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!
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.
I don’t believe it, or rather, I think Warren Spector and Ricardo Bare really didn’t intend for it to be political, as both of them were far more focused on the game parts of Deus Ex; the mechanics, the balancing, the level design, etc, and are seemingly oblivious to how the writers took those puzzle pieces and made it political. Though the extent that Spector is completely unaware of that fact seems unlikely, and instead he almost appears to be whitewashing what the writers intended? Based on his stance that only movies and books can be political (which is a wild take, since games actually seem the most ripe medium for that), he may be trying to frame Deus Ex as A-political because of that.
It’s very odd that this article didn’t interview the lead writer of Deus Ex, Sheldon Pacotti, for an article about the politics of the game. Sheldon absolutely intended for it to be political, and in an old interview even goes into how capital is used to exploit and suppress the working class, which is what leads to radical terrorist groups, such as the NSF. He mentions in the first part of that interview series how the designers would create the levels without any concept for a story (citing the blown up statue of liberty as an example, which the level designer just thought would be an arresting sight to the player, but didn’t consider how it would tie into a wider narrative).
I think Ross’s Game Dungeon on Deus Ex really shows how Pacotti was able to make Deus Ex realistically political by tackling real societal problems that we all now face, and very few games dare touch, which continues to set it apart it decades later.
I think it’s been very hard for us to spread awareness into countries where a majority don’t also speak English, as the organizer and much of the coverage is only in English.
If you know of any big Italian gaming YouTubers or streamers that might be receptive to helping or talking about the campaign, could you reach out to them about it with a comment?
Just to clarify, this isn’t a normal toothless petition, this is an official EU mechanism that allows citizens to bring problems to the attention of the European Commission, and force them to pass judgement on it legally. You can read more about it here.
It’s good to be skeptical of anything asking for that personal info, but I’d suggest researching into it to confirm that it is indeed legit.