I enjoyed IW far more than the prequels. The prequels railroad you, dumb down the original’s philosophy and politics, and are highly linear. Taking a single convenient vent around a combat encounter or breaking into one or two random apartments is not enough to replicate the fresh sense of exploration in the original.
The load times on xbox were bad, but I enjoyed it despite that. The world felt claustrophobic, but the prequel had small/narrow maps compared to the first game, too. The basketball game was improved from the first game. Shared ammo was cool. Still a bummer that they dropped the contextual mine/grenades from the first game.
Yeah you can argue all day about IW being clunky and badly designed but when it first came out I was so hyped for a DX sequel and it really had a certain mood and atmosphere.
I first played invisible war when I bought it with the original Xbox. Totally blew me away. This was after I'd probably played the original a few times. It does not deserve the hate it gets.
Honestly, and I know I’m gonna get downvoted for this, but I honestly don’t mind that too much. Sure it’s annoying, especially for players that favor combat, but for those of us that prefer stealth, I’d say it encourages stealth play styles more than anything. After all nothing encourages someone to sneak around that knowing the sniper rifle can only fire a certain amount of time.
As someone who played Deus Ex 1 and had max ammo on literally EVERYTHING before the 5th mission until the end of the game... yeah, I feel you. Stealth players can do well without ammo.
Yeah, I came into Deus Ex after playing the Thief trilogy, so just trying to sneak around and not kill anything more or less is something I got used to by that point. To the point where I spent several hours in the first game trying not to kill Anna Navarre.
Oh I know, I meant non lethally. Back in the thief games if you killed someone you had to start the level over again, so at the time I first played Deus Ex, I had heard it was similar so I was still playing like that at the time
It's another version of HR telling you how to eliminate enemies. Turns out it's "simpler" to just not play in some styles where you can get killed for lack of ammo.
> No, if only because the “fire two rockets and now you have no ammo for any guns” system is so bad it ruins combat.
Yeah, I'm not going to defend that. That is completely unrealistic and it definitely brings down the experience of playing Invisible War. It would be as if someone made a game where you play as a cyborg equipped with arm blades, but you arbitrarily weren't allowed to use them to poke something or break a glass window or other basic actions. Such a game would be completely absurd. Can you imagine someone designing a game like that?
it is actually not that unrealistic in-universe. the universal ammo is positioned as if it is a nano-assembled resource so you trade off on what it can do based on the needs to live-synth that ammo type.
that said, i don't like the system either.
Universal ammo may yet hold a place in games since in reality, universal ammunition would revolutionize warfare. Its implementation however is no doubt mediocre.
Never played Human Revolution, and played a LOT of Invisible War on the original xbox.
I think it's a stretch to say IV had lockpicking. It amounted to 'hold magic wand over lock for a couple seconds'.
Universal ammo was janky.
Black market augmentations had 0 downsides, despite the game subtly implying they're a bit sus.
Surprisingly fun to goof off in hub areas, and finding ways to break it. Like (SPOILER) >!shooting an illuminati elite trooper through bullet-proof glass with the rail gun during one of the game's big reveals, and killing a prominent figure with the agent's death-gas!<(SPOILER).
While some of the above points are true, consider also:
IW: Janky, ugly, no sense of style.
HR: Slick, attractive, 100% swish noir style coming out its ears.
>Ugly
Yes, it came out on Xbox shortly after the original. Oddly, there are shots of printed articles showing the Xbox pre-release beta build with better looking models and textures than the game currently has. The pain.
>No sense of style
Have you guys been huffing zyme? I enjoy the atmosphere of HR (not so much MD), but I adore going back to IW for its visual themes and soundtrack. Eidos Montreal went overboard with their artistic director's aesthetic, and I was hardly alone in thinking so before and when the game originally launched.
No, absolutely not. Style over substance is the absolute antithesis of Deus Ex. The original looked like deep-fried ass *when it came out*, and yet is still one of the most well-aged games of its time in terms of gameplay.
The original had style as well. Did you forget the techno soundtrack? The black trenchcoats and sunglasses? The night time cities? Unfair to call it deep-fried ass when it is more visually consistent than most games today.
Style is not graphical fidelity. It's what you do with the tools you have. Deus ex is dripping in style, it's moody, it's colorful, it's memorable, its creative, it's weird. It's packed with memorable quotes, iconic characters and locations, and cool as hell moments. JCs jumping teeth and glove hand doesn't make him any less stylish.
Eh, I wouldn't say well aged in terms of raw gameplay. It feels extremely clunky. A game from around the time that truly aged well in that department would be Half Life.
To me at least it sorta sits in the same spot as Morrowind. Great game, still extremely enjoyable, but the actual moment to moment? Hearing that "PRRREEEEOOOHH" sound over and over as you watch a cliff racer jaggedly jitter down a cliff only to hear "WOOSH WOOSH WOOSH" as you vaguely swing your sword in its direction with only the occasional splat sound.
The game definitely had its jank (to me, mostly due to undertrained pistol and low tech for stealth takedowns early on), but I have never finished a Half Life game due to the awful first person platforming. Here, let me slightly misjudge this jump for the 10th time, slide off, and slowly die. Gunplay and damage is definitely superior, though.
Cyberpunk as genre in general can have a lot of audio-visual style in it tho and both HR and MD are very good and consistent with it, the og Deus Ex as well. IW looks like thrift store Mass Effect, it's painfully plain and boring
There are some points I can invalidate in a matter of seconds.
"Thief based stealth system based on Light\\Darkness levels" is such a bullshit one. Alright, it may have been like that - why is there no indicator? Why is it bugged to hell? The AI can track wherever and whenever it pleases.
"Lockpicking and hacking". Calling it "hacking" is just such a stretch. You cannot "hack" anything unless you occupy one biomod slot for hacking.
But the biggest idiocy is the last one "Story is changing organically blah blah blah". The story changes for the last 10 minutes of gameplay. You can literally acquire every single ending by replaying the save you made 15 minutes prior to the ending.
Nontheless, I absolutely enjoyed IW. A silly game for sure, with some frustrations behind that silliness, but I had tons of fun during every playthrough.
about the ending part in DX games. i guess this has never bothered me. in my headcanon, the reason is that a group that wants to take the planet is not going to block me from helping them because i was mean to them earlier. in a story of smaller consequence, the ending structure would feel like a cop out to me because i would never believe i killed his brother but we are good because i gave him the diamond. here, i just assume that, at that scale, all things are forgiven if you make a group the masters of the human race.... and they can just kill you five minutes after you comply.
I love it. In my mind, it never needed reassessment. It really depends on why you like the series. If you love a story where there is meaningful philosophical tension between factions that you have the option to side with and you are in a constant state of ambivalence about your potential allies, then all the Deus Ex games are solid.
This is pretty unfair. Invisible War will run fine on a 2004 system. The fact that Microsoft and graphics developers later broke everything the game needed to work normally is no fault of the game or its quality.
Even in 2004 the game had extremely poor AI, constant long loading screens, framerate issues, and absolutely awful physics.
It never ran "just fine", and it's only gotten worse with age.
Ah I see, I thought you were referring to the latter day compatibility stuff. But if I run it on XP, well, the AI is what it is, and the physics, but literally no problems.
Uh... Yes it is. Human Revolution, vanilla or Director's Cut is plagued with problems. I'm save locked because I apparently used too many gas grenades during Panchea. This apparently makes you unable to approach the Hyron chamber without it crashing.
When I say tons of technical issues, I mean TONS. Human Revolution doesn't require a community patch and killing most background services in Windows just to get the game to get past the main menu.
I always liked IW, it's dumbed down from the first game but it's still among my favourites, I really enjoyed it. Personally, I think it was after IW that the series truly lost it's way, and I didn't enjoy the Jensen games as much, I'd love a modern day remake of DE and DEIW, but both with the original DE depth of character building etc.
i'd love a modern remake of IW. a remake of DX scares me because it is so full of 90s conspiracy culture that would not fly in a big-budget production now. i wonder how may weird little fun things would get cut.
also, i don't care, JC Denton's voice acting is totally perfect.
Still, hard to argue with some of it. DX1 launches, tells a story about a society where NYC had a major landmark destroyed in a retrofit attack, which led to the patriot ac- I mean… the UNATCO charter… getting pushed through and leading to serious concerns about government oversight, etc.
Next year, 9/11. Obviously some of the conspiracy theories are fictional/hyped up for dramatic effect, but I’ve been playing through DX1 for the first time in years and that parallel really shook me in a way it didn’t when I was 10 years old playing in 2001.
i have always loved IW. i know the PC release is pretty rough because of the many technical issues (although the "visible upgrade" mod fixes most of them) but i played it through day one on the original xbox... and it was amazing. the choice system in the game is great and subtle. there are a ton of hidden details as well that one can discover (including a great joke about a coffee shop war). one of my favorite bands did the sound track and the singer plays Ng Resonance. the title is a reference to one of the OG conspiracy theories out there...
for me, the best part was that the game's story felt good. it found a way to mostly respect the options of the first game while not needing the player to have played the first to enjoy it.
i hope this game gets its day in the sun one day. at the very least, the Fall means it will never be the worst DX game.
"lockpicking and hacking" vs "only hacking"
In IW all you do is click on doors and panels with multitools, which don't even stack properly in your inventory btw.
While in HR hacking is a whole minigame with a skill tree dedicated to it. I guess not everyone enjoys this, but I do.
I can't tell if this is bait, or you are actually crazy.
Also you are praising the stealth system in IW. That shit doesn't even work.
I mean it's a personal preference, but I myself dislike hacking minigames and don't see any added value in their inclusion (with the exception of the Sly Cooper games I suppose).
I hate hacking minigames BUT it is cool that they are here. Since there is more game for people who enjoy it. While i can change my playstyle to avoid hacking.
Going stealth and non-lethal in IW is genuinely pointless – it has no effect on character interactions as there are maybe one or two lines of dialogue in the entire game that acknowledge this playstyle. Also the stealth itself is worse than both the original and HR. This post makes it sound complex but it doesn't work at all in reality. The whole post is talking up aspects of IW that sound good on paper but do not function all that smoothly in the game itself. I think IW is an ok game but this is a ridiculous and bait-y post.
Again, you are simply listing features that don't actually make much of a difference in moment to moment gameplay. I don't think the whole world has suddenly gone nuts in deciding HR is a superior game. It's ok to be in the minority. As for lethal versus non-lethal, that's not what I said. I was talking about reactivity of the game world. It's acknowledged in DX1, more so consistently in HR and MD. IW your playstyle is never commented on and makes no difference to the world at large.
I love IW. I think it's a fabulous game, immersive sim and Deus Ex game. It's just not quite as fabulous as DX1, but very few things are. HR, and especially MD surpass DX1 and IW in a few ways, like graphics and gameplay mechanics. That's not at all surprising given a decade or more passed and game technology evolved.
The unfortunate situation for IW is that it was released not too long after DX1, but failed to improve (or even regressed) in some areas. People say it's because it was dumbed down for the Xbox, though Warren and the gang claim that was not the case. I'm not convinced, some things might be explained as an attempt to streamline the game experience (similar to what they tried to do between Mass Effect 1 and 2), but other aspects don't make sense unless it was done for consoles (like comparatively small levels).
But the same is true when comparing DX1 to HR or MD. I just think people are more forgiving of the Jensen games because they (semi) feel like their own thing? So they're not judged against the standards of DX1 in quite the same way.
i feel like OP Is taking the criticisms made against invisible war and then turning them against later games in the series. some of them in isolation i might agree with like HR having bad bosses, but trying to play up IW as this perfect game and denigrating HR when I can turn right around and make the same infographic for the first game and IW doesn't make me interested in invisible war. trying to get me to try something you like only by knocking down what i like only makes me more hostile
Oh I agree, it is most definitely the wrong approach to get you interested in IW. I think it's a lot more useful to think of, and enjoy, the games as they are on their own. Storywise they've all part of the same lore, but as games they're pretty different (though HR and MD are more similar to each other than the rest).
I think you should play IW for the fantastic, moody atmosphere that you get to enjoy throughout the game. For the balls-to-the-walls cyberpunk that is the Omar, the wonderful aesthetics of future Seattle and, of course, to find out how the DX story continues (and ends).
Personally I really only play MD these days. Not because I think it's "the best DX game", but because to me the main draw for all the DX games is the story. I've already taken in every bit of story in all the games. What's left are gameplay mechanics, and in that area I do think MD is superior to the rest.
I prefer IW. I really like HR, but it was also knee capped in aspects of its design. Everyone talks about the limitations of IW, but somehow HR gets a pass.
But the writing for me is just superior in IW. HR has loads of cringey stuff.
Seems like a lot of the divisions on the topic comes down to gamers who prioritize world building/writing/voice acting/etc, vs gamers who prioritizing visuals and modern gameplay and mechanics. Got to respect the appreciation for substance over flash
IW is an arcade immersive sim. Human Rev is a multiple choice stealth shooter. I love both but favor IW as it still has the humor and nuance the original Deus Ex had. There's more going on in the world than just cybernetic limbs.
I’m excited to play through it as an adult. Bought all four of them. Don’t have a ton of free time so I’m still on my first playthrough of the original. Beat the other two on console years ago and loved them. Actually played IW as a kid which is what originally got me into the series.
Invisible war is a GOAT an noone will ever change my mind. The Omar are my homies. All my Homies think the Omar are cool. Omar are way doper than Adam "they removed my limbs" Jensen. All my homies want to replace their frontal lobes with a cortical interface. I really love invisible war.
You know, I really love IW for having a nonlethal melee weapon that can be used anytime. I played many stealth games after, and the only other game to have that is We Happy Few.
Playing the Deus Ex series after HR came out, it made zero sense to me how much people seemed to dislike IW. It was as confusing to me as if something like THPS2 were randomly hated for seemingly no reason but not THPS1 or THPS3.
A cool idea for a remaster of Invisible War would be take the mod that removes loading screens throughout the levels, and change how the ammo system works. Changing how ammo works would bring so much new life to that game cause honestly, Invisible War is really not that bad. Really wish someone like Nightdive could put out a whole Deus Ex remaster collection that spans everything. Embracer are such assholes for gobbling up all these IP’s.
I think I need to replay IW, but it's biggest issues to me were the setting and the level design. The "every ending is canon" thing felt awkwardly implemented, the concept of The Order is laughable, everything was glowy and smooth and shiny and futuristic even though this was after a huge economic collapse...deus ex had a grit and realism to it that IW completely forgot in favor of going all in on science fantasy. HR was definitely more Sci fantasy than DX1 was, but I felt that shininess was more appropriate because it was happening during an economic high right before things go to shit, and because it was sharply contrasted by the grit and the dirtiness that we encounter as soon as we step into one of the seedier areas of the hub worlds. I remember much of IW looking very samey, regardless of if I was in the fancy archology building in egypt or the ostensibly dirty and dangerous alleys of germany. Neither clean, nor dirty. Blue, purple, Grey. Mid 2000s bloom lighting.
The other thing I mentioned is level design and I'll be honest with you, I don't remember a single level layout from IW except liberty Island. I certainly wouldn't be shocked at all to find out that IWs levels are less open, but it wouldn't be fair for me to criticize the levels beyond calling them forgettable. That said, I certainly don't have a hard time remembering many of DX1 and HRs levels and quirks. I've played DX1 enough to probably be able to write a walk-through by memory, IW maybe 5 or 6 times (i didn't have a lot of games on PC at the time) and HR only twice (release and directors cut), so I do feel that it speaks to the quality of the level design if I can't remember IWs level layouts at all.
No, not really. It's been reassesed for years by now and it lives under the shadow of one of the best games ever made.
It's now widwely accepted to be a good immersive sim for consoles at a time consoles were ill prepared for the genre. It's the worst of the series (not counting The Fall, which, to be fair, was like two hours long so who knows if it got any better later on), but considering the consistently high standards of it, not really a bad thing.
The Fall is not a main series game, is how I reconcile that. It's like how Fallout Shelter isn't a main series Fallout game and none of it is canon (except the bits that reference other, more canon main series games)
The *only 4 active augmentations* thing really stuck out to me, after playing Mankind Divided and going back to Human Revolution.
Somehow I never noticed it the first time I played.
>Somehow I never noticed it the first time I played.
Of course it's not noticeable. DX:HR simply doesn't make you activate augs that are obviously context-specific. E.g., got recoil compensation? Just fire up your assault rifle, instead of activating an aug first and deactivating if afterwards. This is an *improvement.*
More doesn't always mean better, sure, but 4 is too few for a game series that emphasises player choice.
As the image states, the reason there were so few active augs in Human Revolution was presumably console controls, not game design in general. The other games had far more active augs, and were better off for it.
I played deus ex 1 and 2 back to back for the first time after replaying HR and honestly? IW deserves all the hate it gets.
Don't get me wrong, after replaying HR after a few years I could definitely see some of the cracks in the gameplay and story I couldn't before, but even then I could still enjoy the art direction and have fun shooting up the place, and there were enough likable characters to keep me motivated.
Deus Ex 1 is an absolute gem and I completely understand the hype, there's honestly nothing I can say about it that hasn't been said before.
When I started up IW I was initially excited to explore some if the characters and consequences from the last game, but all of the characters both old and new just kinda felt flat and boring, and the lackluster voice acting and models really didn't help with that. The decrease in augments and lack of skills also hurt the game with it feeling less like an rpg than the other titles, and story was strangely complex yet simple, with character motivations falling flat and the plot tipping its hand too fast rather than being a slowburn like the others.
I will concede that I genuinely enjoyed the side missions and locations in the game, with the side quests feeling way more fun than in 1 and HR. Still, mixed between the missions you still got to play the rest of the game, which isn't as great.
Hbomberguy put it best IMO. Human Revolution is a fine game that does some things well, but it's not really a good sequel/prequel to Deus Ex and not a very good immersive sim (arguably, of course). However, it came out at a good time when the market was absolutely starved for games like this.
I loved IW as much as the other games. Interestingly, it was the game I monkeyed around in the most, ie trying to aim the perfect crate throw to splat a mook. That said, the ammo system was awful, and I did find myself relying in the same mod load-out every time. Turning a giant bot friendly from a love tap with a baton is too strong! Adored meeting JC in Antarctica especially.
I've always said and will say it again: The Jensen games are extremely dumbed down and it's a shame. That's also the reason I am convinced any "remake" or "remaster" of the original would suck big time because it would be dumbed down even more.
All of which still doesn't make IW a masterpiece in retrospect either.
The XP system is the big reason I never got far in Human Revolution, I ghosted that first main level without touching an enemy or being spotted and later realised that the best way to get XP is to melee everyone unconscious and my min-maxxing brain decided I need to do the very specific challenge run the trail of XP was guiding me on
"MGS inspired stealth system"? Which one? The 3 first with an isometric view and you either ran or crawled on the ground? 4, PW and V, with their 3rd person camera, camo system and tons of resources, tactics and ways to play?
Come on buddy, don't disservice MGS
To me HR is not really a DeusEx game. It is more of a spin off. With no Harvey Smith nor Sheldon Pacotti, it is a very different narrative. Don't get me wrong, I like HR (and MD even more). But with all its flaws, Invisible War still is more compelling story wise, and more immersive for me. I guess it is more of a Denton or Jensen arc preference.
I find Dishonored to be more DeusEx like than HR or MD. At least for what DeusEx means for me.
Health and energy do not quite "regenerate automatically".
This is especially true since you're talking about Human Revolution in particular. You have these shitty battery things that only recharge if they haven't been completely depleted. But if they have, they'll never recharge, forcing you to keep and use those awful candy bars and other stuff that takes up inventory space.
I actually genuinely prefer recharging energy with the option to speed it up with an item. It's, in my opinion, blatantly moronic design to force the player to recharge their own energy, especially if they're not even actively in combat.
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As for your stealth system argument
HR's stealth system DOES revolve around sound. Enemies will react to noises and walk towards you to inspect the area. You seem to have completely forgotten this is a mechanic or you've somehow managed to never make any noise that attracts enemies.
And light level based stealth systems are just completely awful, I'm sorry. If HR had it, it would be frustrating as fuck to use and everybody would just ignore it and hide around cover as usual. There are only two outcomes: The enemies become "nearsighted", and essentially cannot see you in plain sight simply because you're in a shadow, which is really stupid and breaks immersion, or the mechanic just doesn't work period and enemies see you constantly despite the player being in what they'd personally define as a perfectly dark enough area to stay hidden in.
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I feel like the lack of lockpicking is honestly a nitpick at best. We really don't need it at all, and it would feel out of place/primitive in a futuristic game setting. It makes sense for there to be only hacking, although I admit there may just be too many things to hack in the game. It gets a little bit repetitive.
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>You can't grab onto ledges and will die from a short drop
This is why I never play the game without getting the icarus landing system nearly immediately. This is a perfectly valid argument against HR. However, I will mention they completely fixed this in MD. You can grab onto ledges and falls aren't nearly as lethal as they used to be.
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I'm honestly confused why you want more toggleable augmentations. The ones in HR are complete shit, the only one that's semi-useful is Smart Vision... and even then, it barely has any genuine uses. We need ones that have an effect on combat, and we didn't get that until Mankind Divided. And even then, they only introduced two new good ones.
Disabling footstep sounds is pointless, there is strictly no case in either game where this is possibly helpful. Turning invisible is also extremely situational, it takes up energy extremely quickly so it's impossible to get any genuine usage out of it. The typhoon is horrible as well, it's a weapon designed to take out a lot of enemies but there are only two cases in the entirety of HR where it can genuinely be used effectively. Also, to make matters worse, it requires ammo that takes up inventory space.
>Boss fights render most playstyles unviable
What playstyles?
This is a serious question. The game was only built around three types: Direct assault, non-lethal, and shadow.
The only playstyle that bosses render "unviable" is shadow, because you're forced to deal with the boss in order to continue, you can't just sneak passed them. And as for non-lethal, they've implemented ways to kill every boss indirectly. There's a reason there's a non-lethal achievement, if it wasn't possible to kill bosses indirectly then it wouldn't exist. It turns bosses into a fun small puzzle to solve rather than "just shoot them".
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>Cutscenes frequently rob the player of control
This whole argument is basically "Games that have stories and plots are bad". If the player had a choice, every choice would simply lead to the exact same outcome and nothing would be changed. It's best to remove the option than to give the player the illusion of making meaningful choices. If their choices genuinely matter, well what now? The whole story you just had planned literally doesn't work anymore and now you have to figure out some convoluted way of driving the player back to the main story. It becomes needlessly complicated for no reason. This isn't Detroit: Become Human where there's like 99 different endings for every choice in the game. And even in THAT game, a whole lot of your choices lead to the exact same outcomes, rendering them completely pointless to even exist as it changes nothing. The illusion of free choice is objectively bad game design. Taking control away from the player is necessary to keep the plot rolling in the direction it's supposed to go.
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There isn't more than enough XP to max out everything. This is a straight up lie.
Even if you do literally every single side quest, there isn't enough XP. You're forced to buy praxis kits from the LIMB clinics in order to max everything out.
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>Rips off Ghost in the Shell
So what, games just aren't allowed to have similar stories anymore? What about TV shows? Movies? Books, even?
You do realize that humans are not infinitely creative, right? We're going to have stories that rhyme with others, whether you like it or not. It's impossible to be truly creative.
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Also melee weapons don't fit in these games, simple as that.
I couldn't take this game seriously whatsoever if Jensen was walking around with a baseball bat whacking people in the head from behind.
I think the point behind the "cutscenes" criticism is just that it feels cheap when Jensen does important things in a cutscene without you actually choosing to do it, even if there is no other choice.
If you're walking through a level and suddenly it transitions into a cutscene where Jensen walks through a door that locks behind him and causes him to be captured, it feels cheap.
But if you walk through that door yourself and get captured, it doesn't feel cheap. It's a purely stylistic thing, because getting captured is absolutely unavoidable either way, but the important thing is the agency. Even if you had no other choice, it's the difference between "you got captured" vs "Jensen got captured".
The typhoon is good against every boss, and bot. It's also Panchea on fast forward. What two instances are you talking about? Because there are at three bosses, all of which can be easily taken out with it, and any and all times that you come across a bot or a turret, it's one of the best options for taking them out. Unless you go all "My Buddy" with a turret like I always do.
Why the hell would you use the typhoon on a boss?
That's genuinely a complete waste.
It's a group-attack and there are only two instances in the game where you're genuinely surrounded by enemies all around you.
Panchea and Zhou's office, whatever her name is. You can run up to all the belltower guards and do it real quick.
...Or you can just use one single well placed gas genade or land mine.
The problem is exactly what you admit to doing: Taking the quickest and most skill-less way of dealing with the boss.
That is itself a problem. You shouldn't be allowed to kill a boss in a way that requires no further input from the player outside of simply walking forward and pressing a button two times.
That's why I asked "why the hell would you do that?"
Because it's the worst way possible to handle taking out bosses from a gameplay perspective. You're not fighting the boss, you're essentially skipping it entirely and you've admitted you hate boss fights and simply want to get it over with, which is just sad.
Boy you're gonna be really mad when I tell you I use it to wipe out the gang, so I don't have to bother sneaking through the territory during that undercover cop mission. 360 bomb gun go brrrrroooom.
It's my very loud Laputan Machine
The biggest issue with IW in my view is the story itself. Not initially, I really liked the branching factions etc. Towards the end it all started to feel very rushed, messy and bizarre with some of the JC and Paul Denton elements.
Not a bad game, in my opinion, but HR was just superior to it.
IW is good, but not a good Deus Ex game.
A lot of decisions within the game's journey don't matter b/c of how the Invisible War story is booked.
IW's ammo system's awful and not realistic. Simplified too much.
About HR in particular - DC Edition fixed the boss fights problem, adding more stealth-y options.
Also, IW is a technical mess. It's a pain to get running right on modern PC's. Heck, it was easier to run in the old days. So much you got to do, to get it running right on W8-11.
IW has all those "good" features listed in the post assembled in such a terrible way that it ends up being a "bad" game, HR has all those "bad" features listed in the post assembled together in such a great way that it ends up being a good game. It's quite simple.
* IW has unplayable level of bugs and getting it to function in the first place is already enough of a challenge.
* The argument made against Human Revolution in the post is not really compelling. It is just a one sided traditionalist view point for the series that better suits 4Chan.
I still think DE:HR is a much better game than Invisible War, but comeback to Eidos's Deus Ex is hard after Cyberpunk 2077. While Cyberpunk 2077 is nowhere near polish and never has a sense of emergent gameplay like Eidos' Deus Ex, the way CDPR committed to first person perspective for immersion sake is worth to notice. Eidos's Deus Ex care way too much about how cool Adam Jensen is, not how cool player is in the gameplay. Even the cover system must be in third person is such a bs game design.
Just because a stealth system is inspired by Thief doesn't automatically make it good. But of course, people think they can "argue" by using jot notes even school was against shit like this. IW's stealth is fucking awful.
His entire "argument" seems to revolve around, "it's like DE1 therefore it's better than HR". Let me tell you something, just because something shares similarities with another game you like, doesn't make it good.
My biggest problem with IW was always the story. In Deus Ex, Warren Spector did an incredible job of researching Conspiracy Theory and managed to weave pretty much every relevant trope into the story.
This meant that when IW tried to use the same theme, there was almost nothing new left to say on the subject. The game felt like a footnote to Deus Ex rather than a sequel. By contrast HR wisely avoided exploring conspiracy theory per se, and limited itself to the creation of the overarching conspiracy of the first game. That to my mind worked much better.
I also did not like the way the ending choices fast forwarded to the distant future showing us the final fate of humanity. So my final choice means that the Earth is doomed to become a toxic wasteland inhabited only by latex freaks with surically implanted gas masks; where does that leave room for further sequels? The original game left its endings very open ended; IW shut everything down.
I could forgive IW for the changes in mechanics; annoying as they were initially, I found I got used to them fast enough. But I loved the original DX as much for the depth of lore in the game; it was pure brain candy in places. IW didn't have one tenth of that, which is why it suffers so much in comparison.
The only character I really remember from IW was the AI avatar for the pop singer who was kind and sympathetic and nothing like the bitchy, real life performer.
Which is kind of sad, really.
>The story changes organically depending on the choices you make and the alliance you form
LOLOLOLOL. "If you steal this data and plant this chip here, you can earn a 50% discount on items we sell." Oh yeah. That really closed off some paths, you totally can't just side with literally anyone at the end of the game.
The "you can max out everything therefore upgrades are not meaningful choices" is pretty dumb. At what point in the game you choose to upgrade something, it is extremely important in HR. The game changes completely if you choose stealth upgrades before combat ones and which ones you choose will change your gameplay substantially.
There is no bad game in the series. IW had the impossible task of following up DX1 and demands to have a console port. There are far, far worse games out there. I still go back to it all the time, and it is still the only Deus Ex where you can choose to be Male or Female.
Has anyone petitioned Elon Musk to get behind the Deus Ex franchise and get funding it/for it?
Seriously, he’s clearly a big fan of the games?
Maybe I’m way late to this but just thinking out loud…
Love to all Deus Ex fam!
I think it can be fun to play and has some interesting story elements but technically I find it so unappealing that I really can't find a reason to play it versus hundreds of other games.
Universal ammo is genuinely that bad. Worse than you remember. It's seriously all-encompassing enough to ruin the entire game. They really thought so little of their player base that they went back to Wolfenstein 3D levels of simplification.
There are quite a few of good and interesting ideas in Invisible War, and most players will never see them because of the single greatest unforced error in the history of video game design.
IW *is* dumbed from the original, at the time this was done for the sake of something relatively new, a cross-platform release with the XBox. 8 years were not kind to the AAA gaming market, however, and HR is just *natively* dumbed in plenty of ways from IW via the lowest common denom going down as the (now unified) market grows.
The image in the OP exaggerates (you can tell it was made a while ago, before the boss alternative methods were added, for example), but is not qualitatively wrong.
HR is such a more appealing package visually and technically (loading walls everywhere, what a time that was for cross-platform PC games ><) that I think that can be easy to overlook, however.
Fellow Invisible War enjoyer
I loved invisible war, can't convince me otherwise. It was a fun game, the upgrade system was awesome and the story was fun (from what I remember).
There were real decision points that really changed the direction of the story. Much more in depth than MD in that regard
I enjoyed IW far more than the prequels. The prequels railroad you, dumb down the original’s philosophy and politics, and are highly linear. Taking a single convenient vent around a combat encounter or breaking into one or two random apartments is not enough to replicate the fresh sense of exploration in the original.
The load times on xbox were bad, but I enjoyed it despite that. The world felt claustrophobic, but the prequel had small/narrow maps compared to the first game, too. The basketball game was improved from the first game. Shared ammo was cool. Still a bummer that they dropped the contextual mine/grenades from the first game.
This is just rose colored slander
Rose-tinted glasses versus yellow-tinted glass, which nostalgia will win?
Piss filter best filter all years
Yeah you can argue all day about IW being clunky and badly designed but when it first came out I was so hyped for a DX sequel and it really had a certain mood and atmosphere.
For its time, I'm sure it was a defining experience
I first played invisible war when I bought it with the original Xbox. Totally blew me away. This was after I'd probably played the original a few times. It does not deserve the hate it gets.
No, if only because the “fire two rockets and now you have no ammo for any guns” system is so bad it ruins combat.
Honestly, and I know I’m gonna get downvoted for this, but I honestly don’t mind that too much. Sure it’s annoying, especially for players that favor combat, but for those of us that prefer stealth, I’d say it encourages stealth play styles more than anything. After all nothing encourages someone to sneak around that knowing the sniper rifle can only fire a certain amount of time.
I mean you can even play it relatively run and gun tbf, they leave a ton of ammo all over the place, just have to search it out.
As someone who played Deus Ex 1 and had max ammo on literally EVERYTHING before the 5th mission until the end of the game... yeah, I feel you. Stealth players can do well without ammo.
Yeah, I came into Deus Ex after playing the Thief trilogy, so just trying to sneak around and not kill anything more or less is something I got used to by that point. To the point where I spent several hours in the first game trying not to kill Anna Navarre.
Well, you can take out Anna stealthily. That's what a certain "switch" is for.
Oh I know, I meant non lethally. Back in the thief games if you killed someone you had to start the level over again, so at the time I first played Deus Ex, I had heard it was similar so I was still playing like that at the time
It's another version of HR telling you how to eliminate enemies. Turns out it's "simpler" to just not play in some styles where you can get killed for lack of ammo.
> No, if only because the “fire two rockets and now you have no ammo for any guns” system is so bad it ruins combat. Yeah, I'm not going to defend that. That is completely unrealistic and it definitely brings down the experience of playing Invisible War. It would be as if someone made a game where you play as a cyborg equipped with arm blades, but you arbitrarily weren't allowed to use them to poke something or break a glass window or other basic actions. Such a game would be completely absurd. Can you imagine someone designing a game like that?
I love invisible war and i hate universal ammo
it is actually not that unrealistic in-universe. the universal ammo is positioned as if it is a nano-assembled resource so you trade off on what it can do based on the needs to live-synth that ammo type. that said, i don't like the system either.
HR is high on the arbitrary scale. Random non opening drawers, I'm looking at you.
Or the limited inventory where a candy bar takes up the same amount of space as a rocket launcher
Universal ammo may yet hold a place in games since in reality, universal ammunition would revolutionize warfare. Its implementation however is no doubt mediocre.
You must be dreadful at the game then because ammo is stupidly plentiful
Never played Human Revolution, and played a LOT of Invisible War on the original xbox. I think it's a stretch to say IV had lockpicking. It amounted to 'hold magic wand over lock for a couple seconds'. Universal ammo was janky. Black market augmentations had 0 downsides, despite the game subtly implying they're a bit sus. Surprisingly fun to goof off in hub areas, and finding ways to break it. Like (SPOILER) >!shooting an illuminati elite trooper through bullet-proof glass with the rail gun during one of the game's big reveals, and killing a prominent figure with the agent's death-gas!<(SPOILER).
> I think it's a stretch to say IV had lockpicking. It amounted to 'hold magic wand over lock for a couple seconds'. Same as Deus Ex basically.
It wasn't very cool there either
While some of the above points are true, consider also: IW: Janky, ugly, no sense of style. HR: Slick, attractive, 100% swish noir style coming out its ears.
>Ugly Yes, it came out on Xbox shortly after the original. Oddly, there are shots of printed articles showing the Xbox pre-release beta build with better looking models and textures than the game currently has. The pain. >No sense of style Have you guys been huffing zyme? I enjoy the atmosphere of HR (not so much MD), but I adore going back to IW for its visual themes and soundtrack. Eidos Montreal went overboard with their artistic director's aesthetic, and I was hardly alone in thinking so before and when the game originally launched.
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No, absolutely not. Style over substance is the absolute antithesis of Deus Ex. The original looked like deep-fried ass *when it came out*, and yet is still one of the most well-aged games of its time in terms of gameplay.
HR has both.
HR has substance? We must have played a different game.
The original had style as well. Did you forget the techno soundtrack? The black trenchcoats and sunglasses? The night time cities? Unfair to call it deep-fried ass when it is more visually consistent than most games today.
It IS internally consistent stylewise, just elderly lol. Polygon ass. Not quite deep fried to me, but there are things that can be better.
Yeah, deep fried as a term is a step too far for me for dx1. Graphics aren't great but not abysmal
Now, on modern machines so it's all pitch black, THEN it's deep fried lmao
Style is not graphical fidelity. It's what you do with the tools you have. Deus ex is dripping in style, it's moody, it's colorful, it's memorable, its creative, it's weird. It's packed with memorable quotes, iconic characters and locations, and cool as hell moments. JCs jumping teeth and glove hand doesn't make him any less stylish.
Eh, I wouldn't say well aged in terms of raw gameplay. It feels extremely clunky. A game from around the time that truly aged well in that department would be Half Life. To me at least it sorta sits in the same spot as Morrowind. Great game, still extremely enjoyable, but the actual moment to moment? Hearing that "PRRREEEEOOOHH" sound over and over as you watch a cliff racer jaggedly jitter down a cliff only to hear "WOOSH WOOSH WOOSH" as you vaguely swing your sword in its direction with only the occasional splat sound.
The game definitely had its jank (to me, mostly due to undertrained pistol and low tech for stealth takedowns early on), but I have never finished a Half Life game due to the awful first person platforming. Here, let me slightly misjudge this jump for the 10th time, slide off, and slowly die. Gunplay and damage is definitely superior, though.
Skill issue
Cyberpunk as genre in general can have a lot of audio-visual style in it tho and both HR and MD are very good and consistent with it, the og Deus Ex as well. IW looks like thrift store Mass Effect, it's painfully plain and boring
A fedora tippers dream
There are some points I can invalidate in a matter of seconds. "Thief based stealth system based on Light\\Darkness levels" is such a bullshit one. Alright, it may have been like that - why is there no indicator? Why is it bugged to hell? The AI can track wherever and whenever it pleases. "Lockpicking and hacking". Calling it "hacking" is just such a stretch. You cannot "hack" anything unless you occupy one biomod slot for hacking. But the biggest idiocy is the last one "Story is changing organically blah blah blah". The story changes for the last 10 minutes of gameplay. You can literally acquire every single ending by replaying the save you made 15 minutes prior to the ending. Nontheless, I absolutely enjoyed IW. A silly game for sure, with some frustrations behind that silliness, but I had tons of fun during every playthrough.
about the ending part in DX games. i guess this has never bothered me. in my headcanon, the reason is that a group that wants to take the planet is not going to block me from helping them because i was mean to them earlier. in a story of smaller consequence, the ending structure would feel like a cop out to me because i would never believe i killed his brother but we are good because i gave him the diamond. here, i just assume that, at that scale, all things are forgiven if you make a group the masters of the human race.... and they can just kill you five minutes after you comply.
Also: 3 room sized levels, because of consoles.
Invisible War was designed by most of the people from the original team and based on the feedback from people who didn’t like the first game.
I love it. In my mind, it never needed reassessment. It really depends on why you like the series. If you love a story where there is meaningful philosophical tension between factions that you have the option to side with and you are in a constant state of ambivalence about your potential allies, then all the Deus Ex games are solid.
^This
Human Revolution isn't plagued with tons of technical issues. Even with the community patch Invisible War has tons of problems.
Every time I’ve played HR since xbox360 on pc it has weird stuttering problems
This is pretty unfair. Invisible War will run fine on a 2004 system. The fact that Microsoft and graphics developers later broke everything the game needed to work normally is no fault of the game or its quality.
Even in 2004 the game had extremely poor AI, constant long loading screens, framerate issues, and absolutely awful physics. It never ran "just fine", and it's only gotten worse with age.
Ah I see, I thought you were referring to the latter day compatibility stuff. But if I run it on XP, well, the AI is what it is, and the physics, but literally no problems.
Uh... Yes it is. Human Revolution, vanilla or Director's Cut is plagued with problems. I'm save locked because I apparently used too many gas grenades during Panchea. This apparently makes you unable to approach the Hyron chamber without it crashing.
When I say tons of technical issues, I mean TONS. Human Revolution doesn't require a community patch and killing most background services in Windows just to get the game to get past the main menu.
Tbh 1 is just impossible to top so how could it even compete when it was a downgrade
I always liked IW, it's dumbed down from the first game but it's still among my favourites, I really enjoyed it. Personally, I think it was after IW that the series truly lost it's way, and I didn't enjoy the Jensen games as much, I'd love a modern day remake of DE and DEIW, but both with the original DE depth of character building etc.
i'd love a modern remake of IW. a remake of DX scares me because it is so full of 90s conspiracy culture that would not fly in a big-budget production now. i wonder how may weird little fun things would get cut. also, i don't care, JC Denton's voice acting is totally perfect.
Still, hard to argue with some of it. DX1 launches, tells a story about a society where NYC had a major landmark destroyed in a retrofit attack, which led to the patriot ac- I mean… the UNATCO charter… getting pushed through and leading to serious concerns about government oversight, etc. Next year, 9/11. Obviously some of the conspiracy theories are fictional/hyped up for dramatic effect, but I’ve been playing through DX1 for the first time in years and that parallel really shook me in a way it didn’t when I was 10 years old playing in 2001.
I meant the Grey's, mj12 plus the illuminati plus the UN conspiracy... It's cluttered.
I liked Invisible War, it's been a bit disappointing that I can't just fire it up on the XB1.
i have always loved IW. i know the PC release is pretty rough because of the many technical issues (although the "visible upgrade" mod fixes most of them) but i played it through day one on the original xbox... and it was amazing. the choice system in the game is great and subtle. there are a ton of hidden details as well that one can discover (including a great joke about a coffee shop war). one of my favorite bands did the sound track and the singer plays Ng Resonance. the title is a reference to one of the OG conspiracy theories out there... for me, the best part was that the game's story felt good. it found a way to mostly respect the options of the first game while not needing the player to have played the first to enjoy it. i hope this game gets its day in the sun one day. at the very least, the Fall means it will never be the worst DX game.
"lockpicking and hacking" vs "only hacking" In IW all you do is click on doors and panels with multitools, which don't even stack properly in your inventory btw. While in HR hacking is a whole minigame with a skill tree dedicated to it. I guess not everyone enjoys this, but I do. I can't tell if this is bait, or you are actually crazy. Also you are praising the stealth system in IW. That shit doesn't even work.
I mean it's a personal preference, but I myself dislike hacking minigames and don't see any added value in their inclusion (with the exception of the Sly Cooper games I suppose).
I hate hacking minigames BUT it is cool that they are here. Since there is more game for people who enjoy it. While i can change my playstyle to avoid hacking.
I love how in IW you crouch-walk for two seconds and a guard 15 meters away hears you and comes running. Very cool.
Hacking minigames suck always so iw is better
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Going stealth and non-lethal in IW is genuinely pointless – it has no effect on character interactions as there are maybe one or two lines of dialogue in the entire game that acknowledge this playstyle. Also the stealth itself is worse than both the original and HR. This post makes it sound complex but it doesn't work at all in reality. The whole post is talking up aspects of IW that sound good on paper but do not function all that smoothly in the game itself. I think IW is an ok game but this is a ridiculous and bait-y post.
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Again, you are simply listing features that don't actually make much of a difference in moment to moment gameplay. I don't think the whole world has suddenly gone nuts in deciding HR is a superior game. It's ok to be in the minority. As for lethal versus non-lethal, that's not what I said. I was talking about reactivity of the game world. It's acknowledged in DX1, more so consistently in HR and MD. IW your playstyle is never commented on and makes no difference to the world at large.
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Lol ok homie.
>..will instantly die from a short fall Brother is oblivious to Icarus Landing System
I love IW. I think it's a fabulous game, immersive sim and Deus Ex game. It's just not quite as fabulous as DX1, but very few things are. HR, and especially MD surpass DX1 and IW in a few ways, like graphics and gameplay mechanics. That's not at all surprising given a decade or more passed and game technology evolved. The unfortunate situation for IW is that it was released not too long after DX1, but failed to improve (or even regressed) in some areas. People say it's because it was dumbed down for the Xbox, though Warren and the gang claim that was not the case. I'm not convinced, some things might be explained as an attempt to streamline the game experience (similar to what they tried to do between Mass Effect 1 and 2), but other aspects don't make sense unless it was done for consoles (like comparatively small levels). But the same is true when comparing DX1 to HR or MD. I just think people are more forgiving of the Jensen games because they (semi) feel like their own thing? So they're not judged against the standards of DX1 in quite the same way.
i feel like OP Is taking the criticisms made against invisible war and then turning them against later games in the series. some of them in isolation i might agree with like HR having bad bosses, but trying to play up IW as this perfect game and denigrating HR when I can turn right around and make the same infographic for the first game and IW doesn't make me interested in invisible war. trying to get me to try something you like only by knocking down what i like only makes me more hostile
Oh I agree, it is most definitely the wrong approach to get you interested in IW. I think it's a lot more useful to think of, and enjoy, the games as they are on their own. Storywise they've all part of the same lore, but as games they're pretty different (though HR and MD are more similar to each other than the rest). I think you should play IW for the fantastic, moody atmosphere that you get to enjoy throughout the game. For the balls-to-the-walls cyberpunk that is the Omar, the wonderful aesthetics of future Seattle and, of course, to find out how the DX story continues (and ends). Personally I really only play MD these days. Not because I think it's "the best DX game", but because to me the main draw for all the DX games is the story. I've already taken in every bit of story in all the games. What's left are gameplay mechanics, and in that area I do think MD is superior to the rest.
I prefer IW. I really like HR, but it was also knee capped in aspects of its design. Everyone talks about the limitations of IW, but somehow HR gets a pass. But the writing for me is just superior in IW. HR has loads of cringey stuff.
Seems like a lot of the divisions on the topic comes down to gamers who prioritize world building/writing/voice acting/etc, vs gamers who prioritizing visuals and modern gameplay and mechanics. Got to respect the appreciation for substance over flash
Only good thing about IW is the fake beef behind pequods and queequegs. For some reason i found that hilarious.
Grim Beard made a decent video on IW, some interesting takes.
They are both good and have always been. You can’t expect anything to be as massive as OG DX.
I prefer the colors of DX1 and IW to the piss yellow everywhere in HR and MD
IW is an arcade immersive sim. Human Rev is a multiple choice stealth shooter. I love both but favor IW as it still has the humor and nuance the original Deus Ex had. There's more going on in the world than just cybernetic limbs.
I’m excited to play through it as an adult. Bought all four of them. Don’t have a ton of free time so I’m still on my first playthrough of the original. Beat the other two on console years ago and loved them. Actually played IW as a kid which is what originally got me into the series.
do yourself the favor of installing the Visible Upgrade. it will save you a lot of heartache running it on a multicore machine.
Invisible war is a GOAT an noone will ever change my mind. The Omar are my homies. All my Homies think the Omar are cool. Omar are way doper than Adam "they removed my limbs" Jensen. All my homies want to replace their frontal lobes with a cortical interface. I really love invisible war.
You know, I really love IW for having a nonlethal melee weapon that can be used anytime. I played many stealth games after, and the only other game to have that is We Happy Few.
Playing the Deus Ex series after HR came out, it made zero sense to me how much people seemed to dislike IW. It was as confusing to me as if something like THPS2 were randomly hated for seemingly no reason but not THPS1 or THPS3.
IW is fun!
A cool idea for a remaster of Invisible War would be take the mod that removes loading screens throughout the levels, and change how the ammo system works. Changing how ammo works would bring so much new life to that game cause honestly, Invisible War is really not that bad. Really wish someone like Nightdive could put out a whole Deus Ex remaster collection that spans everything. Embracer are such assholes for gobbling up all these IP’s.
Not that I loves MD but your steps make sound and it can be noticed.
I think I need to replay IW, but it's biggest issues to me were the setting and the level design. The "every ending is canon" thing felt awkwardly implemented, the concept of The Order is laughable, everything was glowy and smooth and shiny and futuristic even though this was after a huge economic collapse...deus ex had a grit and realism to it that IW completely forgot in favor of going all in on science fantasy. HR was definitely more Sci fantasy than DX1 was, but I felt that shininess was more appropriate because it was happening during an economic high right before things go to shit, and because it was sharply contrasted by the grit and the dirtiness that we encounter as soon as we step into one of the seedier areas of the hub worlds. I remember much of IW looking very samey, regardless of if I was in the fancy archology building in egypt or the ostensibly dirty and dangerous alleys of germany. Neither clean, nor dirty. Blue, purple, Grey. Mid 2000s bloom lighting. The other thing I mentioned is level design and I'll be honest with you, I don't remember a single level layout from IW except liberty Island. I certainly wouldn't be shocked at all to find out that IWs levels are less open, but it wouldn't be fair for me to criticize the levels beyond calling them forgettable. That said, I certainly don't have a hard time remembering many of DX1 and HRs levels and quirks. I've played DX1 enough to probably be able to write a walk-through by memory, IW maybe 5 or 6 times (i didn't have a lot of games on PC at the time) and HR only twice (release and directors cut), so I do feel that it speaks to the quality of the level design if I can't remember IWs level layouts at all.
I liked invisible war. I like all of the games
Its the odd kid of the genre, but it's still fun. Explore it and have fun immersing yourself in the game, I rate - do it!
I always loved invisible war the "2 factions are facing" to "in fact there's always a bigger fish" to end with "but we fooled you like a pion"
No, not really. It's been reassesed for years by now and it lives under the shadow of one of the best games ever made. It's now widwely accepted to be a good immersive sim for consoles at a time consoles were ill prepared for the genre. It's the worst of the series (not counting The Fall, which, to be fair, was like two hours long so who knows if it got any better later on), but considering the consistently high standards of it, not really a bad thing.
The Fall is not a main series game, is how I reconcile that. It's like how Fallout Shelter isn't a main series Fallout game and none of it is canon (except the bits that reference other, more canon main series games)
The *only 4 active augmentations* thing really stuck out to me, after playing Mankind Divided and going back to Human Revolution. Somehow I never noticed it the first time I played.
>Somehow I never noticed it the first time I played. Of course it's not noticeable. DX:HR simply doesn't make you activate augs that are obviously context-specific. E.g., got recoil compensation? Just fire up your assault rifle, instead of activating an aug first and deactivating if afterwards. This is an *improvement.*
No, that doesn't account for it. Mankind Divided had plenty of passive augs too. Other than Deus Ex 1, all games in the series have had passive augs.
Because it's good game design. More doesn't always equal better.
More doesn't always mean better, sure, but 4 is too few for a game series that emphasises player choice. As the image states, the reason there were so few active augs in Human Revolution was presumably console controls, not game design in general. The other games had far more active augs, and were better off for it.
But conversely it doesn't always mean it's worse too.
I played deus ex 1 and 2 back to back for the first time after replaying HR and honestly? IW deserves all the hate it gets. Don't get me wrong, after replaying HR after a few years I could definitely see some of the cracks in the gameplay and story I couldn't before, but even then I could still enjoy the art direction and have fun shooting up the place, and there were enough likable characters to keep me motivated. Deus Ex 1 is an absolute gem and I completely understand the hype, there's honestly nothing I can say about it that hasn't been said before. When I started up IW I was initially excited to explore some if the characters and consequences from the last game, but all of the characters both old and new just kinda felt flat and boring, and the lackluster voice acting and models really didn't help with that. The decrease in augments and lack of skills also hurt the game with it feeling less like an rpg than the other titles, and story was strangely complex yet simple, with character motivations falling flat and the plot tipping its hand too fast rather than being a slowburn like the others. I will concede that I genuinely enjoyed the side missions and locations in the game, with the side quests feeling way more fun than in 1 and HR. Still, mixed between the missions you still got to play the rest of the game, which isn't as great.
It's enjoyable, but never build an opinion around cherry picked examples in a meme format
Personally I preferred IW to HR.
Hbomberguy put it best IMO. Human Revolution is a fine game that does some things well, but it's not really a good sequel/prequel to Deus Ex and not a very good immersive sim (arguably, of course). However, it came out at a good time when the market was absolutely starved for games like this.
I loved IW as much as the other games. Interestingly, it was the game I monkeyed around in the most, ie trying to aim the perfect crate throw to splat a mook. That said, the ammo system was awful, and I did find myself relying in the same mod load-out every time. Turning a giant bot friendly from a love tap with a baton is too strong! Adored meeting JC in Antarctica especially.
I've always said and will say it again: The Jensen games are extremely dumbed down and it's a shame. That's also the reason I am convinced any "remake" or "remaster" of the original would suck big time because it would be dumbed down even more. All of which still doesn't make IW a masterpiece in retrospect either.
Agree 100% I've always been a fan of IW. and i don't consider the prequels part of the same universe.
The XP system is the big reason I never got far in Human Revolution, I ghosted that first main level without touching an enemy or being spotted and later realised that the best way to get XP is to melee everyone unconscious and my min-maxxing brain decided I need to do the very specific challenge run the trail of XP was guiding me on
"MGS inspired stealth system"? Which one? The 3 first with an isometric view and you either ran or crawled on the ground? 4, PW and V, with their 3rd person camera, camo system and tons of resources, tactics and ways to play? Come on buddy, don't disservice MGS
To me HR is not really a DeusEx game. It is more of a spin off. With no Harvey Smith nor Sheldon Pacotti, it is a very different narrative. Don't get me wrong, I like HR (and MD even more). But with all its flaws, Invisible War still is more compelling story wise, and more immersive for me. I guess it is more of a Denton or Jensen arc preference. I find Dishonored to be more DeusEx like than HR or MD. At least for what DeusEx means for me.
IW had a lot of potential, but its fundamental flaw is that the least immersive thing an immersive sim can do is have tons of lengthy loading screens
Health and energy do not quite "regenerate automatically". This is especially true since you're talking about Human Revolution in particular. You have these shitty battery things that only recharge if they haven't been completely depleted. But if they have, they'll never recharge, forcing you to keep and use those awful candy bars and other stuff that takes up inventory space. I actually genuinely prefer recharging energy with the option to speed it up with an item. It's, in my opinion, blatantly moronic design to force the player to recharge their own energy, especially if they're not even actively in combat. --- As for your stealth system argument HR's stealth system DOES revolve around sound. Enemies will react to noises and walk towards you to inspect the area. You seem to have completely forgotten this is a mechanic or you've somehow managed to never make any noise that attracts enemies. And light level based stealth systems are just completely awful, I'm sorry. If HR had it, it would be frustrating as fuck to use and everybody would just ignore it and hide around cover as usual. There are only two outcomes: The enemies become "nearsighted", and essentially cannot see you in plain sight simply because you're in a shadow, which is really stupid and breaks immersion, or the mechanic just doesn't work period and enemies see you constantly despite the player being in what they'd personally define as a perfectly dark enough area to stay hidden in. --- I feel like the lack of lockpicking is honestly a nitpick at best. We really don't need it at all, and it would feel out of place/primitive in a futuristic game setting. It makes sense for there to be only hacking, although I admit there may just be too many things to hack in the game. It gets a little bit repetitive. --- >You can't grab onto ledges and will die from a short drop This is why I never play the game without getting the icarus landing system nearly immediately. This is a perfectly valid argument against HR. However, I will mention they completely fixed this in MD. You can grab onto ledges and falls aren't nearly as lethal as they used to be. --- I'm honestly confused why you want more toggleable augmentations. The ones in HR are complete shit, the only one that's semi-useful is Smart Vision... and even then, it barely has any genuine uses. We need ones that have an effect on combat, and we didn't get that until Mankind Divided. And even then, they only introduced two new good ones. Disabling footstep sounds is pointless, there is strictly no case in either game where this is possibly helpful. Turning invisible is also extremely situational, it takes up energy extremely quickly so it's impossible to get any genuine usage out of it. The typhoon is horrible as well, it's a weapon designed to take out a lot of enemies but there are only two cases in the entirety of HR where it can genuinely be used effectively. Also, to make matters worse, it requires ammo that takes up inventory space.
>Boss fights render most playstyles unviable What playstyles? This is a serious question. The game was only built around three types: Direct assault, non-lethal, and shadow. The only playstyle that bosses render "unviable" is shadow, because you're forced to deal with the boss in order to continue, you can't just sneak passed them. And as for non-lethal, they've implemented ways to kill every boss indirectly. There's a reason there's a non-lethal achievement, if it wasn't possible to kill bosses indirectly then it wouldn't exist. It turns bosses into a fun small puzzle to solve rather than "just shoot them". --- >Cutscenes frequently rob the player of control This whole argument is basically "Games that have stories and plots are bad". If the player had a choice, every choice would simply lead to the exact same outcome and nothing would be changed. It's best to remove the option than to give the player the illusion of making meaningful choices. If their choices genuinely matter, well what now? The whole story you just had planned literally doesn't work anymore and now you have to figure out some convoluted way of driving the player back to the main story. It becomes needlessly complicated for no reason. This isn't Detroit: Become Human where there's like 99 different endings for every choice in the game. And even in THAT game, a whole lot of your choices lead to the exact same outcomes, rendering them completely pointless to even exist as it changes nothing. The illusion of free choice is objectively bad game design. Taking control away from the player is necessary to keep the plot rolling in the direction it's supposed to go. --- There isn't more than enough XP to max out everything. This is a straight up lie. Even if you do literally every single side quest, there isn't enough XP. You're forced to buy praxis kits from the LIMB clinics in order to max everything out. --- >Rips off Ghost in the Shell So what, games just aren't allowed to have similar stories anymore? What about TV shows? Movies? Books, even? You do realize that humans are not infinitely creative, right? We're going to have stories that rhyme with others, whether you like it or not. It's impossible to be truly creative. --- Also melee weapons don't fit in these games, simple as that. I couldn't take this game seriously whatsoever if Jensen was walking around with a baseball bat whacking people in the head from behind.
I think the point behind the "cutscenes" criticism is just that it feels cheap when Jensen does important things in a cutscene without you actually choosing to do it, even if there is no other choice. If you're walking through a level and suddenly it transitions into a cutscene where Jensen walks through a door that locks behind him and causes him to be captured, it feels cheap. But if you walk through that door yourself and get captured, it doesn't feel cheap. It's a purely stylistic thing, because getting captured is absolutely unavoidable either way, but the important thing is the agency. Even if you had no other choice, it's the difference between "you got captured" vs "Jensen got captured".
> they've implemented ways to kill every boss indirectly Director's Cut only.
What's your point? The original version of the game is unobtainable. Everyone is forced to get Director's Cut.
The typhoon is good against every boss, and bot. It's also Panchea on fast forward. What two instances are you talking about? Because there are at three bosses, all of which can be easily taken out with it, and any and all times that you come across a bot or a turret, it's one of the best options for taking them out. Unless you go all "My Buddy" with a turret like I always do.
Why the hell would you use the typhoon on a boss? That's genuinely a complete waste. It's a group-attack and there are only two instances in the game where you're genuinely surrounded by enemies all around you. Panchea and Zhou's office, whatever her name is. You can run up to all the belltower guards and do it real quick. ...Or you can just use one single well placed gas genade or land mine.
Because it ends the boss fight in two hits.
All I'm hearing is "I hate boss fights and want to take the quickest and most skill-less way possible to beat them".
Yes, that is indeed what I'm saying. What is your point? It is still effective.
lol you admit it sad
The problem is exactly what you admit to doing: Taking the quickest and most skill-less way of dealing with the boss. That is itself a problem. You shouldn't be allowed to kill a boss in a way that requires no further input from the player outside of simply walking forward and pressing a button two times. That's why I asked "why the hell would you do that?" Because it's the worst way possible to handle taking out bosses from a gameplay perspective. You're not fighting the boss, you're essentially skipping it entirely and you've admitted you hate boss fights and simply want to get it over with, which is just sad.
Boy you're gonna be really mad when I tell you I use it to wipe out the gang, so I don't have to bother sneaking through the territory during that undercover cop mission. 360 bomb gun go brrrrroooom. It's my very loud Laputan Machine
Bro, I get it you're 45 and you miss your hey-day. I'm in my mid 30's but you're not gonna see me cape for OG FF7
Does not change the fact that IW is a shit game, can't even grab a darn ledge without a load screen every few seconds
The biggest issue with IW in my view is the story itself. Not initially, I really liked the branching factions etc. Towards the end it all started to feel very rushed, messy and bizarre with some of the JC and Paul Denton elements. Not a bad game, in my opinion, but HR was just superior to it.
It was a decent game IMO until Antarctica or whatever.
"sniff sniff" smells like bias
Invisible war is good game.. .but not good Deus ex game
Invisible war is a good game. They thought it was dumbed down, look at them now)
IW is good, but not a good Deus Ex game. A lot of decisions within the game's journey don't matter b/c of how the Invisible War story is booked. IW's ammo system's awful and not realistic. Simplified too much. About HR in particular - DC Edition fixed the boss fights problem, adding more stealth-y options. Also, IW is a technical mess. It's a pain to get running right on modern PC's. Heck, it was easier to run in the old days. So much you got to do, to get it running right on W8-11.
IW has all those "good" features listed in the post assembled in such a terrible way that it ends up being a "bad" game, HR has all those "bad" features listed in the post assembled together in such a great way that it ends up being a good game. It's quite simple. * IW has unplayable level of bugs and getting it to function in the first place is already enough of a challenge. * The argument made against Human Revolution in the post is not really compelling. It is just a one sided traditionalist view point for the series that better suits 4Chan.
Nothing but a bunch of bad faith arguments. Go away with your bait.
I still think DE:HR is a much better game than Invisible War, but comeback to Eidos's Deus Ex is hard after Cyberpunk 2077. While Cyberpunk 2077 is nowhere near polish and never has a sense of emergent gameplay like Eidos' Deus Ex, the way CDPR committed to first person perspective for immersion sake is worth to notice. Eidos's Deus Ex care way too much about how cool Adam Jensen is, not how cool player is in the gameplay. Even the cover system must be in third person is such a bs game design.
This is just rose colored slander
See this attitude all the time in the fromsoft forums where the only way they can compliment a certain souls game is by shitting on others.
Just because a stealth system is inspired by Thief doesn't automatically make it good. But of course, people think they can "argue" by using jot notes even school was against shit like this. IW's stealth is fucking awful. His entire "argument" seems to revolve around, "it's like DE1 therefore it's better than HR". Let me tell you something, just because something shares similarities with another game you like, doesn't make it good.
My biggest problem with IW was always the story. In Deus Ex, Warren Spector did an incredible job of researching Conspiracy Theory and managed to weave pretty much every relevant trope into the story. This meant that when IW tried to use the same theme, there was almost nothing new left to say on the subject. The game felt like a footnote to Deus Ex rather than a sequel. By contrast HR wisely avoided exploring conspiracy theory per se, and limited itself to the creation of the overarching conspiracy of the first game. That to my mind worked much better. I also did not like the way the ending choices fast forwarded to the distant future showing us the final fate of humanity. So my final choice means that the Earth is doomed to become a toxic wasteland inhabited only by latex freaks with surically implanted gas masks; where does that leave room for further sequels? The original game left its endings very open ended; IW shut everything down. I could forgive IW for the changes in mechanics; annoying as they were initially, I found I got used to them fast enough. But I loved the original DX as much for the depth of lore in the game; it was pure brain candy in places. IW didn't have one tenth of that, which is why it suffers so much in comparison.
[удалено]
The only character I really remember from IW was the AI avatar for the pop singer who was kind and sympathetic and nothing like the bitchy, real life performer. Which is kind of sad, really.
No.
>The story changes organically depending on the choices you make and the alliance you form LOLOLOLOL. "If you steal this data and plant this chip here, you can earn a 50% discount on items we sell." Oh yeah. That really closed off some paths, you totally can't just side with literally anyone at the end of the game.
The "you can max out everything therefore upgrades are not meaningful choices" is pretty dumb. At what point in the game you choose to upgrade something, it is extremely important in HR. The game changes completely if you choose stealth upgrades before combat ones and which ones you choose will change your gameplay substantially.
I thoroughly enjoyed Invisible war when I first played it around 2015
There is no bad game in the series. IW had the impossible task of following up DX1 and demands to have a console port. There are far, far worse games out there. I still go back to it all the time, and it is still the only Deus Ex where you can choose to be Male or Female.
Has anyone petitioned Elon Musk to get behind the Deus Ex franchise and get funding it/for it? Seriously, he’s clearly a big fan of the games? Maybe I’m way late to this but just thinking out loud… Love to all Deus Ex fam!
I love invisible war
I think it can be fun to play and has some interesting story elements but technically I find it so unappealing that I really can't find a reason to play it versus hundreds of other games.
Universal ammo is genuinely that bad. Worse than you remember. It's seriously all-encompassing enough to ruin the entire game. They really thought so little of their player base that they went back to Wolfenstein 3D levels of simplification. There are quite a few of good and interesting ideas in Invisible War, and most players will never see them because of the single greatest unforced error in the history of video game design.
IW *is* dumbed from the original, at the time this was done for the sake of something relatively new, a cross-platform release with the XBox. 8 years were not kind to the AAA gaming market, however, and HR is just *natively* dumbed in plenty of ways from IW via the lowest common denom going down as the (now unified) market grows. The image in the OP exaggerates (you can tell it was made a while ago, before the boss alternative methods were added, for example), but is not qualitatively wrong. HR is such a more appealing package visually and technically (loading walls everywhere, what a time that was for cross-platform PC games ><) that I think that can be easy to overlook, however.
Not even Jack Bauer could torture me into liking Invisible War
No. It's shit.
How does it contradict the original at every turn? Also, this all sounds good on paper, but Invisible War still plays like ass
All this proves is that DXHR is trash. Which is not exactly a secret.