Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Deus Ex Lay D Denton - female JC Denton mod for Deus Ex

502

Learned
Joined
Mar 28, 2020
Messages
277
Location
Ankara
This is a not the worst idea in the world for a mini mod, and the VA isn't any worse than what you hear from amateur VA's in other mods.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,660
So I noticed this got retweeted on the Codex's twitter account. Was that your doing, Roguey?
Yep. Sounds pretty good. Not perfect, but I wouldn't expect that from amateurs and an audiobook narrator. Jay Anthony Franke was a minor actor, but an actor nonetheless; Paul and JC don't sound like the same person to me at all.
 

Gargaune

Magister
Joined
Mar 12, 2020
Messages
3,136


Mmm... nah, that ain't right. The original keeps a straight pitch all the way through, it sounds casual, almost ambivalent, the cherry on top that gives it that beautiful and distinctly memorable deadpan quality. This new take slightly dips, it's... it's just not the same.

crazyrobot.gif
crazyrobot.gif
crazyrobot.gif
crazyrobot.gif
crazyrobot.gif
 

vota DC

Augur
Joined
Aug 23, 2016
Messages
2,259
Impressive work. So I guess her name is Jessie Christ Denton? I wonder if they changed Manderleys "Jesus Christ denton!" line to reflect this.
It was Walton Simons. He should say Jessie Christine Denton.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
nce in a blue moon a new Deus Ex mod emerge
Not what I was expecting, but it's something I guess. HOWEVER, the trailer is missing the most important thing: How does fem-Denton sound when making THE famous one-liners? If she cannot deliver the tone, then that mod is pointless.
What a shame.

*smacks lips* What a shame.

Also, unlike some here, I have to say this doesn't offend me. The voice lines were so bad they were good territory already so it being "bad" is not really a point of criticism. Sure this probably isn't as funny as the original lines but I can't get mad at it either.
Who are the mysterious people who are "offended" here?
It's less dumb than most games that actually let you play as a female. JC's augments would help erase sexual dimorphism.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/vast-deu...iginal-games-vision-for-a-female-protagonist/

Vast Deus Ex mod restores the original game's vision for a female protagonist
The Lay D Denton project features full original voice acting and significant changes.

Game mods that let you change the protagonist's gender are a dime a dozen, but not like this. A new Deus Ex Mod called the "Lay D Denton Project" lets you play the classic immersive sim as a female UNATCO agent, something developer Ion Storm ended up cutting from the original game. It even goes so far as to re-record all of the main character's dialogue, change every single text or verbal pronoun reference, and in some cases even add or significantly modify characters to have it make sense that characters are speaking with a female.

"While a model swap and a vocal plugin could create a cheap facsimile, we felt this would be woefully insufficient," the mod team wrote in their announcement. "Immersion is a core feature of the Deus Ex experience, and a half-implemented female JC Denton would sabotage that. Either we do it right or we shouldn’t bother."

For starters, JC Denton is now voiced by actress Karen Rohan, who recorded all 1,700 of Denton's original dialogue with the customary cool, stoic demeanor. Even that infamous "what a shame" line is recreated with the exact same sympathetic lip smack.

"I must admit, it was intimidating! A big challenge for me was getting my head around the fact that JC is a very famous and influential character with a unique style," Rohan told PC Gamer. "The deadpan lines were straightforward; instead, I struggled with some of the lines that had a lot of emotional subtlety. We paid special attention to the community favorites. [The vocal director] would warn me when we were getting to a “meme” line, and then explain what I needed to do."

The mod team's most daunting task was changing all the dialogue and text in Deus Ex that referred to Denton as he/him. Let's remember we're talking about an immersive sim here, which are typically filled to the brim with conversations to listen to and notes to read. Solutions for dialogue included splicing a character making a "sh" sound and placing it in front of "he," and similar cuts to turn "Mister" into "Miss," and so on and so forth.

"In some cases, the references couldn’t be cut naturally and couldn’t be fixed," the team wrote. "One example is the UNATCO agents offering JC tear gas. 'Give ‘em the grenades' just wouldn’t edit well and was needed because otherwise it’s very unclear what is being talked about. In order to solve this, we added the JC line, 'What, gas grenades?' to allow her to identify the topic of the conversation."

Chris Rohan (husband to Karen) served as vocal director and voice actor for replacement male characters. Speaking to PC Gamer, Rohan says the idea for the mod had always been in the back of his mind ever since discovering that Ion Storm initially planned to let players choose JC Denton's gender. The couple are currently working together on the fourth audiobook of a drama series, but were beginning to feel burnt out, so they decided to tackle voicing Deus Ex's first mission with a female character as a way to break things up.

"I don’t think any of us were expecting to be as happy with it as we were," Chris told PC Gamer. "The enthusiasm was electric, and we started to realize that we simply had to keep going. That was two months ago."

The couple enlisted the support of programmer and map designer Kyle "Mr. Poke" Peach, programmer "WCCC," and used a female JC Denton model designed by "Bogie." Not having any professional studio at their disposal, the Rohans jerry rigged a bed frame, memory foam, and blankets in their basement.

The last major overhaul includes dealing with character interactions and level design that didn't make sense in the context of a female JC Denton, such as The Lucky Money club. The Hong Kong nightclub is full of escorts trying to seduce men and various Russians either ignoring you or asking for more women to dance with. The mod team solved some of this awkward context by altering and recasting NPCs, or outright creating new ones.

More controversial changes included removing lines from an NPC and giving it to a new NPC so the world still felt like it was built for a female JC Denton. The mod team added Russ, a new NPC replacing two flirtatious female characters, Mercedes and Tessa, who normally stand outside the club. The mod team acknowledges that a female character flirting with another female wouldn't be immersion breaking, but they didn't want the scene to feel like it was defaulting to the existing interactions.

After community feedback, the mod team says it's working to allow for both approaches if a player wants to roleplay a lesbian JC. "Mercedes and Tessa were replaced because Russ was added," says Chris Rohan. "It’s very difficult to have these characters coexist because we can’t add any dialogue for Mercedes and Tessa. They’d just be completely ignoring him while he’s right there. There are also other technical reasons that would make it even harder beyond the voicework [but] It was a tough decision to take things out like that. We did not do it lightly and in no way did it to upset LGBT players. At the end, the deciding factor was immersion."

"While we stand by our decision, some people expressed disappointment that we made this choice. In response, we’re adding it as a toggleable flag for 1.1. All the dialogue is recorded and will be able to be turned back on as the player desires. Modding is all about playing the way that you want to play it, and we’re going to facilitate that."

As WCCC, the team's programmer puts it, Deus Ex modding is undergoing a small renaissance in recent times. The Lay D Denton mod rocketed to the number two spot on ModDB.com only hours after releasing on Friday, so it seems the Deus Ex and modding communities are reacting well to the team's efforts.

"It was hard to quietly sit on this while we were working on it, but you see so many half-finished mods out there," Chris says. "They look cool but it’s depressing how many promising ideas slow to a crawl or stop altogether. We didn’t want to sell something we’d never finish. We wanted people to be excited, and people to be able to enjoy it as soon as they heard about it. So, we sat on it in quiet and it was a wise idea. It pushed us to finish, and this response was our reward."
 

Nano

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 6, 2016
Messages
4,648
Grab the Codex by the pussy Strap Yourselves In
"It was hard to quietly sit on this while we were working on it, but you see so many half-finished mods out there," Chris says. "They look cool but it’s depressing how many promising ideas slow to a crawl or stop altogether. We didn’t want to sell something we’d never finish. We wanted people to be excited, and people to be able to enjoy it as soon as they heard about it. So, we sat on it in quiet and it was a wise idea. It pushed us to finish, and this response was our reward."
This is a choice I can respect.
 

LarryTyphoid

Scholar
Joined
Sep 16, 2021
Messages
2,233
Gotta respect it for the effort put in. I'd complain about the VA, but who really could live up to the iconic original performance? Doesn't help that she sounds so sarcastic, though.
 
Unwanted

†††

Patron
Joined
Sep 21, 2015
Messages
3,544
If this mod wants to be realistic (the game was predicting the future anyway), female JC should still get in trouble for visiting the ladies room
issues.png
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth


https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-lay-d-denton-project/downloads/lay-d-denton-project-1-1

Lay D Denton version 1.1 is the first major update for LDDP. It features many fixes and underlying code changes to allow a Male JC/ Female JC side-by-side implementation.

Lay D Denton version 1.1

Install Instructions: [HERE]

1.1 features:
  • Roughly 30 JC retakes (mostly Paris). Lines we identified after several playthroughs as “not quite right” or “we can do better”. This includes important ones like “sticks and stones”, “I was never properly trained in it’s operation”, “How’d my face get all marked up with bioelectrics?”
  • Roughly 15 or so missed pronoun edits in both text and audio. (We owe this one to you guys!)
  • The official LDDP HUD color scheme. This was something we had but couldn’t add in without changing the DeusEx.u file. (We just used the built in Purple one originally)
  • FemJC Sodacan and cig noises. burp
  • Medbots will have the proper paperdoll depending on JC’s gender.
  • Male/Female Character creation screen. Changing JC’s appearance will also flip between genders.
  • Male JC. This may sound silly because it’s ultimately the vanilla experience. HOWEVER! All the new LDDP NPCs have dialogue for male JC now.
  • All cut content has its pronouns fixed. We kept cut content out of our mod, but now other mods that restore the content can do so freely.
  • Original Morpheus flag. If you prefer the original Morpheus over the recast, you can now re-enable him.
  • Male content for Female JC. While we stand by our decision as not making this the default setting, we know this is a huge deal for some people, so this is being offered as an option. This reverts the altered dialogue to the original flirtatious dialogue for Mercedes, Camille, Mamasan, and Canal Whore (we didn’t name her). Please note there are some caveats to this: There’s a chance for minor continuity issues with this option enabled.
  • Three additional LDDP NPCs. One is located in the Underworld Bar on mission 4 (NSF distress signal). The other two are at the Vandenburg gas station. We have a total of 24 new NPCs now!
  • Several AI Barks (out of conversation) lines for select added LDDP NPCs. Try setting the cat-caller on fire!
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom