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solsangraal, do games w Deus Ex devs say they weren't trying to make a statement when they made one of the most political games of all time: 'What I think is the right future for humanity is irrelevant. It's all about...'

in my late teens/early 20s this game made me aware of more conspiracy theories than i even imagined possible, and i loved it. amazing game. pretty cutting edge at the time, but it aged poorly gameplay-wise. none of the sequels came close for me. i’d buy a well-done faithful remake of this in a heartbeat

Agent_Karyo,
@Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world avatar

I am just curious, what makes you say it has aged poorly in terms of gameplay? I would argue it holds up pretty well, but I am also a PC/KB+M only player. I strongly dislike UI/UX that has been compromised (from my perspective) for consoles/controllers.

Agreed regarding the sequels (haven’t played the fourth one, just the 2nd and 3rd sequel); they are OK, but not that special.

Coelacanth,
@Coelacanth@aggregatet.org avatar

I just finished Mankind Divided earlier this month. I think it has higher highs than Human Revolution but suffers from being the planned “middle game” in the trilogy. It has better gameplay than HR, some great levels and some really good side quests. Also a really well executed apartheid theme that played out really well.

I definitely recommend you playing it. It’s not gonna be OG Deus Ex, but it’s a good game.

Agent_Karyo,
@Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world avatar

I really need to play it. I am sure I would enjoy it. I thought Human Revolution and even Invisible War (with mods) were decent. Invisible War is fundamentally flawed due to the small maps though.

darthelmet,

A while ago I tried it out and I can concur on it feeling clunky. To each their own, but I just have a fairly low tolerance for games not feeling smooth to play. There are a lot of games I’ve dropped in less than an hour because it just didn’t feel good to play even if I might have liked some of the ideas or systems.

Agent_Karyo, (edited )
@Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world avatar

That’s totally fair.

I’ve played Deus Ex enough times that I sort of enjoy the clunky and RPG progression gunplay.

mbfalzar,

I played Deus Ex for the first time like, 6 months ago and it didn’t feel particularly clunky. It’s not great, but it’s perfectly okay, and I’m someone who plays with a controller at every possible opportunity and I think BG3 is a better experience on a controller, having tried it both ways

solsangraal, (edited )

i’m also a KB/M player, and to be honest it’s been several (many…? i don’t remember when) years since i’ve tried OG deus ex 1, and remember thinking damn this seems like a chore.

i might just need to give it another shot, with full awareness i’ll never get the same experience of playing through for the first time on windows 98.

Agent_Karyo,
@Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, I can see what you mean by saying guns are chore, it takes some time for them to be effective.

Try one of the mods, they greatly improve things compared for he baseline game (I haven’t played the baseline version in 15 years).

ProdigalFrog,

I’ve made multiple attempts to finish Deus Ex over the years after giving up each time due to aspects of the gameplay. I would normally never give a game so many shots, but I love so many aspects of Deus Ex, I want to finish it, but I just can’t push myself to continue at certain points.

I think the biggest blockers for me is I love stealth games (thief 1 & 2 are all time favorites), and since Deus Ex does have a stealth system (though primitive), I tried to play it like a stealth game. a vanilla install means that tranq darts make enemies run around like headless chickens for a minute, and knocking people out with the baton is unreliable. Combined, stealthing is both visually comical, and realistically very frustrating to play.

I could deal with that, and I’ve tried switching it up by going more guns blazing, but the gunplay of Deus Ex is just as clunky, with slow firing weapons that deal little damage on fairly bullet spongy enemies. Combat just doesn’t feel good.

I tried mods and overhauls to see if I could rectify either of those points, which do sorta work as a bandaid. GMDX makes stealth WAY more fun by making headshots with darts work instantly, and baton-ing more reliable. With it, I was able to get all the way to France without quitting, but I think due to GMDX, I hit a massive difficulty spike where my stealth build became much less viable, and it once again just became frustrating. Perhaps a gun-build with GMDX would’ve been the winning combo.

I think my best experience was with the Revision overhaul, but by then I had started the game over so many times over so many years, I just didn’t have the appetite to get all the way back to France.

It’s a truly spectacular game in terms of story and open-ended level design, but the mechanics really are a turn-off. I wish my first playthrough had been with the Revision overhaul (though I wish it didn’t radically change the level design so much), but even still, I think it would benefit from a Nightdive style remake.

Agent_Karyo,
@Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world avatar

I see. Yes, stealth is in a strange position where it’s difficult to use it full time. There are multiple missions/maps where you will eventually not be able to use stealth.

I can see what you mean regarding guns being clunky. They do get more effective as you level up and get better weapons. Early game gunplay is very iffy.

But I actually like the RPG approach to gunplay and how it forces you to try and avoid direct confrontation and use a mixture of stealth and combat.

That being said, these are all fair points.

I’ve actually never tried Revision. I only use GMDX. Should try it for next play through. i feel like I need to reinstall once I clear out a major deliverable for work. :)

ProdigalFrog, (edited )

I didn’t mind the RPG elements of the gunplay either, it was how lame all the guns felt to use even with higher skill levels.

The shotguns take way too many rounds to down people, the smgs are pea shooters, and pistols can work ‘okay’ with headshots, but still just feel meh. I assume the sniper rifle is more effective, but I never used it much.

I wish they had made it to where low skill makes reloading and accuracy suffer greatly, but if you do manage to score a hit, it hits hard. That would make shotguns in the early game super valuable, but they could’ve still encouraged stealth and more thoughtful tactics by limiting ammo availability.

Basically the RPG and story elements combined with Tarkov style gunplay and thief-style stealth would be heaven for me.

I’d be curious of your thoughts on revision, if you ever feel like coming back to this comment section by the time you finish it!

Agent_Karyo, (edited )
@Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world avatar

I am a big user of sniper rifle + pistol combos. It works pretty well.

Will need to post a mini-review of Revision the next time I get to replay Deus Ex.

MajinBlayze, do games w Deus Ex devs say they weren't trying to make a statement when they made one of the most political games of all time: 'What I think is the right future for humanity is irrelevant. It's all about...'

The most gamer of all gamer moments

CatDogL0ver, do games w Randy Pitchford asks fans if they'd swallow future Borderlands exclusivity deals, almost 10,000 people say just put your damn games on Steam

I will wait for sale

Denjin,

I will wait for torrent, if at all

CatDogL0ver,

As a bad person, I will warn people about pirating softwares. There are really virus, malwares and many sophisticated malicious codes within those programmes.

echodot, do games w Randy Pitchford asks fans if they'd swallow future Borderlands exclusivity deals, almost 10,000 people say just put your damn games on Steam

The ego on this guy is just unprecedented. It’s Borderlands, most people can take it or leave it.

TipRing,

My take is that Borderlands 1 was boring, Borderlands 2 had decent game play but was held up by excellent writing and characterization and every Borderlands game since has been trying to recapture the magic of the second game but just feels hollow. They aren’t terrible, but they aren’t amazing either.

NotBillMurray,

I feel like borderlands 1 was boring but had some high points, but the dlc really started to capture what the series would become. The general Knox dlc is still one of my favorites.

samus12345, do games w Randy Pitchford asks fans if they'd swallow future Borderlands exclusivity deals, almost 10,000 people say just put your damn games on Steam
@samus12345@sh.itjust.works avatar

Better if they don’t, as they don’t deserve people’s money.

Goodeye8, do games w Randy Pitchford asks fans if they'd swallow future Borderlands exclusivity deals, almost 10,000 people say just put your damn games on Steam

Why are people taking this even remotely seriously? This is Pitchford doing marketing for BL4. BL3 already showed people don't want Epic exclusivity and there's no such thing as Steam exclusivity. They can choose to release exclusively on Steam but that's just artificial exclusivity because nothing about Steam prevents them from releasing on Epic or GOG.

It's a pointless poll made by Pitchford either to keep BL4 in the media cycle or to just shit stir, possibly both.

samus12345,
@samus12345@sh.itjust.works avatar

There are Steam exclusives, but it’s because the publisher chose it to be that way, not because of any incentive by Valve.

Goodeye8,

That's what I mean by artificial exclusivity. There are games where the developer or publisher decided it's the only platform they will release on but that kind of "exclusivity" is not at all the same as Epic paying developers or publishers to not release on Steam. Valve/Steam doesn't prevent those games being released elsewhere, the developers/publishers themselves don't want to.

I could understand smaller (I'm talking literal solo devs or studios with less than 10 people) choosing to be exclusively on Steam. Supporting other platforms can have huge overhead costs for them. But for a studio the size of Gearbox there's no benefit to being exclusively on Steam. They have enough support staff to manage multiple stores. There maybe be suits wondering if it's worth being exclusively on Epic but there are no suits sitting around wondering whether to be exclusively on Steam or not, the answer is obviously not.

Katana314,

Any chance he’s putting the question on social media to convince other stakeholders above him?

It’s possible he was in a board meeting when some novice shareholder suggested “What if you take an exclusivity deal”? And he just didn’t have clear evidence on hand of that being vastly unpopular. Obviously that could be me being overgenerous to him.

Goodeye8,

There is a chance but what is he convincing them of? That they should take a non-existent exclusivity deal with Steam? They already have the data that exclusivity with Epic does not work and Steam doesn't do exclusivity deals.

JigglySackles,

Pitchford is a cunt when he wakes up, and when he goes to bed he reviews a checklist to make sure he still retains the appropriate level of cunt in his daily routine.

He’s not doing anything unless it makes Randy Pitchford more rich, or alternatively, makes sure he’s still a cunting waste of life.

CeeBee_Eh,

BL3 is the existing evidence

captain_aggravated, do games w Randy Pitchford asks fans if they'd swallow future Borderlands exclusivity deals, almost 10,000 people say just put your damn games on Steam
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

How does that guy still have a job?

filcuk, do games w 'Spitting in the face of your international audience': The Alters cops to using generative AI for background text and translations, despite not disclosing such on Steam

Why would they use LLMs for translation over dedicated translator (apps like Google translate)? Is this common now?

Agent_Karyo,
@Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world avatar

I work with multiple languages and I haven’t heard of LLMs being used instead of Deeply/Google translate.

Don’t really see the reason to switch to LLMs.

daniskarma,

In my experience LLM get vastly better results that traditional translation software.

Also google translate is not traditionally suited for long coherent text. One particular issue is tone, proper translation takes into account not only the worlds but the tone and the subject is being treated. Google translate cannot take that into account, with an llm the user can tweak the tone to match the tone of the original text with better accuracy.

And, anyway google translate if it’s not already using llm for translation will soon. Results are just better. It’s one of the tasks that language models are actually good for.

Anyhow, what’s the issue if an automatic translation is done using one software or other? Just use whatever gives best results and it’s more convenient for the developer.

filcuk,

I don’t have an issue, it was just a question.
I don’t ever translate anything but a few words myself.
My assumption was that a dedicated tool would have done a better job, but you have good points about tone and coherence of long text (and possibly even across many promps of the translation).

Malfeasant, do games w Young men are 'playing videogames all day' instead of getting jobs because they can mooch off of free healthcare, claims congressman

Where does a young man get this free health care? I’m not young anymore, but for free health care I can pretend to be…

shadowedcross, do games w Randy Pitchford asks fans if they'd swallow future Borderlands exclusivity deals, almost 10,000 people say just put your damn games on Steam
@shadowedcross@sh.itjust.works avatar

Randy can swallow my dick.

Blackmist, do games w Randy Pitchford asks fans if they'd swallow future Borderlands exclusivity deals, almost 10,000 people say just put your damn games on Steam

He can put them in the bin for me. Honestly don’t see the appeal.

KingThrillgore, do games w Randy Pitchford asks fans if they'd swallow future Borderlands exclusivity deals, almost 10,000 people say just put your damn games on Steam
@KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml avatar

He’s the dumbest CEO you’ve ever heard.

network_switch, do games w Randy Pitchford asks fans if they'd swallow future Borderlands exclusivity deals, almost 10,000 people say just put your damn games on Steam

Pitchford is the only person in the industry that seems to love the smell of their own farts as much as Tim Sweeney

VitoRobles,

Johnathan Blow comes to mind.

Peter Molyneux is still top tier delusional, and has a lot of incredible popcorn material.

I don’t know the drama completely, but the Star Citizen folks. Don’t have any names to rattle off.

Agent_Karyo,
@Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world avatar

Chris Roberts is the person behind the star citizen scheme.

deltapi,

Phil Fish struck me as someone who needed to huff either his own farts or copium to get through the day. I hope he’s doing ok now.

pyre, (edited )

Phil fish stuff was so overblown oh my god. i hate gamers man. they never show this kind of hate toward the actual cunts of the industry.

frezik,

Darek Smart will always be the GOAT of… whatever this thing is called.

redditor_chatter44,

What if I love my own farts too? Am I a bad or weird person?

whotookkarl, do games w Randy Pitchford asks fans if they'd swallow future Borderlands exclusivity deals, almost 10,000 people say just put your damn games on Steam
@whotookkarl@lemmy.world avatar

Doesn’t matter if you wait a year or two to get it at the non-hype price with full content included

Almacca, do games w Randy Pitchford asks fans if they'd swallow future Borderlands exclusivity deals, almost 10,000 people say just put your damn games on Steam
@Almacca@aussie.zone avatar

I find it endlessly amusing how popular Randy thinks the Borderlands games are.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

They’re objectively extremely popular.

Almacca,
@Almacca@aussie.zone avatar

Just not as popular as Randy seems to think.

Lightor,

They are objectively less popular with the newer stuff.

Tiny Tina’s Wonderland is at 25% for recent reviews, 70% overall. That’s not glowing. And with their new ELUA a lot of people are planning to boycott. I don’t think Borderlands has the pull it once did.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

Tiny Tina is a spin-off, and I doubt the EULA changes will result in much more than the Modern Warfare 2 boycott. Borderlands 3 still sold multiple millions of copies before it even had its first discount, and over 15 million copies total. It was still in high enough demand after an Epic exclusivity period to get hundreds of thousands of concurrent players when it eventually launched on Steam. It’s one of very few multi-billion dollar franchises in video games.

Zahille7,

Also Tiny Tina was actually a fuckin blast to play through. It doesn’t drag like some of the main games do, the humor is actually fun because you’re basically playing a game within a game and it works as far as D&D stuff goes imo.

Also I actually liked being able to customize my character for once. I don’t know about the other voices, but I actually really liked the douchey/cocky voice I ended up going with. There are some fun lines for different quests and such.

Lightor,

Yeah, not just being diffent colors of the same hero was a really nice change.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

When has this series ever been that?

Lightor,

… Changing outfits in BL has often, for a long time, in most costumes, just been color changes. Not real customizing.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

Oh, I thought you were talking about the classes.

Lightor,

That’s a fair call on Tiny Tina being a spin off, but with it and the movie kinda tarnishing the name it seems like a bit of an uphill battle.

3 did well, but the game before and after it didn’t. Add in people having less money to throw at this stuff and it being “a real fans” price, possible exclusive deals, etc. I just think it’s putting up it’s own road blocks constantly. The franchise isn’t hot and it’s fresh off the Borderlands movie joke.

IMO They should fire this wide and fast, keep the price low and sell it everywhere, earn back that trust and good will. Make people fall in love with BL again.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

Fresh off the Borderlands movie, they sold tons of their Pandora collection, and concurrent players shot up. It may not have been the movie they wanted it to be, but it mostly achieved the same goal.

Noite_Etion,
@Noite_Etion@lemmy.world avatar

And with their new ELUA a lot of people are planning to boycott.

I hope so, but i was expecting more people to boycott Nintendo, and yet the switch 2 was the fastest selling console of all time. I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone does the old “I’m sure it’s fine if I get a copy”

three,

I think people on the internet vastly overestimate the support these boycott movements actually have. For every person here or wherever else saying they’re not buying a switch, there’s 10,000 parents buying one for their kids, or people that just wanna play mario kart with their friends.

overload,

And typically the boycotters weren’t even the sort of people who were buying a switch 2 to begin with. Maybe there’s a subsection of them that will result in some loss of sales but it would be in the fraction of a percent. There’s no surprise to me when gamer boycotts fail.

With that said, the sales were unexpectedly high. Maybe people trying to get ahead of potential future tariffs were the reason. I thought cost of living was fucked and nobody could afford anything.

I’ll be waiting for the inevitable OLED refresh anyway.

ysjet,

There’s also just a substantial number of people that were just astroturfers, I think.

There’s been a LOT of crazy attacks on the switch 2 to try to ‘justify’ a boycott. I think my two favorite was that the gamechat button noise when you hit is actually saying saying a slur, or maybe that the rumble turns off after a while not to protect your hands from the rumble (which has been found to be bad for you), but because Nintendo cheaped out on a rumble motor that overheated too easily.

The switch 2 joycons don’t have a rumble motor. Like, it’s a whole thing they’re super proud of, because it’s so precise they just use the rumble really fast to play music instead of having a speaker.

Honestly, the whole idea of trying to boycott nintendo has pretty much always been over astroturfed bullshit, or just outright bullshit.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

Nintendo gives us so many legitimate reasons to not want to give them money. Who do you think would be behind astroturfing? To my knowledge, it doesn’t usually come in the form of being against one company but in being against a piece of legislation or regulation. People on Lemmy are probably just predisposed to being willing to go against the mainstream when it starts turning shit, or else we’d still be on reddit.

ysjet,

So what are those reasons, that make you think people should boycott Nintendo and not other companies, then?

Because I suspect most of them are not as legitimate as you might be thinking, and now I’m curious.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar
  • They put their money towards suing the shit out of emulation projects and removing ROM sites.
  • This is compounded by the fact that they won’t even sell you those ROMs anymore. They only make them available to rent in perpetuity. People are rightly skeptical of a future where Microsoft only makes their games available via Game Pass rather than it just being an economical option, but Nintendo is already doing the thing that people are afraid of.
  • They’re the last holdout that won’t put their games on PC in an era where console exclusivity doesn’t make sense anymore. There’s no reason to play Zelda at 20 FPS and 360p when, at the time of release, my PC was already quite capable of running the game at acceptable resolutions and frame rates. This is just willfully selling people an inferior product when they have the ability to deliver a better one. Then they have the gall to charge their customers, who already paid $70, even more for an upgrade to finally run those games at acceptable performance on their next console. And in case you think this is me justifying piracy, I didn’t pirate the game; I didn’t play it at all.
  • I’m a competitive fighting game player, and the way they fight against their own fans for trying to compete in Smash Bros. is atrocious.
ysjet,
  1. They sue and go after emulation projects/ROM sites for modern content just as much as Microsoft and Sony do, MS/Sony just get a pass for some reason. Probably because people try to pirate current-gen content less for them, but they do the exact same thing every time it happens. Nintendo (and, it must be said, MS/Sony) don’t really go after the old stuff for the most part. Also, it must be said that several times that emu/ROM sites were shut down and Nintendo was blamed it turned out it wasn’t actually Nintendo. Same thing with that whole streaming copystrike issue- turns out it was some random company taking down gameplay videos, not Nintendo.
  2. Sony already does this too, yet again they pretty much universally get a pass for making you permanently lose almost all (if not all) your stuff if you let your sub lapse. Even if you resub, you don’t get it back.
  3. In my opinion this is just a bad faith argument. Of course they’re not putting their games on PC, they would cannibalize their own sales. Trying to pretend that you should boycott Nintendo for not actively destroying their own economic model is certainly A Take.
  4. Entirely fair. My understanding is that they’re getting better at this, but after the shitshow that was brawl that’s a low fucking bar. I could point out that smash bros isn’t actually Nintendo (it was HAL, then Sora, then Bandai) but like… lets be real here, it’s Sakurai running the show, and Sakurai basically is working for Nintendo even if he isn’t employed there lol.
ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

Nintendo (and, it must be said, MS/Sony) don’t really go after the old stuff for the most part.

They absolutely do. And again, I probably wouldn’t mind if all of the sites they shut down were hosting games that could be legally purchased in a consumer friendly way, but they can’t. Shutting down the Switch emulator built on ill-gotten code is one thing; buying out the legitimate Switch emulator is a super dick move.

Sony already does this too

Thanks for reminding me. I don’t think of Sony much at all, honestly, but they do tend to lock their retro games behind a subscription, some of which can only be played that way. I think they tend to be time-limited and eventually return to sale in most cases? So not quite as bad as what Nintendo does, but still not admirable. I know you went in a different direction with this, but their subscription incentives are theirs to decide; I just hate it when something is only available via subscription when it doesn’t have to be.

In my opinion this is just a bad faith argument. Of course they’re not putting their games on PC, they would cannibalize their own sales. Trying to pretend that you should boycott Nintendo for not actively destroying their own economic model is certainly A Take.

Boycott is a strong word. All of the other reasons I don’t buy their stuff is because of what they do with the revenue that I would give them, but in this case in particular, it’s because I don’t buy bad products when I can instead buy good products. I’m certainly not about to spend $530 plus sales tax to play Tears of the Kingdom at acceptable frame rates on a machine that’s going to sit under my TV collecting dust when I’m done with the game. I already have a PC that could run it if they made it available there, and it would still run it better than Switch 2. Of course they’re doing what they’re doing because it’s more lucrative for them, but if that’s not aligned with what matters to me, then I’m not inclined to give them my money. There are so many other games out there worth playing instead that respect me more as a customer.

deltapi,

The writing in two was really good. I didn’t and still don’t care who got the writer’s WiiU, I just cared that the story was fun.

samus12345,
@samus12345@sh.itjust.works avatar

the writer’s WiiU

I’m assuming this is an autocorrect, but I can’t figure out what the word is supposed to be.

deltapi,

No, it’s a sad tale that would be amusing if it wasn’t real people, and has occupied a lot of brain time at 4chan and among gamergate-involved persons. If you want to know more, knowyourmeme has a reasonably objective article.

My understanding is the drama from resulted in him leaving before BL3 was written

samus12345,
@samus12345@sh.itjust.works avatar

Oh, thanks for the clarification! Never heard anything about that before.

samus12345, (edited )
@samus12345@sh.itjust.works avatar

Borderlands 3 sold over 20 million, that’s pretty significant even if it is less than 2. The overall quality has certainly gone downhill, but sales is all the companies care about. In my experience boycotts by people who know what’s going on behind the scenes never amount to anything - it’s always the potential buyers who don’t know or care about that stuff that ultimately determine whether a game’s successful or not.

ayyy,

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