Deus Ex or DXHR? I’ve hardly ever seen you mention the original.

DXHR. I played the original prior to DXHR’s announcement, and predicted DXHR would be a complete failure prior to the leak. The leak changed my mind on it, and in time since I think DXHR is actually the better game despite its more narrow focus.

My primary issues with the original Deus Ex are that the gunplay isn’t good, enemies aren’t interesting, the stealth isn’t good, the hacking/lockpicking are one dimensional, there isn’t a significant platforming/area traversal element. Dialogue basically never constitutes a good gameplay challenge, and Deus Ex isn’t an exception there.

On the level of simply the game living up to what it. The game doesn’t really care if you go lethal or nonlethal in any of the missions (after the third one it stops tracking the difference completely). The overall story arc is completely linear, you always have to betray unatco, you always get captured by gunther, you always break out of unatco, go to hong kong, infiltrate versalife, etc, etc. There are tons of invincible NPCs in many of the levels, especially the early ones. You’re required to kill multiple NPCs to proceed (even if there are clever workarounds for all but one of them).

I went into Deus Ex thinking, “Wow, I can do anything.” After successive playthroughs and learning more about the game, I realized, “Wow, I can’t do anything.” My opinion on the game changed over time as my opinions about what made a good game or not became more refined. Deus Ex is complex, but it isn’t deep. There’s a lot going on, but none of it is interconnected, meaningful, or challenging. This is what lead to my change in opinion.

DXHR, it fell flat in a number of areas, lacking features of the original (melee weapons) and having smaller more constrained levels generally, but it had stronger stealth, better gunplay, an actually involved process for hacking, and did pretty alright with the level design in of including multiple paths/approaches, and goodies hidden around. Kinda sucks that the entire world wasn’t like detroit and that SO MUCH CONTENT was cut (upper heng sha, montreal, india).

Plus I’ve speedrun both of them, DXHR is an awesome challenge, Deus Ex is boring cheese. Deus Ex is one of the easiest speedruns I’ve done yet (primarily about memorization of the order you have to do things in and not forgetting steps), DXHR has hard tricks, is a super fast stealth run (one of the rare stealth games to actually have a speedrun about being stealthy instead of just running through every blockade), and it’s tricky to avoid enemies while trying to pass through them ASAP on low/no resources.

Deus Ex still has a crazy complex system, which made for good fun in Illiterate Child’s Glitchy Walk Through, but none of the game is designed to be particularly challenging or mentally involved, so a lot of that ad hoc complexity goes to waste.

DXHR. I played the original prior to DXHR’s announcement, and predicted DXHR would be a complete failure prior to the leak. The leak changed my mind on it, and in time since I think DXHR is actually the better game despite its more narrow focus.

My primary issues with the original Deus Ex are that the gunplay isn’t good, enemies aren’t interesting, the stealth isn’t good, the hacking/lockpicking are one dimensional, there isn’t a significant platforming/area traversal element. Dialogue basically never constitutes a good gameplay challenge, and Deus Ex isn’t an exception there.

On the level of simply the game living up to what it. The game doesn’t really care if you go lethal or nonlethal in any of the missions (after the third one it stops tracking the difference completely). The overall story arc is completely linear, you always have to betray unatco, you always get captured by gunther, you always break out of unatco, go to hong kong, infiltrate versalife, etc, etc. There are tons of invincible NPCs in many of the levels, especially the early ones. You’re required to kill multiple NPCs to proceed (even if there are clever workarounds for all but one of them).

I went into Deus Ex thinking, “Wow, I can do anything.” After successive playthroughs and learning more about the game, I realized, “Wow, I can’t do anything.” My opinion on the game changed over time as my opinions about what made a good game or not became more refined. Deus Ex is complex, but it isn’t deep. There’s a lot going on, but none of it is interconnected, meaningful, or challenging. This is what lead to my change in opinion.

DXHR, it fell flat in a number of areas, lacking features of the original (melee weapons) and having smaller more constrained levels generally, but it had stronger stealth, better gunplay, an actually involved process for hacking, and did pretty alright with the level design in of including multiple paths/approaches, and goodies hidden around. Kinda sucks that the entire world wasn’t like detroit and that SO MUCH CONTENT was cut (upper heng sha, montreal, india).

Plus I’ve speedrun both of them, DXHR is an awesome challenge, Deus Ex is boring cheese. Deus Ex is one of the easiest speedruns I’ve done yet (primarily about memorization of the order you have to do things in and not forgetting steps), DXHR has hard tricks, is a super fast stealth run (one of the rare stealth games to actually have a speedrun about being stealthy instead of just running through every blockade), and it’s tricky to avoid enemies while trying to pass through them ASAP on low/no resources.

Deus Ex still has a crazy complex system, which made for good fun in Illiterate Child’s Glitchy Walk Through, but none of the game is designed to be particularly challenging or mentally involved, so a lot of that ad hoc complexity goes to waste.

Okay, let’s imagine an alternative universe where you are indifferent towards or enjoy Yandere stuff (you don’t hate it). Imagine if in that universe for some bizarre reason you were hired to handle the mechanics and gameplay design of yandere simulator. What mechanics would you implement? Why?

Come on, if you’ve been following me at all you should know that I have a militant indifference to the theme of a game. What matters is how it shapes into mechanics, and as a theme, yandere has some potential in my opinion.

My first thought is have a low profile mode and a high profile mode. Part of being yandere is hiding that you’re crazy. The main thing I’m thinking of is movement though. I’m really tired of the “You have to move at the absolute slowest crawling pace to avoid generating sound” tradeoff we usually get in stealth games. Give the girl a decent speed, then give her a high profile creepy run that is really fast, and lets say if you use 2/3rds or half of your stamina or more you run out of breath (move really slow) when the run is over, and stamina generally comes back really slowly so you can’t spam run to bypass everything, you have to pick your moment to dash, and suffer running longer distances. Meanwhile, no ultra slow ultra stealthy mode, just make the regular walking mode stealthy, or hell, add a stealth mode that makes no sound but will immediately alert anyone looking at you (since it’s stealth based on suspicious actions like hitman/asscreed) and consumes stamina at a slower rate, no movement penalty.

The main thing about the game is what qualifies as suspicious/not suspicious and in what contexts. So there needs to be an established parameter for what areas it’s okay for you to be in, at what times, when making noise triggers alerts versus just being innocuous, and so on. Like after school, footsteps are probably suspicious, I imagine a girl alone in the classroom going through her desk hearing/seeing you, turning around, screaming, and pushing you away (high priority over your actions) to make their getaway easier. Maybe have some contextual actions to fit in during afterschool hours, like digging through locker for HW as an alibi.

Should probably be a system of lures and other events to draw romantic rivals out, like leaving notes, stealing their belongings, passing around rumors, etc. divide and conquer, etc. Stabbing people should leave blood on clothes/floor/etc to leave signs for people and add more counterplay between stuff.

Dunno if wooing senpai should be a goal or not. I imagine it would be funnier to have him not realize you exist, but you treat him like he’s your true love. Would also keep gameplay systems cleaner, avoiding having to deal with him. Having him pop up at inconvenient times to almost witness your yandere tendencies would be a good way to reinforce central stealth systems.

Other people should probably only chase you in numbers or if they’re adults, so high profile actions make individuals flee or cower. Should probably be some way to attract people to a given point, though I can’t think of it. Maybe leaving school supplies/candy on the floor? Maybe you drive people away into corners by leaving creepy things around?

Out of characters, hope this is interesting enough

I’ve been playing through vanquish (hahaha, I’ve beaten it long since this was written) and I really love the weapon design so far. it’s the only game with 3 weapons that has ever actually made me consider the weapons I choose for the situation instead of just an optimization function.

The LFE gun (which shoots a huge bubble of energy in case it isn’t obvious) is great for encounters against small enemies that clump together because it destroys them instantly and has a wide fire radius. it’s balanced by having a short range and only 10 shots max. It’s useless against larger units, barely doing damage, if any at all, but can be useful against romanovs because it knocks them down, opening them up for melee attacks. It totally ignores obstructions so it’s good for catching enemies behind cover too.

The shotgun is one of my least used guns, having a pretty miserable effective range. It has huge damage output up close though, so it’s really useful against larger units if I can get in close. It has only 20 ammo, so it has a reasonable amount of firepower.

The Disc launcher strikes me as one of the less useful guns, only being good against single enemy units. It has limited ammo, like 40 I think, and it homes slightly. It has decent damage and great range, so it’s better than a shotgun in most situations, but I think it’s a bit underpowered.

The armor piercing pistol is great against armored units and takes out regular units in a single shot, but that is a complete waste of ammo most of the time. It does damage like a shotgun does up close. They’re extremely rare drops however, but come with more ammo than a shotgun does, like 26 shots. Has more potential firepower than a rocket lawnchair, but takes more shots and is even more rare a drop.

The Rocket Launcher has a manual firing mode and a lock on that takes time to activate. It does tons of damage, and stuns romanovs. It has a very wide blast radius, like a grenade, making it useful for clearing tons of standard units in a close area. Better than a grenade on heavy units. Balanced by the fact that it has only 3 shots, less than anything else. Despite doing the best single hit damage, I tend not to choose it in situations with diverse enemies because it’s not flexible enough.

The laser cannon is a huge laser with great damage over time. It requires a few seconds to warm up though, and it drains energy directly from the suit, and can even overheat it. It’s really useful in situations where you won’t get fired on and need to do a lot of damage over time. It has no ammo limit, but I end up discarding it when I enter standard sections because it’s just not practical against regular enemies.

The sniper rifle is a sniper rifle. It’s useless against armored units, because a regular submachine gun gets better damage output. Its most useful in sections where the enemies are far away and you are free to line up headshots with the scope. It nearly kills an enemy on a body shot, and kills them instantly on a headshot. All the submachine guns kill instantly on headshots too, but the scope is the difference here. Also good for when an enemy is even slightly weakened.

The lock on laser locks onto a wide array of targets and fires at all of them with lasers kind of like a predator missile or something, but has shit for damage. I think it may be the most useless weapon. Takes a long time to kill even a large amount of standard units. I didn’t pick it up much at all.

There are 3 types of submachine guns and they’re all pretty similar, and good for long range engagement, and dealing damage to heavier units.

The boost machine gun is the best of the three I think, balanced by poor accuracy, small clip, and smaller ammo supply. Great damage output though, more than worth it. Drops rarely, so it’s a bit of a bonus weapon.

The heavy machine gun is my favored over the assault rifle, for better damage output despite smaller clips and less ammo. The boost and heavy machine guns both have around 260 ammo versus the assault rifle with 600.

The two grenades are also really cool and have nice application. The standard frag grenade has a great range and does great damage, which is useful against enemies big and small, especially if they’re clumped together. The EMP grenade has a wider radius and freezes the robotic enemies for a decent period of time, enabling moving forward, melee while they’re stunned, taking them out with an AOE, or just plain shooting at them.

Melee attacks are massively risky, because they instantly overheat the suit, and require moving forward into enemy lines. They leave you defenseless, so they’re a terrible idea except as a clutch defense or for attacking unassisted romanovs (large enemy units).

Dishonored was a game that showed a lot of promise to the stealth community. I for one was massively hyped for it and enjoyed it as I started the game up, but as I got further in, I became really bored and disappointed. The stealth was easy and rigid where tools like blink should have enabled the team to come up with harder stealth challenges than previously possible in stealth games.

My big conclusion on the issue was that guards, even on the highest difficulties, didn’t pursue enough and didn’t really have counters to the player’s options.

The worst part is, most of the code necessary to fix dishonored was already there, just not used correctly. If there was just a modder with source code access, the game could be patched up easily.

All I can say is, I hope at some point in the future someone does this game justice.

Changes that can be made using existing code or very minor modifications to it

Guards get back up after a fixed period of time after being knocked out (there is already a routine for ragdolls getting back up, I saw it with soldiers who survived the wind blast attack)

Guards who get up investigate in the direction of the player and are placed on level 2 alert (investigation routine exists)

Guards who find other unconscious guards do not raise an alarm, but instead wake the guard up and begin investigating on level 2 alarm (ditto)

Guards who hit level 2 alert mark the player location and begin their investigation routine in that direction (the investigation routine exists, I’ve triggered it with a grenade before)

If a guard partially spots a player and the player blinks away, the guard marks an investigation spot at the player’s blink destination (small code change, small trigger condition, small result)

After a player who is in sight uses a ranged attack (windblast, crossbow, gun, etc) enemies using ranged weapons have a shorter windup animation before firing enemies using melee attack faster (like halved or something) (small code change, only involves changing some timers and adding a simple new trigger)

Darkvision costs all the meter the player has temporarily (it all regenerates) (simple variable changes)

Bodies allowed in the stage is a lot higher (variable change, people have already done it in ini mods)

guards hit with sleep darts take longer to go to sleep and investigate around when they are shot (former done with ini mods, latter is obvious) (maybe an aggressive investigation instead of a normal one?)

Guards put on alert status or in investigation status take longer to cool off (basic variable change), and after an alert cools off there will be a separate investigation phase which also needs to cool off, with the investigation point set at the player’s last known location, or if the player can see the guards, the player’s actual location (more simple AI state work)

Pistols knock down less or not at all, also remove the wide blast zone around the pistol, it’s overpowered enough. (ini edits, easy)

Increase the number of zombies in areas with them present? Make the new ones idle around, so as not to disrupt the existing level compositions? (not actually code, just level design)

Basically all the ultimate difficulty mod changes (they’re ini mods, simple)

More guard wandering (It’s a variable, I know it is)

Addition of a noise maker arrow? Make one of the existing arrows have this function? (can’t be too hard, there is already a sound propagation engine, and investigation routines, hell, the DLC has something like this with the chokedust)

Changes that require the writing of new code routines

Guards who notice missing guards alter the patrol patterns of all guards in the area to cover missing spots in the patrol (this obviously requires totally new pathfinding code and could potentially be really tricky)

Once put on full alert guards cycle the current patrol routes for that area of the level, perhaps from a set of pre-scripted routes. (not too hard honestly, simple trigger condition, simple result, more work in designing good guard routes though)

Guards shuffle patrols every so often, taking over another guard’s route (could be a bit complex to manage)

Guards that see another guard being killed by a razor tripwire will not step on razor tripwires in their direct line of sight. (I have no idea how complex this is, it involves modifying pathfinding, but I don’t know if unreal has dynamic pathfinding support out of the box like that)

Guards that see the player use a ranged attack will use the environment to take cover (No code exists for this in the published game, but it’s made in unreal engine, there has to be full fledged support for that type of thing)

Guards that see rats will attempt to run from them, maybe after seeing one companion get devoured (no routine exists for this, would involve new animations and voice acting)

If a guard notices a wall of light has ceased to function, they will replace the whale oil battery + increase to level 1 alert temporarily (holy christ how is this not in the final game? Anyway, needs new AI routines, maybe pathfinding, definitely animations)

Melee system like Dark Messiah? (I can dream, right?)

Guards dodge or run away to avoid grenades thrown at them (new routines and animations)

Guards that discover a device is rewired will attempt to fix it if possible (new routines and animations)

I like the integration of back to forward commands, I feel like it adds an interesting kinaesthetic component to his playstyle.

The really key thing about Nero is that to make up for not having the weapon variety dante has, they made his commands a bit more straightforward and augmented his abilities in a few ways. Like his charge shots exploding, that’s cool, devil trigger letting you cancel anything and being a small burst, that’s cool. The table hopper dodge, also cool. The devil bringer obviously seems like it’s a gap closer a lot like dante’s trickster style teleport. Since his air dash has an attack at the end, you need to rely a bit more on jump canceling to get damage off it. Seeing as he can attack in the air without any style business, he has a more straightforward air game that incidentally leads players to try jump canceling, leading them into the advanced option, basically because of the air dash thing.

The trouble I have with Nero is that he lacks in options. He doesn’t have any good ranged options besides charge shot 2 and 3, and those take a long time to charge. His normal shots are only good for extending combos, his devil bringer does no real damage. This means he kinda sucks against cloaked enemies and blitzes because he has to wait for the charge shot to go through before he can actually fight them. (though devil buster and bringer are both rather effective on cloaked enemies). Dante meanwhile can get the cloak off those enemies instantly by teleporting at them, and doing DT rain storm. Against Blitzes, Dante has Drive on rebellion, charge shots, lucifer swords, honeycomb shot, fireworks on rebellion, royal guard parries and royal release.

With Nero it feels a lot like there’s a “right” way to play, with Dante it feels a lot more improvisational. with Nero you constantly hold down the charge shot, with Dante you don’t need to. With Nero you hit L2 after every single attack with the perfect timing. And so on.

I think Nero is designed pretty alright though. I like him more than MGR Raiden, or Bayonetta honestly. And that has to do with him having a lot of command moves. He does have more dial combos on account of the creators trying to get more out of just one button on one weapon, I feel like this isn’t an approach that is very enticing to most people, but having the number of distinct command moves he does is helpful to people getting into the game for the first time, less memorization. Or rather, it’s easier to remember. That and I personally prefer that style of design over its competitors using nothing but dial combos.