Topic: The PlayStation Fan Thread

@NEStalgia For me it does but I admit that I am biased towards them.

@Ralizah I'm certain the game is fairly decent on high-end PC. After all, it's clear that's the only platform they actually worked on for the past decade. Though a lot about the game from what I've seen seems fundamentally incomplete as you said - I'm not sure it's even that amazing on PC beyond window dressing and concept.

Did you ever play the original Deus Ex? I know there's mods out there now that make the visuals more bearable, my play is hindsight from 2001 or so. If you haven't played it the OG is simply one of the greatest games of all time. But it also holds up really, really badly gameplay wise (the beginning is fine but by the time you get to some of the later levels it's just soooooooo 90's and stealth play gets close to impossible. Warren Spector at his best and worst. But the scope was amazing. Even today, let alone back then.

Human Revolution is second best, but a lot more bearable modern gameplay. FUGLY graphics on 360/PS3. Directors cut fixed that somewhat, and the really really broken bosses (not the broken ending) but isn't really available on any platform anymore. I have no idea how the Steam version fared.

Mankind Divided (playing it now as a Cyberpunk replacement, it was also in my backlog for ages): is arguably the best in terms of stealth gameplay, but the story and scope feel horrendously cut short. Squeenix must have really pulled the reigns in and rushed it to launch. Good game, but it feels so limited in scope for a Deus Ex game. It's clearly the "middle game" meant to bridge Human Revolution to the third of the trilogy that may or may not ever exist.

I still want a total remake of the first game. Even if they do the episodic FFVIIR approach, that game could do it. FWIW, the Adam Jensen trilogy (duology?) is a prequel to the OG duology.

Which takes us to Invisible War. It's like a bad fever dream wrapped in blue that's best forgotten. Like the Star Wars Christmas Special. Warren Spector at his worst.

However, even Invisible War is better than Cyberpunk on any platform right now....

@Zuljaras Imagine being so biased towards a partially-state-owned publicly traded corporation that you actually celebrate their "apology" for going out of their way to hide the truth from you to prevent you from refusing to hand over money for a wholly broken work in progress? I mean, even EA has never stooped quite that low.

@NEStalgia I can forgive them anything just for creating GOG I mean they can make puppy meat burgers for all I care

In the meantime I do not buy games on day one. I wait for reviews or complete editions

The Director's Cut of Human Revolution is on Steam, @NEStalgia .... I'm not sure if the original version of that game is, though! I've played all the Deus Ex games there & they're pretty good!

@NEStalgia Nope. My experience with old WRPGs is pitifully limited, and I'm scared to go back to most of them because of how poorly most of them have aged. Human Revolution was acclaimed and still reasonably modern, so I figure it's a good game to start with to see if this IP appeals to me.

Stealth isn't necessary in these games, right? I despite stealth sections in games.

Are there decent quests? Sidequests? Exploration?

@Zuljaras What if they made a GOG console....with a high RPM fan?

@Ralizah Yeah, as much as I absolutely love(d) Deux Ex 1, and I do still believe it's one of the finest video games in all history in terms of it's world, story, dialogue, scope, world, etc - the mechanics while incredibly deep for its time would be pitiful now. Especially stealth which came from the era of "hit C to crouch and hope the line of sight detection doesn't notice you behind random brush with crate texture." The tutorial mission alone, even in its era, for stealth required restarting 2 dozen times because of stupid line of sight detection that would see you even though you thought all your pixels were behind the box. And the latter third of the game had so many enemies in such large environments (all identical) that gameplay just got stupid. As was common then. But the first 2/3 of the game are pure gold. I think I had a 100% non-lethal playthrough until I got to the last few areas and then I just brought out the machine guns, may or may not have found some cheat codes, and just tried to shoot my way through the endless hordes. But the rest of the game, visually hasn't aged well but a lot of aspects of it has. It's one of the first games I can recall where you had optional approaches to any solution, go straight in, stealth the side, find a duct to crawl through, talk your way out of it, find a keycode, hack the terminal, etc.

I really do want to see a remake, but great as it is, I definitely wouldn't recommend trying to jump into it now without nostalgia goggles and some rose dye. It would not impress with modern expectations. The story, dialogue, and choices, however, would. Arguably better than most anything since. Spector was publicly musing about a remake back when Human Revolution came out.....but I assume Square told him what they thought of that idea (it wasn't Square back when he made the first 2 at Eidos/Ion Storm.)

Human Revolution is absolutely very good though. It's pretty faithful to the feel and intent of the original, updated for modern expectations. There's some things Spector was way ahead of his time with with the first that the Eidos team didn't quite pick up on, but generally speaking, as a mega fan of 1, and dual-wield torch + pitchfork bearer against the second, I'm very very happy with Human Revolution.

Keep in mind Human Revolution is (or was to be) the first of a trilogy of prequels to the original. And there's a lot of references for players to recognize and see the threads forming. Things down to the names that wrote emails you find on computers, etc. So players of the original already know "how it all ends" before starting (not well....1 starts in a hellish dystopia where everything is unhinged and about to get a lot worse. 1 Starts you, J. C. Denton, the first "nano-augmented" agent, and in the tutorial you meet Anna and Gunther, yesterday's trash, the obsolete mechanical-augs you're obsoleting. And they're not happy about it.) Human Revolution picks up some time before that, during the "golden age" when the mechanical augs were new and changing the world. Essentially the story arc is: Human Revolution (the golden age and beginning of the fall), Mankind Divided (the obvious middle story that only links together the others - in the middle of all heck breaking loose and the threads coming together), ??? third of the trilogy (presumably all the pieces lining up for where things are at the start of the OG), OG full-on dystopia coming apart. Invisible War: Britney Spears wannabe hologram (from back when she was popular) clones and "Definitely not Starbucks references" everywhere!

The famous "gold" filter of Human Revolution carries over from Spector's original idea of color filters. The Gold represents both the golden age, a sense of artificiality, and an autumnal sense of preparing for an end. Mankind Divided doesn't really have a color filter - there's no tonal focus. It's kind of a "natural state" game. Not sure what the third will be or would have been. The original is a purple filter. Dreary, suggests night, dark ages. The whole game is set only at night. It's an oppressive, sort of necrotic tone. Invisible war: blue - suggesting sort of a new hopefulness.

In order of game quality I'd say OG (but doesn't hold up in modern gameplay), Human Revolution, Mankind Divided improves play, but drops the ball on story and scope by far, and last IW that would be better to not exist. A fun-ish game, but a horrible legacy for Deus Ex (It was largely hampered to squeeze it into the ram requirements of OG X-BOX before consoles could realistically handle such a game.)

No, stealth is not necessary. The design intent across the board was to let you choose your skill tree to build either a super stealth agent or a walking doomsday device. I prefer stealth play overall since to me it feels more tonally appropriate for the nature of the story and characters (and after the OG game the stealth systems are really really good) but there's tons of guns around and you can go guns blazing, too. You can't do both though. You either build your skill tree around more silent running, cloaking, hacking, etc abilities, or you build your skill tree around heavy weapons handling, armor augs, etc. You can CQC/Tranq everyone and sneak past unseen and hack through the back door security grid, or you can load up the rocket launchers, gas grenades, and chainguns and take on exosuits.

OG and HR have great quests and sidequests, sidequests are usually multi-part and involve going to other, sometimes fortified areas as their own mini-missions. MD sidequests are more like "optional missions" to a degree, it doesn't have quite as open-RPG feeling and questing feeling at all. Lots of reward for exploration in terms of "lore" and finding items, however the design of the newer games means relatively dense/structured locales. Cities are linear closed streets (think old Yakuza I suppose) rather than big open worlds. But there's a lot of back and forth through them. OG and HR are definite RPGs in the Oblivion/Witcher sense of the word. MD is an RPG play-wise, but doesn't have that "tons of NPC with their own objectives" feel the others do, and is generally a smaller game.

Note that "exploration" probably is more applicable for stealth play, as hacking into terminals in back rooms and getting info, lockers, etc is more rewarding if you didn't just blow a hole through everyone in the main rooms then just walk into the side rooms to pick up everything in it. The outdoor areas do reward some exploration but they're more "setpiece" settings, not open worlds. But it's best to check all the areas you can get to for the sidequests etc.

@NEStalgia I ... would tell the good luck with that but I will have to pass

My general impression from Cyberpunk so far, is that it will be very similar to Deus Ex in this respect.

I disagree that it's aged badly though. I think Deus Ex still plays brilliantly (although I don't remember anything about the later levels)

Now that the PS5 is out in the wild, I have a question. Does everything from the PS4 transfer over? DLC, PSN purchases, themes? I won’t be getting one for a few years but I wanted to know so I can start planning what to do with my PS4. I don’t normally offload systems but if the PS5 has full compatibility with PS4 I can give it to a friend or something.

@Ryu_Niiyama DLC yes. Themes no. The PS5 doesn't have traditional themes like the PS4. The background is determined by the game you have selected.

@Octane wait what? Brb need to google this...

Edit: That’s kinda cool. Annoying if you bought a bunch of old themes last gen though.

@NEStalgia Cool, thanks for the detailed write-up. I'll definitely check out Human Revolution, then, and maybe the others if I end up liking it.

Too bad HR never got ported to Switch, considering it's on Wii U!

@Ralizah Yeah. Its entrance on WiiU was weird to begin with. It was a "late" port to Nintendo after it had already been out on PS360 for a while. Director's Cut was initially announced as a WiiU exclusive. Then WiiU started tanking hard by month 3 and the industry was already pulling away from it. And by that E3 it was suddenly a multiplat release as an enhanced "Complete" edition on all 3 - but only on the consoles it had already released on & PC. They didn't actually bring it forward to PS4/X1. And then it just kind of quietly dropped, physical-only (+Steam), and vanished overnight. They did do XB BC support for it - but it never had a digital release so it's only supported by those that managed to get a disc in the brief release. And I bought mine on WiiU. It was a weird release.

One thing of note is that the bosses were totally broken for stealth players in the original release. They outsourced the boss fights and the company that did it just treated it like it's a shooter game. If you're a stealth build the bosses seriously suck - you're expected to tank and dps them. For Director's Cut, Eidos took it in house and redid those to work properly. But only in Director's Cut.

FWIW, the fall of the franchise was during those darkest days of Squeenix. They rushed Mankind Divided to market by just cutting some content (as a result it has like 2 cities rather than more), sold some content back in as DLC (but not enough), tried to expand the game into "Deus Ex Universe" cross-media franchise (Fabula Nova Crysalis for Deux Ex), shoehorned it into two half hearted mobile games (and put the actual team on them instead of on Mankind Divided for more time), kept trying to market it like an action game and being confused when it only sells a few million in a dialogue-heavy RPG, and then when the game hit mixed critical reception and mediocre sales announced they were putting the series on indefinite hiatus before they even pushed out the stripped content. Squeenix was pretty ugly at that time. And we never got our 3rd installment. They were trying to make annual releases out of it, Assassin's Creed-style and when that didn't work, ran.

A few years back Masuda did say they aren't abandoning the series and still have ideas for the 3rd entry and that it's an important franchise for them but they wanted to give it a breather. He also said Avengers was taking Eidos Montreal's resources and they couldn't do both. Well, now Avengers is out....and that's not looking so well received either...

On one hand, what I'm really hoping is that with Cyberpunk being the be-all end-all of sales, even without a product to show for it, right now, Squeenix will take the hint and try to cash in on that momentum by rushing a new half-baked Deus Ex game with stripped content to market.

OTOH, Squeenix is posting mega-losses for it's "HD games" category across the board. Probably due to Avenger's semi-failure. Sales were up (especially with the pandemic) but apparently costs went through the roof and dwarfed that (typical poor S-E management and 10- year delivery times.) FFXVIIR (they'll no doubt try to salvage that when the PS exclusivity ends) was mentioned in that as well, so I wouldn't doubt Squeenix puts all of their "HD games" division on hiatus and all the franchise installments get delayed or cancelled while they chase GaaS cash grabs.

EDIT There's an easter egg in one of the offices in HR that is a poster....it was probably meant to be a fun homage, but in reality it comes across as fairly cynical in-house (and accurate.) In the year 2027:

@Ryu_Niiyama I think dataminers found something that may hint at traditional background themes (hasn't been confirmed though), but I don't know if the PS4 ones will carry over, because the UI is completely different, they'd have to update all of them.

Wow so Sony have removed Cyberpunk from the playstation store, until it's been heavily improved in its performance.

Makes you wonder why they allowed it in that state in the first place on PS4?

@Dezzy to quote Mr. Krabs from the critically acclaimed Spongebob: The Movie:
"I like money"

CD Projekt's attempt at a speedrun of destroying a company's own reputation is pretty impressive, I must say. Clearly they should be at AGDQ next year.

@GilbertXI

Yeah but I wonder why they've never done that before. They've had games that were borderline broke at launch (Fallout 76) and also games that flat out lied about what the game featured (No Man's Sky at launch), and they've never removed anything before.

Still, this might actually be better for CD Projekt over the long run. It might be good if Xbox did the same too. That way the general audience might come to see the 'second' release of the game as its "real" one, and so opinion might shift back towards the positive a lot more quickly.

Otherwise they're gonna have to go the No Man's Sky route, of slowly winning people back over time. Which is definitely possible, and I think they will manage it, but it can take quite a while.

@kkslider5552000

Especially sad given that it's mostly just the base console versions that are a serious problem. They should've released PS5, SeriesS/X and PC versions only, and it would've been fine. The bugs in those versions are the kind that most people are more than happy to live with, and not really much different from your average Bethesda open-world game.

@Dezzy Problem is they've been saying for years they're only targeting PS4 and Xbox One, and not next gen systems. Additionally, the ''next gen'' versions aren't even done yet. Those systems can do so much more, but Cyberpunk looks like a last gen game on PS5 and Series X.

Well, they couldn't have been developing it for the current gen games until the last couple of years .... They should definitely have made sure to test it properly on the older ones, since it'd have been easier upgrading from that to current consoles than downgrading backwards