some odds and ends after completing the game [contains spoilage - handle with care] - by Daxim
Daxim on 15/10/2001 at 17:31
I actually completed the game already a month or so ago when I was on holiday, but only today I could bring myself to copying the notes from the laptop. Actually I also planned making a newbie diary (back then when the game frustrated me that bad on easy difficulty that my knuckles went pale of anger - you can search for that article if you like) but I guess I'm not the right person for that. And now in no special order, my thoughts and questions about DX:* Hey man! Where's my background story?! Isn't there supposed to be a background story in the manual?
* Low replay value for me - very story driven. I'll replay it in a couple of months when I will have forgotten most of the details - or immediately if one of you can confirm that a higher degree of difficulty changes the game in a significant way. Maybe it becomes more fun if I go on a mad allies killing spree, thus cutting myself off valuable extra supplies.
* Way of least resistance in Thief is stealth, in DX it is the way of greatest resistance - so I killed them all. First I sweared like a coachman with each kill because I was afraid of penalties and also feeling that the bad guys don't deserve such bloody and also often insidious deaths from a policeman. Some time into the game it dawned me that these aren't real people and that I can well do what I wish to do but I had to keep remembering that. <small>(Ich bin reif für die Klapsmühle. :p)</small>
* I played in low resolution (640*480) so that I still could read the tiny 5px bitmap font.
* Riddles and puzzles were ridiclously easy. More often than not answers were lying directly at the place where I would need them. Remember Final Unity? "No THANK YOU Cmdr Data, you don't need to blurt out the whole solution to the goddamn puzzle. Spoilsport." But then, DX != adventure game.
* Concept of drunkenness/intoxication is bloody genius and very well simulated. Look look, it's got even disorienting circular motion and "tunnel view" if you drink some hard 'holics in a row, just like the real thing! :D
* Meshes with eye-glasses - very cool idea. Haven't seen this anywhere before.
* Concept of showing damage by fading the object is a cool idea of abstraction.
* Selectable interface colour schemes! :thimb: The only decent one was Pastell, imo.
* Hacked cams screen slows down game so much that even the mouse pointer starts lagging. Even had to buy Geforce2MX based video card just for the game (had a Rage128 before that). BTW how does it come that the game works better with a TNT2 than my Elsa Gladiac MX?
* I've never seen such beautiful concrete walls or electric rods (I mean the player arm weapon object).
* In Paris, when climbing out of the sewers, I overhear a convo between mj12. Admittedly, my Denton had red hair and white skin, but would they also have said that he looks German if I gave him negroid appearance? BTW the player arm has white skin in any case.
* In Paris there's a balcony on top of O's house which seems to be inaccessible. How do I get to these supplies?
* I kept my superfluous zyme till Paris (there's far more to find than the plot needs), sold it together with the bakery stuff to the dealer, then butchered him to get it back. At this point I already lost any moral scruples and even killed the policemen just because they could make trouble at some point.
* The ocean thingie was very Shock-like. I liked that one most. I liked the roof hopping level 2nd best.
* Blue laser traps trigger even with F4 radar transparence enabled.
* I consider Greasels and poison dart scouts the most dangerous enemies (poison/drunk effect!), even though adult Karkians can gnaw legs off in one bite. I guess that wouldn't have been that much of a problem if I had invested some skill into medicine.
* Clone tanks - the gene profile
abcabc etc. is a reference to Bladerunner.
* In one of the last computers we find (at the sector3 medbot), we can read email from
golivaw. This is a reference to characters of Asimov's Foundation 10-parter - R. Giskard Reventlov and R. Daneel Olivaw.
* Endgame: I merged first, because it was the easiest thing to do. When I exploded the reactors I was really pissed off by the technician who draw his pistol on me. Stupid ass rather should have run for his life. Rewarded his behaviour by introducing his throat to the wonders of modern nanotech.
* Non-eutectic is spelt wrong. <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=non-eutactic" title="Praise Google.">Look how far this mistake has already spread</a> thanks to DX' popularity.
* Uniques (aka minibosses): Navarre - several shots to the head. Lebedev survived. Hermann - lured out of tomb. Then backstabbed with dragonsword. Simons - one hit with sword. Disappointing. The grenade guy in the level 2 of silo - headshot. Silly. Does he count as boss anyway?
* What are the terrors?
* What is the spinning electric thing during the start-up?
* What's the vindication for the game's title?
* I need effective weapons against spiders - empgrens and grens are too precious, empdrone is slow. Meleeing them with the sword is too dangerous. Would heavy weaponry do the job? (Someone in IRC mentioned stomping on them until they break. Hey, JC Denton is no Super Mario - sounds not like a good idea when 6 of these beasts are closing in.)
* Does the LAW count as grenade or heavy weapon? Does the PS2 count as grenade, melee or pistol weapon?
* Inventory was chronically full (overfilled even) after level 1.
* Look close at a diver's trousers! They shine! Very cool effect. :) Why wasn't this used more often?
* Who are the team heads on the Credits photo?
* I suppose the faces (mesh skins), while looking very realistic, are hand-drawn. That would be an explanation why so many faces resemble each other.
* Fights are unsatisfying. The continuous strafing of the enemies (even animals strafe) does not make an adrenaline rush like in Shock2.
* A very funny thing is to scramble a war robot. Hehe. :) I reloaded often just to see how long he'd last this time.
* Editing: since it's based on Unreal - I suppose it is easy to make additions. Is it? (oRGy mentioned that in UT each and everything can be modified.) Is the core editing restricted in any way? I'd like to have forward leaning, Dark style keybinds, multiple keybinds, savable keybind schemes and stackable LAW, body armour, tech-fs and diving masks.
* Are thrown blades useless? If they work under water (haven't tried yet), then that would justify their existance.
* What is the best order in modifying my weapons? Which weapon should receive ugrades first? Should I concentrate on 1 weapon or spread my modifiers between them all?
* All in all the game has very few flaws and but oh so many fine delectable things. It will always be revered among my top 10. But will DX part 2 suck in very much the same way like Highlander 2 sucked? (You see, the story is basically over.)
* I am confused by the patches. I got contradicting information from different websites. My CD volume says
deusex_v1003f_d4. I patched the game with a loose .dll for Direct3D performance, a single player patch and a multiplayer patch (in that order). Main menu now shows
Mon Jan 29 16:37:22 2001 v1.109fm_d1. Am I missing something? (I bought the German version.)[/list=a]I hope this spawns some good discussion.
D`JK on 15/10/2001 at 19:52
1) surely you learn it as you go along?
2) the replays for me were all about trying different skills and techniques.
11) Riot Prods in that are works of *art*
12) I believe they're talking about Agent Hermann.
13) Do you mean the balcony outside the room of the weapons dealer, the one with the various mods, knives, guns and stuff?
15) Very Shock-like, yes.
17) As the Karkians can kill you in two hits, and take 2 hits from even a Mastered Dragons Tooth, I think they're most dangerous. Possibly also the Grays, who can kill you in a few radiation blasts and are immune to fire and plasma, making killing them on a Heavy Weapons game bloody hard.
22) Navarre, headshots or a GEP rocket. Hermann - Dragons Tooth. Simons ditto. And I'd say not.
23) Terrorists?
24) Huh?
25) Deus Ex... from Deus Ex Machina, God from the machine, used classically to describe a charater in a play who arrives to save the play from an otherwise inescapable situation. Probably it refers to JC, who saves the world. It also helps that JC's partly a machine.
26) Try Sabot rounds from the shotgun or HE 20 from the assault rifle. Otherwise, get to high ground and get a lock on with the GEP gun.
27) Heavy Weapon, I think and Pistol, I think.
28) Yes, it is. It wouldn't be much of a system if you could carry everything you wanted now, eh?
32) In SS2, don't most creatures attack you with hands/other melee things? It wouldn't make much sense for a soldier with a gun get up close to you, would it?
33) Especially when they start attacking seagulls :D
35) Certainly not, they have enough power to be a one-hit kill iit hits the head.
36) It depends of course on what skill points you've put in. I'm doing pistols at the moment, so I'm completely upgrading my pistol. Usually, it's best to put them all in one. However, the accuracy mods can be wasted once you get to Master or even Advanced, so you may want to spread those around a bit.
37) Hell no. :)
ignatios on 15/10/2001 at 20:31
I'm close to the end of the game (2nd level ocean lab -- the Shock2 one). Here are my thoughts:
2) Try it with stealth next time. For a real challenge, try non-lethal (tranquilizer bolts and prod only). I did it this way while I was fighting NSF ... I think I only killed 2. Once it was MJ12 troops or UNATCO, I slaughtered them with my lethal pistol mastery.
3) See #2
10) I encountered this as well ... then I played with a single 12MB voodoo2 and it worked fine, aside from the occasional lock-up. Except in the ocean lab level 1. It locked up every 45 seconds. Frustrating to play through. Once I got inside it was OK.
24) It's just the game's logo.
35) Thrown blades are excellent one-hit kills if your enemy is unaware of your location. Very quiet.
36) Depends on your skill. If you choose pistols, upgrade your regular pistol -- NOT the stealth pistol. The stealth pistol sucks. Make sure you don't have to give your nice upgraded pistol away to people like Gunther or that Renton guy who runs the 'Ton.
now ... off to finish it for myself! i'll post on this topic once i do; i was going to start a thread myself.
Bogeyman on 15/10/2001 at 21:07
2. There are nearly endless variations to play through - many maps contain two or three routes to the objective(s).
3. People (including myself) have played the game with minimum kills (only Navarre and Page) as a sort of challenge. Stealth works very differently from the way it does in Thief. Especially when playing on realistic you'll find that stealth actually makes the game easier, because you get to avoid a lot of combat - and on that level a single shot from the weakest NPC can kill you.
Quote:
Ich bin reif für die Klapsmühle.
Aber doch wohl nicht wegen Deus Ex. <IMG SRC="devil.gif" border="0">
8. I prefer Starlight myself.
10. a) True 10 b) See 38.
12. I think so. How do we look, anyway?
13. Enter O's house, go up the stairs and use the door?
16. Yes, laser and radar are different things
17. On realistic, almost any human can kill you easily unless you've armour or protective augs. Adult karkians chew you up in a single bite.
22. Me, I hate traditional bosses.
23. You what?
24. A logo?
25. and 26. See D'J
27. LAW is a heavy weapon, PS20 is a pistol. You can highlight any weapon in the inventory and see which catehory it falls into.
28. That's why you have it. The game is about choices. See also 2.
34. If you can call working in UnrealEd easy, than I suppose it might be. It's a bit more complicated for Deus Ex, though, since you need goals, conversations etc pp.
35. They are :cool: . But in almost every situation other weapons are more useful.
36. That depends on which skills you upgrade. Weapon mods without skills aren't very useful. I personally tend to go with the pistol and crossbow first and then upgrade rifles - if I bother to carry any. ;)
37. I'd be very much surprised if Deus Ex 2 sucked in any way.
38. Yup, you missed something. I'd recommend going to 1.112fm. The German patch likes to play hide and seek, though. Try the eidos.de site.
this box on 15/10/2001 at 22:15
Agreed, Thiefy playing is very hard to do in DX, maybe that was the intention. I prefered to play it as a badass swordsman and master of the pistol. Now if they only added a kung-fu fighting system to DX2, i would
really be a god. <IMG SRC="devil.gif" border="0">
Actually, that might be a good idea for a single scenario if you were a guns-a-blazin' guy. You stumble upon an armory of troops who have been somehow weakened significantly (maybe they inhaled something without knowing it) and so when you storm in you can take out a dozen before they even realize it. :D
Myoldnamebroke on 17/10/2001 at 17:11
You can take out Hermann with his killswitch. I'm not sure about Anna. That's the best way to do it :D
ignatios on 17/10/2001 at 20:27
navarre has a killphrase too, although i didn't learn it. i blew her up even before lebedev got a chance to see her.
LAMs are beautiful things. :D
i had to fight gunther the hard way (which actually only consisted of a well-placed LAM, hehe) since i asked jaime to meet me in hong kong. you don't get gunther's killphrase unless jaime stays at UNATCO.
Daxim: is the voice acting all in German in your edition of the game? in the English voice acting, navarre and gunther have very stereotypical accents. at times it's terribly annoying, and at times it's wonderful.
Bogeyman on 17/10/2001 at 22:40
Quote:
Originally posted by ignatios:
<STRONG>
Daxim: is the voice acting all in German in your edition of the game? in the English voice acting, navarre and gunther have very stereotypical accents. at times it's terribly annoying, and at times it's wonderful.</STRONG>
I'm not Daxim, but no, the voice acting in the German version is in English. Subtitles and interface are (rather poorly in part) translated. You can turn a German version into an English one, though, with a couple of tricks.
Gunther's accent is a source of much innocent amusement to me. ;) Anna Navarre is supposed to be from Israel, btw, if my memory serves me.
Chimpy Chompy on 18/10/2001 at 00:51
Gunther sounds very much to me like Doc Ock in Spiderman on the playstation... wonder if it's the same guy voicing, or two guys doing the same stereotypical accent.
Bart on 19/10/2001 at 10:14
low replay value? you gotta be kidding me
