The word is that it was the same development studio, but a different team there.This isn't the team that went on to make Thaif then? If not then I guess there is hope.
The director's cut greatly reduces the piss filter (though I actually liked it because I'm crazy or smth).I should probably give HR another try some day, but I could not stomach that game for long. The piss-colored filter over everything was just as bad as the generic level design. I feel as though its problem stemmed from the levels actually feeling like levels (i.e., constrained, like a maze with options), whereas the first Deus Ex definitely carried a 'sandbox' feel almost all the way through. I might not just have gotten far enough into HR to see that kind of gameplay, I dunno, but I know game designers like to put their best shit on display in the first half (impress those reviewers, baby!) and I found myself very bored.
The hacking got old, and eventually the emails were too many, but I liked it for some time.Towards the end I just stopped checking all those computer terminals in the endless string of office buildings.
Grunker nailed this on his Desu Ex mini-review:
Modern stealth games and Deus Ex-likes make one core mistake in their design. This mistake is the most apparent in Arkane Studio's Dishonored, but it can, in one way or another, be found in almost every stealth game since 2004. They ask you to focus on either stealth or combat.
What made Deus Ex so mind-blowingly awesome, such a hallmark of gaming, is that it asks you to decide, for each single obstacle you face, which approach you want to use. You're not asked to stealth through the whole game even when combat seems a better approach, or to shoot and kill everyone even when creeping through the shadows would be smarter. It doesn't reward you for sticking to a single course of action during the entire game. It lets you decide.
The fun of being a thief, a secret agent or a similar type of character, is using different methods and skills for different obstacles. Having you play through the game three times while using exclusively a single tactic on each playthrough entirely defeats the purpose of having multiple approaches available. Deus Ex understood what each of its spiritual successors has failed to grasp, and for that, I salute it.
I'm replaying HR right now, it really goes out of its way to make you go full stealth. Not only the level design, but stuff like "Ghost" and "No alert" bonus points. That plain out says "either go full stealth, or you are wrong and won't get bonus points".
dev 1 said:OK, in our latest round of playtesters we found that 95% of them went in the front door with guns blazing and shot everything. How can we make sure they know that they don't have to do that?
dev 2 said:Well, why don't we add some special bonus for stealth?
Then the two devs go to bed together and DXHR is born 9 months laterdev 1 said:Great, now 50% of players are doing stealth and 50% are shooting shit up. That's exactly the % we wanted! We've created the perfect DX level!
There is some evidence the game was rushed towards the end and they didn't have time to adjust things at the end.The "you get less XP for a fatal cutscene punch than non-fatal, even though it is noisier and useless" thing really shows they didn't even do a pass after the rough draft. They needed a Sawyer-like design criticism nerd to handle that kind of middle layer stuff and no one did it so it shipped. So they ended up with perverse RPG design you need to ignore - not that big a deal honestly (I've certainly enjoyed games that did that kind of stuff immensely worse) but it sours a playthrough a bit.
They tried to push the cinematic takedowns being a good decision so hard when they were developing the game.The "you get less XP for a fatal cutscene punch than non-fatal, even though it is noisier and useless" thing really shows they didn't even do a pass after the rough draft. They needed a Sawyer-like design criticism nerd to handle that kind of middle layer stuff and no one did it so it shipped. So they ended up with perverse RPG design you need to ignore - not that big a deal honestly (I've certainly enjoyed games that did that kind of stuff immensely worse) but it sours a playthrough a bit.
If only the DX:HR development team actually played Deus Ex and adopted the designs it used it would have possibly been an enjoyable game.
I could not get into it.
From what I heard maybe that wasnt their fault. I think during development they had to outsource these parts to another company. I suppose they did something with that in Directors Cut.also i love how they talk about what made earlier game great and then they decided to put those shitty boss fights...