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Deus Ex: Invisible War


kano

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Thoughts on this game? Mine are that, even though it is dumbed down and simplified in almost every possible way from the original, there's still a good game/experience to be had inside. The big plus over the original game is that IW feels more like multiple powerful organizations are manipulating you to serve their agenda, as opposed to being simply thrown in the middle of a conflict between parties A and B. This makes the world feel more alive, in spite of how small the world in IW actually is.

 

There are some bugs (passing through the floor), but not as many as Thief 3 with it's body awareness system. Also you are pretty much free to switch sides up until the very end, as opposed to The Nameless Mod, where your actions early on dictate your allegiance for the rest of the game. Some will like this, others won't.

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I liked it years ago (rather a decade ago). But, I tried it a few years ago, and found the level design way too claustrophobic. It takes the whole realism out of the game world. I get it, they had to design it that way due to console memory restraints, but, I really can't play it anymore now. Same with Thief Deadly Shadows. 

It's a real shame, because, both games would be great if it wasn't for the level/game world design.

You probably already know them, but, IMO, Deus Ex Human Revolution and Mankind Divided are the much more worthy successors. Even though they do have some things which I despise from modern games (like the unbearable do-gooder political shit they try to plaster the games with these days).

Edited by chakkman
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Yeah I was watching someone else play Invisible War last night, and they brought up how all the characters they have encountered thus far in Invisible War who give the player side quests to complete, are so dark and sinister. They in fact compared it to the newer games, which they said side-quests are more about helping people and doing good. lol

To be fair though, the later side-quests in Invisible war, which that player has yet to reach, aren't "evil" e.g. the one about finding out what is happening to students in the academy or cleaning the pollution.

I think if the Xbox hadn't existed, DX2 and Thief 3 would have been superbly excellent games.

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4 hours ago, kano said:

I think if the Xbox hadn't existed, DX2 and Thief 3 would have been superbly excellent games.

I think the games wouldn't have differed much in regards to gameplay and level design and we would be holding the same conversation just complaining about different aspects that we didn't liked.

Personally I've played both games several times, which means they didn't do too much wrong imho. The first Deus Ex already had split up maps with comparable small areas, so it wasn't such a break compared with Thief. Besides that the only real downside for me was the lack of a synchro for Deadly Shadows, while oddly enough DX2 received one.

I wouldn't say that DX3 and DX4 are better, they are just different.

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Oh man. I have a lot to say about Invisible War but I think this dude summarizes most of what I think much better than I could explain:

 

Also if you do intend to play Invisible War at some point, please for the love of God, install this unofficial patch after installing the game: https://www.moddb.com/mods/deus-ex-2-visible-upgrade/downloads/visible-upgrade-full-edition

The quality of life improvements are so significant it's basically mandatory on modern systems. It adds widescreen resolutions, removes the pop back to desktop between level loads/quickloads, adds some really good community texture packs, and so on.

10 hours ago, kano said:

I think if the Xbox hadn't existed, DX2 and Thief 3 would have been superbly excellent games.

If you go and look up screenshots of Invisible War, it's actually quite fascinating just how much variation there is between pre-release screenshots made during development and what was actually released. There is a particular screenshot that shows what is clearly a PC-centric HUD kinda similar to that in the original Deus Ex, which makes me think the decision to make the game cross-platform with the Xbox was not in the original design and perhaps came from Eidos management. Unfortunately the exact screenshot I remember well but seems to be partially lost to the Internet as it's REALLY hard to find. I'll keep looking. :)

EDIT: This isn't the image I'm looking for but it does show the HUD I'm thinking about. If only they didn't experiment with the eyeball HUD they ended up with...

DeusExInvisibleWar-HUDDesignB1.png

Edited by Xolvix
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A word of warning, Agent Denton. This was a simulated experience; real LAMs will not be so forgiving.

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12 hours ago, chakkman said:

Big cities usually don't cause claustrophoby.

I am not sure that this is true. I guess it depends on the city you are in. Also, the feeling of claustrophoby actually fits the theme pretty well, imho. I mean, it is a dystopia.

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As are the other Deus Ex'. And, I didn't mean the claustrophoby you get from loads of people around you. The levels are too narrow. Ceilngs are too low. Etc. You simply see that they had to do these limitations in the game world design. It doesn't appear realistic.

Anyway, maybe I should shut up, because, even though I have these points of criticism, I plan to play IW through soon. 😂

Edited by chakkman
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low ceilings...

Reminds me of what I saw one time while playing this game. The SSC and I got into a battle with the Templars in the terminal area. An SSC guard threw a grenade, and promptly blew himself up along with his friends because the AI doesn't seem to compensate for low ceilings, and so the grenade traveled two feet at most and landed right near the squad of SSC guys.

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10 hours ago, chakkman said:

I didn't mean the claustrophoby you get from loads of people around you.

I know, that's agoraphoby ;)

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Not necessarily, if you feel spatially constrained by loads of people. ;)

Anyway. The level design of Invisible Wars is the most "claustrophobic" of the Deus Ex'. Period. There is no other Deus Ex game which has such narrow and small levels.

Edited by chakkman
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No worries, "claustrophobic" is the exact same terminology I was thinking of to describe the level layout in this game.  Yet in spite of the game's various flaws and problems, I still can't hate it. I enjoy the story and the setting and the soundscape overall (Like Thief).

If someone made an expansion pack or new mod for DX2 similar to The Nameless Mod, I would definitely give it a go, too bad that can't happen.

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You've named the Nameless mod twice already. You have good taste. :)

I may as well also suggest Deus Ex: Nihilum. Kinda similar in terms of production values as well as having plenty of voiced NPCs.

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A word of warning, Agent Denton. This was a simulated experience; real LAMs will not be so forgiving.

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14 hours ago, Xolvix said:

You've named the Nameless mod twice already. You have good taste. :)

I may as well also suggest Deus Ex: Nihilum. Kinda similar in terms of production values as well as having plenty of voiced NPCs.

 

There are also great soundtracks.

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"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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  • 6 months later...

Did anyone test the Deus Ex: Invisible War ESRGAN Pack? Appart from enhanced textures:

Quote

An outmatch number of textures in Deus Ex: Invisible War were missing normal maps and represented flat ingame. For diffuse textures without normal maps I used Awesome Bump program to recreate them. Second program I used was material library editing utility for Thief 3 and Deus Ex 2 by snobel. I inserted all my created normal maps to the corresponding diffuse textures. I created new 597 normal maps and inserted or edited 1008 entries in material library. Also I linked reflections cubemap for most of the metal and marble surfaces that lacked any.

Same guy also created a similar upgrade for Thief 3.

Edited by datiswous
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