Something that irked me about DX (possible spoilers)

Agent Monkeysee on 23/8/2001 at 05:23

The Metaphysics of Being Bitch
      by Dr. John Romero

sphyraenidae on 23/8/2001 at 05:25

In my view, you always have to balance out between telling a compelling story, and giving the players freedom. Too much freedom would make the story hard to script and unpredictable. Too much storytelling and the game goes linear. Now, creating a 3D environment with as much freedom as the Baldur's Gate games is much more difficult. I would also imagine the scripting nightmares, because the Unreal engine wasn't originally designed for RPG style scripting.

In my opinion, Deus Ex had a nice balance, but leaning too much towards having too much storytelling (ie. linear). Today, multiplayer games are seen as a gold mine because so much could arise from them, with minimum input from the game producers. With a good Counterstrike map, players can play in the same environment over and over without getting bored. Go through Half-Life singleplayer just once, and the suspense would have gone the second time around.

<BLOCKQUOTE>Spoiler:<DIV STYLE="background-color:#000080">
The Battery Park Ambush fiasco could have been avoided by allowing players to escape and go directly to Hong Kong. Quite a number of people would miss out the MJ12 base completely. The mappers and script writers for this section would not be too entertained by the idea that their effort would go unnoticed.
</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>

kostoffj on 23/8/2001 at 14:25

Quote:

Originally posted by Agent Monkeysee:
The Metaphysics of Being Bitch
by Dr. John Romero

Ithillian on 1/9/2001 at 12:57

Regarding the "Battery Park fiasco" they coud have twisted the MJ12 base, though I'm not sure just how this idea would work since I haven't managed to save Paul either of the times I played through the game (may the eternal fires of architecture hell take that back window :mad: ) so I'm not sure how this could be implemented BUT here goes my idea. What if you made it to the copter but a)you left Paul in the 'Ton, or b)Paul takes a bullet/trq. dart during the escape (is he with you if you manage to get him out of Hell's Kitchen alive?). Assuming that Tong needs that thingummer from Paul to deactivate your killswitch, that would turn this into something like Cragscleft for those of you who have had the pleasure of playing Thief. Either you have to go back there to get what you need from his corpse, or break him out. I wonder if there are any loopholes in this idea of mine..... the only problem I can think of is Gunther, and the amount of ammo nescessary to get out of there alive is rather large. Just my two cents on the matter, I'll stop my rambling now =)).

Brad Schoonmaker on 10/9/2001 at 02:39

Quote:

Originally posted by sphyraenidae:
In my view, you always have to balance out between telling a compelling story, and giving the players freedom. Too much freedom would make the story hard to script and unpredictable. Too much storytelling and the game goes linear.

While this may be true, after finishing Blade Runner, I'd say the balance in DX could have been better. That game was very well done storywise and playwise. I actually felt I was the one to do these things. At the end of DX, I thought about how the game built up to an amazing climax of an ending. Any borg could have stepped in at the last second and done the deed, though. In Blade Runner, the endings were intergral to the way you play through the game. Way cool! <IMG SRC="thumb.gif" border="0">

This is not a slam of DX. It's one of my favorites, but the endings were less than the game quality deserved.

Brad S.

Tyler on 11/9/2001 at 00:21

Quote:

Originally posted by X:
Lets look at this from character development.

JC is a trained human being. It's the way he has been raised, grown, harvested. Therefore it is perfectally natural for him to follow Manderlys orders. Then when his world is turned upside down by the revelations of his brother, he intially tries to cling to some aspect of his previous life, the organisation, the orders. Hence he follows Paul. He has a need to follow the order of Tong because he owes him.

hes not a human! (or at least thats what i think!)

>>Tuler<<

Homoludens on 15/9/2001 at 03:49

To comment on the original discussion, I'll put it back into its original (and intended) context. J.C. begins his career as a humble bitch to UNATCO, following orders as best as he can to fulfill the ends of what he thinks is a just cause. But once his 'innocence' begins to be torn away at the Statue Of Liberty, he begins questioning the validity of his current 'daddy' (UNATCO). Thus, in his decided investigation to uncover what is actually happening, he inevitably becomes a bitch to each successive daddy. The more bitched he gets, the more he learns (sorry, trying to type this without bursting out laughing), the truths build up, until at last he can finally make his own decision, and the tables are turned as his former daddies become his bitches. *Phew*...I'm all bitched out.

[Edit: In summation, J.C., in order to uncover the truth, must become everyone's bitch for a while until he gains enough knowledge to achieve the status of 'Ultimate Bitch'.]

[ September 15, 2001: Message edited by: Homoludens ]

Fone Bone 2001 on 13/10/2001 at 13:33

I don't know, for some reason games that don't give you much freedon I don't mind. At all. So the thing where you are forced to quit UNATCO didn't bother me one bit.

Probably because I love playing adventure games from LucasArts. . . absolutely zero freedom there but I still like it. I don't know why. I've never really been much of an "infinite possibilities" RPG type of guy. . . . . .

So this kind of stuff in Deus Ex doesn't really bother me. In fact, I kind of enjoyed the forced failure where you are captured by Gunther Hermann.

And when I got to the ending, well, I wasn't sure what to do! In the kind of games I play you don't get that kind of freedom. The only game I've ever played that had multiple endings was Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, and even there it was only two.

Besides, I don't expect complete freedom from games! It would be impossible to literally have infinite freedom. I mean, isn't that what our actual lives are for?

Just my two cents.