Heh - I suppose sometimes the real thing doesn't necessarily give the impression of a cohesive reality in a game. As one guy says on an episode of the Simpsons: "Cows don't look like cows on screen. You gotta use horses."

Mind you, I don't think that talented Cantonese voice actors could have done much with the script handed to them: "I take care of you! Special price!" Seriously, what the hell can you do with that?

I really doubt about that.



The voices are just fine.
I'm sure of that simply because english is not my 1st language.

Guys,
Don't mess up a masterpiece!
Just try to improve it (if you really can).

cheers

It must just be bad acting all around. I can't really speak for the French accents, but I'm sure that the Chinese actors are Chinese Americans who've grown up with general American accents trying to imitate the accents of Hong Kongers. I doubt any of them can even speak proper Cantonese; what few lines of Cantonese there are are phonetically wrong.

as far as an update to the sound effects... I believe Reborn is doing them for updated music (same track just better quality newer instruments) the weapon sounds are very unrealistic but then again for a futuristic game half the weapons are very poorly made... i mean really you would think they would have a more accurate assault gun in 2050.

unfortunately there are no new sound effects mods for this game engine. however I plan on going to school for Digital audio engineering. so I may start a mod once i get enough experience.

The problem isn't the rifle. The problem is behind the rifle.

DXR was doing a mastering of the DX music tracks, as well as replacing instruments in the mod format files. I'm uncertain what they decided to go with.

I honestly don't know what any gun sounds like. I heard a shotgun over a decade ago. Deus Ex guns sound like movie guns, so they sound like guns I think I've heard but haven't. It lets me identify them as gunshots, which is good, but kind of boring from an audio point of view. People who know guns are very exacting though, annoyingly so, and it's something I don't care much about. The whole thing about the shape of the DX assault rifle being "wrong" I thought was hilarious. JC's hearing enhancement technology must deaden the sound of gunshots. A wizard did it.



I would be. Quality is not an absolute. It is relative. When new games improve in graphics, Deus Ex graphics (which were once decent) become quaintly terrible. In an age of FLAC TrueHD 7.1-Channel stuff, Deus Ex audio is pathetic. Age itself does not diminish the comparative quality of a game, but the competition does, and newer competition has better technology behind it. Great games compared to their contemporaries will always be great games. I'm always disappointed to say that Deus Ex remains a great game among modern games, since while the graphics and audio have long been surpassed (and were surpassed by contemporary games), other elements of Deus Ex have not yet been surpassed in my opinion.

we will find out with DX 3 in about 5 years lmao...

Yeah, or, you know... one.

well yeah iv have yet to play a game with a better plot. if 3 is not as much of a disappointment as IW and is actually as good as 1 or even better it will be a miracle.

Fixed.

I was going to write an impulsive, acidic (not to mention delightfully witty!) response, but then realised you are completely right, and thought better of it

Of course, quality is relative in any medium - but you have made an interesting point about how games might differ from other artistic mediums. I would deny passionately that my very favourite films - like Tokyo Story (1957), for example - have 'gotten worse with age'. Their stories, and the technology with which the films were made, predate my existence by decades, yet they are no worse for it. I guess games are different (some would say more multimodal) than films - something about the experience of a game encourages us to be so aware of all the different semiotic components at play. And when one of those components, like the textures, or the animation, or the timbral qualities of the sounds, compare unfavourably to those of contemporary games, it is very noticable - at times detrimental.

I guess you were right at the end, there - that anyone still seeks refuge in Deus Ex reflects poorly on a lot of more modern PC shooters.

As for DX:R remixing the music - I don't like the idea of that. I really like the timbral characteristics of old tracker software that Brandon used. I think it really suited the mood of the game. I am assuming that remixing the music would involve using more modern, timeline-based DAW software like Reason to replace the instruments with versions that are closer to their real-life counterparts. I just feel that the music would lose something in the translation. Then again, I haven't actually heard any of these remixes to comment on their quality, so I'll shut up about that until I know better.

And, going back to the voice acting - yeah, the HK accents were at times crappy. The few instances of actual Cantonese (just those two guys in the temple, right?) were spoken with improper tones, as encinodude wrote. And that kid with the baseball cap wandering around the markets reminds me of the annoying kid from the second Indiana Jones movie

Oh, Louis Pan?

Everyone just kills him on sight.

...right?

I usually refrain from harming children in games, even in Fallout 2 where those little bastards were picking my pockets every five seconds. But when Pan continued disrespect me, even after I had both dragon heads eating out of my hand, I shocked him in the head with the riot prod and dumped his body in the police station.

The gun sounds are probably terrible. It's more jarring for me when the sound of a gun in another game (Crysis? MoH? I forget) constantly includes the tinnitus high-pitched squeal of now-damaged hearing at the end. From the bad audio I know, guns are supposed to go poppity-pop-pop like in Deus Ex, and gunshots aren't supposed to sound like exploding gunpowder propelling projectiles that break the sound barrier. Real gunshot sounds would probably be more immersive after a while.

On the stuff about quality in any medium, I think the audience changes as well. Some of the greatest movies of all time are just too slow for me. I'm not sure if that reflects badly on me or our times/culture, but I'll be watching some great old movies soon to find out. A new player will expect more of graphics and audio, so DX may never be a great game for them. Not until HDTP/NV/DXR at least.

I like the old mod tracker music. DXR's new mastered music sounded a bit annoying to me, since it was slightly different (from the original great music), but not a lot better. Their music with new instruments was far more orchestral, far more powerful, and very enjoyable, but the originals will always be nostalgic and good to me. Fender2k1 was posting samples of his new recreated tracks, and I'm still listening to them.

If DX can be art, then it's odd quirks with silly audio and silly accents can be accepted as a part of the originating culture and times. If it's just a game, these are things that should be updated. I like to have both the original, and the updated versions. I think DX as a game deserves to be updated. Until newer games best it regularly, a generation of gamers is missing out.

I've posted about it before, but new games don't do story properly. DX had a decent plot, but even it was a bit complex and arguably pre-falsified. Crysis has a decent plot, if a bit outlandish. HL2 has a decent plot, maybe even a better plot than DX. I think modern games fail at story telling, partly by treating the plot as if it was all a story needs. HL2 does surprisingly well at storytelling, but it can never leverage the immersive qualities videogames bring as a medium, since Freeman is basically a mute tied to a railway line in every map. Choice is limited to "pistol or shotgun?" in most games. DX has a story, it progresses through the game, the player can alter the story, there's choice everywhere, and there's a whole cast of round (and even a couple dynamic) characters that the player can care about. If everyone in Crysis dies but the aliens, who cares? Players will likely demand that Manderly dies, or try anything to keep Anna alive. Videogames have so much more potential than other mediums since the player interacts, but DX is one of few games that could pass for a good movie, or a good book.

I know the dragon head! <poppity pop> Auuhhww!

on a side note... i have always wondered why there isn't an ending where you remain a puppet to UNATCO and eventually join mj12... that would be cool