Dishonored 2 is a masterpiece. It's slightly more focused on gameplay than story/atmosphere, and the structure is more like a Hitman game - you move from "level to level to level" and can't backtrack but each level is a huge and sprawling, detailed thing.
If you're going to play Deus Ex, i'd recommend the original (2000) or Human Revolution. Mankind Divided is nice but i couldn't get past a few hours of it - it lacks that energy and vitality that makes imsims like Prey, System Shock and Dishonored so compelling.
Deus Ex 1 and HR are more what you want - especially the first. Crazy connected levels, great cyberpunk story, etc.
Dishonored 2 and Mankind Divided are both excellent.
Dishonored 2 is probably my favorite Arkane title despite its lackluster story. The level design is superb, the world is beautifully crafted and it gives you a ton of options to tackle any given scenario.
What he said. I think Human Revolution was a fantastic game and the atmosphere is really thick. I don't really remember anything even particularly bad about it minus the pre-Director's Cut boss fights (which were few and far between) and the fact you couldn't turn off the dramatic 'kill cam' whenever you stealth kill someone.
EDIT: I do have to add though that Human Revolution (again) was my first Deus Ex game and I still have yet to play the original so it didn't really have to live up to that for me.
EDIT#2: Fixed, yes yes, I meant Human Revolution, not sure how I confused the titles.
Not going to lie, I hit a high frustration point today.
I'm in the GUTS part, and I fucking hate all this anti gravity shit. I made it through the first part, but now i'm in this winding corrider with seemingly 5 different ways to go (with the yellow light stuff everywhere). On top of dealing with shitty controls,
I'm having to fight new enemies that are killing my propulsion system and throwing me into shit. Just fucking done.
What he said. I think Mankind Divided was a fantastic game and the atmosphere is really thick. I don't really remember anything even particularly bad about it minus the pre-Director's Cut boss fights (which were few and far between) and the fact you couldn't turn off the dramatic 'kill cam' whenever you stealth kill someone.
EDIT: I do have to add though that Mankind Divided was my first Deus Ex game and I still have yet to play the original so it didn't really have to live up to that for me.
What he said. I think Mankind Divided was a fantastic game and the atmosphere is really thick. I don't really remember anything even particularly bad about it minus the pre-Director's Cut boss fights (which were few and far between) and the fact you couldn't turn off the dramatic 'kill cam' whenever you stealth kill someone.
EDIT: I do have to add though that Mankind Divided was my first Deus Ex game and I still have yet to play the original so it didn't really have to live up to that for me.
Yeah should be under game options or something on the pause screen. You can change it any time you want this way and it doesn't effect cheevos at all afaik.
Yeah should be under game options or something on the pause screen. You can change it any time you want this way and it doesn't effect cheevos at all afaik.
Really? I couldn't get past the ham-fisted writing and I didn't dig the vibe in Prague at all so I quit less than 2 hours in. Maybe I'll give it another shot but boy I really hated the writing.
Dishonored 2 is a masterpiece. It's slightly more focused on gameplay than story/atmosphere, and the structure is more like a Hitman game - you move from "level to level to level" and can't backtrack but each level is a huge and sprawling, detailed thing.
If you're going to play Deus Ex, i'd recommend the original (2000) or Human Revolution. Mankind Divided is nice but i couldn't get past a few hours of it - it lacks that energy and vitality that makes imsims like Prey, System Shock and Dishonored so compelling.
Deus Ex 1 and HR are more what you want - especially the first. Crazy connected levels, great cyberpunk story, etc.
Man, I feel like the one who never liked the Dishonored games as much as the other immersive sims, even last year I vastly preferred Mankind Divided-so much so that it was my GOTY. The world design and atmosphere always felt very artificial, like they were trying to imitate Thief and evoke nostalgia for the olden days without really committing to a coherent vision, and the biggest sin for me was the writing- Mankind Divided had its problems but those sidequests are among the best in videogames, right up there with The Witcher 3. Dishonored 1 had bad writing but Dishonored 2's writing almost made me not want to play the game. The artificiality of the world didn't help, it just felt so manufactured and mechanical as opposed to games like Deus Ex or Bioshock.
Its also way I guess as of now Prey is my favorite Arkane game, even thought it slavishly follows the immersive sim tradition (sometimes a little too close for comfort), the world feels more "real" and the writing in the audio logs/emails not only immerses but makes me genuinely interested in these crew members. The premise is also intriguing, the early twist I thought was very well executed.
Really? I couldn't get past the ham-fisted writing and I didn't dig the vibe in Prague at all so I quit less than 2 hours in. Maybe I'll give it another shot but boy I really hated the writing.
I mean yeah the writing is whatever (just like in HR), but the game is probably the most DX like game since they started coming back out. It's basically like if someone decided to look at the NYC Streets level from DX1 and made a game out of it. It's awesome. When the game narrows on you for plot reasons it gets less impressive (other than the amazing last level), but I thoroughly enjoyed all 40 hours that I put into it. Does it feel like half a game? Yeah, it does narratively. It's still a fantastic game in the package it presents though.
The first game that comes to mind when thinking of MD is Mass Effect 2. It really feels like a game with a 5 hour plot that was designed around around questing and exploration, plus side missions. Granted, the side characters here are mostly cardboard cutouts without any of the panache some of the more interesting ME2 characters had flowing out of their ass, but from a mechanical perspective the game is most definitely not one to be missed.
Really? I couldn't get past the ham-fisted writing and I didn't dig the vibe in Prague at all so I quit less than 2 hours in. Maybe I'll give it another shot but boy I really hated the writing.
I need to get back to Mankind Divided one of these days, I only put a few hours into it before wandering off to play something else. It definitely didn't grab me the same way Human Revolution did, though.
Just finished Prey, 32 hours total. Ending spoilers:
I read the ending as you always being a Typhon, placed in a simulation of Talos I. The operators you see at the end, I assume, are AI versions of actual people, either generated specifically for the simulation or somehow downloaded from the actual people at some point. They were clearly there to observe and interact with you in the simulation. I'd agree that this can't have taken place more than a few years after the actual events aboard Talos I, though I would love to know how that original event turned out and whether we followed the same reasoning as the original Morgan.
One interesting bit of foreshadowing (sort of) I haven't seen mentioned yet: if you managed to get Calvino's crew cabin keycard, you would've found his Looking Glass Visor prototype work (though not the visor itself, if I remember correctly).
All in all, a fantastic experience. I find I have very few complaints. Definitely a stellar game in a year already full of them.
Oh, also: here are some things I clearly should have recycled:
17 bananas
20 cans of Duck Beer
23 typhon lures (I think I used one total)
31 EMP charges (I think I used three of these?)
50 suit repair kits (lol)
51 bags of spare parts (though honestly they were great for turrets and operators)
108 psi hypos (lolwtf)
I need to get back to Mankind Divided one of these days, I only put a few hours into it before wandering off to play something else. It definitely didn't grab me the same way Human Revolution did, though.
Deus Ex HR was one of my favs of the generation. MD....was not. Like others said, the "mechanical apartheid" writing just didn't work for me. However, the exploration is fun, and the game gets MUCH better toward the end - the lowest points in the game are the introduction in Dubai and the Golem City & ARC complex sections. Sidequests are well-written and enjoyable. If I recall from the credits, there was a different team writing the sidequests vs. main quests.
Also, I just beat a Nightmare to death with my wrench and took no damage. More like a speedbump than a Nightmare eh
I feel like gigantic open ended environments are a bad fit for immersive sims, so I couldn't get into Mankind Divided or all the city environments in Dishonored 2. I greatly prefer how much more intricate and personal the levels in Prey are.
Well I'm not sure of your abilities and what weapons you've upgraded. Combat Focus is always useful.
Q-Beam destroys the thing. It's also susceptible to fire and explosion so if you have Typhon powers like Superthermal that would work.
Nullwave transmitter will disable its abilities. You'll definitely want to chuck those at it to keep it continuously disabled if you don't have combat focus.
You can sneak and use your stun gun or mindjack to free people as you see them before the confrontation so you don't have to deal with any suicide bombers while you fight the Telepath.
Psycho shock and the stun gun both render them pretty harmless for a good amount of time. If you have either of those you can just use them and then bonk with a wrench.
Do mind-controlled humans get in your way? Sneak around and knock them out carefully one by one with the stun gun, if you have this gun and the ammo. Also, it would probably help if you list your combat-related neuromods.
Part of me wonders if GAF could support a Prey spoilers thread. I have questions that need answering (or at minimum, rank speculation)! ENDING SPOILERS BELOW
So there's October, December and January. Who are these personalities? Were they just successive versions of Morgan's sentient message-in-a-bottle to herself? Was October originally intended to support Morgan's plant to use the nullwave prototype to destroy the Typhon presence on the station? Is January actually Morgan's operator, or was it placed there by some outside force? The transcribe you find in Alex's safe room suggests his original agenda was to destroy the station if the Typhon got out of hand; does January actually represent HIS interests, before Morgan convinced Alex the nullwave was the best course of action? Or is that just an odd coincidence? There's a potential mirror image here of Alex thinking initially the station had to be destroyed if the Typhon ever got out of hand, and then apparently over the course of the sim lab experiments deciding Morgan was in fact right, whereas the evolution from October to January implies Morgan went through the opposite transformation.
Also, what's with December? Why would Morgan have created an operator who would convince her to escape from Talos I instead of destroying it or using the nullwave? Was December invented in the midst of Morgan's psychological drift between experiments? How did December survive long enough for January to murder it?
Finally, with the revelation that everything was a simulation, is it possible some or all of the operators are actually fabrications created by Alex to test for or provoke certain reactions from Morgan? It is curious that Alex and January are set up as opposing forces from the start; in some ways it's a little convenient. What if there never actually was a January, and that's why everything's as fucked up on Earth as it is now? Just how different is the simulation from actual events?
Dishonored 2 is a masterpiece. It's slightly more focused on gameplay than story/atmosphere, and the structure is more like a Hitman game - you move from "level to level to level" and can't backtrack but each level is a huge and sprawling, detailed thing.
If you're going to play Deus Ex, i'd recommend the original (2000) or Human Revolution. Mankind Divided is nice but i couldn't get past a few hours of it - it lacks that energy and vitality that makes imsims like Prey, System Shock and Dishonored so compelling.
Deus Ex 1 and HR are more what you want - especially the first. Crazy connected levels, great cyberpunk story, etc.
Mankind Divided is weird. It's like the best game I've been completely apathetic to playing. Release just kind of happened, and I bought it on sale but haven't felt too much of a desire to dive in for very long.
Part of me wonders if GAF could support a Prey spoilers thread. I have questions that need answering (or at minimum, rank speculation)! ENDING SPOILERS BELOW
I can't say how similar Prey is, since I haven't played it yet unfortunately. But do yourself a favor and play Dishonored 1 & 2 and also Deus Ex HR & MD.
FWIW I stuck with the silenced pistol the entire game and never used the golden gun once. I was fine. The golden gun does seem to do slightly more damage, but lacks the silencer; I mostly used the pistol to sneak attack mimics so the non-silenced variant wouldn't have done me much good anyways. Early in the game, you lean on the pistol more, so upgrading it is a good idea regardless.
That John Carpenter tweet is great. Really cool to see him praising the game like that and it sure deserves it too. Imagine if a new The Thing game would be made. Arkane might be the one for the job.
Prey definitely is my favorite Arkane game now and I hope they continue like this.
Is this just out in open space, or are you flying into a hull breach? If it's the latter, chances are there's a sparking panel nearby. Cover it with gloo to temporarily stop the electricity discharge. You can then fix the panel if you want it to stop permanently, or do what you need to do in the area and get out quickly if you don't want to waste the spare parts or don't have the repair skill.
I just unlocked the last sprint/jump upgrade and I'Ve been exploring the Arboretum.
I found a spot behind a wall that looks like you were behind a movie set where there's a bunch of stuff to loot lol
Also I got to Alex's office just by jumping around and even got to the escape pod by "Skyriming" my way over there.
Best feeling.
Edit: (near endgame spoiler)
Wait... So I just got the escape pod keycard so I can just leave the station? I assume that this ends the game? I feel like I have still so much to do... Also this isn't a main mission?
Finished the game, 25 hours according to Steam. Still missed a lot of stuff (transcribes, people, emails etc.) but I didn't really feel like exploring any more - probably should've done that before the
military operators
started appearing.
I didn't take a single typhon power, and now I really want to do a playthrough with nothing but typhon powers. There's a lot of utility things I'd miss though.
The ending was great. I chose to
use the nullwave
.
In the post-credits scene one of the operators says a lot of typhon-controlled humans died - does this mean mind-controlled (I thought I didn't kill any) or the named phantoms or something else? I got the full empathy achievement either way, but that line confused me.
Ok feeling like a massive idiot now. I have been enjoying this game a lot, then just now decided to check out how much I have spent playing it. That was when I decided to, stupidly, read some of the achievements descriptions and fucking spoiled myself in the process. To think I don't even read this thread because I was afraid I might spoil myself.
Don't read the damn achievements description folks.
Finally finished the game and watched several endings. I enjoyed how it ended but it bothered me that you didn't get even one proper outro
I'm talking about the cutscene shown prior to the credits, not about the postcredits one which seems to always be the same by the way, only with different summaries on what you've accomplished
Ok feeling like a massive idiot now. I have been enjoying this game a lot, then just now decided to check out how much I have spent playing it. That was when I decided to, stupidly, read some of the achievements descriptions and fucking spoiled myself in the process. To think I don't even read this thread because I was afraid I might spoil myself.
Don't read the damn achievements description folks.
Ok feeling like a massive idiot now. I have been enjoying this game a lot, then just now decided to check out how much I have spent playing it. That was when I decided to, stupidly, read some of the achievements descriptions and fucking spoiled myself in the process. To think I don't even read this thread because I was afraid I might spoil myself.
Don't read the damn achievements description folks.
I've completed this quest already and... now i've completed it again without doing anything and then just a second later failed it...? May i ask for what reason exactly?
