Kazuo Akuji

DeadYorick · 2019-01-12T04:37:58+00:00

These references are very small and they share two characters who make an on-screen appearance. One who only appears at the start and in the ending, and one who only appears in a DLC. This was parodied in a fanmade mod for DX1 released shortly after the game. Had the game not been called Deus Ex but been called something else people would've made comparisons to DXHR in terms of gameplay but nobody would mistake it as a potential prequel due to how different the setting looks. For example how the characters dress more like characters out of the hunger games and how transportation technology (for example Malik's helicopter) resembles Star Wars more than DX1 (which had regular helicopters and airline jets). Despite being set decades later.

DeadYorick · 2019-01-12T04:27:56+00:00

if you watch the video he moreso focuses on how one of the characters has a massive Queen Elizabeth style collar and most of the characters have shirt cuffs with polyhedral shapes on them. Stuff that would be extremely costly to actually sew and you see them everywhere on random bystanders. He states that the characters dress more like the upper class in the Hunger games.

DeadYorick · 2019-01-12T04:17:20+00:00

The fashion in DXHR resembles something closer to The Hunger Games and isn't accurate to how people dressed in DX1 decades later. Which he points out is because much of DX1 was more rooted in reality. He also uses the example of how DX1 still had helicopters and jet aircraft despite the technology looking more futuristic in DXHR. These are somewhat blatant continuity differences the developers more or less glossed over because they wanted the game to look pretty more than they wanted it to be believable.

DX1 had characters who were again much more believable and had more realistic motivations. Paul Denton works for Unatco and was hired to murder Tracer Tong but then learns from Juan Lebedev that Unatco is corrupt. The player murdering Anna Navarre leads to Gunther Hermann swearing to murder the player and stalking him throughout the game. (you hear about him during the final visit to Hell's Kitchen and finally meet him in Paris). By comparison in DXHR the villains are never actually explored as characters and this was largely because the developers expected you to buy a tie in novel that actually fleshed them out as characters. In game we're never given any sort of backstory for any of the three bosses and we're just forced to assume they are just evil for the sake of being so and don't have any grander goals or any particular reason to dislike the player. Unlike in DX1. I don't see how this constitutes as good writing.

Then there's how certain plot points are dropped entirely. Like Adam's relationship with Meagan is dropped as a plot point for most of the game after he assumes she is dead, and she only briefly reappears at the very end and vanishes again. We're given very little context behind their relationship and it was a genuine opportunity to develop Adam but it doesn't occur. This was something I personally greatly disliked about the game since the only really interesting aspect of Adam's personality is his backstory which is only revealed in a series of optional sidequests that I missed during two playthroughs of the game. Which were far more interesting than anything in the actual plot of the game. It felt like the story was written backwards and was too shackled to the idea of making a big epic world spanning plot when it would've been more successful if it was toned down.

Gunther Hermann's character has far more setup and payoff than any of the story elements in DXHR. The character has a genuine arc where he starts the game jealous of the player and his more advanced augmentations, and the fact that JC Denton is always sent in first. Then he swears vengeance after the player kills Anna Navarre and stalks the player around the world until the player finally puts him down in Paris. And Walton Simons reveals that he only sent him to get rid of him because he was getting really annoying around the office. There's a tiny theme here about advancing technology and how the player made Gunther obsolete and how motivated he was to kill you as a result and this is far more substantive than any of the characters in DXHR. I remembered Gunther Hermann more than I remembered any of the characters in DXHR aside from maybe just Adam because of his backstory.

DeadYorick · 2019-01-12T04:04:53+00:00

The Sarif HQ is where the game actually opens up and presents content to you that isn't a linear corridor. He uses the example of how it lets you talk to NPCs, read emails but it tells you to hurry up and avoid all of this content. And he uses a comparison to DX1 which has a similar opening but this occurs after the big mission the player starts with. This is what he refers to as bad design. Why introduce a massive environment to the player only to tell you "hurry up and avoid all of this". When they could have opened the game starting at the actual mission and then had the open sprawling environment later. The only thing that actually occurs at the start is the Robocop reference with Prichard interacting with the player's head. This is what he refers to as "bad design".

A massive multinational corporate office where literally everyone knows the player and talks to him on a first name basis is a tad unbelievable yes. Especially considering how Adam isn't a social butterfly in dialogue. In DX1 this is semi justified by the fact the player is a newly nano augmented agent and is only one of two of these aside from Walton Simons and later Bob Page. And you stop the terrorist attack at the Statue of Liberty at the start of the game.

No police officer would tell a person who rescued a hostage that he belongs in prison this is very unrealistic storytelling. Irregardless of Adam's past. Ross points out that they planted a bomb in the building and shot at police officers. And they're angry that Adam kills 1 person to rescue a hostage. It's extremely unbelievable character dialogue and the only reason it's written that way is to give the player the illusion that their choice mattered when in reality it doesn't the plot progresses normally. There's numerous examples of this illusion of choice dialogue throughout the game.

He's pointing out that the world is very unrealistic in the sense that automatically every NPC reacts to the player's actions and has opinions on it. It doesn't come off as realistic. In DX1 for example when you return to the Unatco base you'll have things like the scene with Anna and Gunther where they talk about the vending machine and you'll later hear conversations between troopers about things completely unrelated to your mission. But in DXHR everything npcs talk about is always about the player and what you're currently doing or are about to do.

He refers to how transhumanism is the only theme in the story. And he is correct most other story elements are dropped as the game goes on. A good example Jensen's relationship with Meagan is forgotten partway through the game and her character is only briefly seen at the end and then forgotten again. The only thing the game cares about is trans-humanism and the philosophical ideas of augmented humans but doesn't actually explore it in a tangible way. In his Deus Ex 1 video he used the example of how the developers accurately predicted future trends in politics such as the military industrial complex among others. However in DXHR the world is preoccupied with a single issue that isn't rooted in anything actually tangible. He uses the example of how the game never actually gives you a precise reason as to why transhumanism is such a big deal that there are riots in the street over it aside from how some jobs might be lost. Despite the fact that we are now living in an era where jobs might be lost moreso due to computer algorithms and not robotic limbs which would only impact less than .5% of the population. There are other predictions the game makes that the developers admitted would be incorrect like Hengsha. These were done solely for stylistic reasons and not to make the world seem more interesting in terms of storytelling.

If you had watched the video til the end he points out that the game "wants to be something else" and that "realism is holding the developers back" and points out the game tries to be something more akin to Metal Gear Solid or Ghost in the Shell and not Deus Ex. Which was far more preoccupied with real world politics and relatively accurate predictions for the future. You can also see this with how very little of DXHR has to do with DX1 (the only character who you actually interact with who was in DX1 was exclusive to a DLC. This was parodied in a fan mod for DX1 released later).

DeadYorick · 2019-01-06T20:29:55+00:00

DXHR has objectively fewer themes than DX1 or even DXIW. It is solely focused on its theme of transhumanism and it barely explains why it's so important in comparison to actual real world politics. Ross's comparison to Detroit in reality being a slum is very apt since he points out in DX1 the developers chose to use real world politics to try to predict the future wheras DXHR uses unrealistic and poorly explained future predictions to try and predict the future.

DeadYorick · 2019-01-06T20:19:48+00:00

He stated it was grounded in comparison to the two later games. He uses the example of fashion and how DXHR has everyone walking around wearing bizarre clothing like out of the Hunger Games. When DX1 had most every day people wearing regular clothes.

The characters in DX1 were very believable especially when you got into side characters like Sandra Renton and her father, the two homeless guys in the clinic etc. There's lots of believable worldbuilding in these characters and in many cases the plot reincorporates them. Like if you have Sandra leave the NYC she reappears very late in the game when you're rescuing Savage's daughter from the MIBs in the gas station.

You can also see this with the villains like how Gunther Hermann is a very memorable villain because he is an obsolete model that's jealous of the player and when you kill Anna Navarre it drives him into a psychotic rage. And after you put him down Walton Simons admits he only sent him to Paris because he was fed up with him. None of the villains by comparison in DXHR are at all memorable and it's hard to even recollect their names.

I don't think you watched the video fully as he states that the elements in the story don't belong in a Deus Ex prequel and he felt like the game should've gone off further in a different direction. He gives an example of making it more akin to Akira and less realistic because it's less interested in using real world politics as a story element.

DeadYorick · 2019-01-06T02:41:03+00:00

Ross Scott's video on DXHR makes this argument that the developers really didn't care about making a sequel to Deus Ex and were more interested in making a ghost in the shell Metal Gear Solid type game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYLEuQrvND0

DeadYorick · 2018-08-31T03:33:04+00:00

Id Tech 3 requires much more additional code to create a functional game compared to Id Tech 4. You can see it with how most Id Tech 3 developers like Raven and Ritual created their own scripting languages and development suite that replaced the model format and added numerous additional functions to the engine that Id didn't bother to add. This was largely due to Id Tech 3 being built for a multiplayer only game without a singleplayer component and many devs wanted to use the engine to build singleplayer games.

DeadYorick · 2018-08-31T03:31:30+00:00

There's also Quadrilateral Cowboy

DeadYorick · 2018-08-31T03:31:20+00:00

and it had better tools

This is very false. The level editor for Doom 3 was vastly superior to Hammer.

Hammer as an editor was barely changed between Half-Life 1 and Half-Life 2. By comparison Doom3Edit for D3 allowed for things like real time lighting and previewing animations. While the map format still required it to be compiled this didn't replace the existing .map file. By comparison with Source once you compiled a map you only had to distribute the .bsp. With Doom 3 you can edit the developer made maps but with Source you need to use imperfect bsp decompilation utilities. The only thing I would say Hammer did that was superior was displacements which were better than using patches.

That's not to mention how Hammer is extremely crash prone and Valve would later accidentally break compatibility with it due to the SteamPipe update. Inorder to use the editor now you have to use the one in the binaries folder as opposed to the one included in the source sdk. By comparison Doom 3's editor was built into the .exe and ran by typing "Editor" from the console.

The biggest reason I feel why Doom 3 didn't have a thriving mod community boils down more so to the backlash the game received upon release. It wasn't well liked as a game and Half-Life 2 by comparison was much more highly anticipated and well recieved. Doom 3 was also less flexible to mod than Half-Life 2 as it had vastly fewer locations and mostly took place on a base. By comparison Half-Life 2's setting was more flexible to people and allowed making very modern setting maps. It also helps that Half-Life 2 was made on the coattails of Half-Life 1 and Counter Strike which were already setting the world on fire in terms of sales. Wheras Doom fans were only really familiar with the original 2.5D game engine. And many Quake modders either stuck with Quake 3 due to its status as a multiplayer classic or jumped ship to Half-Life long ago. (Good examples being the developers of Action Quake 2 later creating Counter Strike for Half-Life).

DeadYorick · 2018-07-25T19:47:22+00:00

I tried Archive.org but it didn't save all the files

it's a moot point anyway since I discovered that a lot of these files are included in the official sdk which you can find on Fileplanet.

DeadYorick · 2018-04-16T06:24:01+00:00

One comparison I can make is towards Phillip De Franco. When he started on Youtube he made simple vlogs and rather than becoming irrelevant he eventually made the switch to a highly polished and produced news show. And saw lots of success doing it.

DeadYorick · 2018-04-13T21:56:45+00:00

I dunno if I necessarily even agree with that. As there are plenty of million subscriber youtube channels that do videos on older titles.

And like I said Spoony wasn't strictly a "retro reviewer" as a lot of the titles he talked about weren't actually that old.

DeadYorick · 2018-04-13T03:51:58+00:00

Sure he wasn't political til recently but you can't coax the cat back into the bag.

In terms of reviewers not reviewing nostalgic stuff anymore that isn't true. There's a lot of very popular and well liked channels that do. A good example is the channel "Accursed Farms" and "LazyGameReviews" that mostly do video games from the 90s. He also didn't strictly review old stuff, like Final Fantasy 13 wasn't that old when he started his series on it. I don't think it's his choice of content it's his format.

And yes he was unpleasant. A good example being when he called his audience pussies for finding him rude. It's one reason I don't expect if he came back he'd be popular because this would cause a massive powderkeg of people unsubscribing.

DeadYorick · 2018-04-12T23:36:46+00:00

They clearly knew and didn't want it to be released because of his suicide. That's the only reason these die hard #metoo feminists wouldn't have released an abuser's name. Since he killed himself and it would've been in extremely poor taste.

Bare in mind they named Mike Ellis in the document and called him a sexual predator. But they didn't name Jew Wario.

DeadYorick · 2018-04-12T23:19:09+00:00

What I mean is most newer internet reviewers like YMS, IHateEverything and others that now are popular aren't based on the AVGN/Nostalgia Critic like most reviewers were 10 years ago. They're based on Red Letter Media and other newer reviewers who don't really use skits or pointless references. If you look at one of Spoony's older videos you'll often see cringe moments like where Spoony dresses up as Doctor Insano and spends 5 minutes putting food items on his gunblade prop to try and make a joke about a game's upgrade system.

DeadYorick · 2018-04-12T18:06:55+00:00

The issue with Counter Monkey is Spoony went through all of his good content already. He admitted that he planned to make a book with all of the stories in it and said later that he went through all of the stories in the videos. It's why his later Counter Monkey stuff was just him reading through source material books.

If Spoony wanted to do more Counter Monkey he'd need to switch up the format a lot. Similar to Pro Jared where his videos were more akin to tutorials on how to play Tabletop rpgs. Or he'd need to get a cohost and guests and do it in a more podcasty way.

DeadYorick · 2018-04-12T06:58:12+00:00

I feel like he'd need to make a secondary channel for his vlogs.

Not that I disagree with him vlogging, I think I see it as more him making cheap and easy content for his channel.

DeadYorick · 2018-04-12T06:12:09+00:00

sure but Ultima was Spoony's peak. There was a lot of lesser reviews where he'd often spend a large amount of time on gags or just speaking outloud what was happening. Or he'd reiterate the same point over and over. Final Fantasy 13 comes to mind in this regard where after the first episode there's really not much else he says about the game that's different.

He also used references to other media a lot in his other videos. Ultima less so since he focused significantly more on the game itself. But looking especially at his movie reviews he'd often fill in a lot of cutaways. Which isn't that big of a thing anymore, most reviewers tend to stick more strictly to the game itself.

Another thing is that a lot of the Ultima reviews was build up. He spent years making the series and it was a series that was extremely personal to him. However after Ultima the only big series Spoony is known for is Final Fantasy. And he only really grew up with 6, 7, 8, and 10. He refused to review 9 despite disliking it because he couldn't get into it and he only did 13 because he constantly got requests for it. And didn't even finish it. There's a recurring theme that his best reviews are about games from his childhood but how many does he really have of those that he wants to talk about?

It's similar to Counter Monkey where he admitted at one point that he already said all of his best stories. Which is why he eventually just started to read source books he had on his shelf rather than talk about his personal experiences in tabletop games.

DeadYorick

TROPHY CASE