{"id":15299,"date":"2012-03-09T12:55:20","date_gmt":"2012-03-09T17:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=15299"},"modified":"2012-03-09T12:58:25","modified_gmt":"2012-03-09T17:58:25","slug":"deus-ex-human-revolution-ep33you-munchkin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=15299","title":{"rendered":"Deus Ex Human Revolution EP33:You Munchkin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/OtUVUSs1Sh0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OtUVUSs1Sh0'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>Yes, Josh is a <a href=\"http:\/\/tvtropes.org\/pmwiki\/pmwiki.php\/Main\/Munchkin\">munchkin<\/a>. I guess that&#8217;s what makes him so&#8230; &#8220;lovable&#8221;? <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking more about <a href=\"?p=14879\">the looting compulsion I experienced in this game<\/a>. I&#8217;ve been playing through the game again, so a lot of this is coming back to me.  I think I&#8217;ve identified a couple of bad spots that led to self-defeating behavior: <\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Early in the game, I discovered the LIMB clinic sold Praxis kits for $5,000, and I had less than $2,000 at the time.  This sent me a signal: <em>There are level-ups available that you can&#8217;t afford.  You&#8217;re in danger of missing them. The massive gap between what you have ($2k) and what you need ($10k) means you need to be bringing in a lot more money.<\/em>  Thus began the looting compulsion.  This continued even after I had enough to buy the Praxis kits, because I never knew when more would show up, how many there would be, or how many the game would &#8220;expect&#8221; me to have.\n<\/li>\n<li>Later we have the long stretch through the Pangu, TYM, the ambush, and the Picus building where we have two different boss-type encounters without encountering a single shop. This sent me another signal: <em>You never know when the next shop will show up, so you should always make sure to dump your inventory to the bare minimum before you go someplace new.<\/em>\n<\/li>\n<li>This led to me making extra shop trips, and caused me to show up to the Malik fight with just a pistol and stunner. No grenades. Which means I didn&#8217;t have the means to bring down the robot, which means I really had no way to save Malik.\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>I&#8217;m not complaining that this fight was &#8220;too hard&#8221; or anything.  Unlike the other set-piece encounters, this one gave you some freedom and didn&#8217;t feel like a lame cheat. You weren&#8217;t railroaded into acting like a dumbass, the bad guys just sucker-punched you.  I showed up without the tools to win, and so I didn&#8217;t. Really, if I&#8217;d actually been playing my character I would have allowed ONE INVENTORY SLOT for holding EMP grenades or some other anti-bot tool. <\/p>\n<p>I just find it interesting that the looting and shop mechanics had this unintended impact on my gameplay, and my attempt to make sure I didn&#8217;t miss out on Praxis points resulted in me not having enough murder mojo to save my pilot. I called Josh a munchkin in this episode, but I was being a munchkin in my own awkward way, and it led to my undoing. Well, Malik&#8217;s undoing. <\/p>\n<p>And yes, saving her on my current play-through felt pretty good. <\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re not going to get the chance to cover it in the show, but I thought her death was a bit lame. You find her body (in pristine condition) in Tong&#8217;s chop shop.  You can&#8217;t say anything to anyone about it. You don&#8217;t tell Pritchard. She&#8217;s just there, as a bit of room clutter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Link (YouTube) Yes, Josh is a munchkin. I guess that&#8217;s what makes him so&#8230; &#8220;lovable&#8221;? I&#8217;ve been thinking more about the looting compulsion I experienced in this game. I&#8217;ve been playing through the game again, so a lot of this is coming back to me. I think I&#8217;ve identified a couple of bad spots that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[188],"tags":[76,208],"class_list":["post-15299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spoilerwarning","tag-deus-ex","tag-spoiler-warning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}