How do we feel about Deus Ex 3?

[Morpheus]

The problem is that they seem to be completely ignoring how Jordan, Gunther and Anna were augmented.

Ok, so is there any connection to Deus Ex that we know of?

This is so very wrong. Because DX3 is set before Deus Ex it is actually more linked to Deus Ex than IW was.

What I meant was that there is not a direct connection between DX3 to DX1, like DX2 had a direct connection to DX1, if you play DX3, if you didn't know anything about DX2 or DX1, would you know more about what would come in DX1 or stuff in the DX Bible, the history of DX World, by playing DX3? At least with DX2, you got a sort of idea what DX1 or at least what was in it if you never did play it, VersaLife, Grays, JC, Paul, Nicolette Duclare, Tracer Tong, JC in Area 51,, Illuminati, UNATCO, MJ-12, you even see the inside of part of the 747 in DX1, Area 51 area where JC/Paul and Alex were born etc...

[Jaedar]

So if you see, for example, a mechanically augmented arm you can fit a sleeve over, that is a mech aug that couldn't have come before or during Deus Ex. (With the exception that it could have come during Deus Ex if it were experimental.)

I see what you mean, but I always assumed that Gunther and Anna didn't mind showing of their augs, as a sort of scare tactic, the bartender does poke a whole in that theory though. Still, I don't see much reason for why you couldn't put a shirt over the aug, unless it would cause some moving part to malfunction, but the arms don't look like they contain moving parts on the outside. But that may be engine limitations.

[Morpheus]

I see what you mean, but I always assumed that Gunther and Anna didn't mind showing of their augs, as a sort of scare tactic, the bartender does poke a whole in that theory though

If you hear the NSF troop and the Thug talking in Liberty Island when your trying to get to the commando at the start of DX1, they say about Gunthur "They cut of his arm, replaced half his face" so, this could mean that maybe he was human before they did what they did and came up with them as they are referring to the metal parts that show he is a mech

[chris the cynic]

I give you, Sam Carter's leg:


That's not a "Make him a better agent" aug that's a "man lost his leg, lets make him a replacement" aug. Presumably as unobtrusive as such an augmentation can be made. Note that it wouldn't be stronger or faster than an ordinary leg, because it has to be balanced with Sam's ordinary biological leg.

[Added]

I see what you mean, but I always assumed that Gunther and Anna didn't mind showing of their augs, as a sort of scare tactic, the bartender does poke a whole in that theory though.

I base what I said on more than just how they look in the game.

As an example, the reason the MiBs exist in the first place is that a bunch of albinos with growing red eyes are less conspicuous than mech augs. Seriously, the reason MJ12 spent time, money and other resources to create an entire new class of augmented agents was because they wanted agents without the nonstandard appearance of mech augs. They created agents with a brand new non-standard appearance, but unlike mech augs this nonstandard appearance could be covered up with suits and sunglasses.

It says all of this in Deus Ex.

[Servalan]

I don't have enough info at this stage to have a real opinion of DX3. I can say the regenerative health and (especially the) cover dependent stealth ideas don't really appeal to me, but other than that there's just not enough info available yet.

Heck, I remember reading the premise of TNM and thinking it sounded ridiculous ("Set in an online community? The frell?? ), yet it turned out to be a terrific game. So I'm certainly not going to pass judgement on DX3 on an equally flimsy basis.

[justanotherfan]

I have to agree that from the concept art, they're not making the augs as mechanical or unpleasant as DX1 says they are. Where Gunther looks like a metal zombie, this DX3 Barret looks like a bodybuilder. They're doing this skin-tone thing with subtle lines and impressions, where the arm augmentations are transformer parts that normally look like arms.
http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc15 ... ms-1-1.jpg
http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc15 ... kclean.jpg

Difference being, Gunther, Anna, and Jordan Shea are half chrome. In playing the game, I figured these mechanical augmentations must get fairly hot, so they would burn away fabric (that could get caught in gears) and discolour anodized metals.

I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. As long as the story has people unhappy about how unnatural and ugly the mods are, if they don't appear disgusting, it'll be more esthetically pleasing to see. It would be better if they evoked the same feelings as the Mad Hatter's creations from Alice, but they're going more for an Iron Man Transformers Supersoldier TehAws0menes thing.

[gamer0004]

I have to agree that from the concept art, they're not making the augs as mechanical or unpleasant as DX1 says they are. Where Gunther looks like a metal zombie, this DX3 Barret looks like a bodybuilder. They're doing this skin-tone thing with subtle lines and impressions, where the arm augmentations are transformer parts that normally look like arms.
http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc15 ... ms-1-1.jpg
http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc15 ... kclean.jpg

Difference being, Gunther, Anna, and Jordan Shea are half chrome. In playing the game, I figured these mechanical augmentations must get fairly hot, so they would burn away fabric (that could get caught in gears) and discolour anodized metals.

I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. As long as the story has people unhappy about how unnatural and ugly the mods are, if they don't appear disgusting, it'll be more esthetically pleasing to see. It would be better if they evoked the same feelings as the Mad Hatter's creations from Alice, but they're going more for an Iron Man Transformers Supersoldier TehAws0menes thing.

Barret's augs are ridiculous

[Morpheus]

I have to agree that from the concept art, they're not making the augs as mechanical or unpleasant as DX1 says they are. Where Gunther looks like a metal zombie, this DX3 Barret looks like a bodybuilder. They're doing this skin-tone thing with subtle lines and impressions, where the arm augmentations are transformer parts that normally look like arms.
http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc15 ... ms-1-1.jpg
http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc15 ... kclean.jpg

Difference being, Gunther, Anna, and Jordan Shea are half chrome. In playing the game, I figured these mechanical augmentations must get fairly hot, so they would burn away fabric (that could get caught in gears) and discolour anodized metals.

I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. As long as the story has people unhappy about how unnatural and ugly the mods are, if they don't appear disgusting, it'll be more esthetically pleasing to see. It would be better if they evoked the same feelings as the Mad Hatter's creations from Alice, but they're going more for an Iron Man Transformers Supersoldier TehAws0menes thing.

Barret's augs are ridiculous

I agree, he sort of reminds me of an Unreal Tournamnet character or something.

[justanotherfan]

http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc15 ... barret.jpg
http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc15 ... /scana.jpg

I think it's an idea. The ugly bodybuilder's arms transform into guns. It might take some time to transform back, which would leave him without fingers for a while (eg. hitting lightswitchs with the gunbarrel), but it's a cool idea. It even screams "gratuitous overmodification". Still, it seems far more advanced than Gunther's "my arms are partly metal" mods. Gunther couldn't even get a gun built in, where Barret has transformer machinegun turret arms. It sounds like a good idea for a movie, like an enemy villain for Iron Man (his body is the machine!), but it has nothing to do with Deus Ex. It is far more pop-culture, very GI-Joe, but not interesting.

Whats his face has his face mechanized, and it looks like this-
http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc15 ... sure/1.jpg

So he has an octagonal impression, like he slept on some playmobil lego. To be mechanized, Gunther and Anna had to look like freaks-
http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/deuse ... unther.jpg
http://www.visualwalkthroughs.com/deuse ... ld2/47.jpg

Still, fine, they're trying to make a block-buster ton of cash. "Less refined technological mechanization than Gunther and Anna" would be perhaps too grotesque. If they want the "mechanization" concept to be interesting at all, they're going to need to put everything they have into the writing.

[gamer0004]

Problem is that those augs are like sci-fi tech. So many moving parts and frail connections (and useless functions). One bullet and the arm is completely rendered useless. It's not what military-grade stuff looks like.

[Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar]

First- or early-gen kit is likely to be much more fragile. Maybe early mechs were actually less obtrusive, but it was discovered that in order to get a significant boost in performance it had to be more functionally designed?

[DDL]

Well...making someone have a giant unsubtle arm that transforms into a gun seems like pointless excess: it would be cheaper and easier AND more functional to simply make him a mechanical arm and then WELD A GUN ONTO IT.

I mean, if I'm setting up regulations for mechanically augmented peeps, I'm classifying gunless GIANT SMASHY ARMS O' DEATH (tm) under the same "those fuckers ain't comin' in my building" category as arms with guns on/in them, so why hide it at all?

Because it looks pimp, apparently.

Plus hey, if you had external bolt-on weaponry, you could chop and change it: going for some jungle clearance? Unhitch the machinegun, snap in a flamethrower. Try doing that when the gun pretty much IS your arm.

[chris the cynic]

"Less refined technological mechanization than Gunther and Anna" would be perhaps too grotesque.

Then they could make it equal to Gunther and Anna. Seriously, who would complain about that? They've even got a perfect excuse built right into Deus Ex. Jordan Shea was in an early program and her augmentations look pretty much like the ones Gunther and Anna have. They wouldn't have to address it at all in the game, for obvious reasons, but if anyone wanted an explanation outside of the game they could point to Jordan and say, "The appearance of mechanical augmentations doesn't change much over time."

If they don't want to include augmentations less advanced than those Gunther, Anna and Jordan had I see no problem with that. Deus Ex never really says when mechanical augmentations reached the level seen in Deus Ex. They could say, "25 years before Deus Ex mech augs were just like the ones you saw in Deus Ex," and, while it might seem a little off, it wouldn't actually contradict anything in Deus Ex.

Where I have a problem is when they take it in the other direction. If they don't want to have mech augs less advanced than the ones in Deus Ex that's fine, but don't have ones that are immediately noticeable as more advanced. Don't have them noticeably more advanced 25 years before the first game when an important plot point of the first game is that mechanical augmentations like that simply don't exist.

-

I'd be more accepting if they didn't know it was a Deus Ex game when they started. If, midway through development, some corporate suit had told them, "By the way, we've decided to market this as a prequel to Deus Ex," then I'd have an easier understanding and forgiving the fact that the developers have chosen to completely ignore Deus Ex and what it says, pretty fucking clearly, about what is and isn't possible in a prequel.

The problem is, they did what they did after successfully lobbying to be given the right to make a prequel to Deus Ex. They asked to make a Deus Ex game, and then proceeded to go so far from Deus Ex can tell they're not even trying by looking at a still. That's ... impressive. It's like begging to be entered in a singing contest and then silently juggling when you get on stage. Except worse. After all, if you just saw a picture of someone juggling at a singing contest you wouldn't know for sure that they weren't singing.

Look a the pictures we have of DX3 mech augs, just one of them would be enough to tell this isn't a faithful Deus Ex prequel. I'm trying to think of another way they could have done that and, short of cartoon bunnies or a dragon, I'm really not coming up with much of anything. They had wide open possibilities; other than augmentations, fashion and architecture I'm not seeing many ways Deus Ex hemmed them in.

Well, there was the fact that the technology to enable auto heal didn't exist yet...

[gamer0004]

@ mech augs; Jordan vs. Anna:

Remember Jordan saying "I was in an early program, but I can still polish a glass" (i.e. despite being in an early program)? Scientists spent their resources on improving the first generation augs, instead of making them look fancy. Which is the only logical thing to do.

@Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar: This doesn't make sense. The DX3 augs are far more advanced than the ones in DX; the ones in DX did not automatically (un)fold itself. More importantly, I think, is the fact that nobody would ever design augs like that. However crazy some weapons might seem, there is always a logical explanation why they look and work like they do. But there simply isn't any reason why augs would work like the ones in DX3. This is worse, because it means I can't play DX3 without wondering all the time why augs look like that. Like the burning lasers in IW (seriously, WTF?).

Also, I'd like to quote myself from over at the PDX forums:

This [mechanical augmentation] is a very interesting aspect of DX... Stealth or power? Social interaction or superhuman speed? &c.
What worries me is that Eidos Montreal seems to be designing mechanical augs that look pretty sleek (like an expensive watch).
The choice between augs and normal interaction could make for some pretty awesome role playing. Instead of becoming devil-like for no other reason than being evil (Fable did this, I believe), or not being punished at all, the player would be punished in a more natural way for more powers.

It is far more interesting from a scientific point of view as well. Just after World War I surgeons could make very natural looking prosthetics. But they were useless. As science progressed prosthetics became useful, even to the extent of being usable in certain sports, but at a cost: it was (and is) almost impossible to make prosthetics that work but look natural.
While DX3 is supposed to take place in 2027 and science will have progressed since now, prosthetics that provide powers to the human body that normal limbs do not (nor can) will probably still look weird (creepy), even if normal prosthetics look natural (but will they in 2027? I'm not so sure).

[Jaedar]

Like the burning lasers in IW (seriously, WTF?).

What's wrong with them? Wanting a visible deterrent that isn't(directly) lethal makes sense. Regular lasers+turret(like in DX) is actually much more lethal, and turrets are vulnerable to being turned against you by a hacker.