Deus Ex Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Pre-Release Thread

[Ludo Lense]

It's was kinda painful to watch with all the comments by Spector on how unnecessary hard the first level is. It was amazing, dammit! I've started replaying it just a few days ago and there is just so much stuff to do on a single level, so many paths leading to the same goal. Today Spector would have probably said 'this is too much, come on, we must cut most of the content'. No wonder he likes the new Deus Ex.

Most curiously, creators are usually the last people you should ask about their artwork. I remember reading an interview about how Spielberg doesn't like Jaws anymore and that it is too slow paced and stuff, same thing with Ridley Scott and Alien (you can see this in how much he screw up Prometheus).

 

[Infinitron]

Documentary Part 3: http://www.ign.com/videos/2015/07/23/deus-ex-reinventing-the-franchise-dx15-part-3-ign-exclusive

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Ludo Lense]

Elias Toufexis is such a cool dude. There is a video somewhere of him playing Deus Ex:HR for an hour with some guys. He is a good sport and pretty laid-back.

 

[LESS T_T]

https://www.deusex.com/news/Gamescom-2015

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is flying over to Germany for Gamescom! Here’s a breakdown of our activities this week:

For those of you who will be going to Gamescom, come visit us at Square Enix’s booth. You’ll be able to see a presentation of our game, and receive a mini Adam figurine!

Online, join us on Friday August 7th at 12:00 EST on Twitch for a new episode of DXTV, in which we’ll share some new information on Mankind Divided – directly from our dev team. It will be followed by the the first public streaming of our panel “The Art and Story of Mankind Divided”, presented at San Diego Comic-Con a couple weeks ago.

We will also be doing an AMA on the official Deus Ex subreddit this Friday, with Patrick Fortier (Gameplay Director) and Mary DeMarle (Executive Narrative Director). Come ask your questions to our team!

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.deusex.com/news/Gamescom-2015

Unfortunately, our anonymous Gamescom representative wasn't able to secure a timeslot with DX: MD. Ah well, not like there'll be any shortage of information about it.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/08/05/deus-ex-mankind-divided-has-a-real-nice-tree-sculpture/

 

[Zombra]

I'm not happy with what I'm reading about lethality being completely, 100% optional for every playstyle. There should be gameplay implications. It should be easier/more convenient/whatever to kill people. Otherwise it becomes a meaningless choice like the endings of the previous game. "Place value on human life? Y/N" with no repercussions either way is toothless and lame.

 

[Infinitron]

DX: MD on Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/twitch/v/9889827

Starts at around 21:00

 

[Infinitron]

New character added here - Jim Miller: https://www.deusex.com/characters/dx-md

Adam Jensen's boss at Interpol. A more sympathetic take on Manderley?

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.deusex.com/news/Gamescom-2015

It's live: http://www.twitch.tv/deusex/v/10035820

 

[Infinitron]

Well, that wasn't very long. Looks like their minds are mostly in the right place, though. Better C&C, more mechanics and systems to play around with, cool art design.

 

[Fairfax]

I'm not happy with what I'm reading about lethality being completely, 100% optional for every playstyle. There should be gameplay implications. It should be easier/more convenient/whatever to kill people. Otherwise it becomes a meaningless choice like the endings of the previous game. "Place value on human life? Y/N" with no repercussions either way is toothless and lame.

Well, the alternative is lethality being mandatory, so this is good news. Whenever killing people is too easy/convenient/rewarding, we get shit like Dishonoured.

 

[Infinitron]

Actually, in the presentation I just watched, they say they want to incentivize players more heavily to mix up their playstyles. They didn't like how tempting, easy and rewarding it was to go full stealth in Human Revolution.

Well, the alternative is lethality being mandatory, so this is good news. Whenever killing people is too easy/convenient/rewarding, we get shit like Dishonoured.

That's hardly the only alternative.

Spoiler

Also, behead those who dislike Dishonored

 

[Angthoron]

Well, the alternative is lethality being mandatory, so this is good news. Whenever killing people is too easy/convenient/rewarding, we get shit like Dishonoured.

I guess a good way to avoid that would be to simply not assign a black/white morality on lethal/non-lethal approach. Let's say you play non-lethal, at later parts of the game, the enemies are more plentiful (because you didn't kill them!) and possibly more resistant to your normal tricks - watching each others' backs more carefully, going in pairs/threes, having armor that can't be pierced by stun darts, forcing you to go for melee takedowns... Stuff like that on the gameplay side.

As for the storyfag side, 1: do NOT do the same shit as Dishonored did (Haha so you killed people, now get the BAD ending kinda!!!) and 2: have killing/sparing people have bigger impact down the road. Witcher 3 does some of that in some of the (side)quests, for example. Spared that guy that seems fishy? Have it blow up in your face a bit later when you find out he's a criminal and now he's doing bad shit and you maybe better stop him.

 

[Fairfax]

I didn't mean Dishonoured is shit, but in regards to this approach, I believe it is. It favoured lethality way too much in its design and gave you a bad ending for following it. "Bad" endings shouldn't even be a thing, by the way.

 

[Athelas]

Well, the trade-off for lethality should be that you're expending resources. Though with regenerating health and typically being able to loot more from downed enemies than you expended this goes out of the window (though the latter issue could be solved by restricting enemy loot, like the original Deus Ex did for NPC's who sold you stuff).

If they really want to encourage people to mix up their playstyles, they should abandon the XP rewards.

 

[Infinitron]

I'm afraid that DX: MD's problem will remain that as long they're using one-button-press takedowns, stealth will ALWAYS be too tempting. To shoot somebody, you have to aim, possibly miss and definitely cause a racket if somebody is nearby. To knock them out, you just have to be kinda near them and press a button. For a PC player especially, who has near-perfect control over his character's movement and quick reloading of saves, that's always going to be fundamentally overpowered, no matter how cool the guns are.

The original Deus Ex's implementation of "stealth takedowns", such as they were, was extremely clunky - the whole "hit them with the prod right in the spot of the back at the exact right place or they'll just shake for a few seconds instead of falling" thing. But that clunkiness made it much less tempting to use.

If they insist on keeping in the takedowns (and I suspect they're now something of a signature element), they really should make them require closer range, closer to what you need to do to choke somebody out in Dishonored, at a minimum.

 

[Fairfax]

XP should be rewarded according to how difficult the kill/takedown was. Getting up close and personal, taking someone down and dragging bodies around without being detected should -at least in theory- give more XP than a tranquilizer sniper rifle. The problem is that stealth takedowns are usually way too easy, sometimes more convenient than shooting people.

 

[Infinitron]

Actually, XP shouldn't be rewarded for any of those things, just like in the original Deus Ex.

But it looks like the developers aren't on that wavelength at all. Instead it looks they want to give you some kind of bonus style points for creative/difficult kills or something like that. Which Human Revolution already did with headshots actually, but apparently that wasn't enough.

 

[Fairfax]

Actually, XP shouldn't be rewarded for any of those things, just like in the original Deus Ex.

But it looks like the developers aren't on that wavelength at all. Instead it looks they want to give you some kind of style points for creative kills or something like that.

Agreed, but I don't see them changing that either. No XP in combat is far too controversial for an RPG, and IMO wrong in most cases, but a lot of people would have a negative impression before release.

 

[Angthoron]

Introducing elements that make melee takedowns harder or eventually impossible should shake things up as well. Designers could, for example, force the players to use the environment against the NPCs - let's say hack a terminal to release sleeping gas on a sublevel filled with Alert NPCs, or some stuff that can't be taken down from melee at all, or to set up natural traps throughout the level. Place mines, for example. In fact, mines and traps would probably be a great way to have the player stop relying exclusively on melee takedowns as long as they're efficient and entertaining.

The problem of Dishonored, after all, isn't that the lethal approach is TOO FUN, it's that there are too few fun tools for non-lethal approach to carry the game. Today's "interactive entertainment" is about fun, rather than discouraging the player from taking an approach by making it tedious - so it just means that every alternative needs to be entertaining. Tripwires, stun mines, sleeping gas grenades, tear gas, aug disabling gadgets, smoke, hell, "simple" ability to turn off the lights in a sublevel - that's already a lot of stuff you can do as a non-lethal player. Consider stealing a few ideas from Watch_Dogs and voila, you got a great arsenal for either non-lethal or mixed style.

Of course, non-lethal then can become too easy, which means that it needs to be evened out later in the game, when enemies you didn't kill might come back and bite you in the ass in a form of reinforcement and additional immunities. Relied too much on mines? NPCs have minesweep equipment. Killed no-one? Well, instead of 2 NPCs per patrol you now have 4. Good luck! That also helps alleviate the regular endgame tedium, when you have unlocked all your tools and the challenges still remain on the early game level.

Add to this some reverse logic for lethal, give some good lethal tools, and there you go.

In fact, this would also very much welcome mixed gameplay since you might be a maniac at start, then throw the game off the rails by going full stealth while the universe doesn't expect that.

Ah, but that'd require too much work, unfortunately. Processing power's just not there yet.

 

[Athelas]

Why would sparing enemies in one area (on potentially a different continent, consideirng previous Deus Ex games) result in more enemies being present in another area?

Also, some of those consequences sound like they would incentivize sticking to one play style even more.

 

[Infinitron]

Think of how Fallout: New Vegas tried to throw a spanner into the works of a similar yet related problem - the OPness of long range sniping. Cazadores, with their jerky movement.

You just have to make that instant, one-keypress solution a little harder to use.

 

[Fairfax]

Cazadores...