DX:HR Dev Vault - Level Design Philoshophy

[Acleacius]

A completely different team did Thief.

Don't you mean, a completely different team 'started' Thief? Once HR was out the door, it was all one team, iirc.

 

[Dez]

I don't have DC. And IMO DX:HR the release version was already a masterpiece. Yea, boss fights were retarded, but do I look like a person who cares for boss fights when the rest of the game is unbelievably good?
Should I buy DC and replay it?

I grabbed the director's cut from some sale with 5 euros and I think its not the worst way one can spend 5 €

Main feautures:

The Missing Link DLC is now fully integrated into the base game. I think this was the main selling point for me. It really makes sense and it was obviously meant to be part of main campaign. I recall they weren't able to finish the level when main game was shipped, so it was cut, but later released as a standalone dlc which was worth of every euro I paid. Now it is finally integrated into main game.

Other two dlcs (Tactical Enhancement Pack and Explosive mission pack) have been also integrated to the game in more immersive way. Explosive Mission Pack content includes the tracer tong rescue mission.

In the orginal dx:hr tactical enhancement pack dlc basicly spawned two new weapons into your inventory in the hostage rescue mission. Now the game doesn't do that anymore. Those weapons (silenced sniper rifle and double barred shotgun) are placed in the hostage rescue mission location which makes much more sense to me.

New game+ mode: Option to start New Game where previously selected augmentations will carry over. Weapons from the previous playthrough will be gone though.

So when you have completed the director's cut, this new game+ option becomes available. Adam starts as almost fully augmented and it will certainly offer a different kind of experience. I just replayed the first detroit mission and it was kind of fun having the clock and other cool augs right from the begining.

45 Minute "Making Of" video and Around 8 hours of commentary from Eidos Montreal. I have not yet experienced these, so I can't comment them. What I've gathered is that people seem to like the commentary, but I lack first hand experience.

Redesigned boss fights. I'm with you there, the problematic nature of boss fights in the orginal dx:hr was somewhat exaggerated, but they did kind of stood out because rest of the game was so great. Still I never had any problems with them.

That being said atleast there are now alternative ways to take out bosses if player so desires. Don't just expect ground breaking changes. They more or less play the same, but for instance with Barret there is an option to reprogram some turrets and the room design is slightly different.

Improved textures. Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut vs The Original Version (PC Graphics Comparison) [HD]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGB27zgAcDU

As you can see, there is a slight difference in quality, but imo orginal DX:hr was a gorgeous game on it's own.

Lastly there is a small change how augmentation power renegerates. By default Jensen will be able to regenerate two energy cells on all but the hardest difficulty.
This change had no effect on my playthrough since I played with "give me deus ex" -difficulty setting

 

[DArtagnan]

Don't you mean, a completely different team 'started' Thief? Once HR was out the door, it was all one team, iirc.

No, it was done by a different team all the way, AFAIK. I read an article about how the HR team left the offices and turned over facilities to the Thief team.

 

[Dez]

Yes, I still think DX:HR is a modern masterpiece - and one of the very, very few games I've played that actually exceeds the original classic it's trying to emulate.

Though I realise many fans would consider such a statement sacrilege.

DX:hr is truly one of it's kind and the developer team did justice to the orginal game. They truly understood the setting and which design choises made orginal game such a classic. Orginal deus ex is still a bit closer to my heart, but the margin is very narrow here. Both deus ex games have earned a permenent place in my best games ever list.

One thing i will say though. It is a damn shame how they messed up the invicible war. That game had so much potential. I have only finished it once and it was a struggle.

But then again because of the invicible war disaster, we got DX:HR

 

[joxer]

I grabbed the director's cut from some sale with 5 euros and I think its not the worst way one can spend 5 €
… etc

Count me convinced.
And hell, I need a proper nogrinder while waiting for DA3 nobears mod, even if it's a sort of a replay.

 

[SpoonFULL]

DX:HR is very good, but not as good as the original nor the unappreciated Invisible War (I found it to be a very solid rpg with excellent Deus Ex level design, but missed the atmosphere the original).

DX:HR became very repetitive in the second half of the game and 'tunnely', and the choices and consequences had no real value. But I liked the narrative and atmosphere.

 

[Nerevarine]

I agree with Spoonful on all points. The different paths were a bit too "on the nose" and obvious in Human Revolution, and I grew tired of the repetitive, narrow level design. Art direction and atmosphere were top-notch, but the design itself just didn't feel as clever or as open compared to the original.

Still a solid game though, and after the abomination of Thief, I worry about the direction of newer games in the Dues Ex series published by Square Enix. Hopefully new entries will at least match the quality of HR.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

HR really wasn't that good, it didn't come together well and the levels were super tiny and limited. Also the stealth was much dumbed down.

And yes I wanted a Montreal hub.

 

[Acleacius]

It's the same company, in the same building/complex. All the employees on both teams have the same bosses in the same building and get paychecks from the same accounting department. They are two different leads using the same hardware, software and employees guided by the same corporate polices and visions.

 

[JDR13]

You guys can't possibly be serious about claiming DX:HR wasn't as good as Invisible War.

While I do think the original Deus Ex is still the best of the series, HR was a HUGE improvement over IW.

 

[Nerevarine]

You guys can't possibly be serious about claiming DX:HR wasn't as good as Invisible War.

I guess I should clarify: I agree with Spoonfull that IW is under-appreciated; I forgot to make that part clear in my post.

 

[DArtagnan]

It's the same company, in the same building/complex. All the employees on both teams have the same bosses in the same building and get paychecks from the same accounting department. They are two different leads using the same hardware, software and employees guided by the same corporate polices and visions.

Unfortunately for your theory, the leads are actually the people in charge of the vision and delivering upon it - which is why HR is a much more wholesome and unified game. Apart from the boss fights, the game is more or less exactly what they were going for. Thief was corrupted by a much more troubled leadership and corporate interference, based on a lack of faith.

I don't know what it's like where you work, but at my job people on different teams produce results of a very, very different quality. This despite our top level boss being the same guy.

But your dislike of HR makes that irrelevant? Fair enough. If you really want it to be the same kind of game as Thief, and you want to dismiss the very different way they were received and reviewed by the same critics, have at it.

 

[DArtagnan]

This is certainly the first time I've heard someone suggest that IW is better than HR

Considering the two leads in charge of IW more or less admitted it was horribly marred because of console restrictions, that's a rather unique position.

To each his own, though.

While I agree that HR had less empty open spaces than DX, I don't agree it was necessarily a bad thing. Then again, I don't enjoy running around with nothing to do as much as others might.

I found it a very appropriate balance between the "emptiness" of the huge DX spaces (using the impressive Unreal engine with its novel potential for gigantic levels - and I remember Unreal itself had much the same "huge empty levels" problem for me) and the ridiculously tiny closets of IW.

But that said, I grant that the "illusion" of open levels was kinda ruined at occasion, because HR was almost exactly like Vampire Bloodlines - in that it presented the large hub areas as entire towns, but really only had a few segments with "tunnel-like" paths in-between. Didn't quite pull off the sprawling city environment.

I did like the mission levels more in HR, because I found them visually varied and with a LOT more to find when exploring. It helped that I found the combat/stealth vastly superior - and the hacking a lot more interesting.

It did suffer from "hacking saturation" towards the end, but that has more to do with my gaming OCD than anything else. They really went above and beyond, trying to create "corporate" e-mail stuff, and that's ultimately just not very interesting, but that was sort of the point, I guess.

 

[SpoonFULL]

While IW was indeed marred by console restrictions (UI, universal ammo .. etc.), it was a solid rpg (conversations, variety of stories, main/side quests, choices and consequences, factions and twists) with excellent level and game design (although limited due to consoles) allowing multiple approaches to problem solving (more than HR).

So it depends on what one is looking for; and overall I enjoyed the rpg and level design aspects in IW more than HR. But I enjoyed the atmosphere and small details more in HR. The king is still the original Deus Ex.

 

[DArtagnan]

While IW was indeed marred by console restrictions (UI, universal ammo .. etc.), it was a solid rpg (conversations, variety of stories, main/side quests, choices and consequences, factions and twists) with excellent level and game design (although limited due to consoles) allowing multiple approaches to problem solving (more than HR).

So it depends on what one is looking for; and overall I enjoyed the rpg and level design aspects in IW more than HR.

As I said, to each his own

I thought IW was pretty terrible when it comes to dialogue and RPG aspects - but we all like different things for different reasons. I quite liked the story and dialogues in HR, though, but I wouldn't consider it fantastic by any stretch of the imagination.

I prefer the original DX for those things, though I must admit it's been so long - I might not even like it today.

 

[Dez]

There is no question that dx:hr level design is spectacular, but the level design in deus ex 1 goes beyond that. There was just so much more variation between closed environments and huge open spaces. I really liked those open vast levels. The Vanderberg military space in particular and the the nsf airfield with 747. Not to mention those noctural Paris city levels

Dx:hr had few areas which were somewhat similar (The Rifleman Bank Station, The harbour area in Hengsha, Detroit streets and the opening crash site in Panchea), but overall Dx:hr was more tighly packed and there was less room to roam. That being said when I played it, i rarely noticed lack of truly vast areas because those location felt so real and just pulled me in. And to be frank human revolution levels had so much more detail in them.

However the one thing which sets dx 1 truly apart from it's prequel (for me) are the numerious books, emails, datacubes, newspapers one can find all over the gameworld. Those were quite intresting. You could learn so much about the world or the people reading all kinds of datacubes, emails etc. Dx:hr had ofcourse some intresting databooks and newspaper articles, but dx1 was miles ahead. Hacking to terminals in dx:hr rarely felt as satisfying because you rarely stumbled on some intresting backround info or hidden secrets.

In dx1 I remember hacking to Walton simons pc and reading his medical records which gave away all his augmentation. Or just mundane stuff like hacking to hospital pcs and reading the correspondance between medical staff where they discuss about grey death and how the hospital was running out of meds and goverment funding. Ofcourse the most iconic thing was finding out the kill switch for Gunther Herman.

Or something just as odd as hacking in Morgan Everett's lab and discovering his artificial intelligence projekt. Or hacking to his home basement and finding out a former illuminati leader in a cryo state!

 

[sakichop]

I enjoyed DX:HR, one of the few FPS I actually finished. I didn't even mind the boss fights, although they were pretty bad.

More annoying to me was the pick 1 of 3 buttons to get your ending, thus making all your choices irrelevant.

I did really enjoy the saving the hostages scenario. Wish they would have done more stuff like that through out the game.