Heh. This is not to call you out because I absolutely did the same up until last week (and I'm certain a high percentage of others are the same). I've recently decided to make it a habit of reading articles first (directly from the publisher website) before even visiting Hacker News or Reddit. And after you do that, you start to realize how much discussion is based entirely around headlines.
Anyway, from the article:
And shortly after the announcement went live, Eidos Montreal confirmed in an Embracer conference call that its next major game would be set in the world of Deus Ex
And if you would've read the article that linked to that quote you would see that: "Update: This was an out-of-context quote in reference to Eidos Montreal's beginning. Shacknews and the author regret this error in reporting." [1]
Yikes, thanks for pointing that out! Read a few articles about this and multiple of them referred to the press conference announcing a new Deus Ex - disappointing that none of them verified for themselves and shame on me for not following the rabbit hole.
I would take anything EM says with a grain of salt.
I think they have no desire to make another Deus Ex game. MD was released in a "rushed" manner according to them, despite having over 5 years of dedicated development :/ But maybe a new parent will breath some life/money into their development cycle.
The thing about Deus Ex is that there's nothing particularly special about the "IP". Anybody could make a near-future cyberpunk conspiracy-oriented immersive sim, and call it whatever.
The modern Deus Ex games were really average, and (as detailed in the recent hbomberguy video) failed to grasp the key principles of level design that are required to make games like that work.
It's true that you can make an immersive-sim without the "Deus Ex" title, but over the course of four games they've built a sort of cohesive universe and storyline and many people - myself included - would really like to revisit that universe. DXHR and DXMD weren't the same as the original, but I didn't get the feeling that they were trying to reproduce it. I think they wanted to do a sort something in the same style but in a way that appealed to a broader group of people, so it was necessarily simplified (and hamstrung further by being the first game the studio made, the Eidos/Squenix turmoil and finally the rush to deliver).
HBomberguy's video hammered on a few points to deliberately make it seem more stupid than it was, and he knows it because he pulls back and calls the game "fine". I have a fairly unique perspective on this because by pure chance I'd played through all the Deus Ex games in the months before the HBG video dropped so I had an extremely fresh perspective on it. I'd also played through the original Deus Ex as a kid so I got to experience it when it was new and shiny. The video is very careful about emphasising DXHR's weak points while downplaying or ignoring many of the original's issues (or flat-out lying about them). The latter two entries in the series were troubled for sure, but they were more than "fine".
Edit: Actually I just remembered I wrote up a list of issues with the review because my friends were talking it and I wanted to share them in a way that didn't blast a wall of text in the group chat. So just in case you're curious what specifically I meant you can check it out here (content warning: I am a bit sweary) https://gist.github.com/smcl/666a0156b13d7a681e0378b836b36e4...
Edit 2: Oops I am a liar actually, I didn't play Invisible War :-O
I think Human Revolution mainly fucked up its infamous boss fights. Beyond that, it's a decent Deus Ex game. Like it's not the greatest ever, but hard to say it's worse than Invisible War.
A lot of what made the original good was unraveling the conspiracy. That's a trick you can only do once, and I think in large, that's why the sequels (including IW) don't have the same impact.
Yeah the boss fights in DX:HR came as a kick in the groin for players who focused on stealth. I'll just note that the Director's cut release revised the boss fights, expanded the arenas and added ways for stealth players to deal with them.
The Director's cut can also be played with commentary which I think was implemented really well.
Ooooh I'm gonna have to play thru with the commentary after I'm done with Elden Ring (and Nier Automata, and System Shock 2 and Ghostwire Tokyo and some other things I have lined up). What's the experience with commentary like?
The game prompts you when there's commentary to be heard, and it's presented as like a radio transmission. It's basically a bunch of the leads talking and giving behind the scenes insight into things. It's been a while since I played through with commentary, but I remember it being a great experience - in particular if you're a big fan of the game (which I am).
Human Revolution excelled as a stealth game, which was fine for me because that is how I (and, judging by the critical reception to DXHR, many others) usually play immersive sims. It's almost as much of an underserved genre as the immersive sim.
Mankind Divided improved on a lot of the criticisms in DXHR, but ended up being too ambitious for its own good, setting sales goals (and production budgets) in a somewhat niche genre as if it was Call of Duty. It's good, but short and ends abruptly.
Hard disagree. While newer DX games are simpler and more accesible in some ways they are still great playgrounds. Old games may have had fewer loading screens but their jank wasn't worth some of the more subtle bits that weren't carried forward.
Yeah, it's trippy and looks like a low-effort meme game, but it has surprising depth both in terms of gameplay and arguably also in terms of philosophical consistency.
The sensory assault that is the audiovisual aesthetics are very intentionally crafted and fits with the world and the message.
It has near-universal critical acclaim though. I've been putting it off because of the visual vomit ever since Steam recommended it to me before Civvie, Yahtzee et al boosted it ... but sooner or later I'm gonna have to give it a go.
Quite possibly, I'm definitely keeping an open mind though. Just for context, I had written off the FromSoftware games because I disliked the idea of a game tormenting me, and I've given Elden Ring a shot and I love it. This might seem a bit silly but I'd previously been playing it safe and only trying things I think I'd like rather than rolling the dice and leaving my comfort zone. So I'm now in the state of mind of having zero preconceptions and just trying stuff, even if my initial impression is "it looks like their main graphics guy was drunk and only used MS Paint"
It's honestly fairly similar to From's games in several ways, except it's a first person shooter.
At face value, it's ridiculously hard, everything kills you almost instantly. The game is figuring out how to cheese the game, the more you cheese it the more the game unfolds. The game expects you to do this, and rewards you for it, arguably even more so than FromSoft's games do. Jank is a core gameplay mechanic. If you manage to bullshit your way into a location where you really shouldn't be able to go, odds are it has a super powerful weapon or a secret or whatever.
It really forces you to engage with the game as it is rather than going through the motions of playing a first person shooter.
Cyberpunk was pretty revolting ... Cyberpunk 2077, that is. I kid, I kid. It actually did a good job of presenting a future that's not the slightest bit appealing, I suppose.
The cyberpunk game that covered its expenses, made a profit, and is slated to receive DLC was made by a studio that disproved that theory how, exactly?
While it technically "made a profit" it's sales after launch where massively under expectations.
They where expecting to sell upwards of 30+ Million copies in the first year. They sold 14+ Million before launch, and an additional 4 Million since. For an AAA game of this size that is a crazy dropoff, and it is unlikely to ever reach the original goal, even if the expansions manage to turn the massive PR hit to CD Projekt around.
(And thats ignoring the fact that CD's stock absolutely tanked after launch, and is unlikely to recover until The Witcher 4, if ever.)
So it's not a smash hit, but it's not a failure either. In game development, any game that makes a profit is a success; that's just how our business is.
