The man has shown more badly-memed stock photos of David Hasselhoff (1) than justifications (0) for the hugely bad game design decisions they made (all of them).

Nevermind I'm back with the complaints: this guy (Lapikas, not Hbomb) is so badly organised… he's brought tons of slides and he skips through 90% of them, just to "show how well organised we were when we left conception", and he promises the slides will be on the GDC website later, but now, 12 years down the road, the GDC "vault" is paywalled!

Anyway, Hbomberguy says it better and with more examples and comparisons than I could, so here:

Deus Ex: Human Revolution Is FINE, And Here's Why

I cannot overstate this: he's praising himself for having made a game that's open, about choice, rewards exploration, and different solutions, while proudly admitting they removed 90% of all choices from the game, and the game he's talking about is one that removed the health system, the melee combat system, 90% of all character development, consists almost entirely of linear levels, and that actively denies you any meaningful choices.

And DXHR is a fun game, don't get me wrong, but it's fun in the same way playing with tin soldiers is fun but could never replace Arma III.

Like, they looked at Deus Ex, a role-playing game (players develop their character and have a unique impact on the world) and immersive sim (the world is deeply simulated, wide and open, and players are presented with goals to achieve but have to come up with the way to do that themselves, in ways that mirror the real world as closely as possible), and decided to remove all character creation, most character development, make all levels super linear, remove 99% of all simulation elements, and then he had the chuzpe to stand on that stage and say "we didn't dumb it down, we just streamlined it, because Deus Ex was too much of a management heavy kind of game".

The audacity…

I could go on, but all I'd do is remake Hbomberguy's video on the topic, so I won't.

But really, I'd love to see Lapikas or anyone else react to Hbomb's video because he takes the designers' stated intentions and shows piece by piece that all of them were empty promises and I'd love to know if they tried to tell themselves their shoddy work was fine or if they worked off of completely different definitions of "choice", "freedom", and whatnot.

"As the player explores the game and comes up against challenges, he'll be asking himself 'what if I do this?' or 'what if I try that?' And each time the game should answer back: 'Yes, that is possible.'"

Coming from the senior designer of a game that purposely had the ability to make choices or interact with the world removed, from a game that intentionally removed the option to avoid hacking, and that removed lockpicking, destructible objects, or open-world maps, that is pretty fucking rich. I have sunk some 300 hours into DXHR, and 99% of the time when I asked myself "what if I try that?", the answer was "that's not what the designers intended, now get with the single mandated solution to the level".

It's like he's talking about a completely different game… this talk is a mockery.

It's so bad at some point around 12–13:30 he literally says out loud (or rather, on his slides) that they identified Deus Ex's open-endedness and free choice of approach to problems as "intimidating", "experimential", and a problem, and that they intended to "solve" it by removing most choices and making the rest meaningless ("What we prefer: […] multiple resolutions but same ending for all (objectives don't change)").

No seriously, I've searched far and wide, I've gone through a 75-song playlist purporting to be the entire Invisible War soundtrack (since it plays while Hbomb talks about Invisible War), I've checked every promising track name in a 5-hour video purporting to be the entire Deus Ex soundtrack, and it's not in the song credits for the video. I am at my wits' end.

Jan 22, 2023 - Day 22 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 29

Game: Deus Ex - Human Revolution - Director's Cut
Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Oct 26, 2013
Library Date: May 30, 2018
Unplayed: 1698 days (4y7m23d)
Playtime: 77m

Deus Ex & I have a history. That history is: owning the original Deus Ex, trying to play it, sucking at playing it, never playing it again. I even bought the Deus Ex pack on Steam, only to find a couple of months ago, that it doesn't want to play on Windows 10 without a lot of effort.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution (& the sequels), are effectively a reboot/sequel (rebooquel?) of the original Deus Ex games, set in the same universe, but in the future.

Being #AuDHD, it feels like there's a competition in my brain between my less-than-average hand-eye coordination & fine motor skills (thanks, ASD!), and my "lots going on to pay attention to" ADHD. I can generally get by in single player FPS games, but stealth games generally leave me frustrated.

Deus Ex is a stealth game wrapped in the skin of an FPS. You can play it like an FPS, but that's not necessarily the best way to do so.

A good storyline can be the difference between me uninstalling the game, or working at making slow progress.

It's a good looking game, but so far for me, it's equal parts "keep going", & "frustrating, give up". The storyline will probably keep me going.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is:

3: OK

#Gaming -
Been gaming all my life. Not limited in this genre, either.
#Riven is foundational to who I am. I look for it in everything, even subconsciously. You'll see hints of this in my taste in music, games, etc.
#Myst #Metro2033 #MetroLastLight #DeusExHumanRevolution #MetalGearRisingReveangeance #Gacha #FGO #FateGrandOrder #GenshinImpact #PUBG #TheRoom #AlienIsolation #ICEY #Undertale #Cayne #Stasis #SOMA #Subnautica #HalfLife #STALKER #StarWarsKOTOR #Megaman #Pokemon #AssassinsCreed

@FreiGuy86

Top 5 #VideoGame #music picks:

1. The Last of Us (#TheLastOfUs #tlou #GustavoSantaolalla #PlayStation)
2. Horizon Zero Dawn (#HorizonZeroDawn #hzd #JorisDeMan #JulieElven #PlayStation)
3. Stardew Valley (#StardewValley #sdv #ConcernedApe #NintendoSwitch #PC)
4. Command and Conquer / Red Alert games (#CommandAndConquer #RedAlert #RedAlert2 #FrankKlepacki #PC)
5. Halo games (#Halo #Halo3 #MartinODonnell #MichaelSalvatori #Xbox #Xbox360 #XboxOne #XBOne #xb #xb360 #xb1)

And because I've gotta have a sixth:

6. Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (#DeusExHumanRevolution #dxhr #DeusExMankindDivided #dxmd #MichaelMcCann #PC)