ROSS'S GAME DUNGEON: DEUS EX - HUMAN REVOLUTION

[daisekihan]

 

You mentioned all these advantages augmented people have, but do we get a single mention as to whether that's truly an advantage for EMPLOYERS in the job market? Hell, I hear stories all the time of talented and experienced programmers losing their jobs and getting replaced with fresh from college people who are half as good, but work for a third as much. While some fields always need specialists, for most employers maximum profit margin is what counts. So who cares if the augmented guy is twice as good if the job gets done 20% slower with the guy who costs half as much? I don't remember HR addressing that at all. Right now in the current world, it's an employer's market, there's already fierce competition for many jobs WITHOUT disruptions like augmentations, so I'm judging this by real world standards, the way I might for Deus Ex if I suspend my belief about the existence of some technologies. But if you're looking for dramatic symbolism, comparing this using the logic from the real world is unimportant, which is why you see this as a much better game than I do. I mean you mentioned that you can swap in migrants, perfect example:

 

Human Revolution would show increased migrant presence, show the divide of different people over it, and show how society is changing because of increased migrant presence and express concern over the migrant future and where it might go.

 

Deus Ex would show that also (though not as thoroughly), then it would go onto to look at WHY migrants are coming in, discover its due to political disruption in their native region, then discover that was partially due to actions a different government took that destabilized the region in order to achive more control over it. And in the process it would show that some of the things migrants are being blamed for ALSO have other causes that aren't getting mentioned publicly that you're able to uncover, and by the end of the game, you have a better understanding of all the factors in play.

 

 

Ross, it seems like you're almost deliberately missing the point: AUGS DON'T ACTUALLY NEED TO BE TAKING MANY JOBS FOR THEM TO BE A BIG ISSUE OR PEOPLE TO BE SCARED OF THEM. Politicians always have political scapegoats from incredibly small minorities. How many people in the country to you think are actually transgender relative to the importance of transgender issues in the media? It's nowhere near proportionate. Didn't you say in your Deus Ex review (I could be mis-remembering) that way more people are killed by falling pianos than terrorists, and yet look at how important of an issue terrorism is?

 

I mean, you're issue seems to be "I can't see that augs would be efficient enough to be better at enough jobs for anyone to care"--but even if its just restricted to construction (just like the issue with illegal immigrants), even if you could prove maybe 1,000 jobs went to augs that might have otherwise gone to naturals, that would be all a Hannity or Limbaugh would need to get people worked up. Do you really find it that improbable that even that any jobs would be lost.

 

I really think your disappointment at Human Revolution not handling the same issues as the original did is clouding your judgment on this matter. If you were just saying, "This isn't what I was expecting, so I dislike it" I could accept that, but instead you're saying, "This isn't a credible plot development" when your evidence is weak.

 

Also, Eliza Cassan's clothes have nothing to do with anime. See:

 

 

 

 

So yeah, nothing to do with anime. It's part of an aesthetic--see The Fifth Element for something pretty similar. Now, it may be an aesthetic you may not like, but it seems to me you saw one FF reference poster and decided, Ah ha, everything I don't like about the aesthetic of this game is because of this. At the very least, I don't think anyone else has made a connection to anime.

[Heliocentrical]

So yeah, nothing to do with anime. It's part of an aesthetic--see The Fifth Element for something pretty similar.

Don't you see how absurd and jarring a jump from Deus Ex 1's grounded reality to Fifth Element levels of weirdness is? I completely agree with Ross's assessment that this property should be it's own separate entity rather than be held back by using the Deus Ex title in it's name. Like he said it's anchor around Human Revolution's neck that will on serve to constrict it in terms of artistic freedom. People who have played the original Deus Ex GOTY which established what was so fundamental about Deus Ex as a franchise will come into Human Revolution expecting it to be just like Deus Ex GOTY.

 

Also you seem really hung up over the anime comparison Ross made. He only said it a couple and even then they seemed more like backhand sort of comment rather than the meat of his argument. I have never watched anime in my entire life but I can still see all the problems Deus Ex: Human Revolution had. The animations seemed awkward and out of place IMO.

[daisekihan]

So yeah, nothing to do with anime. It's part of an aesthetic--see The Fifth Element for something pretty similar.

Don't you see how absurd and jarring a jump from Deus Ex 1's grounded reality to Fifth Element levels of weirdness is? I completely agree with Ross's assessment that this property should be it's own separate entity rather than be held back by using the Deus Ex title in it's name. Like he said it's anchor around Human Revolution's neck that will on serve to constrict it in terms of artistic freedom. People who have played the original Deus Ex GOTY which established what was so fundamental about Deus Ex as a franchise will come into Human Revolution expecting it to be just like Deus Ex GOTY.

 

Also you seem really hung up over the anime comparison Ross made. He only said it a couple and even then they seemed more like backhand sort of comment rather than the meat of his argument. I have never watched anime in my entire life but I can still see all the problems Deus Ex: Human Revolution had. The animations seemed awkward and out of place IMO.

 

The awkward animations were a part of a transition away from static character discussions during in-game cut-scenes using the real character models instead of a full cutscene (see Skyrim for example), so it's obvious they're going to be awkward. And like someone said, during the "boss" debates, like Taggart's, they aren't awkward at all, so I doubt that they were a deliberate choice elsewhere.

 

Anyway, the costume design is supposed to indicate that this is a period of decadence--I think someone else pointed this out.

 

But I'm bowing out of this discussion at this point. The whole reason I turn to Ross is to learn and think about games without the stress of an online forum and having to debate these things, so this is just defeating the purpose.

[Heliocentrical]

But I'm bowing out of this discussion at this point. The whole reason I turn to Ross is to learn and think about games without the stress of an online forum and having to debate these things, so this is just defeating the purpose.

Then why did you post here to begin with? You can just email Ross about your concerns if you don't want your opinion being called into question by anyone else besides him. Doesn't mean he'll agree with your opinion though and kind of defeats purpose of discussion if you aren't willing to come to terms with the fact that people's opinions differ from your own but whatever.

Edited September 13, 2016 by Guest (see edit history)

[Forgot_My_Account]

But I'm bowing out of this discussion at this point. The whole reason I turn to Ross is to learn and think about games without the stress of an online forum and having to debate these things, so this is just defeating the purpose.

*Ninja'd.

I don't mean to sound rude, but this is a forum. If you wanted to talk to Ross in private and a public discussion ruins it for you - there are multiple ways to contact him.

 

The way I see this discussion is: you like the liberties Eidos Montreal took with the Deus Ex franchise. Ross doesn't because they subtract from the original vision of the game, the way he and many others saw it. Even by saying HR is more theatrical than the first game, you do admit that the first Deus Ex was more grounded even if it was just because of technical limitations - it became a part of its identity.

It's like, if a hotdog stand started selling out steaks, wouldn't it be an improvement? Most would say yes. But it changes the core of the venue. The gameplay of HR is better than that of Deus Ex (although I would say the level design is lacking in comparison, but that's a whole other can of worms), but its approach to storytelling and the storyline in general are radically different to that of Deus Ex, and even its Invisible War. And different isn't necessarily bad, but selling steaks from a hotdog stand just doesn't feel right.

[daisekihan]

But I'm bowing out of this discussion at this point. The whole reason I turn to Ross is to learn and think about games without the stress of an online forum and having to debate these things, so this is just defeating the purpose.

Then why did you post here to begin with? You can just email Ross about your concerns if you don't want your opinion being called into question by anyone else besides him. Doesn't mean he'll agree with your opinion though. After all it is his opinion and only his opinion. You're really coming across as self-centered.

 

Maybe. However, there are obvious points where people are not going to agree and further discussion won't solve it, so I don't feel the need to continue it when I'm not enjoying myself.

 

 

I don't need to be that guy.

 

 

The way I see this discussion is: you like the liberties Eidos Montreal took with the Deus Ex franchise. Ross doesn't because they subtract from the original vision of the game, the way he and many others saw it. Even by saying HR is more theatrical than the first game, you do admit that the first Deus Ex was more grounded even if it was just because of technical limitations - it became a part of its identity.

It's like, if a hotdog stand started selling out steaks, wouldn't it be an improvement? Most would say yes. But it changes the core of the venue. The gameplay of HR is better than that of Deus Ex (although I would say the level design is lacking in comparison, but that's a whole other can of worms), but its approach to storytelling and the storyline in general are radically different to that of Deus Ex, and even its Invisible War. And different isn't necessarily bad, but selling steaks from a hotdog stand just doesn't feel right.

 

I agree that on the whole, it's just a matter of taste or what the person in question was anticipating. But not all of Ross's criticisms are stated like this, they are stated in terms of "This isn't plausible" or "This is poor exposition", particularly in the way the game shifts the focus to augments as being such a big deal.

Edited September 13, 2016 by Guest (see edit history)

[Heliocentrical]

Maybe. However, there are obvious points where people are not going to agree and further discussion won't solve it, so I don't feel the need to continue it when it's not amusing me.

It's called reaching an impasse and happens all the time. Just leave if it's making you so miserable.

[Magnificentophat]

I was looking through the credits, and I couldn't find where that pixel art version of Deus Ex came from. Does anyone know, or am I missing something really obvious?

[Ross Scott]

Ross, it seems like you're almost deliberately missing the point: AUGS DON'T ACTUALLY NEED TO BE TAKING MANY JOBS FOR THEM TO BE A BIG ISSUE OR PEOPLE TO BE SCARED OF THEM. Politicians always have political scapegoats from incredibly small minorities. How many people in the country to you think are actually transgender relative to the importance of transgender issues in the media? It's nowhere near proportionate. Didn't you say in your Deus Ex review (I could be mis-remembering) that way more people are killed by falling pianos than terrorists, and yet look at how important of an issue terrorism is?

I fully understand this point, sorry if I haven't explained this clearly. My issue is assuming that is true, I still don't find it PORTRAYED in a believable way. You can absolutely have a minor issue get blown out of proportion, but it needs FUEL and would be done in certain ways. Transgender stuff has gotten disproportionate media attention because that riles people up to get views, but it doesn't persist. If you talk to 10 people on the street, none of them are going to be talking about transgender people. Terrorism has had way more fuel, but 9/11 killed about 3000 people in the most public and symbolic way possible in what was the largest foreign attack in the USA, bigger than Pearl Harbor. If you noticed, I didn't have an issue with the believability of the Templars in IW, because the whole game built up what a huge deal religious influence is in that culture, so it MAKES SENSE for that fictional world, if you suspend your disbelief about there being a one-world religion. HR wants suspended disbelief after disbelief.

 

Disbelief #1:

VERY few people would get augmentations because cutting off your arm, having brain surgery and becoming dependent on a monpolized drug is really scary and isn't worth it, even if you have a better chance at getting a job. It's a borderline horror story.

 

Disbelief #2:

I don't get anything concrete as to how much of an advantage this really is. If you're 10% better at your job, that's no guarantee of employment. Look at how many QUALIFIED college graduates have trouble getting work.

 

Disbelief #3: The game doesn't make a case that augmentations would actually be hired en masse, because CHEAP "good enough" workers are what most businesses need for most of its workforce. I don't hear any economic argument for this. "It helps Malik fly better." Like we don't have an abundance of qualified pilots right now? A lot of pilots are underpaid as it is. How is an augmented person going to be able to afford to work at rock bottom wages?

 

Disbelief #4:

I don't understand how this is shaping human evolution anymore than having pro-athletes or astophysicists walking among us today does. Life is still extremely competitive even if you have talents. You can be an amazing athlete and still not make it into the NFL. If I'm going to cut off my arm, it needs to make the best artist on the PLANET. The game just likes to get really vague about all this and makes it seem like a minor advantage.

 

Disbelief #5:

(I'll make a one-world news network a freebie) It doesn't seem like there's any MOTIVE for the Illuminati to create artificial controversy on augmentations, it sounds like they want to control it, which means not letting it spill out too much.

 

Disbelief #6:

The game doesn't make much of a case as to why people would buy this reasoning. I don't hear any stories from people who thought it wasn't an issue, but then came around and realized it was. How is everyone being sold on this?

 

Disbelief #7:

If the wool is being pulled over people's eyes and blaming augmented people for something else, how come in this entire world I can't get the ACTUAL reasons for what's going on?

 

 

So you're trying to convince me #6 can happen, and yes, I agree. It's absolutely possible under the right circumstances, but the game doesn't make a very compelling case for it. So if I accept 6, I need to accept 1-5 also, which the game also doesn't explain clearly. It's this chain of faith combined with unrealistic people sprinkled about that just suggest bad writing. Do you see what I'm getting at?

 

So yeah, nothing to do with anime. It's part of an aesthetic--see The Fifth Element for something pretty similar. Now, it may be an aesthetic you may not like, but it seems to me you saw one FF reference poster and decided, Ah ha, everything I don't like about the aesthetic of this game is because of this. At the very least, I don't think anyone else has made a connection to anime.

Two things you're misunderstanding:

 

1. I don't hate the costume design and other over the top things they do. I think they have a lot of talent and it's interesting. I just think it's in the WRONG GAME. I don't want to see a bunch of Carribean pirates if I'm playing a game about ancient Rome. Same concept. This is a prequel to an established IP, so of course I have some expectations of the range of possibilities. It's irrelevant whether something in the game is truly an anime influence or not, that's just a guess on my part. The point is it's not Deus Ex.

 

2. The decadence is SO decadent it destroying the strength of the first of game of being grounded in reality. It's fantasy. It belongs in an over-the-top sci fi environment. The 80s were somewhat decadent for America and newscasters looked about the same, maybe they had a little more shoulderpads in their suit. Businessmen had more slicked back hair. Human Revolution gives us a Lady Gaga news anchor and Queen Elizabeth as a biotech corporation CEO.

[daisekihan]

This whole thing is still stressing me out, but since you responded, I'll respond once more.

 

 

Disbelief #1:

VERY few people would get augmentations because cutting off your arm, having brain surgery and becoming dependent on a monpolized drug is really scary and isn't worth it, even if you have a better chance at getting a job. It's a borderline horror story.

 

 

The game explains that the main people getting augmented are involved in construction. Some of this is talked about more in the MD, but one example is the pilot in that game has a limp (I think he's Australian or South African) from being attacked during the aug incident, but he doesn't blame the guy because he knew him personally and knew he was pressured by the company he worked for into getting augs (indeed, the company paid for them). Just suppose they did a cost benefit analysis and found that they could have a single augmented worker do the job of ten men, and that the augmentations would pay for themselves in a year--then they give the guy the option of either getting augs, or he's fired (which they can do in most At-Will jobs)--is it really that hard to imagine someone desperate, maybe even someone in the country illegally, wouldn't agree?

 

Also, more than one company makes anti-rejection drugs, I don't know where you're getting that. It only happens that there's only one producer in Mankind Divided.

 

Disbelief #2:

I don't get anything concrete as to how much of an advantage this really is. If you're 10% better at your job, that's no guarantee of employment. Look at how many QUALIFIED college graduates have trouble getting work.

 

Jensen can lift a refrigerator without losing any energy and shove it across a room. That's not 10% added benefit in a job where strength is needed. You're still looking at this as though there needs to be some massive loss of jobs in all sorts of fields for this to happen, which it doesn't. And it's not as improbable as you think that a cost-benefit analysis could show that if one aug can do the job of several naturals, it's worth getting him augmented.

 

Disbelief #3: The game doesn't make a case that augmentations would actually be hired en masse, because CHEAP "good enough" workers are what most businesses need for most of its workforce. I don't hear any economic argument for this. "It helps Malik fly better." Like we don't have an abundance of qualified pilots right now? A lot of pilots are underpaid as it is. How is an augmented person going to be able to afford to work at rock bottom wages?

 

I refer to the point above---all that it would have to take is a few, just enough to get people riled up. You keep on falling back on it not being reasonable for people to object, because the numbers would be small, but you're assuming people are always reasonable. I mentioned the transgender issue, which isn't as much of a passing thing as you think. PayPal left North Carolina and a lot of people lost their jobs because of that bathroom law--that's not something people effected (like they would be in Detroit, which is at the center of the aug issue in the game) have forgotten about.

 

Also, it seems in most cases, it's company paying for the augmentation, not the individual.

 

Disbelief #4:

I don't understand how this is shaping human evolution anymore than having pro-athletes or astophysicists walking among us today does. Life is still extremely competitive even if you have talents. You can be an amazing athlete and still not make it into the NFL.

 

It's about the blending of the mind with the machine. If you can get rid of the arms and legs, next you can get rid of the torso, next the whole body except the brain, and the essence of what it means to be human changes. You get people with collective consciences or integrating their minds with AI. That's definitely something pretty drastic.

 

 

Disbelief #5:

(I'll make a one-world news network a freebie) It doesn't seem like there's any MOTIVE for the Illuminati to create artificial controversy on augmentations, it sounds like they want to control it, which means not letting it spill out too much.

 

From what I recall, the Illuminati doesn't think people are ready for augs yet, they need to grow more (or something). I'll agree it is a weakness, but it seems more like they think the risks of augmentation letting people wrest control from them are higher than the benefit of using them to control people

 

Disbelief #6:

The game doesn't make much of a case as to why people would buy this reasoning. I don't hear any stories from people who thought it wasn't an issue, but then came around and realized it was. How is everyone being sold on this?

 

Augs are different from people, that's all it takes. It's not even clear that the majority of people in the game's world, of which we only see a small portion, are anti-aug. Again, do you think most people who support Donald Trump have been directly affected by illegal immigration? All they need to see is Mexicans in the construction site across the street from where they work to get mad.

 

Disbelief #7:

If the wool is being pulled over people's eyes and blaming augmented people for something else, how come in this entire world I can't get the ACTUAL reasons for what's going on?

 

I don't know what you mean here--what's going on is a conspiracy of elite powerbrokers has deemed augmentations to be dangerous, so they are manipulating events to prevent them from becoming more widespread. I suppose the "reason" is that Sarif was just about to introduce low cost augs that anyone could get. Even if it was just the retinal replacement, or the social enhancer (just suppose it works better than the game seems to show), some people would get them. So the Illuminati has to stop this by setting up a terrorist attack.

 

On the costumes, if you feel that way, I guess that's your right. I didn't mind it, since as I've said I haven't played the original and I don't have any attachment to any particular aesthetic. I still don't think, though, that the HR is saddled with the IP, as I've said before, and more than Chrono Cross was saddled with Chrono Trigger.

[Heliocentrical]

suppose they did a cost benefit analysis and found that they could have a single augmented worker do the job of ten men, and that the augmentations would pay for themselves in a year--then they give the guy the option of either getting augs, or he's fired (which they can do in most At-Will jobs)--is it really that hard to imagine someone desperate, maybe even someone in the country illegally, wouldn't agree?

That's actually not too far fetched considering that companies right now are replacing workers with robots that can do the jobs of multiple workers. Not exactly the right prediction when it comes to reality but pretty close. Replace robots with augmented workers and those instances become somewhat similar.

 

I still don't think, though, that the HR is saddled with the IP, as I've said before, and more than Chrono Cross was saddled with Chrono Trigger.

Tell that to the people who played and enjoyed the classic Fallout games. To this day those people still hate Fallout 3 & 4 for not being like 1 nor 2.

 

Which ever game in a franchise you start with and enjoy sets a precedent for what you expect out of it's sequel. If the sequel then doesn't meet or raise the bar their predecessor set then you in turn will be disappointed. You started with and enjoyed Deus Ex: Human Revolution and so that's where your bar is. For the sake of argument I'll also assume you liked Deus Ex: Mankind divided just as much as Human Revolution because from what I've heard from reviews they're pretty similar games. Mankind Divided has met your bar because all you know in regards to Deus Ex is Human Revolution.

 

Ross started with and enjoyed the original Deus Ex GOTY . Keep in mind that Deus Ex GOTY is considered by many long time gamers to be the greatest game of all time. So that's one hell of a precedent set right of the bat and judging by Ross's Game Dungeon for Deus Ex GOTY his feelings towards the game very much align with this precedent. So when neither Invisible War nor Human Revolution came anywhere near meeting Ross's expectations for them he was disappointed and rightly so. Those games aren't what Deus Ex means to him.

 

This is the problem we eventually run into with sequels/new games entering already established franchises. Depending on which game you start with and enjoy that's what you'll think of in regards to the rest of the franchise whether all games within are completely the same or different from one another. Hell I'm willing to wager that there's a group of Deus Ex fans who only like Invisible War and believe that the rest of the Deus Ex fan base are nothing but a bunch of crazy people. For them Deus Ex means one thing, the Kidneythieves.

Edited September 14, 2016 by Guest (see edit history)

[daisekihan]

Tell that to the people who played and enjoyed the classic Fallout games. To this day those people still hate Fallout 3 & 4 for not being like 1 nor 2.

 

Which ever game in a franchise you start with and enjoy sets a precedent for what you expect out of it's sequel. If the sequel then doesn't meet or raise the bar their predecessor set then you in turn will be disappointed. You started with and enjoyed Deus Ex: Human Revolution and so that's where your bar is. For the sake of argument I'll also assume you liked Deus Ex: Mankind divided just as much as Human Revolution because from what I've heard from reviews they're pretty similar games. Mankind Divided has met your bar because all you know in regards to Deus Ex is Human Revolution.

 

Ross started with and enjoyed the original Deus Ex GOTY . Keep in mind that Deus Ex GOTY is considered by many long time gamers to be the greatest game of all time. So that's one hell of a precedent set right of the bat and judging by Ross's Game Dungeon for Deus Ex GOTY his feelings towards the game very much align with this precedent. So when neither Invisible War nor Human Revolution came anywhere near meeting Ross's expectations for them he was disappointed and rightly so. Those games aren't what Deus Ex means to him.

 

 

Yeah, I get all that. I did like Mankind Divided, though not as much (it cuts off at what feels like the 2/3 point and feels like sequel-bait). I was really pissed off, for example, with all the changes they made to Mass Effect 2. But I still think Ross is being a little too hard on Human Revolution, though it is understandable.

[ScumCoder]

Federova is the only exception in the vanilla game. No tricks here, you just have to gun her down.

I played only Director's Cut so I don't know how it was in original DEHR, but there are several different ways to dispatch Federova (besides the obvious). IIRC you can break the servers (which makes them explode) and lure Federova near them; cause a short-circuit which hurts Federova because the floor is covered with water; break through a wall, go upstairs into a room with a canister of poisonous gas and turn the valve; and finally hack a terminal and use a machine gun turret (in that same upstairs room).

[Aquinas]

In the original all the bosses, including Federova, could only be beaten by being shot down. That upstairs area you are talking about was explicitly added in the directors cut. I was pretty impressed with how much they added to each boss fight in terms of additional areas etc; but then they did face quite a significant backlash. Somewhat unjustified since, if memory serves, you couldn't really avoid fights with Anna Navarra or Walter Simons in the classic game (though of course you could ambush them).

[klasodeth]

In the original all the bosses, including Federova, could only be beaten by being shot down. That upstairs area you are talking about was explicitly added in the directors cut. I was pretty impressed with how much they added to each boss fight in terms of additional areas etc; but then they did face quite a significant backlash. Somewhat unjustified since, if memory serves, you couldn't really avoid fights with Anna Navarra or Walter Simons in the classic game (though of course you could ambush them).

As I recall, Walton Simons could be avoided by simply running past him, but Anna Navarra and Gunther Hermann couldn't be avoided without exploits. There is a notable difference with Anna and Gunther though. While the game does require you to kill them, you don't have to actually fight them. Deus Ex did reward exploration and hacking by allowing the player to figure out their kill phrases, which made killing them as easy as selecting the correct dialogue option. The original version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution did not have a similar reward for non-combat builds.

[Aquinas]

Yep, the kill phrases. A feature (correct term?) they brought back in mankind divided

[Zelpa]

Found it interesting that you liked the takedown attacks, they were pretty annoying to me and took me out of the game.

[Connectamabob]

In the original all the bosses, including Federova, could only be beaten by being shot down

 

Not 100% true: the takedown trick for Namir works, and IIRC so does the gas canister thing for Barrett. The Namir takedown was actually an exploitable bug in the original version, but because people liked it the devs never patched it.

 

 

On the video:

I actually like the yellow filter thing in the original HR. I feel it's on of the few games that actually uses color filters for real artistic style purposes, and not just blindly cramming it into the stack of cargo-cult "must have" features like other games. I feel like a lot of the hate it gets is basically a case of all the jackass devs misusing a thing causing people to be so sick of it that they can't enjoy it even when it's done well. It's victim of a "this is why we can't have nice things" situation.

 

Sort of like a movie using bullet time shots in a legitimately interesting way... 5 years into the Matrix-spawned trend of every single hack action director throwing random bullet time shots into everything, everywhere. No matter how smartly it's done, at that point most people are going to roll their eyes and go "Oh god, not this AGAIN. Just MOVE ON already".

 

Ross's argument of "imagine if every game used a yellow filter like this" is kinda broken in a way that ties into this. It's like criticizing The Matrix by saying "Imagine if every action movie did this". First, in that the subsequent overuse by hack directors doesn't mean it wasn't good in The Matrix. Second, it assumes that anything that can't be used in every game/film is somehow made categorically bad by that limitation. What if every movie was set in Antarctica? Would that suck? Yes. Would that Make "The Thing" a bad movie? No.

 

What if every single story (movie or game) could only have Muppet characters?

What if every single soundtrack could only be done by Phillip Glass?

What if every visual media had to be in Sin City-style accented B&W?

What if every single cast could only be all female, or all male.

What if every single game had to revolve around quasi-predictive 90's conspiracy theories?

 

The argument only seems to work if the element in question is one you already dislike for other reasons, and you aren't thinking about it too hard, because any possible element of any game or movie or other media can be equally damned by it.

 

The extension of that thinking is, ironically, a world where all media is a samey void; nothing stands out, nothing breaks new ground, established formula is law. Because literally anything that's different, good or bad, can be ruined if it's overused, or used in the wrong contexts.

[ScumCoder]

Okay, after re-watching this episode for the third time I can't hold anymore.

 

Ross, I just can't understand why didn't you like the DEHR music. So far our tastes were essentially identical in this regard (e.g. I'm a diehard fan of Alexander Brandon, just like you).

 

But I liked the soundtrack to Human Revolution so much! "A dash of Daft Punk" was IMHO exactly what was needed to give the soundtrack a cyberpunky feel. "Not too much" was a good decision too, because Daft Punk is also "like a nutmeg".

 

And I disagree that "nothing stood out". Five years later I still have the DEHR soundtrack in my player. It has such a distinctive, anxious and slightly somber, feel that I immediately hear it in my head whenever I see DEHR art or just think about this game. And vice versa, whenever a track starts playing I immediately imagine the corresponding part of the game.

 

It is also very coherent. Every track, from the famous "Icarus" to fight themes, to ambient music all carry a little touch of Michael McCann.

 

Anyway, the whole rest of this episode I found great and straight to the point, so please don't think that I'm a yet another butthurting DEHR fanboy.

 

 

 

[John]

I still find it interesting everyone's cought up in the game we forget how scary the whole oil thing is.