MovieChat Forums > Deus Ex: Invisible War (2003) Discussion > Invisible War killed Deus Ex

Invisible War killed Deus Ex

posted 17 years ago by obikes
7 replies | jump to latest

Deus Ex is my favorite videogame of all times, I defended DX:IW at the beggining, but looking back I realize now IW killed Deus Ex.
Deus Ex was not complicated, it just had a lot options in character customization. I still don't understand why Smith thought console players are dumb and made the game so uninteresting. The story and factions are good, is the playability that became a joke. Deus Ex was an RPG but Invisible War is just a FPS with powers and some dialog.

Invisible War is to blame for killing the Deus Ex franchise because is a dumbed down game that doesn't look like Deus Ex at all, dissapointing in all fronts.
Harvey Smith is to blame for killing the Deus Ex franchise because of his "revolutionary" design ideas ( making the game accesible is one thing dumbing it down is another).
Warren Spector is to blame because he did not oppose Harvey ideas strong enough.

[–] dakedoom 17 years ago

bla bla BLA.. your complaining is futile. the game is good in my opinion. not the same as the first but a good game still. if you'd stop comparing it you have a chance of seeing that

i think the ONLY mistake they made with IW is not making it as long as the first game

[–] b-r-blokzijl 17 years ago

The complaining ain't futile, it's his opinion and shared by many others.
When you compare both games (which is possible since it's the follow-up), Deus Ex itself is by far better then DX:IW. Better story, gameplay etc. DX:IW just can't beat the first part, it's in many ways, much better.

But when you look at them seperately as 2 games, without comparing them, then I agree, both games are good. For a game on itself DX:IW is decent, good gameplay, reasonable story etc. However if you could choose to buy one of the two, I would still go for Deus Ex, not DX:IW it's just not as good.

[–] anthonytd103 17 years ago

i liked invisible war.

[–] evil_eldar_girl 17 years ago

I liked Invisible War but I'll conceed that some of the "modifications" to the game engine (to make it more console friendly I suspect) cost it long term playability.

multiplayer and a map editor would've been nice for example.

[–] Pashalietis 17 years ago

Your point is false on the single point that the franchise isn't dead, as the news of a DX3 being made that are floating about would show. I do agree with your general point though, the sequel doesn't deserve to carry the Deus Ex name, even if I liked the story. I read half a Terry Prachett book during the loadtimes between the minuscule areas of the second one during my last play-through :/

[–] mikemann 16 years ago

After having played it through from beginning to end only once before shelving it - and then letting almost 5 years fill the gap - I can safely say that the two things about the game that I was disappointed with that still stand out in my memory are 1) Horribly shrinking the amount of augmentations, and 2) the length of the game.

Half of my enjoyment of DX1 was the ability to mix play styles via Augs, and in DX2, the smaller number of BioMod slots meant you had to choose a finite kind of character - Stealth, combat, or hacker. In DX1, you could do a combo of these. I don't like being stapled down to one set of strategies like that... And you get more than half of your Biomods in the first level, so you pretty much are set from the get-go.

Yeah, the Aug thing was probably my biggest beef. If I hadn't played DX1, though, I think my opinion of the game would be different. I saw the light before I played IW, unfortunately.

[–] bigt2006 16 years ago

I find it strange when I try to decide wether I like IW or not. The problem is the fact that it is a sequel to the best game ever made (my opinion). When I think of IW on its own I see a good, solid, decent, fun and well-executed game and struggle to find many faults in it, Then I think of it as the sequel to DX and suddenly it becomes a lobotomized mass of steaming doggy-poop.

In the original DX there was HUGE scope for character customization but in IW, as a previous poster said, you are funneled into one of a few different ways of playing and are given very little leeway in trying things outside of that whereas in DX you could literally go about things in whatever way you wanted and even find ways to skip whole chunks of levels.

However, one thing I did like in IW was that they gave you the ability to swap out your biomods if you felt you had chosen the wrong one whereas in the original, if you decided that you made a mistake and picked an aug that you didn't want anymore you were stuck with it.

Basically, I am in two minds about IW, if i take it on its own merits it's actually really good and alot of fun, but if I compare it to its daddy then it becomes crap, very strange.