Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: Rictor on November 26, 2007, 06:54:14 pm
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Celebrating the unveiling of the new studio, EIDOS-MONTREAL invited media, partners and industry stakeholders to take an exclusive tour of the cutting-edge facility. Executives from the new studio also announced during a news conference the exciting new project that will be driven by the new studio: the development of Deus Ex 3, the highly anticipated next instalment to the award-winning AAA franchise.
“This is a very exciting day for Eidos,” said Rob Murphy, Managing Director of Studios at Eidos. “Deus Ex is one of our finest franchises, often cited as one of the best PC games of all time. By developing this game at our new cutting-edge Montreal studio we have the opportunity to really push the boundaries of expectation for Deus Ex 3.”
“We are thrilled to be working on such a prestigious franchise as Deus Ex in Montréal, which has a well-known reputation as a hotbed for experienced, talented developers. Our new studio enables us to work with a passionate and talented group of people and helps strengthen our position as industry leaders,” says Stéphane D’Astous, General Manager, EIDOS-MONTREAL.
Teaser trailer here:
http://ve3d.ign.com/videos/19299/PC/Deus-Ex-3
Now...I take it for granted that this is going to be cross-platform, because most AAA titles these days are. But I'm still holding out hope that it won't be consolized to death, given that there are a number of cross-platform games which have been executed properly.
I think we can all agree that the first Deus Ex was a unique gem, one of the best computer games ever, while Invisible War was....bad. I haven't even played it and even I know it's bad.
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I still feel burned after the abortion that was Deus Ex 2. I don't think i'm quite ready to love again.
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It's either going to totally suck, or it's going to the bestest ever. Not like over-hype, bestest ever, I mean literally bad-grammar-constituting bestest ever.
IMHO the reason they had trouble in DX2 was because of 3 endings they had to incorporate. Either they're going to somehow really screw it up with even more endings, or they're gonna do something else. And given that this is Deus Ex, that something else is likely to be good.
Anyway, huzah! :D
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DX2 wasn't really that bad in its own right. It's just terrible as a sequel to the first game.
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The trailer is not very informative, but any news about this game is good to hear. :yes:
I think we can all agree that the first Deus Ex was a unique gem, one of the best computer games ever, while Invisible War was....bad. I haven't even played it and even I know it's bad.
Invisible War was quite good compared to most games. It was just nowhere near as good the first game.
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This is a good news, I didnt played Deus Ex 2 so cant say about that. What I fear the most is that due to way current FPS games are made, this may end up a pretty empty shell and nothing else.
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DX2 was a solid game, but the first was such a hard act to follow...
Hopefully DX3 will go back to the feel of the first, where you're dropped on location, given an objective and basically left to find your own way.
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Deus Ex worked partly because of the setting, partly because of the way you could play through any given level in multiple valid ways, but all of that was made possible by the RPG/augmentation system they threw out the bloody window in the sequel! Every single aspect of the interface, inventory system, augmentations, health management, etc was a step WAY backwards from the wonderful design of Deus Ex, and we all know it's because those menus were designed for a mouse.
If they bring back all the elements they lobotomized from the original to appeal to the Madden and Halo crowd, then I'll consider playing it. It's strange how Eidos managed to butcher Deus Ex and then bring us Thief: Deadly Shadows, which used the same engine and was a REAL sequel to an established and well loved setting.
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You know, I first played Deus Ex as a PS2 port, not on PC, and it worked just fine. They changed some stuff, like inventory management is simpler and you just have one big pool of health rather than location specific HP. I haven't played DX2, but it sounds like they didn't even need to dumb it down so much to work on a console since DX1 worked so well.
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Invisible War was quite good compared to most games. It was just nowhere near as good the first game
I have to disagree, I thought compared to most other games it was mediocre at best. The characterization was poor, the combat was horribly unbalanced, and there was no location damage.
I haven't played DX2, but it sounds like they didn't even need to dumb it down so much to work on a console since DX1 worked so well.
Too bad that didn't stop them though. :p
If they bring back all the elements they lobotomized from the original to appeal to the Madden and Halo crowd, then I'll consider playing it. It's strange how Eidos managed to butcher Deus Ex and then bring us Thief: Deadly Shadows, which used the same engine and was a REAL sequel to an established and well loved setting.
Then again I think what went wrong was that Warren Specter had a much greater say in the sequel than in the original, and rightfully took a lot of heat from the fans because of it. But now he's gone, so I think there's no longer any problem.
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Actually, I think it's the opposite. Warren Spector was the lead guy on DX1 and Harvey Somethingorother was the lead on DX2. Apparently, most of the controversial design choices were his calls, though that wouldn't account for low production values if indeed they were low (haven't played the game).
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I played both titles, and while Deus Ex 2 is not as horrible as it's touted to be, it's a lot dumber game then DX1 was. I also find it hard to think that the same Warren Spector who brought us Systemshock would have fallen in with the console crowd.
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I have to disagree, I thought compared to most other games it was mediocre at best. The characterization was poor, the combat was horribly unbalanced, and there was no location damage.
It did have major flaws, but look at the good points of it. The story was excellent and actually more original than DX's in some ways, even though it had nowhere near the same amount of depth or detail. Most of the levels were also fairly nonlinear despite being small and had more believable layouts than the progressive sequence of rooms we see in many games these days. As for the location damage, that applies to most sci fi FPSs I've played. The first Deus Ex was somewhat unique in that respect.
And of course, you could spend hours screwing around with the ridiculous physics. That was almost a whole game in itself. :D
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Well we can NOW, back when it was first released it ran horribly, and even playing it patched, with improved textures, on a much more powerful system, I STILL get this disconnect whenever I move around, interact with the environment, etc. It's hard to explain what I mean by that, but it just doesn't feel like I'm there; Alex just doesn't move right somehow, and every time a light switch disappears when you look at it from the wrong angle it keeps driving home the point that you're playing a game.
True story: When I first fired up the game I was convinced my sound was broken, because everyone sounded tinny and robotic, and I spent hours scouring forums trying to find the setting I needed to fix it's "rampant misconfiguration". Except all the voicework really IS that low grade, every single character sounds like an obvious recording! They spent so much time on the graphics (and didn't even get them playing properly on monstrous systems when it was released) and they release it with horribly compressed audio? Once again, every time anyone talked I was pulled right out of the experience because the sound was so bad. It wouldn't surprise me that they compressed the audio because the graphics were already pushing the poor X-Box too hard, giving me one more reason to hate the blasted contraption.
If I had never played the original, I would still contend that Invisible War wasn't a very good game. Having played the original, most of what I loved about it was cruelly stripped away, and all the good things they kept were dumbed down, ugly, soulless imitations of the original. There were some cool settings, some interesting plot twists, but they didn't overcome the overwhelmingly bad elements (everything else). I know empirically that the story wasn't bad, but it didn't have the same level of resonance with me partly because it tried to reconcile all the various endings from the original and threw them into a world that didn't feel like ours anymore.
So in short, yes Deus Ex 2 WAS as horrible as it was touted to be, it's just there are tons of even more horrible FPS games to compare it with. Just because something is better then a crappy game doesn't mean it's not a crappy game itself.
On a related note: Being the best FPS on a console is like winning the Special Olympics, so what's that say about the competition?
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This announcement inspired me to fire up Invisible War again to see if it was as bad as I remembered. And yes, it really is. And no, I don't mean bad by comparison with the original. It's just plain bad. For example--
In the first few minutes of gameplay, you see a guard get killed by an exploding air vent. When you walk around literally the next corner and report this to the first guard you see, his only response is a disinterested "These things happen." Then you spend another five minutes or so hearing distant explosions, but everyone you mention this to shrugs it off like nothing's happening. The entire game is like this. It's like a world populated by crazy people, and it makes it pretty much impossible to get immersed in or even care about the storyline.
Oh well, at least Harvey Smith won't be involved in DX3. And from some of the frames in the teaser, it looks like it might be a prequel.
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I think the world is supposed to be populated by crazy people. Maybe it suggest something about the times that they live in.
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Actually, I think it's the opposite. Warren Spector was the lead guy on DX1 and Harvey Somethingorother was the lead on DX2. Apparently, most of the controversial design choices were his calls, though that wouldn't account for low production values if indeed they were low (haven't played the game).
Yeah, you're right, I get them confused sometimes. Speaking of which it looks like Harvey;s latest game bombed pretty bad.
http://games.slashdot.org/games/07/11/29/1953246.shtml
The story was excellent and actually more original than DX's in some ways, even though it had nowhere near the same amount of depth or detail.
I will give the story credit for being different, but not having the depth or detail of the original kind of sank it. The entire premise of DX is the wacky conspiracy theories (the "New World Order" stuff) come true, but it seems to me that this aspect of the sequel was kind of shoe-horned in. In a straight FPS it wouldn't matter so much, but DX has always been much more than that, and so having a great, detailed, great story line matters a lot more.
But yeah, the Havok physics engine was a lot more fun to play with than Karma was.
Oh well, at least Harvey Smith won't be involved in DX3. And from some of the frames in the teaser, it looks like it might be a prequel.
I think that's probably the best way to go, although I'm not sure what they would do about Gunther's voice, since the actor is dead.
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Well we can NOW, back when it was first released it ran horribly, and even playing it patched, with improved textures, on a much more powerful system, I STILL get this disconnect whenever I move around, interact with the environment, etc. It's hard to explain what I mean by that, but it just doesn't feel like I'm there; Alex just doesn't move right somehow, and every time a light switch disappears when you look at it from the wrong angle it keeps driving home the point that you're playing a game.
True story: When I first fired up the game I was convinced my sound was broken, because everyone sounded tinny and robotic, and I spent hours scouring forums trying to find the setting I needed to fix it's "rampant misconfiguration". Except all the voicework really IS that low grade, every single character sounds like an obvious recording! They spent so much time on the graphics (and didn't even get them playing properly on monstrous systems when it was released) and they release it with horribly compressed audio? Once again, every time anyone talked I was pulled right out of the experience because the sound was so bad. It wouldn't surprise me that they compressed the audio because the graphics were already pushing the poor X-Box too hard, giving me one more reason to hate the blasted contraption.
Performance was definitely a problem when the game first came out. I think that was the biggest issue with the game back then, as it ran like trash on everything until the X1800 cards came out a good two years after its release (and it never looked that good at all, except for maybe the NPCs). However, there are no such issues on current hardware. Like several other Havok games, the physics engine is capped at 30fps, but you and the other characters still move around at a normal speed. I haven't seen this light switch thing you're talking about.
I didn't find anything that bad about the voice acting, with the exception of Alex Denton's own voice which was quite boring and generic. The rest seemed pretty good to me. Some of them did have a noticeable recording-like feeling to them (just in terms of the sound quality), but it didn't bother me much.
This announcement inspired me to fire up Invisible War again to see if it was as bad as I remembered. And yes, it really is. And no, I don't mean bad by comparison with the original. It's just plain bad. For example--
In the first few minutes of gameplay, you see a guard get killed by an exploding air vent. When you walk around literally the next corner and report this to the first guard you see, his only response is a disinterested "These things happen." Then you spend another five minutes or so hearing distant explosions, but everyone you mention this to shrugs it off like nothing's happening. The entire game is like this. It's like a world populated by crazy people, and it makes it pretty much impossible to get immersed in or even care about the storyline.
Yeah, the whole intro sequence was pretty bad, but the game got much better when you got out into the Seattle streets.
Speaking of that guard, is he the same guy who asks for your help a bit later when you come back up there? I never figured out if that was the case. He's in roughly the same place where you saw the other guy but seems to have quite a different personality. :p
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I think we can all agree that the first Deus Ex was a unique gem, one of the best computer games ever, while Invisible War was....bad. I haven't even played it and even I know it's bad.
Funny thing, I still have 2 but can't seem to get it to run...
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Oddly enough, me too. I've got it sitting on my shelf right now, but for some weird reason it kept crashing on my old comp (I think it had something to do with audio drivers). I haven't gotten around to playing it on my new system, but I will eventually.
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I haven't seen this light switch thing you're talking about.
I didn't find anything that bad about the voice acting, with the exception of Alex Denton's own voice which was quite boring and generic. The rest seemed pretty good to me. Some of them did have a noticeable recording-like feeling to them (just in terms of the sound quality), but it didn't bother me much.
The light switch thing applies to any 2d sprite being rendered on a wall, depending on the angle you're looking it will get brighter or darker, or disappear entirely from certain angles. It's extremely annoying and looks REALLY stupid, considering the original game had fully 3d keypad/lightswitch/you-name-it models and it's sequel is slapping on the equivalent of a decal (which doesn't always show up). Now that I think about it that's probably exactly what they did, I've noticed blood splatter from various titles not always displaying properly from all angles, but it's not really an important feature that gets on your nerves if it flickers into and out of view. I know it's not a video card problem as I've gone through 4 different cards from both Ati and Nvidia, and it's not system specific because I've replaced every component in my computer twice since I first got this. A fresh re-install last week confirmed it still does it.
As for the actual voice acting? Yeah, other then Alex being ultra boring and not at all cool like J.C. was, the voice work itself isn't bad. I just can't stand the playback quality, every other game in my 225+ collection featuring voice actors sounds better then Invisible War, which is pretty sad. And I'm an audiophile, so it REALLY bugs me. For some reason I'm recalling (possibly erroneously) a study linking audio quality to perceived video quality, if that's not just something I imagined then Invisible War is going to look crappier then titles with identical graphics just because the audio sucks so much.
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Apparently it's going to be powered by the Tomb Raider engine.
Eidos has big plans for the new installment in its esteemed Deus Ex franchise, and will be using the game engine from another of its next-gen revamps, Lara Croft Tomb Raider, to power the new game.
D'Astous explained: "This is a very important factor for us. In former positions where i worked technology was always a grey zone, a question mark. I'm relieved that here at Eidos we have two great internal engines - one from IO and one from Crystal. We chose the Crystal engine because we plan to help develop this engine more and then share it back with the rest of the company, the other Eidos studios. Having that technology from the start gives us a great advantage and foundation for our coders - there are no doubts about the approach, and we have few uncertainties. We just want to all work together on improving the same technology as we develop our game."
Has anyone played the newest Tomb Raider and want to weigh in? They say they're going to make improvements to the engine, so it might be OK.
Wonder if they'll bring JC back with huge boobs.
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Apparently it's going to be powered by the Tomb Raider engine.
Eidos has big plans for the new installment in its esteemed Deus Ex franchise, and will be using the game engine from another of its next-gen revamps, Lara Croft Tomb Raider, to power the new game.
D'Astous explained: "This is a very important factor for us. In former positions where i worked technology was always a grey zone, a question mark. I'm relieved that here at Eidos we have two great internal engines - one from IO and one from Crystal. We chose the Crystal engine because we plan to help develop this engine more and then share it back with the rest of the company, the other Eidos studios. Having that technology from the start gives us a great advantage and foundation for our coders - there are no doubts about the approach, and we have few uncertainties. We just want to all work together on improving the same technology as we develop our game."
Has anyone played the newest Tomb Raider and want to weigh in? They say they're going to make improvements to the engine, so it might be OK.
Wonder if they'll bring JC back with huge boobs.
I though the latest tomb raider 10th aniversary or watever it was called was really good ( a remake of Tomb Raider 1 i think) and also the tombe raider before that cant remember the name though, and the games looked pretty good so why not.
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Yeah, the whole intro sequence was pretty bad, but the game got much better when you got out into the Seattle streets.
Yeah, but not enough to save the game from being craptacular. I still gripe about the amazingly shallow characterization.
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CVG (Computer & Video Games magazine) has speculated that DX3 might be a prequel, based on a date shown briefly in the teaser trailer. I hope it is, because the further the story moves into the future (I think DX:IW was around 2070) the less grounded in reailty it will be, and the less realstic the setting/gameplay will be. I don't want to see crazy mechs and teleporters and all that far-futuristic sci-fi baggage.
As an aside, I've started playing Invisible War and so far I'm about 3 hours into it. Not bad, not particularly good either. There's definitely some good stuff in there, but it's buried beneath a big pile of poorly-designed, poorly-implemented crap. My main complaints so far are that the levels are tiny (making loading a pain) and that the whole game somehow feels loose and floaty, probably due to its console origins.
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the whole game somehow feels loose and floaty, probably due to its console origins.
Ah! So I'm not alone when I said Alex's movement just felt....off.
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Just finished the game, and I was pleasantly surprised. Not nearly as bad as I expected it to be. Really, it's just the first bit that's weird and boring - after that, I either got used to the feel of the game or the game itself picked up, probably both. And while it's no Deus Ex, it's not terrible either. Aside from a few deficiencies such as the unified ammo and simplified RPG elements, the game was remarkably close to its predecessor.
Well, at least now I'm ready for DX3. And I can see why they would choose to go with a prequel, given that DX:IW had even more (and more divergent) endings than the first.
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That's what I was saying earlier. If you can look beyond the (admittedly major) bad aspects of the game, there is actually a lot to like in it.
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I don't like games that make guns look "cheap". I mean, if a weedy scientist dude can take 3 head shots it just looks absurd. Much rather the mechanics of something like Rainbow6. Took a while to get over that with the original DE but I'm glad I perservered with it.
Actually reminds me of the ending to FarCry2. I'd just nailed the bad guy with grenades, shotguns, Sniper Rifle shots and an assault rifle and then seeing him speared by a chunk of wood is supposed to be dramatic ??
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Far Cry 2 isn't out yet. :p I'm guessing you meant Far Cry 1, as that had an anticlimactic ending like you describe. (IIRC the final enemy was some scientist who goes down with a single pistol shot)
I would actually like to see more games with non-realistic weaponry. It places more emphasis on movement and dodging and makes combat more drawn out and interesting. We used to have many such games in the past, but they're increasingly become rare these days. The only recent one I can think of is UT3.
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I just assumed it was a thinly-veiled knock at Crysis' lack of innovation.
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Well, there is actually a separate game in production called Far Cry 2. :p Some of the pre-release info suggested it may be quite good, better than Crysis.
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Far Cry 2 isn't out yet. :p I'm guessing you meant Far Cry 1, as that had an anticlimactic ending like you describe. (IIRC the final enemy was some scientist who goes down with a single pistol shot)
I would actually like to see more games with non-realistic weaponry. It places more emphasis on movement and dodging and makes combat more drawn out and interesting. We used to have many such games in the past, but they're increasingly become rare these days. The only recent one I can think of is UT3.
FarCry Instincts Evolution. The fight with that Tribal/Guerilla Leader in a mountain-top temple complex.