually provoke some measure of thought ( can utopia only be achieved by hiding the undesirable aspects, failure and the denial of self, etc ). The story while cheesy was decently told, and it provided enough mystery to get players to the ending, provided they were willing to put up with the technical problems. As an added benefit, they took one of the coolest things Deus Ex did and expanded on it, taking the nonlethal/lethal track and expanding it into an entire games worth of faction options. While Liberty Island/Castle Clinton were the only two levels that mattered for nonlethal/lethal in Deus Ex, your choices over the entire game matter to the factions in Invisible War.

Even outside of storytelling the game was quite well done. Unlike Deus Ex, which presented you as a super soldier in name only, Invisible War finally gave you the power to play with the combat engine. While I'm sure some people legitimately enjoyed playing on Realistic and dying in a single hit, it somewhat ran counter intuitive to everyone claiming you were some sort of nanoaug badass who could tank bullets in most encounters. Invisible War fixed this, making the combat challenging for the average player, but also giving the player enough tools to deal with enemies from all sorts of angles/paths. They also fixed the energy issues inherent to the original game. While energy was at a premium in the original Deus Ex, only giving you the chance to fire off augs to get around/sections of combat when things were going poorly, Invisible War offered enough energy to encourage aug use during basic combat encounters, which added a bit more spice to them.

Ultimately, while the levels were smaller thanks to the loading screens, they were also much larger in scope and scale if you were able to ignore them. Only the cities really suffered from the transition to consoles, with Seattle and Egypt being a bit smaller in scope/scale then Hell's Kitchen/China. The actual gameplay zones ended up being as large or larger then the average Deus Ex level, and offered as many if not more options to get into/through them. The addition of new augs/new grenades/new guns opened up strategies you couldn't even think about in Deus Ex. Like my favorite, throwing down a spiderbot, taking control of it with droid control, and then using it to sneak past everyone to the turret control center. Or using the rifle that shoots through walls alongside the eye aug to snipe general enemies before I even had the alarms sound.

I play through both games on a yearly basis, and Invisible War has just gotten better with age, thanks to the reduction in loading times. I honestly find a lot of the hate it gets nonsensical ( "There is no reason to explore!" leads people to not have any ammo. I've beaten the entire game only using the rocket launcher/mako rifle before and had no problems. I regularly fire off all sorts of big guns before switching to pistols again, and don't have any ammo problems. If you are having ammo problems, maybe you should be exploring? ), and the few people I've convinced to play it on my friends list have largely ended up enjoying it. Obviously none of us think it's a better game then Deus Ex, which is still one of the best games ever made, but it was a pretty good game in the same vein. It's a good RPG that now only has a few odd bugs, but is still treated as one of the worst games ever made because it was the first real console to PC port.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Rookersh posted:

Yes, it was a buggy mess.

Yes the FoV/text was too big, and yes the menu was godawful.

Yes the combat system was different.

No argument so far.

Rookersh posted:

None of that adds up to the amount of vitriol that game gets on a regular basis. The world was interesting, well defined, and the themes they pushed did actually provoke some measure of thought ( can utopia only be achieved by hiding the undesirable aspects, failure and the denial of self, etc ). The story while cheesy was decently told, and it provided enough mystery to get players to the ending, provided they were willing to put up with the technical problems. As an added benefit, they took one of the coolest things Deus Ex did and expanded on it, taking the nonlethal/lethal track and expanding it into an entire games worth of faction options. While Liberty Island/Castle Clinton were the only two levels that mattered for nonlethal/lethal in Deus Ex, your choices over the entire game matter to the factions in Invisible War.

Now the argument starts. The problem with Invisible War's story is that it didn't make your choices matter. It's most obvious if you do a Yojimbo run, flipping sides at every chance to make a buck or gently caress someone over, but even in a pure loyalist run the facade cracks. You can repeatedly murder someone's finest lieutenants, even the woman someone (supposedly) loves, and they keep trying to hire you with the same arguments that they'd use on a hardcore loyalist. Worse, any time you try to invest in something emotionally, they rip the rug out from under you. Like the idea of being a corporate merc, like the game promises at the start? Well, gently caress you, the academy is destroyed as part of the tutorial mission. (Deus Ex the first, meanwhile, gives you nearly half a game to get into being the cool dudes in the black helicopters killing terrorists before it forced you to confront the fact your coworkers were looking at that new catalog of hats with skulls on them) Like one of the factions? gently caress you, all the initial faction choices are made irrelevant by the midgame twist. The only thing that matters come the ending is who you support in the last mission (and, to a lesser extent, who you back in the second to last mission).

As for themes, I think Tom Francis (who actually liked IW) said it best.

"Invisible War fails by being too scared to suggest a morally acceptable faction, and thus systematically destroying the philosophical appeal of each of the ideologies to which your character can subscribe, and thereby any spark to the plot that could make it enjoyable for repeat plays. It's fun to replay Deus Ex even when you know the twist is coming because there are real, compelling things involved - UNATCO resembles the US government unwaveringly and believably, and the NSF are exactly like certain terrorist groups with a good cause but not enough organisation to keep their methods moral. In Invisible War, you're not interested in the factions because they're all murderous hypocrites with nothing but vague, philosophically feeble rhetoric to justify their actions. You don't even believe that they believe it, let alone that it's worth fighting for or caring about. It was such a disastrously bad design decision to 'balance' them with flaws rather than working on convincing you of their merits."


Rookersh posted:

Even outside of storytelling the game was quite well done. Unlike Deus Ex, which presented you as a super soldier in name only, Invisible War finally gave you the power to play with the combat engine. While I'm sure some people legitimately enjoyed playing on Realistic and dying in a single hit, it somewhat ran counter intuitive to everyone claiming you were some sort of nanoaug badass who could tank bullets in most encounters. Invisible War fixed this, making the combat challenging for the average player, but also giving the player enough tools to deal with enemies from all sorts of angles/paths. They also fixed the energy issues inherent to the original game. While energy was at a premium in the original Deus Ex, only giving you the chance to fire off augs to get around/sections of combat when things were going poorly, Invisible War offered enough energy to encourage aug use during basic combat encounters, which added a bit more spice to them.

And here's where I grudgingly concede a point. Deus Ex the first made augs a bit of a pain to use. I mean, if you had speed boosts and regen on and were carrying the DTS you were a blur of nanotech murder (running on worn out D cells), but for the most part, and especially early on, you still felt like a fragile creature of meat and bone. Invisible War's augs were a little simpler to work with. I mean, that was more than countered by the awful inventory and ammo system, but I give you this.

Rookersh posted:

Ultimately, while the levels were smaller thanks to the loading screens, they were also much larger in scope and scale if you were able to ignore them. Only the cities really suffered from the transition to consoles, with Seattle and Egypt being a bit smaller in scope/scale then Hell's Kitchen/China. The actual gameplay zones ended up being as large or larger then the average Deus Ex level, and offered as many if not more options to get into/through them. The addition of new augs/new grenades/new guns opened up strategies you couldn't even think about in Deus Ex. Like my favorite, throwing down a spiderbot, taking control of it with droid control, and then using it to sneak past everyone to the turret control center. Or using the rifle that shoots through walls alongside the eye aug to snipe general enemies before I even had the alarms sound.

But the loading screens have a huge impact on levels even aside from the nuisance factor. They mean action in one part of the map can't influence the other parts as directly. And every strategy added comes at the price of other tactics lost. Deus Ex the first had plenty of chances for long range sniping, impossible with IW's basketball sized maps. The new ammo system and inventory cut off a lot of the older alpha striking plays and incentive to use oddball strategies (If you saved GEP gun ammo, it was one of the most versatile tools in your inventory. Meanwhile, the fire extinguisher only taking one slot encouraged using it in emergencies, whereas IW's rocket launcher candy bar equivalency makes oddball items much less useful). First Deus Ex also had enemies running out of ammo and taking damage to different parts. You could disable an enemy by breaking his arms, whereas IW didn't even have headshots before it was patched.

Seriously, those levels are tiny. It's painful.

Rookersh posted:

I play through both games on a yearly basis, and Invisible War has just gotten better with age, thanks to the reduction in loading times.

I played it less than two years ago, on a quad core with 8 gigs of ram. If those were reduced loading times, then I'm shocked anyone ever beat that piece of poo poo. Think they would have died of old age first.

Rookersh posted:

I honestly find a lot of the hate it gets nonsensical ( "There is no reason to explore!" leads people to not have any ammo. I've beaten the entire game only using the rocket launcher/mako rifle before and had no problems. I regularly fire off all sorts of big guns before switching to pistols again, and don't have any ammo problems. If you are having ammo problems, maybe you should be exploring? ), and the few people I've convinced to play it on my friends list have largely ended up enjoying it. Obviously none of us think it's a better game then Deus Ex, which is still one of the best games ever made, but it was a pretty good game in the same vein. It's a good RPG that now only has a few odd bugs, but is still treated as one of the worst games ever made because it was the first real console to PC port.

No, it's treated as one of the worst games ever made because it's a moderately lovely game with abysmal optimization that came as a sequel to one of the best games ever made. It isn't just that it's not great, or that it's a sequel to a much better game, though. It also bares a lot of its shittiness on its sleeve. Deus Ex the first had awful voice work, but it took it in fun, and JC's monotone was fun and entertaining. Meanwhile, Alex D (meaning no insult to the VAs. I mean, we are talking the boss of the Saints here) has some of the least engaging voicework ever. The graphics make Deus Ex 1 look good (Which scientists previously deemed impossible), the big twist is self-evidently stupid in ways you can't help but notice, the constant chatter from the various faction leaders made it impossible to ignore the fact that they would ignore you eating their children in front of them to give you the same hiring spiel next level, the features cut stand out on even a casual look, and the crap programming is impossible to miss. (Tiny levels, 2 kinds of multitool with no difference except taking up different inventory slots, etc.)

I hold no ill-will for anyone involved in the game. Harvey Smith made Dishonored, after all, and if there's a more suitable penance I can't imagine it. But the game itself can burn.

Tiggum
Oct 24, 2007

Your life and your quest end here.


chiasaur11 posted:

The problem with Invisible War's story is that it didn't make your choices matter.
I've never understood this as a complaint against Invisible War specifically. No game I'm aware of has ever done this well, and Invisible War didn't fail in a worse way than anything else. I mean even the flawless Deus Ex was super bad about this.

chiasaur11 posted:

You can repeatedly murder someone's finest lieutenants, even the woman someone (supposedly) loves, and they keep trying to hire you
Well, there is at least some attempt to justify this. You're not just some guy, all the factions actually need you specifically (except for the templars, and they need the others not to get you).

chiasaur11 posted:

Like one of the factions? gently caress you, all the initial faction choices are made irrelevant by the midgame twist. The only thing that matters come the ending is who you support in the last mission (and, to a lesser extent, who you back in the second to last mission).
As opposed to Deus Ex, where the only thing that matters come the ending is who you support in the last mission?

chiasaur11 posted:

As for themes, I think Tom Francis (who actually liked IW) said it best.

"Invisible War fails by being too scared to suggest a morally acceptable faction..."
It wasn't too scared, it's intentional.

chiasaur11 posted:

Deus Ex the first had awful voice work, but it took it in fun, and JC's monotone was fun and entertaining. Meanwhile, Alex D (meaning no insult to the VAs. I mean, we are talking the boss of the Saints here) has some of the least engaging voicework ever.
Sorry, anything you say about the voice acting in Deus Ex other than "it was terrible" is just making excuses for it. It was bad.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Tiggum posted:

I've never understood this as a complaint against Invisible War specifically. No game I'm aware of has ever done this well, and Invisible War didn't fail in a worse way than anything else. I mean even the flawless Deus Ex was super bad about this.

Alpha Protocol, for all its other faults, does okay. But the problem isn't that it fails. The problem is it draws back the curtain too much. When people keep calling you after you murder their families or try to threaten you into working for them when you've been a model employee, that wrecks the illusion. The game goes out of its way to let you know nothing you do matters.

Tiggum posted:

Well, there is at least some attempt to justify this. You're not just some guy, all the factions actually need you specifically (except for the templars, and they need the others not to get you).

No, they just need a Tarsus grad. And there's four of 'em around, minimum. That's only at the end, even, with most of the jobs in the middle being anyone's game. And if we're taking your angle that they need you, then they do a piss-poor job of showing it most of the time. They nag at you to do their dirtywork, but they never show much talent in basic salesmanship. I mean, one of the groups is the Illuminati. Why aren't they offering you all the money? They could do that. Easily. But they don't, because everyone in invisible war except the Omar is a stupid rear end in a top hat.

Tiggum posted:

As opposed to Deus Ex, where the only thing that matters come the ending is who you support in the last mission?

You were the one talking about the rich depth of Invisible War's reactivity. Not my fault that it's just as bad at the big things as its predecessor. And it shows less little details. Again, it's all a lie, but it matters how well you sell the lie. Deus Ex did it well. Invisible war didn't.

Tiggum posted:

It wasn't too scared, it's intentional.

So, it intentionally sent the message "Nothing in the world is worth a second's attention, just murder people at random. Can't do a worse job than the assholes on the intercom."

I don't think you're making the argument for the merits of Invisible War's plot that you think you are.

Tiggum posted:

Sorry, anything you say about the voice acting in Deus Ex other than "it was terrible" is just making excuses for it. It was bad.

And yet IW was even worse. And unlike Deus Ex, where the comparatively decent-ish voice work went to the leads and the shittiest stuff mostly went to late game incidental characters, IW has the worst performances from Alex D. (JC also got much more memorable dialog. Try to find a good Alex D. line. Just try.)

(And I haven't even got to the datacubes. If you ever needed proof Invisible War wasn't even as well written as the first Deus Ex, there you go. Just compare Jacob's Shadow and Jacob's War to get the differences between the two games in a nutshell. To top it off, while Deus Ex the first grabs the obscure but perfect for the task at hand "The Man Who Was Thursday" for its focal literary reference, Invisible War just puts a bit of Frankenstein in the last level, the go-to for every hack who needs to show they've read something about technology gone bad.)

chiasaur11 fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Dec 14, 2014

Tiggum
Oct 24, 2007

Your life and your quest end here.


chiasaur11 posted:

No, they just need a Tarsus grad. And there's four of 'em around, minimum.
It's been a while since I played it, but isn't Alex unique even amongst the Tarsus grads?

chiasaur11 posted:

everyone in invisible war except the Omar is a stupid rear end in a top hat.
Yeah, they are. Is that a problem?

chiasaur11 posted:

You were the one talking about the rich depth of Invisible War's reactivity.
That wasn't me. I think it does a relatively decent job of not feeling like it's railroading you (even though it obviously has to be), but that's as far as I'd go.

chiasaur11 posted:

So, it intentionally sent the message "Nothing in the world is worth a second's attention, just murder people at random. Can't do a worse job than the assholes on the intercom."
Yes! It turns out that the Omar are the good guys and everyone else is terrible.

chiasaur11 posted:

And yet IW was even worse. And unlike Deus Ex, where the comparatively decent-ish voice work went to the leads and the shittiest stuff mostly went to late game incidental characters, IW has the worst performances from Alex D. (JC also got much more memorable dialog. Try to find a good Alex D. line. Just try.)
I can't remember anything either of them said, honestly. And I wasn't trying to say that Invisible War had good voice acting or dialogue, just that as a comparison to Deus Ex it's not really a point in either game's favour.

chiasaur11 posted:

(And I haven't even got to the datacubes.
I never read that poo poo, so, no comment.

Doom Goon
Sep 18, 2008


Beast Pussy posted:

Maybe that was my problem? I'll definitely give it another go.
Just a note that the "restart and getting copies of inventory" bug is one that most mods fix. I recommend if you're having trouble to use Shifter or Biomod (in order of how much different you want it from the original), and if you're still having problems and want combat to invest almost completely in it (if I remember right the correct answer is almost always the pistol. Oddly enough DX:HR is like that too). Also almost everyone should be using Kentie's Deus Ex launcher even if you're running no mods and there's even a way to force different DirectX lighting systems though I think they often end up making the game darker (the exceptions to running the exe: Direct2Drive doesn't work, there's a subtitle bug with widescreen, and I guess he dropped XP support apparently).

The "lower back" thing for non-lethal is because of the hitbox and the formulas DX uses for damage; apparently body shots always double. There's a few other mechanisms which matter which is why you might want to carry stun batons and/or pepper spray, depending on your play-type and skills and what enemy type you're up against (all non-robotic enemies that are made to be defeated [aka those not including some unique NPCs during a few scenes, though one of them can be "glitch defeated"] can be knocked unconscious but not always how you imagine).

chiasaur11 posted:

I played it less than two years ago, on a quad core with 8 gigs of ram. If those were reduced loading times, then I'm shocked anyone ever beat that piece of poo poo. Think they would have died of old age first.
I wonder if this is because of the constrained core thing? I tried it out to get a screenshot for the General Chat thread and I swear I remember it loading faster on an older computer. It's not just the level loading, but quick-loading, too.

This isn't related to anything, but I just found out that JC Denton had a "cameo" in some bad Eidos mobile phone poker game. :lol:

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Tiggum posted:

Yeah, they are. Is that a problem?

Yes? I'm not sure what answer you were expecting here but "everyone is incredibly stupid" isn't really a selling point. Deus Ex wasn't a masterpiece of writing but it did a much better job of selling its sides and characters.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

I mostly remember Deus Ex: Invisible War for the AI pop star that continually drilled you for information to add to her banks. That was kinda neat and seemed genuinely prescient. Overall, though, it was a not-terrible, forgettable game.

I played this game at 800x600 on a Voodoo 2 or maybe a second-gen onboard nVidia chip something and it creaked along so slowly. I can still hear the cracks in the audio from the menu UI sliding around like nails on a chalkboard.

The game wasn't great, and didn't seem to learn the right lessons from Deus Ex, but looking back, at least Deus Ex had a sequel. Lotsa great stuff formed in little studio pockets get snatched up, overdeveloped, and end up looking like poop. The Matrix had its Reloaded, Deus Ex had its IW. It happens.

Deus Ex had its issues, though, and I agree with the dudes here who were also disappointed that ultimately, your choices didn't matter a whole lot: you were just funneled to the next branch of the tree. But even then, you were OK with it because it really was a good game with a fun, open level design and cool novel tech, and dialogue trees that babbled on as long as you could stand them.

Deus Ex, I speel my dreenk to you.

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Rush_shirt
Apr 24, 2007

I played the demo when it came out, and the game at least 10 years after. What I enjoyed most was that I could play the game as I wanted, even if my choices didn't have any baring on the overall story. I was pretty stealthy and hacked a lot of computers. A lot of modern FPSes with skill trees don't let you branch out enough from the "kill dudes with guns and/or powers" route. Deus Ex was different, IMHO.

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