Pet Peeve: Boss fights that force you to change the way you play - by Poetic thief
june gloom on 6/2/2013 at 22:54
That DXHR managed to be even half of what Deus Ex 1 was all those years ago is a fucking miracle. And I think it hews a lot closer than that.
gunsmoke on 7/2/2013 at 00:42
Totally agree. I actually think it surpassed the original in a lot of ways.
heywood on 7/2/2013 at 08:15
I don't think the inclusion of boss fights screws up the premise of the franchise. DX1 included them, and realistically how are you going to make a game about elite augmented super agents without coming up against a few?
The problem was the implementation. Deus Ex set a benchmark for how to do bosses in this game genre and even Invisible War did a good job with bosses. Human Revolution should have done better. It's a mystery to me how Eidos Montreal could get so many things right about making a Deus Ex game but screw up the boss battles so obviously and massively.
Just compare the two; start with Human Revolution. The boss battles were staged in locked, arena-like rooms with weapons caches distributed around the perimeter. There were cut scenes at the beginning and end of each fight. There were no non-lethal or non-combat options, and there was only one opportunity to deal with each boss. And the battles just sprung out of nowhere; you're making your way through a level, open a random door, and bang! a cutscene rolls and you're in thunderdome (okay, there was a very minor hint dropped before the 3rd battle but it's easily overlooked given what's happening then). There's no foreshadowing or lead-up before any of the bosses, nothing to build anticipation. You never get to meet any of the bosses before you battle them, the first two bosses play absolutely no part in the story and the third just a minor part, and the storyline isn't affected by their deaths. All of that adds up to a massively immersion breaking experience. It's like you're yanked out of this great game you're playing with no warning and forced to complete a mini-game before you can resume.
In contrast, Deus Ex gave you have choices about when and how and whether to kill them, sometimes with story consequences and subsequent branching dialogue depending on your actions. The encounters don't feel staged, but there is some build up and anticipation (mainly with Gunther and Simons, knowing you're being hunted and they're getting close). They occur in regular levels, there are no arenas and no convenient weapon caches. You get to know the characters before hand so the fights mean something and can make you feel satisfied (or sad depending on your POV). They are tough, but not so tough that their abilities break the game fiction. And if you're smart, you've learned their augs and/or seen them fight before so you don't have to quickload a bunch of times to come up with a strategy. The first opportunity with Anna even presents a moral conflict.
Jason Moyer on 7/2/2013 at 15:26
Quote Posted by mgeorge
Same kind of thing with Alpha Protocol
Unless you made a build with no combat skills at all, in which case I'm not sure how you progressed through any of the missions far enough to reach a boss, then no it wasn't anything like Alpha Protocol. The boss fights in AP are just dispatching bigger versions of shit you've been dispatching all game.
In DXHR and VTMB you can complete the entire game playing non-lethally. Then you're forced into a non-skippable boss fight. That's just terrible design, although in the case of VTMB that's pretty much de rigeur for the entire RPG genre.
mgeorge on 7/2/2013 at 19:55
Almost all games have boss fights which I guess are a necessary evil in an action game, but that doesn't mean I have to like them.
However in DE:HR I didn't care about any of the NPC's, even Jensen. You spend a lot of the game trying to find out what happened to his girlfriend, (that you meet for about 10 min. in the entire game). Why would I care about this bimbo? Most of the other characters you meet are cliched caricatures that fall into the good or evil category. I liked Sarif, but other than that I found most of the NPC’s blasé.
And Heywood nailed the flaw in the boss fights IMO. Even the devs admitted that. No is doesn’t have to be a “steathy” kill, but given the build you've picked , (which in this particular game practically shoves stealth down your throat BTW), seems like they could have come up with some way to creatively avoid the typical beat em up an kill em in an enclosed room mentality.
As to Alpha Protocol and Bloodlines, I brought these games up because they are structured the same way as HR, which is not a good thing. Choose the wrong build and you’re going to have a lot of trouble with the boss fights. I certainly did my first time playing both. The difference however to me is that both AP and Bloodlines create NPC's that are actually interesting and have personality, where HR’s are more stereotypical. And for me that’s the reason I can replay both those games multiple times.
Maybe I should replay HR. I admit that I was disappointed when I first started playing it and that probably skewed the rest of the game for me.
june gloom on 7/2/2013 at 20:29
Quote Posted by mgeorge
Most of the other characters you meet are cliched caricatures that fall into the good or evil category.
And Deus Ex 1 didn't do this?
henke on 7/2/2013 at 21:06
Quote Posted by gunsmoke
I honestly don't see the point in what some of you are asking for: a 'stealth fight'? The only game that pulled that one off was Deadly Shadows
Actually the Missing Link DLC for DXHR pulled it off rather well too.
[video=youtube;P-S8eGG3qTI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-S8eGG3qTI[/video]
Muzman on 7/2/2013 at 22:45
It really was notable how corny those DXHR boss fights were. It's probably testament to the game being pretty good that they stuck out so far. But man, that first guy even. When you first meet him he's this enormous scary bastard. Even after you've been modded you wonder how the heck you can face him down. But then it's: oh it's ok, he's a moron who's going to follow a pattern and spray around in a circle. Going from a more emergent game with options to a little bit of game theatre is bad enough. They couldn't find a way to keep up the tension and give them some personality either.
mgeorge on 8/2/2013 at 02:25
Quote Posted by dethtoll
And Deus Ex 1 didn't do this?
Yes of course it did, I admit that. But that game is almost 15 years old now so I think the cheesiness can be forgiven.
june gloom on 8/2/2013 at 02:32
My point was that double standards are stupid -- why bash DXHR for something that was all over DX1 which gets a pass? And to be honest, I actually disagree with you that DXHR's characters are cheesy at all, or at least as cheesy as DX1. Maybe a little underwritten (though I like that they do a lot to tell you about the characters through subtle visual cues, like their workspaces or homes) but cheesy? Hardly. I've put DX1 on a pedestal for 10 years, it was my favourite fucking game in the whole world, it shaped me and had a huge effect on my worldview and my sense of aesthetics for a long time, but after a long-overdue replay (immediately after DXHR) I was just struck by how flat the characters were. Most of them were little more than walking mouthpieces for a freshman sociology paper.
