Deus Ex Human Revolution EP9:Yo Baby What’s Up?

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Jan 25, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 174 comments


Link (YouTube)

The inventory system really got to me in this game. I was using Skyrim-style item hoarding in a cover-shooter with some light inventory elements. There was no way that was going to work out for me. I maxed out the inventory capacity as soon as I could, and even that wasn’t enough.

In the section where you have to deal with the gangers, I was compelled to sell off ALL of their gear.Of course, if you pick up a shotgun and you already HAVE a shotgun, it simply poofs the firearm out of existence and gives you the bullets. So, I had to… carry the guns to the shop one at a time. I did that. It was boring. It took forever. It wasn’t necessary. And it wasn’t something the developers intended the player to do.

And if I played through again? I’d probably do the same thing.

There is no cure for compulsive looting.

 


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174 thoughts on “Deus Ex Human Revolution EP9:Yo Baby What’s Up?

  1. Infinitron says:

    The irony being that they designed it that way precisely to prevent people from hoarding loot.

    1. Dev Null says:

      The moral of the story being:

      You do not stop the player from doing something by making it miserably painful. All you do is make them miserable.

      1. Thomas says:

        Players don’t know what they want :( How many people on this site have complained about their obligation to hack every terminal for XP? Whenever I play a Final Fantasy I always grind to the point where I get bored of grinding and stop playing the game, I can never convince myself, that you know, maybe I could just not grind?

        Luckily in a ghost pacifistish playthrough you never ever need money for anything. Not even really Praxis and as such I always had enough money to immediately buy all the praxis in the area and I had no compulsion to collect and sell everything (well I had the compulsion, but deciding I was never going to waste praxis on inventory space, broke me of it)

      2. Irridium says:

        Reminds me of the little blurb here

        “No matter how difficult or absurd you make a puzzle, your players will find an even more impossible and preposterous way of solving it.”

  2. robo9 says:

    I did the exact same thing with those two combat rifles in Adam’s apartment, but stopped after I realized how useless it really was.

    Even when I didn’t sell every weapon individually, I still had way more money than I ever could’ve needed. There really wasn’t anything to buy except Praxis Kits, and occasionally the odd box of ammo or a weapon upgrade.

    1. Tizzy says:

      I have not played the game, so maybe this is a naive question, but… …does the game really need to have money at all then? I think it’s a valid question: if the mechanic is not that crucial, why keep it in the game?

      1. Infinitron says:

        Loyalty to the original Deus Ex?

        The money in the first Deus Ex was basically a reward for effectively exploring the levels you traversed, scrounging credit chits and hacking ATMs. You could use it to resupply yourself with odds and ends – grenades, upgrades, sometimes ammunition – from NPCs at selected locations.

        It was like the MCBers you meet when you arrive at the FEMA facility in DX:HR. There were no “proper” stores with a special buy/sell GUI. HR’s stores were supposed to be an upgrade over DX1’s system, but maybe they just ended up being incongruous.

      2. Gamer says:

        Not really. You can use money to bribe people and stuff. But besides Praxis Kits, anything you can buy, you can find for free. Money only really helps to make the world feel more real.

        For other games that didn’t need money: see Assassin’s Creed 2 through Revelations.

        1. Amazon_warrior says:

          I found a Praxis kit lying at the bottom of a lift shaft once….

          But yeah, Praxis and bribery. Only things money’s good for the world of the Revolving Human. :p

      3. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Money has its uses.To buy mods in order to maximize your favourite weapon,for example.

      4. robo9 says:

        It’s hard to say for me. I still broke into every safe and fully hacked every panel I could find, and I spent a lot of time exploring.
        Maybe if I hadn’t done any of that and just hurried my way through, I would’ve had money troubles all the time.

        Actually, the way a lot of the monetary income in this game is tied to doing things that also give EXP seems a little problematic:
        If I hadn’t bothered with hacking and exploring, I wouldn’t have earned as much Praxis through EXP, and I’d also have (presumably) been short on money to buy Praxis Kits from LIMB clinics.

        However, since I did hack and explore everything, I had way more Praxis than I ever needed. By the last quarter or so of the game, I was just purchasing augmentations I didn’t even need, and that was on Give Me Deus Ex. I don’t want to imagine how overpowered one would feel on lower difficulties.

        Basically, the EXP system is a nice idea but badly executed. The result is a player that’s either under- or overpowered, depending on their style of play.

        1. Thomas says:

          But it also responds to their style of play. People who hack a lot need a lot of hacking augs and the game gives them that. People who shoot a lot need a lot of ammo and money for weapon mods, and looting corpses and clearing desks gives them that.

          People who don’t shoot and don’t hack, basically only need the cloaking aug and the ghost awards will give them plenty enough of the little XP they’ll need for that.

          …except for the Boss Battles, where those last people will be caught short :(

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            No they wont.You can beat bosses without any augs,if you just stock up on grenades,or taser darts.

            1. Thomas says:

              I’m not one who thinks boss battles are impregnable, I happily cheated my way through all of them, but the thing is, if they were ultimate ghosting, they wouldn’t have the money for that stuff either, which is above persons fear. In all other cases though, DX:HR rewards you with what you need for how you’re playing, and it’s just that some play-styles need more. You could even argue that if you’re straight up shooting you need less XP because the only augments are the armour and aiming, whereas if you’re playing stealth-shooting you’re doing something quite complex and need a lot of augments

              1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                Even if you go into a boss fight with an empty inventory,youll still find plenty of stray grenades around.Granted,it will be much harder to go around the arena and pick those up.

                But youll also pick up plenty of stray grenades around long before you reach any boss.For example,just in this room,you find 3 explosive mines.Find one or two more(which will be in your path when you do the derelict row antenna quest),and youll beat barrett with ease,even on give me deus ex.

                1. Jeff says:

                  Yeah, it always makes me roll my eyes when stealth guys can’t beat the first boss – because we pick up at least 3 explosive mines while sneaking our way there.

                  If you didn’t get those mines, you weren’t being a very good sneak.

  3. Alan says:

    I had the exact same problem; for the more valuable guns I would run them back and forth one at a time to sell them. Hard to know if it helped, but I do know that I never wanted for cash in the game.

    The solution seems pretty straightforward: don’t let me sell things. Make sure I can get the money I need in other ways. Maybe have an option where I can sell things I’ve purchased back (“30-day money back guarantee!”) so I can change my mind. In a full blown RPG making money by scavenging is expected and part of the gameplay, but this is a hybrid game with a strong emphasis on other elements.

    In an interesting coincidence, I just started playing Fallout 3. Some sadist filled the world with almost worthless junk. It’s early in the game, and I don’t have much money, so I feel compelled to carry as much as I can to sell. The library with 100 or so damaged books was a real gem. If I can’t carry it all (and I frequently can’t) I create caches and occasionally do runs to just clear those out. I haven’t yet decided if I’m enjoying that element. :-)

    1. Tizzy says:

      It’s a cool part of any RPG, I think, when everything you pick up is valuable. What a wonder-filled existence, full of surprises! Later, you can’t be bothered to pick up weapons that are good enough to terrorize whole cities: it always makes me feel a little bit sad…

      1. Paul Spooner says:

        It would be awesome if, at some point, you could sell the location of the items, instead of the items themselves. Then you just run through killing monsters, and then sell the location of the loot to a scavenger gang.

        1. Gabriel Mobius says:

          That’s actually quite ingenious. I wouldn’t mind having that be a system where you could tag locations with some kind of beacon, and sell the beacon’s code to various people.

          The big thing would be making sure it’s entirely optional, and maybe plays into the main plot once or twice. I could see it getting to be extraordinarily taxing if over-exploited for the main plot.

        2. Khizan says:

          What I wanted in New Vegas was an ability to strip a thing of its most valuable components so I didn’t have so many stupid weight issue due to looting after fights.

          Example: I kill a dude. He has a plasma rifle. I can sell that rifle for $2000, and it weighs 20lbs. Or I can strip out the plasma stream regulator, magnetic flow couplings, and the technobabble thingamajig and sell them for $1500, but they only weigh 5lbs. The rest of the thing gets destroyed.

          This might not solve the problems Shamus has, but when somebody is so anal-retentive that they will make repeated trips to the store to sell shotguns one by one, the only thing that will work for them is an infinite inventory mod.

          It would solve, however, my continual irritation with the way that I’ve got to leave massive amounts of loot behind OR play stupid fiddly inventory games.

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            Yeah,crafting system in new vegas couldve been much better if it included components for weapons and such.

            1. Khizan says:

              I don’t really want a crafting addition. What I was thinking was that the stripped components would have no use other than their sale value. It would just be a way to increase the caps-per-pound of your inventory.

              Crafting, to me, is kind of meh. It ends up being another bit of fiddle because, most of the time, you’re going to have one strictly optimal upgrade path and a bunch of newbie traps.

              1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                With an improved crafting system,youd get what you want.You never have to use crafting,after all.Just make it so that you can always disassemble anything,but need high repair/science/survival to assemble it.

                Also,just because most of the time crafting is like that,doesnt mean it cannot be better.Balancing is hard to do,granted,but not impossible.

              2. Sumanai says:

                I think that being able to turn the object back into component parts would help considerably with the newbie traps, since if you build something that is in fact useless, you can take it apart and use those for something worthwhile. Of course, this means you should never lose items in the process. You always get what you used for it.

                For example, you build a Coil Gun. You realize that it is inferior to pretty much every other weapon, but uses a valuable (both in cash and in what you can build with it) Super Capacitor. So what you do is take it apart and now you’ve got the Super Capacitor for something better.

                And it wouldn’t create a situation where you go “I want to take this apart, but what if I need the working version later” since you could just rebuild it. Maybe after putting more points into Repair or whatever, but as long as the difference isn’t too much.

                1. Sumanai says:

                  Of course I’m assuming that the crafting skill in itself isn’t a newbie trap. Such as putting points in it is a waste, it improves by using but the enemies get tougher alongside without the skill improving your combat.

          2. RTBones says:

            I always thought it was odd that you could esoterically repair an item with a like item, but you couldn’t break a gun down into components.

            I believe I might have used the FO:NV crafting system about a half-dozen times in all my play-throughs. Never really saw the need.

            1. Khizan says:

              The main use of the crafting system is ammo. The difference between the generic store bought and found ammo and the high-tier crafted ammo is pretty huge.

    2. RTBones says:

      My MO was similar in FO3/NV. Always had a TON of stuff I wasnt sure what to do with (or should I say – the packrat in my didnt want to part with), so I created several caches. In FO:NV, going back to the casino always seemed to be a pain to me. Every once in a while, particularly when I was low on cash, I’d just clean a cache out – you know, cash out, as it were.

      1. Gamer says:

        I’m doing a new Fallout 3 playthrough where sell weapons and armor (barring unique equipment, I always collect those in every Beth game) the moment I get the chance because that was a huge problem in previous playthroughs. It’s working well so far. I have plenty of caps and I not longer have to look through 15 of each weapon type when going through crap in my house.

        I do still hoard components and quest stuff like Sugar Bombs and eventually go to sell them en masse..

        1. Eruanno says:

          Any Bethsoft game is TERRIBLE for my hoarding-OCD. Must loot ALL the things!

          1. Gamer says:

            Oh yes. I make it my personal goal in a Bethesda game to collect every unique weapon and piece of armor and complete every quest. I never succeed.

            Really, they are more for loot whores and explorers than Role-Players.

  4. Thomas says:

    It took me much longer into the game, when I was doing a stealth section in a factory that was covered with mines, to realise you could do something other than not trigger them. I didn’t even realise mines were a thing in that appartment, I thought there was some one off booby trap and I was confused when the person was disappointed at me for not collecting all the evidence in that room

    1. Chris B Chikin says:

      Really? My first instinct was in this apartment to actually to just crouch-walk and then disarm and collect them to exchange for goods and services. Thank you Fallout 3!

      1. Shamus says:

        On a console, you can walk using the thumbstick. On the PC, you have to use the “walk button”, which is not mentioned to the player.

        1. robo9 says:

          Even when I was holding down the Alt key, they sometimes blew up on me anyway. Mines are fickle in this game.

          1. 4th Dimension says:

            You need to approach them oblieqly from the side. If you have to approach them from the front, do so in increments. Mines WILL warn you by bleeping that they are about to blow.

            1. Alan says:

              After many, many mines exploding in my face, the rule I came up with was: you’re safe if your crouch-walking. Unless, you bump into something, or you climb up or drop off a height or object, no matter how small. Step off of that plank on the floor? Boom! My rate of mines exploding in my face didn’t significantly improve, but when they exploded I could explain what I had done wrong. :-)

        2. Amazon_warrior says:

          I had to look this up too. :/ The mines in that apartment damn near killed me because I wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t learn how to deal with them properly until I found some in the ganger’s territory.

          1. Thomas says:

            With a console it’s harder to tell if you’re speed is appropriate too, because you’ve got so much control over it. Even when I worked out what to do, it turned out I was going much more slowly than I needed. I guess the beeping was good feedback though

      2. swenson says:

        I am exactly the same way! We’ve been trained well.

        Alternately, someday we’re all going to stumble into a minefield and die while trying to disarm the mines and sell them for money.

        1. Chris B Chikin says:

          This is also true.

    2. Klay F. says:

      Mines are probably the most useful thing in Human Revolution. Mines stack while regular grenades do not.

      In my current playthrough, mines and grenades are literally the only things in my inventory, I’m just past the first boss, and I already have enough mines to completely curb stomp all the other bosses. Mine templates are the only thing I spend money on.

      Seriously, that mechanic is so genius that I have to wonder why other games don’t let you do it.

      1. Amazon_warrior says:

        I *really* didn’t understand that twisted little piece of “logic”, and distinctly recall bitching about it at the time. Why didn’t grenades stack? I’d accept a mechanics explanation, but only one that also accounts for mines stacking. :/ I didn’t make a point of buying mine templates, but I did use any I found to instantly convert whatever grenades I could be bothered to haul around. And honestly I thought the mines made the better weapon. Throwable *and* sticks to things? Yes please! I wouldn’t have got through the third boss battle without them. <3

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          I think I could explain it somewhat:
          The mine template isnt just a stand in which you insert a grenade,but it rather strips the grenade off its casing.So basically,you just replace the casing around the explosive part.And while mines are bigger than grenades,they are flatter,so they can stack on top of one another.

        2. Thomas says:

          It’s simple, Jensen literally stacks everything :D Have you ever tried to balance a grenade on top of a grenade? It’s not easy, whereas mines are flat and you can clearly lay up to three of each type on top of one another with something falling off.

          Why does he stack them? Well because Jensen has just graduated from the university of augmented arsekicking he’s wearing a cloaked mortar-board on his head, and since he never bothered to bring a backpack he just stacks all his stuff on that and relies on really good balance

          1. Paul Spooner says:

            Now I’m imagining a cat-in-the-hatesqe scene with grenades balanced on guns balanced on rocket launchers balanced on Jensen’s head. When he does a dive roll he first tosses it all up in the air, and then catches it on the other side. So goofy.
            Oh wait, what happens when he crawls into ducts?

  5. littlefinger says:

    So Shamus, if you had Jensen’s apartment, you’d turn into the Illusive Man?

    1. Gamer says:

      Shamus is a rogue cell of Cerberus. Everything makes sense now.

      1. tjtheman5 says:

        No, Cerberus is a rogue cell of Shamus, that’s why he’s always so angry at them.

  6. I’m about 2/3 way through my first playthrough, and thank you SW for teaching me you can disable mines. I just shot them / threw boxes at them. Not that I play particularly stealthy but w/e. Another piece of Deus Ex HR information that the game doesn’t tell you and you can do without :|

    1. Chris B Chikin says:

      I think this is part of the charm of the game. In almost any situation you can just take the direct brute force approach (shooting the mines) or the slightly tactical approach (detonate mines with boxes) or the stealthy approach (disarm and collect the mines) which is hardest, often least intuitive, but most rewarding method that makes you feel damn good if you figure it out by yourself!

      The first time I entered the alleyway behind the police station by walking on boxes to the electrical switch, or got onto that ladder by sticking a box under it, or discovered a vent to circumvent (geddit, circumvent???) a firefight this was basically how I felt.

    2. Alex says:

      Man, what this game doesn’t tell you could fill an instruction manual…

      1. Infinitron says:

        No, it’s pretty much just the mines.

        1. Thomas says:

          And how to throw stuff. Never ever learnt that one, eventually I wandered in on a friend playing it and asked him

          1. Chris B Chikin says:

            The console version tells you how to throw during the picking stuff up tutorial.

            1. Thomas says:

              Ah, I’ve finally had the problem with the tutorials that Shamus pointed out then :D

              1. Nick says:

                and WHAT THE FRIKKIN QUICKSAVE BUTTON IS.

                It’s F5, by the way. Not that the game makes it easier to learn that, I just gave up trying to find it and started mashing function keys eventually…

                1. MrPyro says:

                  I only realised that the PC version had a quicksave because people playing the console version were complaining about the lack of it. I’d assumed that the keyboard remapping screen held all functions that used the keyboard, not realising that it was a hard-mapped key and couldn’t be changed

                2. 4th Dimension says:

                  On the other hand F5 is standard quick save key in MANY PC games.

                  1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                    Which is why I hate games that have f6 as the quicksave,and dont let you rebind it.F5 and f9 are perfect,because they are spaced enough that you wont accidentally load when you want to save,and both are near the break in the keyes,so you can locate them easily without looking.So why do some developers think they are smart and use other keys for this?

                  2. Khizan says:

                    Yeah, in most games I can think of that have quicksaves, the defaults are F5 for save and F9 for load.

    3. MrPyro says:

      I saw it as one of the tips on a loading screen; that’s the only reference I saw to it

  7. webrunner says:

    If you had that apartment you’d have to not ask for things all the time

  8. littlefinger says:

    I do have to say I miss having wallclimbing mines ;_;

    Also, DX 1 mines were the ultimate of discretion, whereas these ones … not so much

    1. Wolverine says:

      Also, in Deus Ex you had to run to them and deactivate them before they blew. I tried that once and decided that they cannot be deactivated and had to be shot or avoided. Though I think you can learn how to deactivate them ingame some time later, in Hengsha or somewhere…

  9. Gamer says:

    Like I said, I missed the undercover cop my first playthrough. That was literally the one quest I didn’t finish. I even got the Zeke “cholo” quest finished. I blame the undercover cop for blending in like she’s suppose to. After doing it my second playthrough I agree with Shamus, not bad but doesn’t really expand on the world like many of the other side-quests do. That’s probably my only problem with it.

    I’m surprised the Rutscarn didn’t upgrade anything the first time. I remember that I had a 10mm Pistol I carried along with my Stun Gun. I upgraded it, but I only used it on bosses (and even then when I exhausted the Shotgun and Combat Rifle). I thought most people had one gun they sank everything into.

    I imagine everyone in the audience was yelling “Dammit, Josh you forgot some evidence!”

    Also, I’m glad that you looked at Jensen’s mirror. It was one of the biggest hints as to how Jensen felt about his augmentations. It also leads into one the running gags which is that the receptionist will always tell you that the mirror is still broken.

    I know many people who did what you did with the inventory, Shamus. The inventory augments were the first things I got (post hacking software upgrade). I always collect tons of loot in Bethesda games, but I didn’t in this game. I’m guessing because, as you said, it is considerably less convenient to do so. Well, that and the fact that I lack patience while at the same time never hurt for funds. (Remember, I punch out people who ask for my money except shops.)

    Excellent episode, always looking forward to the next one.

    1. Infinitron says:

      It’s not quite true that it doesn’t expand on the world. That quest reveals ahead of time that there’s a covert FEMA presence somewhere in the city, and furthermore, that they’re willing to resort to very ugly means to keep it hidden (provoking a full-blown gang war just to get rid of the Motor City Bangers encroaching near their facility).

      1. Gamer says:

        You know, I completely forgot about that. Even still, you’d gather that by just going through the game.

        1. Thomas says:

          I got the quest without ever even hearing Pritchards thing I think, because I was still in a ‘talk to every NPC’ phase. Even then, I think she’s got some unique dialogue when you pass her without talking and whenever that happened it always triggered my completionist tendencies. When they passed her in another episode and she spoke I was yelling in my head for them to talk to her ;D

          1. Hallc says:

            I got that quest because I just happened to walk past her when returning to my apartment. She says something along the lines of “Jensen? Is that you?” so I turned around and spoke to her and got this quest.

    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

      “I imagine everyone in the audience was yelling “Dammit, Josh you forgot some evidence!””

      I saw last episode what he did,but didnt say anything,and just waited the moment he realizes it so I can laugh.

  10. Hitch says:

    I haven’t played this game yet. So I can only go by what I’ve seen on the screen and heard you guys say. But my question is, why does Josh bother putting Megan in the credits sequence if she’s dead and we’re never going to see her again?

    On the other hand — thank you, Josh, for saving right before doing something stupid. (I’m not saying whether I count throwing the box while in the middle of the room full of mines, or listening to Ruts as the stupid thing.)

    1. Infinitron says:

      Because SPOILER.
      You should really play the game before watching these…

    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

      The same reason he is putting that guy jensen stabbed,and not because she actually survived that completely unsurvivable and unfakable thing.That would be ridiculous,why would anyone even think that?

    3. Eruanno says:

      Because she’s a ghost that haunts Adam’s house. Oooooo~

      1. Jarenth says:

        ~Ooooh, Adam, why did you ask for those augmentations, ooooh~

  11. Jokerman says:

    “So, I had to… carry the guns to the shop one at a time. I did that. It was boring. It took forever.”

    You are truly mental Shamus…

    1. Kresh says:

      “You are truly mental Shamus…”

      You tend to get that way when the game design tries to force an artificial scarcity scheme on you. I do it too, just not in this game.

      1. Wait, you’re saying it’s the GAME’S fault?

        Srsly?

        1. Zukhramm says:

          Yes, of course it is the game’s fault.

          1. Kdansky says:

            If a player does something that bores him for a long time despite the game being designed for not doing it, it’s not the game’s fault. If the game was rigged to be a Skinner box in the first place (like most MMOs, or F2P titles), then you’d had a point. Any subscription-based game is designed to waste as much of your time as possible, so you pay for longer.

            “No selling” would definitely work. And in Skyrim, selling is extremely not worth it either, and all the compulsive collectors (not me) have a worse time for it. I just don’t pick up any weapons, and the game plays so much better.

        2. Sumanai says:

          I don’t agree with the point of view, but I don’t find it insane either.

          Game design seems to fall roughly into two types. In one, you try to give as much freedom to the players as possible and hope that they will find or make their own fun.

          In another, you try to make it so that the players will have fun and you take away certain freedoms in order to do it. They spend too much time wondering where they’re supposed to go? You want them to be making constant progress, so as the designer that’s a problem for you. They do something that the game doesn’t force them to do, but which is time consuming and not really fun (but definitely breaks the flow)? You change the game so this isn’t encouraged in any way.

          In this case it would be making it so you can’t sell weapons, since that’s not an unreasonable behaviour for the NPC and it’s breaking the flow of the game. Then make sure they can get enough cash some other way.

          The reason why I don’t agree with the point of view is simply that DE:HR is in the middle of the two. You’re in a controlled experience, but not so controlled that you’re not expected to make your own decisions on what you find most enjoyable.

  12. dasick says:

    Note: Not watching the episodes because I don’t want to spoil “Deity From” game series everyone keeps talking about (Deity From… where? How can a game whose title isn’t even finished be coveted as the pinnacle of gaming by so many people? If the title is an unfinished phrase, what does it say about the developers attitude towards the rest of the game?!)

    Note back on track: I still read Shamus’ write up, because it’s 1. (mostly?) spoiler free and 2. it’s very hard to find intelligent and articulate discussion of video games anywhere, without running into any “games are high art” (digging deep = awesome. digging too deep = lava). Unfortunatly, SW is pretty much the only regularly updated portion of this blog, and while gaming discussion is happening, it’s littered with spoilers and Josh screaming “STOP SHOOTING ME”.

    END NOTE

    The scavenging element is pretty nonsensical in games, especially in the so-called RPGs, which thrive on their approximation of “realism”*. Mass Effect 2 lampshades that with the Adoring Fan character, which is funny considering that in ME1 that was exactly how you got rich. In ME2 however, it’s a little bit different, and you only scavenge up things that it makes sense to scavenge (or for the things to be there).

    *(I know it’s moot to talk about realism in a genre predominated by fantasy games, but I don’t know what else to call it. It’s the attention to detail, the presence of internal logic, the butterfly effect of introducing an unordinary element into an ordinary situation. Y’know, things making sense while being weird.)

    I’m wondering if the ME2 system is the right way to go. I can’t really think of a fault within it, it’s streamlined the inventory management aspect, without removing the scavenging thrill or the depth of the system.

    1. Hitch says:

      One solution would be for games to logically limit the amount of money you can carry around without creating problems for yourself. In a future high tech setting like Deus Ex or Mass Effect you simply have applying excess credits to your account raise red flags with financial institutions and unwanted law enforcement attention. On the other hand, applying the credits to an unregistered “anonymous” credit card would make it only usable with black-market dealers who, as soon as they figure out how many credits you have, multiply all of their prices by 10 or 100 or more to make it not worthwhile.

      In a medieval fantasy setting like Skyrim, just limit the gold you can discretely carry to what would fit in an easily concealed coin purse. Once you have so much gold it’d have to be in a gunny sack slung across your shoulder, then you attract the attention of every bandit in the region any time you walk down the road.

      No more obsessive scavenging. No more hoarding. No more breaking the local economy.

      1. Gamer says:

        They did this in Bioshock by having the wallet only hold 500 dollars. I personally found it quite irritating. The problem is that in most RPGs, scavenging and acquiring loot is a major aspect of the game. Therefore arbitrary limits like that are bound to annoy players. It’s a delicate balancing act.

    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Many people hated that in me2,but I actually liked it.Except for the probing part,that was just stupid.But having a shared inventory,and upgrading the weapons for the whole team was great.And you even could customize your weapons,although not directly,but through your squadies.The only problem is that they gave the best passive skill to miranda,so on any higher difficulty,you simply had to pick her up every time(unless you are an uber l33t,that is).

      However,scavenging isnt the problem just for computer games.Table top rpgs have suffered from that problem for decades now.Its something thats hard to do,because if you go for too much realism,you have to micromanage a lot.But if you do away with micromanagement,you get into really absurd situations.

      1. Gamer says:

        I didn’t mind the system of Mass Effect 2. The only thing I wished they did was include the stats (more than a description, actual numbers) and include a bit more customization. Looks like ME3 is solving that problem, so yeah.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          Oh yes,I hate lack of stats.If I want to read,then let me read god damn it!

          As for customization,like Ive said,thats what your team members(and their powers)are for.Though a few more branching paths wouldnt hurt.

      2. Khizan says:

        Avoiding the use of Miranda really isn’t that hard. You feel it a bit in the earlier levels, but after that I never felt the loss. This is on insanity, even.

        The squad bonuses are good, but far from mandatory. Hell, the reason I think Miranda was overpowered is overload/warp as a combo.

    3. Thomas says:

      Deity from the human revolution of course :D The colon marks the place the translation machine threw a hiccup

  13. SolkaTruesilver says:

    Shamus, your Deadly Sin isn’t Pride, or Envy. Or Wrath (except when you are dealing with Fable storyline)

    It’s Greed…

  14. Zagzag says:

    I like how Josh’s constant switching from sensible to Cuftbert playstyles somehow seems more Cufterbertian then just pure Cuftbert. Chaotic Cuftbert perhaps…? I don’t really know where Curftbert fits into the alignments.

    1. Hitch says:

      Early on Cuftbertian simply meant doing things we would not expect. But now we expect Cuftbertian behavior, so he has to change it up by playing smart to keep us off guard. Next he’ll have to go deeper by being pointlessly destructive right when we would expect him to change things up by being sensible. Then we get into a whole Cuftbertian Inception thing….

      1. Lovecrafter says:

        Cuftception?

      2. Eruanno says:

        So… the Cuftbertian deception would essentially be to do the talk-to-reporter thing in Mass Effect by responding nicely, again nicely, something nice again and then BAM punch her in the face for no reason.

        1. Hitch says:

          The Cuftbertian approach to Mass Effect is to take the Paragon option whenever you’re dealing with an NPC you like, even if it does you no good, and the Renegade option on other NPCs any time it will make your mission harder. So then at the end of the game you can troll the audience by being unable to take any of the interesting options at either end of the scale.

    2. Hal says:

      Incidentally, I finished the game last night. There is a man listed in the credits by the name of Cuthbertson.

      Close enough for me.

  15. Daemian Lucifer says:

    I did that same thing here like you Shamus,but after finishing this main quest,I stopped.Looting is my problem too,so I always impose rules on myself in order to not loot too much.Here,I used the rule of not carrying any ammo(except for the tranq rifle),and to immediately use up all the mods.It both satisfied my need for looting shit,and it didnt overcrowd my inventory.

    I found out you can disarm grenades in the derelict row,and before I went into this apartment.I went there to do the weapon stash,and ended up exploring the place,accidentally disabling the antenna in the process.I blew myself up,so I decided to creep to the mine to see if it worked.But I too forgot about walking,so I first tried the tapping W method.It sorta worked,for a bit.But then I remembered that there was a walk key in the bindings,so I went there and checked.Sure enough,caps lock.And from then,I had one more thing that I always carried with me(a bunch of mines).

  16. The_Unforgiven says:

    I’ll accept you smoking in that appartment, but ONLY if you smoke a pipe.

    1. noahpocalypse says:

      And shoot the wall with new kinds of bullets and gunpowder?

      1. Irridium says:

        And starts his own noir detective agency. Complete with the cool hat noir detectives have.

      2. Gruhunchously says:

        When I got to Jensen’s apartment, I actually took the assault rifle on the coffee table and emptied it’s entire clip into the wall, so that I could be a future Sherlock Holmes. It spooked all the nearby NPCs pretty hard.

  17. silentlambda says:

    I understand how everything built on the Gamebryo engine subtly builds those looting reflexes, but the original Deus Ex taught the opposite economic lesson. Vendors were only an option every few hours, and they bought none of your junk.

    Even with the more fleshed out system in this game, the only thing worth buying is spare ammo and Praxis kits, everything else is found throughout the levels. Is schlepping all if that vendor trash across the city necessary if the reward is so insignificant?

    1. Shamus says:

      The rewards were actually pretty good. The shotguns were worth a few hundred each. Which is probably where the problem began. “Hm. Just a few of these is worth a praxis kit, I’d better get ’em all!”

      1. Gamer says:

        I definitely applaud you for the effort (Not sure if I should, but anyway), but I was simply far too lazy to bother with dragging the guns to a vendor one at a time.

        Admittedly, each gun is worth a fair chunk of money.

        1. Thomas says:

          But there are only two praxis kits an area!! I guess it helps you get them quickly on the first level

          1. Gamer says:

            I still had enough to buy all the Praxis Kits without gun smuggling. 5000 credits isn’t a whole lot when you (like me) go out of your way to silently takedown every single mook in the area and hack every single terminal. I had 35000 unused credits by the end of the game. I like to think that my Jensen is just saving up for an early retirement.

  18. Raygereio says:

    So are the inventory-upgrades going to be the new incinerator of this season?

    1. Dante says:

      I was thinking Cannibal.

      1. Hitch says:

        No, save that until they play Arkham City. Have Batman take the cannibal perk.

      2. Raygereio says:

        Nah. Cannibal was just a recurring joke with Mumbles wanting Josh to pick one of the best contestants for the most-useless-perk-award. It did not make some people upset due to just how wrong it was.

        1. Dante says:

          I’m currently on my “evil as possible” playthrough of NV, and I have cannibal on there, and it is a very useful perk to have.

          1. Mumbles says:

            Welcome to the cult, brother. You are a child of Namira now.

            1. Tizzy says:

              It’s nice to know that Mumbles will still weigh in from time to time even if we can’t hear her voice any more.

              1. Dude says:

                Weigh in.

                I see what you did there.

    2. Even says:

      He’ll probably get them just so he can carry a rocket launcher and several rockets. And never use it. Maybe switch to a laser or plasma rifle along the way.

  19. Sleeping Dragon says:

    This game is somewhat unsubtle with clues to its twist, isn’t it? I think what they want to do is have the players pat themselves on the back and not see that one twist coming.

    RE: Looting:
    I usually curse the inventory limitations but I rarely bother to build caches, reloot a location or use engine tricks to fetch stuff around, I’ve seen very few games that actually punish the player with a “you don’t have enough cash” sign for not selling a rusty spoon that was in the hotel room down the corridor from where you were doing a boring sidequest.

    1. Thomas says:

      I think the idea is, that it’s less a twist and more a story element if you provide the backstory. It stops it being cheap and gives extra reward to the exploring.

      However they were just as unsubtle about a certain evil-voiced figure and that little move sounded like it was built up to be a twist, which I can’t understand because they were really really telegraphing it.

      With the other twists, it was all in game stuff and you guessed them because it made sense from the bits of story you already had. The twist I mentioned above on the other hand is guessable because of all the meta stuff, story clues and narrative devices and that’s what I think makes a bad twist. Knowing Girl will meet Boy because at first Girl hated Boy is trite and cliche and bad. It makes no real world sense, but it makes story sense. Knowing Girl will meet Boy because you can see from the start their personalities are actually really suited to each other, even though they don’t know it yet, is good because it’s established. Sixth Sense is good because the twist makes inworld sense and as an affect on everything before it etc

  20. Ed Lu says:

    “Man, if only they had the option to upgrade your – ”
    *Shamus sees the mines go off*
    ” … brain.”
    I was waiting for the reaction – that was PRICELESS.

    1. Sydney says:

      Seconded. My laughter carried straight through the credits.

  21. Raygereio says:

    Okay, here’s a question for Josh: how the hell did you play through this game and not figure out how to disarm mines? o_O
    I know it’s not spoonfeed to the player like for instance in Deus Ex 1’s tutorial, but unless I’m seriously misremembering something it’s mentioned in the manual and in the tutorial movies.

    Now this isn’t a “You’re playing it wrong!”-thing. I don’t give a crap about that. This is more of a “Please stop looking like you’re bad at videogames. It’s embarrassing.”-thing. Which naturally is completely different.

    Erm, wait.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Those tutorials are really bad.”Show,dont tell” doesnt translate well to video games.In video games its “do,dont show”(or is that engage?).

    2. Zukhramm says:

      What’s wrong with being bad at video games?

      Every single person I talked about it with had problems with the mines in this game.

    3. Gamer says:

      I never knew that until Shamus said it this episode. I always disarmed mines by shooting them from a distance with a pistol.

      1. Raygereio says:

        @Daemian Lucifer:
        True the ingame tutorials are pretty bad. It would have been good if they had a “Hey, welcome back to active duty, Adam. You want to run a quick obstacle course?”-tutorial thingey.

        @Gamer: Well, I suppose that would have worked well enough. Though it is still just weird for me to hear about people comming across something they don’t get in a game and never bothering looking up how it’s supposed to work.
        Just as weird as hearing people complaine about the default keybindings, without those same people going through the effort of customizing their bindings.

        1. Josh says:

          True story: When I got to this room the first time I played the game, I sat there trying to figure out how to go and disarm the mines. But the thing that seemed logical to me – crouching and approaching – wasn’t working because I didn’t even realize there was a walk button. I even looked around at walkthroughs for this section, but they all said “just shoot the mines or throw something into the room.”

          I never figured it out until last recording session. Whole first playthrough, every mine I saw I blew up.

          1. Raygereio says:

            Well, to be honest I also had to look it up as I got to this section first time playing (after several failed attempts with the DX1 disarm method, that is).
            I suppose it helped that I knew there was a walk button, by virtue of me having customized my own controls. ;-)

            You understand I had to ask, right? I mean it’s rather hard to figure out at times where the line between truth and trolling your audience / fellow SW-crew lies with you.

            1. MrPyro says:

              My problem was that I didn’t realise that the walk/run distinction applied to crouching as well as standing; I assumed that crouch automatically put you into walk mode.

            2. Sleeping Dragon says:

              Actually I probably wouldn’t figure it out either if not for the fact that I always go into controls setting before the game which made me remember there was a walk thing after I crouched, approached and blew up the first time (okay, the second time, the first time I opened the door and waltzed into the room without really looking).

          2. RTBones says:

            I’m glad its not just me. I, too, blew up or set off every mine I came across.

            I figured you could disarm the mines somehow, but I made the mistaken assumption that crouching automatically put you in ‘walk’ mode. I never got disarming to work. I didn’t realized there was actually a ‘walk’ BUTTON you needed to toggle until MUCH later.

  22. noahpocalypse says:

    Man, when you were talking about mines with sweet spots, I thought you were going to do an Artemis Fowl reference. That would fit in quite nicely with this universe, even with the fairies.

  23. Destrustor says:

    My hoarding usually goes like this:
    1. Fill inventory with useless crap
    2. Oh noes inventory is full
    3. Drop the most worthless-est stuff to make room for the slightly-less worthless stuff (unless one of the stuffs is something I don’t know how much is worth), starting with the huge stuff because I always have the feeling that smaller items have a better cost-to-space ratio.
    4. Keep opimizing the inventory until every spot is full with the highest possible value.
    5. Find merchant, sell all, repeat from step 1.
    If I see some item to pick up and my inventory is already full, I just ignore it, unless it is something that I know could sell for lots of cash. I would never do multiple trips (unless the merchant is less than 2 minutes away or something).
    And even then, ignoring about a third of the loot, I still have too much cash.In my current playthrough I just came back from montreal and after buying both praxis kits I’m still left with over 16000 bucks that are of no immediate (or even, I guess, future) use to me.

    1. Destrustor says:

      D’oh!
      Ahem: 4. Keep optimizing blah blah blah…

      There. Fixed.

  24. – @4:00 Wow! You did NOT just say that!

    – The heroin patch theory actually makes a lotta sense, however it looks like they’re positioned in the wrong spot.

    – Her doing the street tramp cop trap gig actually pans out if you think about it. She points out that the investigation’s stalled, so it stands to reason she’s been transferred to a different assignment. It’s also slightly inferred that her transfer may be the result of O’Malley’s interference. In either case, if she were still actively on the case, it’d prolly be a lot harder for her to get away with asking Jensen to do all this in the first place.

    – “So…Pritchard, regarding a certain folder in my partitioned drive you may or may not have discovered…uh…” “It’s okay, Jensen. I’m a brony too.”

    – Yeah, it definitely stuck in my craw that Jensen at no point acknowledges the conflicting details surrounding that guy’s suicide.

    – Order your fembot today! *some assembly required

    – See Josh, the thing about motion sensors is they really don’t differentiate from a human or a box.

    POST GAME BLOG POST:

    THIS! THIS is why I can’t play Skyrim. After YEARS of playing console RPGS where EVERY item has an immediate purpose, the idea of not grabbing EVERY DAMN THING just…I couldn’t do it. Same for HR. Expanded out the inventory first and I was STILL spilling over with crap that I wasn’t using. Usually additional ammo, which I was ALWAYS too paranoid to sell off. :P

    1. swenson says:

      I’m playing Oblivion at the moment (yes, I know I’m a game behind) and… I’ve taken to playing with a calculator next to me so I can quickly punch in the weight-to-price ratios of the various loot I pick up. This is the ONLY way I can manage to get through the game, but even when I know something is a better value than some other item, it’s still painful for me to leave something behind.

      1. Destrustor says:

        I just go with the simple “2x it’s weight in cash”. I’ve been tempted to use the calculator, but it’d be too much of a hassle.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          My rule is 5x the weight.And I still end up with too much in both new vegas and skyrim.

          1. Gamer says:

            My rule was to only take components and things I could use like weapons, armor and collection quest items. I usually ended up just shy of overweight and never hurt for caps/gold.

            In Skyrim I eventually only took weapons and all armor except chest pieces. The chest piece was always far too heavy. Any ingredients were also fair game and any enchantment took priority. There was some sorting and resorting, but I always made out.

        2. swenson says:

          The problem is that I’ve gotten to a level where I routinely find things worth 500, 1000, 2000 gold. So I won’t take it unless it’s worth 100 or more times its weight. Something with a weight of 2 and a price of 500, that’s a top priority item for me to take. Something with a weight of 3 and a price of 170 or so… that’s still a pretty high price apiece, but everything else is worth so much more (relatively speaking) that I just have to leave it behind.

      2. Y’know if I recall correctly, there’s supposed to be a GUI mod that actually does that for you. Leastways, I remember something akin to that being mentioned in the Skyrim Mods articles on The Escapist.

  25. Zaxares says:

    3:16: I actually never knew that Pritchard contacts you regarding Jenny’s quest. I’d always talked to her first by just walking around town and talking to every single NPC I see. (A habit leftover from the early days of JRPGs. XD)

    Jenny’s sidequest is mainly all about giving the player additional world-flavour by showing the lengths that the Big Conspiracy will go to to hide their presence and what they’re doing in Detroit. It ties in later with the main quest, but not in a terribly big way.

    Also… it’s worth reminding everybody that this is Jenny Alexander. One of Jensen’s friends from when he was back on the Force… And Josh promptly broke into her office back in the last episode and looted everything in her office. XD (In my defense, when I did it? I had to make sure I showed no favouritism or it could have gotten her into trouble. *whistle*)

    9:20: Shamus, that was my exact thought too. XD “Why don’t you guys just use a virtual machine??” To be fair though, anybody who doesn’t work in the IT industry is not likely to know what a virtual machine is.

    11:15: Pack rats of the gaming world, UNITE! :D Yeah, the inventory upgrades are always the first ones I get, since I HATE leaving loot behind. I don’t mind the fact that you just get bullets instead of duplicate weapons; I just hate knowing that there’s loot that I left behind in a mission. Sometimes I will deliberately pull out a weapon and fire off a clip just to waste ammo, just so I can take another clip of ammo that’s lying there in front of me.

    That aside though, I do like the way DX:HR built inventory upgrades into the level-up system. I thought it was a very clever, logical way of going about it. (I DO take issue at the size of some of the weapons though. If you’ve ever carried an assault rifle, and compare that to a pistol, there is NO WAY a standard pistol should take up that much space on your person compared to the rifle. I think the handguns should only have taken up 4 squares of space, instead of 6.)

    12:34: Unlike Shamus and Rutskarn though, I DO use a lot of my inventory space. I always carry with me a few EMP and Gas grenades, multiple weapons (usually a handgun, a medium-range weapon and a long-range weapon, but I sometimes lug around the Rocket Launcher too, just because it’s so fun to use), two stacks of spare ammo for each weapon, a small stash of candy bars for energy, and health items like Painkillers and Hypostims. That doesn’t always leave a lot of room for picking up loot.

    14:45: It’s hinted that the janitor was the one who put the Armor-Piercing mod in Jensen’s secret storage, since that’s the only thing in there that you can’t really buy from shops at this point in the game. The fully modded Pistol is also considered by many players to be the most superior weapon in DX:HR, since headshots with it will take out just about any enemy in the game in one shot. Me personally though, I prefer the fully-modded Revolver, since the explosive rounds stagger enemies and lets you easily take them out without risk of return fire.

    16:04: Me! I did full completion on every single playthrough I made. XD I’m pretty OCD about completing every available side-quest in any games I play, unless player choices preclude certain side-quests being available.

    18:50: Clearly, explosives and Josh do not mix. *snicker*

    Oh, and regarding poorly concealed plot twists? I figured it out from the VERY BEGINNING, when you pick up the datapad in Megan’s room and the file name for “Patient X” begins with “AJ”. … Seriously, how much more obvious can you get??

    1. Michael says:

      “Oh, and regarding poorly concealed plot twists? I figured it out from the VERY BEGINNING, when you pick up the datapad in Megan's room and the file name for “Patient X” begins with “AJ”. … Seriously, how much more obvious can you get??”

      Oh, man.

      See, I haven’t played this one yet, so I’m basically just along for the ride. I was under the assumption that the NPCs in this world had basic ‘gameworld motivations,’ like mustache-twirling villains.

      The fact that Megan brings Jensen back to life speaks volumes of their past relationship. This adds a layer of depth to the character (for me) without forced exposition.

      Unless I’m misinterpreting your remarks, and she’s the end boss or something.

      1. Nick says:

        I’m still playing through the game myself, but I think what they’re saying is that all the Patient X stuff, who is miraculously not rejecting augments over time, and wouldn’t need the addictive Neuropozene doses, would represent the ability for everyone to get as augmented as they like without the current drawbacks if they can work out how to extract and use that ability.

        Megan is presumably still alive and working on this somewhere. At least, that seems like the logical plot to me so far.

      2. Daemian Lucifer says:

        She didnt bring jensen back to life,sarif did.But I forgot if he knew that megan got her research from jensen.He did,however,hire a PI to research jensens past,and found some quite interesting things(that the crew will probably cover in the futer,its a quick sidequest).However,megan is alive,and she is not a villain.

        As for that twist,I wasnt surprised by it either,but I was surprised by how the game handled it.Megan broke up with jensen because of what she did,and couldnt live with the guilt.Its not something you get in other games.

        1. giantraven says:

          Her not being a villain is pretty suspect in my eyes.

          1. Thomas says:

            Seconded

    2. Paul Spooner says:

      While it was annoying how much space grenades and pistols took up, I appreciated that the sniper rifle and rocket launcher were absolutely huge.
      It’s not like it would have affected gameplay, but I would have loved to have “slots” for carying items, just so the models could show up on your body in third person mode. Seeing Jensen bristling with spare rockets, gun barrels, and candy-bars as he sneaks around would have been great (if perhaps too comedic).
      Are there any games where you can actually see the equipment your character is lugging around?

  26. GiantRaven says:

    That was a Sleeping Bag, not a Body Bag. Makes much more sense for one of those to be in a deserted alley.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      With so many homeless around,why would it be abandoned?

      1. Nick says:

        It’s behind the incredible security of the 0002 gate :P

  27. guy says:

    The AP 10mil is the best gun, and I will hear no disparagement of it. You can instantly kill any non-boss human enemy with a single bullet from it, and it is perfectly accurate.

    1. Gamer says:

      Especially with the laser-pointer upgrade.

  28. decius says:

    If you hack all the ICE nodes, you automatically get all the extra stuff. Once I realized that, hacking became much easier for me.

  29. Bubble181 says:

    On a *completely* unrelated note, I bought Fallout: New Vegas during the last Steam sale, because of Spoiler Warning. Haven’t watched the season but people seemed to like the game a bit in the comments :-P
    As someone who usually prefers to play (evil) glass canon mages in this kind of game (Morrowind, Kotor, Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights, you name it) but isn’t familiar with the setting, what kind of starting setup would you people suggest? No mods or DLC (yet), if that influences anything.

    1. Gamer says:

      Each weapon type has strengths and weaknesses, but all are viable.

      Melee weapons/Unarmed builds do kinda poorly in the beginning, but become easy mode in the end once you get some better armor and a Ballistic Fist or the Melee Weapons equivilant.

      Explosives are good once you can get a steady supply of them.

      Small Guns are an average and well-rounded assortment

      Energy weapons are strong, but a lot of the powerful ones eat up ammo like crazy and you don’t get any decent ones early on.

      The best thing to do is experiment. One good thing about New Vegas is that your never forced into a single playstyle and can always change up by putting points in different places. One thing I would advise is to put points in some of the non-combat skills like Speech, Medicine, and Lockpick/Science. But skip Barter and Survival, you don’t really need those.

    2. Even says:

      I’d believe the equivalent would be a high Agility/low Endurance sniper type character with high luck emphasis. Guns and/or Energy Weapons are the way to go, depending on if you by glass cannon you also mean low Strength. All weapons have a minimal strength requirement (which affects your effectiveness should you not meet it) and to be comfortable with most powerful Guns you should have it around 5, give or take a point. Energy Weapons do not all need that much Strength so you can go a little lower on Strength if you want. The most imporant thing would be to take the Weapon Handling (drops the requirement for all weapons by 2) perk whenever it’s available to give yourself more choice all around. If you want to really cash out on the choice department, I’d recommend getting Gunrunners’ Arsenal. Dead Money also has one of the most powerful Energy Weapons in the whole game if you fully upgrade it.

      To further enhance your “cannon” you might want to look to enhancing your critical rate. One of the optional traits, “Built To Destroy”, is ideal with +3%. The tradeoff isn’t that big of a deal since fixing your stuff isn’t that hard in this game. High Luck is essential and you probably don’t wanna miss out on some of the perks either, mainly Finesse and Better Criticals. You can also find some gear to which gives you “+critical rate” along the way.

      Some additional perks to consider:

      Hand Loader – gives you a whole load of recipes for crafting special ammo which can give you some nice damage boost

      Alternatively you could try going for Explosives as a secondary weapon skill for some extra hilarity, but that would need some investment in Strength again for the biggest damage dealers.

      So there you go. It’s by no means the be all end all in-depth guide, but should be enough to get you started. Feel free to experiment.

      Edit: Beaten to the punch.. well, here goes anyway.

      1. Bubble181 says:

        Cheers to both :-)

        I managed to die against the gecko’s in Goodsprings, so I’m doing great so far :-P

  30. The Bard says:

    Hehe, that’s funny to me, because I am the exact same way. The Witcher has a similar mechanic where you can’t carry more than one extra weapon on your back and one on your waist. And after killing people and having 12 weapons on the ground, I get anxious, because they despawn if you leave the area you’re in. So I have to figure out how to get to a merchant without leaving the area, and then make 12-15 trips to sell off these stupid little weapons that are only worth a pittance each.

    So yea, I totally feel your pain, Shamus. I just make sure I have Netflix or something on in the background to ease my self-inflicted suffering.

    1. Dasick says:

      So as a scavenger in nature, is there anything that would deter you from such blatant display of masochism? Or would the devs have to invent new mechanics that simply dont let you do that?

      I was thinking that maybe only letting the player sell stuff off only at designated hub spaces, which are only available between main quest portions.

      I wonder though, in the original Fallout (drink), the one with the time limit, was the hoarding and loot ferrying a part of the game play, considering that time has value there? If the devs manage to give time value, not by a hard restriction but by the way the game mechanics work, would that discourage the hoarding gameplay?

      1. The Bard says:

        For me, a lot of it depends on how easy gold is to come by. If there’s a game that has finite encounters and finite chances to earn money, I’m far more likely to suck every last gold coin out of the opportunities in front of me.

        The Witcher actually DID change my behavior as gold became easier to come by. Once I could earn money in ways that didn’t involve dragging weapons for 3 hrs, that’s what I started doing. But it still was a sort of pained release. Sort of like reluctantly giving away that death metal concert t-shirt you wore in the 80s that smells like a bog.

        I hate timed games of any kind, so I’m a bad person to ask about them. Part of the OCD/Completionist mentality is a complete aversion to being timed. =( I tried to play Dead Rising, and I just couldn’t do it.

        1. Dasick says:

          That’s why I’m asking though. I hate timed games as well, but I also don’t like that time doesn’t have any value whatsoever. I’m thinking of mechanics where time has value, but you’re not restricted in it.

          As an example, I’m thinking of upkeep in 4x games. If your guy requires upkeep (fatigue, food, etc), then it merely becomes unprofitable to just lug stuff around, but at the same time, ther should always be an activity to let you grind more resource to be used for upkeep.

          1. The Bard says:

            I guess I wouldn’t be opposed to trying something like that if it were done in a way that makes sense. There was a Neverwinter Nights mod back in the day that required you to have food and a bedroll in order to make camp & rest. I liked that over being able to rest anytime anywhere, and it could be a neat thing to put in RPGs.

            I’m also one of the few – if the interwebz is to be believed – who thought the ME2 salvage mechanic was brilliant. It focused me on things other than “find all loot and spend 3 hrs selling it”, something I always found to be tedious. Automatically being given money for things you couldn’t use was a great way around it.

            As for other games, I would say if there are appropriate established methods to get resources when I need them, I’m totally in favor of being weened off scavenging, especially since it sucks. It’s the PERCEIVED financial cap that makes me suck every oil field barren.

        2. Daemian Lucifer says:

          Dead rising(2 at least,didnt play the console exclusive 1)isnt really timed,since everything you do remains done between playthroughs.Its a good trade off.

          1. The Bard says:

            I never played the second, so I have no idea. I thought the first one was a cool premise, if you can get past the time thing. For me, it was always “Ok, I’m 5 minutes in, am I going as fast as I need to be? I bet I need to beat that last boss 20 seconds faster. If I reload and keep reloading until I beat him with 20 seconds less off the clock, then I’ll be good. Also, I have to make sure my guy never stops running. EVER.”

            Even after being told the point is to get better, restart the game, get better, restart, I just can’t shake this anxiety with that clock over my head. It’s totally my fault, though, not the game’s. So I guess that’s step one to recovery?

      2. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Fallout 1 had just as much scavenging as 2.The time limit was almost meaningless.

  31. Dasick says:

    Dammit, missed the thread

  32. Jarenth says:

    Fun fact: I came up to this door with Hacking < 4, and I didn't think to look for a Pocket Secretary. So I got angry with the door instead, and threw a grenade at it.

    That's when I learned that in the Deus Ex universe, wooden doors are not magically grenade-proof.

    Ok, that’s a fib: I suspected they would be breakable from Deus Ex 1 (and HR’s promotional materials) and experimented accordingly. Still, I love that it’s possible to subvert hacking with explosive violence.

    1. 4th Dimension says:

      No need for explosives. Throw something against the door a dozen times and it will break.

      1. Jarenth says:

        Why would I use not explosives when explosives do the trick?

    2. Even says:

      Reminds me of the distinct lack of melee weapons in this game. In Deux Ex you could always break locked doors, chests or hatches if you could do enough damage. The Dragon’s Tooth sword was always ideal for it. They could have easily given the option for breaking down locked doors for example with the wallbreaking aug.

  33. RCN says:

    Meh. Once I had the Tranq rifle, the taser, the double takedown and the awesome non-lethal shotgun in Deus Ex: Cuban Retribution, I didn’t need much more of anything. Heck, I think the Taser was the best weapon hands down against the bosses.

    Inventory is what I started taking when I started running out of things to pick. Though it really did take an insurmountable amount of will to NOT just carry each and every firearm I’ve found on my way one at a time. I’ve kept saying my mantra: “you only need those three weapons, you only need those three. Don’t be a rat pack. DON’T! Remember the Oblivion Fiasco. Remember!” (I’ve once decided to take everything, pretty much a bit at a time, of a secluded dungeon in Oblivion to the merchant just so I wouldn’t leave them to waste and I wouldn’t need to drop anything before going to bed… until the point I noticed it was day already… fun test that morning).

  34. Ateius says:

    I took the inventory augments over other, actually sort-of crucial ones, just to get more space, and I still never had enough to loot everything, because I had ‘just in case’ weapons and grenades and consumables constantly littering up my inventory.

    And I never used them, because no matter how big or scary the current situation was, I could never be sure there wasn’t another, bigger, scarier encounter in the next room, and boy would my face be red if I faced that without a dozen EMP grenades!

    1. evileeyore says:

      Same here…

      When I’d run out of hoarding space for mines and grenades I’d dump them in the apartment and office… as well as duplicates of every single weapon I found.

      I kept expecting to be stripped of all equipment and need to do a quick resupply from one of those two locations.

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