Star Wars KOTOR is not a first person RPG. It also can't ever hope to compare to Deus Ex, KOTOR II on the other hand...

If you want influence, Deus Ex did inspire the game Chrome - not that it was a good game in the end 😐 but it's had its "FINALLY ! DUE SEX 2" hype.

Imagine you're Duke Nukem with legs made out of the same boxy barrel in Trespasser. but you have augs and spammy grenade throwing and you're collecting 5 second wav loop tape players from aimbot soldiers' pockets.

That's a fairly accurate description of Chrome 🤣

I didn't know that it was hyped as a Deus Ex style game and to be honest I don't see the resemblance. But it was an alright title, although I do have a soft spot for low budget Euro releases from smaller studios.

KT7AGuy wrote:

(I played as a stealthy pacifist. Anna and Gunther were my only human victims.)

After 10 long months, I have finally completed the original Deus Ex; all three endings.

That is actually very impressive. I've completed it maybe a dozen times (it's my favourite PC game ever), but even though I usually start a new game thinking "This time I'll do a non-lethal run", I always give in and end up killing differing amounts of enemies, as it's easier and (to me) more fun. I love to replay my favourite games, and often decide to do a run with my own set of rules to give the game more variation and challenge (when it's a game I know well enough to otherwise take for granted), such as non-lethal, or only using certain weapons, or (in Deus Ex's case specifically) not using certain augmentations, but the urge to have fun and use my favourite mods/weapons/decisions/etc can be overwhelming!

BTW, to finish the game you actually have to kill three humans. Deus Ex used to be in the Guiness Book of records (seriously) being listed as the first person shooter where you have to kill the least number of enemies (https://www.gamespot.com/articles/spot-on-igu … i/1100-6185294/), these being Howard Strong, Gunther, and Anna Navarre.

But it was later found, by some very clever (and/or very obsessive) fans of Deus Ex that you don't have to actually kill any of these three. Or rather, you do at least have to kill Strong, but you can sort of claim it's not your fault (and indeed, as you yourself don't mention Strong dying, then you obviously weren't aware that he died, and you can't be blamed for that, see below) since you can sort of spare him though he dies almost immediately afterwards anyway.

See, you can, if you are clever and manipulate Deus Ex's in-game physics and game rules, leave Gunther and Anna alive. The game does still consider them dead though, as it was not supposed to proceed without their dying, but you can leave them alive in either or both cases (though I've not even attempted to spare Anna, as it involves fighting her almost to a standstill, near the door that won't open until she's dead, then when she's sufficiently weakened, you have to frighten her with a grenade or something, so she opens the door. Then you just run out and hit the load point for the next level.

Strong will always die, though, as even if you knock him out and move him away as far as possible, the game is hard-coded to register him dead when the missile launches. But if, as you presumably did, you knock him out, then I'd class that as you not killing him, it's not your fault that the game then does so.

And of course there are scripted, unavoidable deaths for other characters whom you might have chose to spare, such as Maggie Chow and Lebedev. If you don't kill them, then they die later in the game's storyline, but you can't help that, so you're not to blame.

Seriously, mate, you have my deepest respect as a gamer. To kill no one but Gunther and Anna, and on your first play-through, that is really impressive!

Anyway, when Deus Ex came out, it received stellar reviews from almost everyone. One of the very few bad reviews I can remember at the time (maybe the only well known bad review, in fact) tore the game apart, though. But the strange thing is, even though the review made the game sound really bad, everything it said was true. Even I, as a huge fan of the game have to admit that. The review claimed things like (if I remember the review correctly); the graphics were bad, the A.I. was never great and was frequently terrible, the areas (the levels) lacked detail and local 'feeling' (as in, New York didn't feel particularly like New York, etc), some of the voice-work was almost insultingly bad, the story left a lot of things unanswered, and so on. And it was all true. And yet the game still ends up near the top of many peoples' (and many magazine's, and website's) "Best of..." game lists.

And it's not nostalgia, as lots of us still play the game. I think partly it's because Deus Ex is, as others have said, much more than the sum of it's parts. It mostly just works very well. Also, I think (and this is tragic) that it's also down to later games mostly not doing things even as well as Deus Ex, let alone better. Deus Ex was very ambitious, and though it often fell short of the mark (sometimes pretty badly), the highs really are good.

And if you do decide to play Deus Ex again, then definitely play it with the GMDX fan-made mod. It's superb, all the more so since it's mostly the work of one person. It's not a new campaign or new set of levels, but it builds on the base game, improving the levels, the weapons, the A.I. of your allies/enemies/neutrals, and polishes up so many other things, it's brilliant.

As a bit of Deus Ex trivia, the game was originally planned so that if you chose, you wouldn't side with your brother Paul, you could instead stay on with UNATCO and fight and defeat the NSF and their allies. Plus the game was originally to have taken you to a space station, the Moon (no doubt the "Did we really land on the Moon in 1969" conspiracy theories would be brought up), and the White house. And you'd also travel to California which was wrecked by an Earthquake, and have to rescue someone from a civil prison in California (where people were rounded up by martial law) who was an informant, during a riot. These ideas were scrapped because of the lack of development time (the ability to not side with Paul was one example of something being cut due to lack of time), or because it didn't seem to work, enjoyment-wise (i.e. fighting in the White House apparently felt boring since it was just room after room), or because the game's engine couldn't support it (such as the large scale riot and the number of prisoners in California).

F2bnp wrote:

Star Wars KOTOR is not a first person RPG. It also can't ever hope to compare to Deus Ex, KOTOR II on the other hand...

I've not yet played KOTOR 2, but I have it on the original XBox, and from what I've read it really should be played on the PC, as apparently the official release of the game had *lots* of content cut, due to time constraints, and apparently a team of talented modders have done an amazing job of finding what content remained, and building upon it to really enhance the game.

I *think* this is the mod:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-sith-lords-rest … tent-mod-tslrcm

But I've not played it, so that might be a different but similar project.

F2bnp wrote:

I didn't know that it was hyped as a Deus Ex style game

Kerr Avon wrote:

I've not yet played KOTOR 2, but I have it on the original XBox, and from what I've read it really should be played on the PC, a […]
Show full quote

F2bnp wrote:

Star Wars KOTOR is not a first person RPG. It also can't ever hope to compare to Deus Ex, KOTOR II on the other hand...

I've not yet played KOTOR 2, but I have it on the original XBox, and from what I've read it really should be played on the PC, as apparently the official release of the game had *lots* of content cut, due to time constraints, and apparently a team of talented modders have done an amazing job of finding what content remained, and building upon it to really enhance the game.

I *think* this is the mod:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-sith-lords-rest … tent-mod-tslrcm

But I've not played it, so that might be a different but similar project.

I wouldn't dare touch the XBOX version of KOTOR II. It is Obsidian's first game and is plagued by the classic issues of Obsidian games, buggy on release and loads of cut content. KOTOR II was made on an insane deadline, but in terms of writing and story it is far better than Bioware's title.
I have not played the cut content in this one and I don't know if it should be played on a first playthrough, you know how these things are.

By the way, I just noticed that the OP went for a completely pacifist run which explains a lot of his frustration. Deus Ex 1 is just not meant for this kind of gameplay, especially on a first playthrough, it must have been immensely annoying to use tranquilizer darts on human enemies only to have them running around and alerting everyone before the effect kicks in. Human Revolution is for the most part, but that's another story.

@leilei
🤣, Gamespot
I remember being very impressed by the lush enviroments back in 2004 when I first saw the game. Friend of mine was playing in one of the first levels where you get out of a forest and into an enemy base.

Interesting Deus Ex review/analysis by Ross Scott: https://youtu.be/rxOKEsBx4NU

That's a sweet review, you should also check out the review for the rest of the series that he's done.

I've just tried to find a video showing how to avoid having to kill Anna, and here's one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hsh24FmYlNQ

But the player here doesn't fight her first, which means that either this is a refinement of the method I outlined, or that I mis-remembered it (like I say, I'm pretty sure never tried it myself) and only imagined that you had to first fight her and bring her health down so that she'd be frightened enough to open the door.

Remember when first person shooters allowed you to experiment with things?

leileilol wrote:

F2bnp wrote:

I didn't know that it was hyped as a Deus Ex style game

I'll admit it, I liked Chrome a lot and found Deus Ex kind of meh, I know I have bad taste. 😁

The comparison they made in the add must have been entirely done for marketing purposes because when I played it I never thought "hey this is just like Deus Ex."

Kerr Avon wrote:

I've just tried to find a video showing how to avoid having to kill Anna, and here's one: […]
Show full quote

I've just tried to find a video showing how to avoid having to kill Anna, and here's one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hsh24FmYlNQ

But the player here doesn't fight her first, which means that either this is a refinement of the method I outlined, or that I mis-remembered it (like I say, I'm pretty sure never tried it myself) and only imagined that you had to first fight her and bring her health down so that she'd be frightened enough to open the door.

Remember when first person shooters allowed you to experiment with things?

Wow, you need to be pretty precise with that LAM to avoid killing her while still blowing the door open. Then you better put on that armor and run like hell while hoping she doesn't get a lucky shot on you. I remember trying to avoid killing her. At one point, I think I put about 20 tranq darts in her and she just kept coming.

I'm curious though, what drives Gunther if you don't kill Anna? Does the plot change if she stays alive? Is it possible to avoid killing Gunther too? (I had to use a LAM on him. There was no way I could beat him in a shoot-out.)

This short video reminded me of something else I really liked about Deus Ex: the background music and sounds. They were excellent. I still have the Wan Chai music stuck in my head. The Dolby Surround Sound really made good use of my Audigy 2 ZS's onboard decoder. With headphones, the effect was very cool. Are there any other games that make use of the onboard decoder?

KT7AGuy wrote:

...I'm curious though, what drives Gunther if you don't kill Anna? Does the plot change if she stays alive? Is it possible to avoid killing Gunther too? (I had to use a LAM on him. There was no way I could beat him in a shoot-out.)

I've never managed to spare Anna, so I don't know from my own experience, but from what I've read, the game does then still consider her to be dead (so Gunther still thinks she is, and you never see her again) so I wouldn't have expected any change with Gunther or any other dialogue.

I have progressed without killing Gunther, but I can't remember how. I'm pretty sure I didn't knock him out, I *think* I blocked his way with some objects and did something to slow him down (a gas grenade, maybe?) and just ran out when I was done in the area, and of course I never saw him again after that, as the game was scripted to regarded him as dead after that level. I think I only spared him once, to see if I could (and very possibly that was only after I'd read that it was possible), I always kill him whenever I replay the game (yes, explosives are useful here!).

And since I could spare him, that means that it's not massively difficult to do! 😢

I've just thought. Perhaps the fan-made mods GMDX or Shifter do take this into account, and if you do spare Anna or Gunther, then you get different text and maybe even encounter them later. I doubt it, as it might be a big change to make, coding-wise, but maybe. Plus, when I saved Gunther, it might have been on the PS2 port of the game (which is extremely close to the PC version), as sometimes when I'm working away from home I take a couple of consoles with me, as I don't like gaming on my laptop. Even if I only saved Gunther on the PS2 version, he and Anna can both be spared on the PC version, as I read about them on PC related Deus Ex forums.

This short video reminded me of something else I really liked about Deus Ex: the background music and sounds. They were excellent. I still have the Wan Chai music stuck in my head. The Dolby Surround Sound really made good use of my Audigy 2 ZS's onboard decoder. With headphones, the effect was very cool. Are there any other games that make use of the onboard decoder?

I've no idea about the onboard decoder (not even entirely sure what it is 😕 ), but yes, Deus Ex has some very good music indeed.

Kerr Avon:

Thank you for your previous kudos. Somehow I missed them before, otherwise I would have replied. However, I'm sorry to admit that my completion of the game was due to a large number of saves rather than any measure of skill.

If your sound card has an onboard Dolby/DTS decoder, you can enable it and also enable the Dolby Surround function in the original Deus Ex. While wearing headphones, it gives you an aural/spacial perspective on objects around you. For example, you can distinctly hear objects above, below, in front, behind, or on your sides. It's a very nifty effect that I haven't heard in any other game, ever. You must wear good over-the-ear headphones to take advantage of this neat effect.

Of course, the AI in Deus Ex is so bad as to make this irrelevant, but it's still very cool anyway.

Sadly, my attempts to start Invisible War on this same PC are not going well. Even without AA and AF, the game runs pretty badly on period-correct hardware. I may have to postpone this sequel until a later date when I get a nice E8600 C2D with GTX 750 Ti running. Alas, I have become spoiled with frame-rates and AA.

Edit: Thinking I must have done something wrong with my previous attempt, I reinstalled Invisible War for another try. It is shocking to me how poorly this game runs on better-than-period-correct hardware. I'm using a 6800 GT with an Athlon 64 3400+. Even without AA and AF, FPS regularly drops into the teens. On the box, minimum requirements call for a Geforce 3. If the performance I'm getting is this bad with a 6800 GT, then I can only assume that FPS is in the lower single digits with a GF3. Was this game the Crysis of 2003 or something? TRON 2.0 looked and ran significantly better on a GF3 Ti500 with an Athlon Thunderbird 1400.

I just came across this and found it funny:

Deus Ex: Mr. Manderley and Me - A Photo Album

Best part: "I threw Ms. Chow out the window. She's unconscious, so the fall won't hurt her."

I guess now I know what really happened to Manderley... 😊

Lol, this is too funny 🤣

OK, so I hate to necro-post, but I want to walk back my initial statement re: Deus Ex vs Half-Life vs Fallout.

I just finished another play-through of Half-Life. All three games have their strengths and weaknesses. All three are excellent and worthy of another play.

KT7AGuy wrote:

OK, so I hate to necro-post, but I want to walk back my initial statement re: Deus Ex vs Half-Life vs Fallout.

I just finished another play-through of Half-Life. All three games have their strengths and weaknesses. All three are excellent and worthy of another play.

If you want to play some very good Half-Life mods, then I'd recommend Azure Sheep (probably my favourite HL mod - it's long and uneven, but at it's best it's fantastic, you play as Barney the security guard, like in Blue Shift, but Azure Sheep is much, much better than the short and unimaginative Blue-Shift), USS Darkstar (very old, but very good), the They Hunger Trilogy (starts off slow but gets much better), and the almost brand new (it's been out about a month) Half-Life: Echoes, which isn't too long but is very good and very inventive and has earned almost endless praise from the Half-Life community. Offhand I can't recall any others I'd recommend, but there are lots more that are worth playing.

Oh, and the second official Half-Life addon, Opposing Force, where you play a soldier who was sent in to Black Mesa before the 'clean up' soldiers (the ones who's orders are to kill *everyone*) were sent in, is excellent. The first addon, Blue Shift, isn't much good at all, but Opposing Forces is really good.

Regarding Deus Ex, when you next want to play through it, you should give the mod GMDX a try, as the changes and balances it makes to the game are very good, and really elevates an already great game. There's also the mostly cosmetic Deus Ex: Revision, which I personally don't like, but lots of people do (and lots don't - the mod really polarises opinion).

BTW, you mention how annoying Deus Ex: Invisible War is to get running correctly. If I recall, the game had a memory leak bug that the developers couldn't fix in time for release, so the game was 'fixed' by making the game exit when you left an area, and then reload when you went into a new area. So basically, when you (in game) passed from area to another, the game would almost exit back to Windows, leaving a small re-loading program in memory, thereby clearing the system memory, and then reloading the game engine with the new game area for you to play through. I don't know if any later patches fixed this 'fix', but it's indicative of the problems the game had.

I mean, not only did the game do away with so much that made the original Deus Ex so popular (skill points, skills, having to train in weapons to improve weapon accuracy, an interesting plot, interesting and memorable characters, the feeling that your in-game choices did change things in the game-world, et-bloody-cetera), but because of the game-engine, they were forced to drop swimming from the game, limit the size of the playing areas to almost claustrophobic levels, and limit the amount of onscreen objects so that nowhere felt busy or cluttered.

The engine was totally wrong for the game, it's only good feature seems to be it's real-time shadows, which is fine for a Thief style game (and Thief 3: Deadly Shadows is the only other game I know to use that same engine), but in Deus Ex you don't much care about shadows, instead the ability to move fast, to swim, and to go through large levels are much more important than the "Oh look, the shadows move realistically if you knock that swinging light-bulb around" moment you get when you first play Deus Ex: Invisible War.

Thanks for the mods recommendations. I've actually just started playing Opposing Force for the first time. I'll give Blue Shift and your other recommendations a try after that. I'm actually quite anxious to play Half-Life 2.

I almost used GMDX for my Deus Ex play-through. I have owned the GOTY installer disc since it came out, but I never played it. I felt that I owed it to myself to experience the game in its original state. When I play it again, I'll use GMDX.

Invisible War just ran like crap on my Athlon 64 system. If I ever get around to playing it, I'll do it on my C2D system.