One of the best bits of subtle design Mankind Divided does in the Prague hub is the checkpoints coming out of the train stations. You have to go through them practically every five minutes, and if you go through the non-augmented part of the checkpoint, you'll be stopped, scanned, and admonished for using the 'natural' part when you're augmented. At first, I made a point to defy the system and go through the route I was told not to - screw you, unjust prejudice! - but over time, this became annoying and slowed down my gameplay, so I got into the habit of just using the augmented section to speed things up. Then it hit me: I'd just essentially accepted the fact that an unjust system was dehumanising me (or my character) for the sake of convenience and safety. Instead of constantly pushing back, even when there was no actual consequence beyond inconvenience, I'd buckled under and stayed quiet. It's a brilliant illustration of how these systems work and how they force people into following them, even if those who aren't affected by them might think they'd fight back, and it's probably the best way in which Deus Ex uses its medium to illustrate its themes.
Exactly, I think many people might have overlooked the significance of those checkpoint segments. It really does "show" you the story, rather than just "tell" how life is in Prague. Very insignificant, but excellent use of environmental storytelling.
I seem to recall some points in the game where you get shot for breaking the rules like that, but it's been a while since I've played so I don't remember the details. May have been later in the game that it starts happening, or in a different scenario
The geometry of the streets in Prague are what is viewed by many to be good Urban Design in general. Older cities like Prague with a medieval and earlier structure are appreciated for their ability to organize all/most of one's real life spaces in walkable distances on streets proportioned with enough intimacy to notice the weave of lives that have made it their place. Human Revolution's successor demonstrates what we call good human scale. This sits in contrast to the city built for the car which might say something about how games with such models are best experienced in vehicles; GTA would be agonizing as a pedestrian and the detail while the human depth of Mankind Divided's Prague would barely be noticed as you'd drive past it in seconds. Even adding a few open parking lot parcels or widening the roads in Eidos' Prague would detract from the experience. The speed one travels through the city, real or game, heavily informs your level of engagement with it.
Playing GTA as a pedestrian is interesting. You notice that Rockstar really does put a lot of detail into pretty much every single area, and add a lot of quirks to the NPCs, the weather and other systems to make the minute-to-minute experience less repetitive, but the sheer size of the cities and the slow walking speed of your character makes it obvious that at the core, every GTA is still an action driving game. Even when trying to drive at regular speeds and not break traffic laws you'll notice a lot of details to tempt you into driving recklessly. The frequency of red lights, the random speeding cars, collisions and police chases, as well as many obvious illegal shortcuts, like walking streets and breakable fences. While they do cater to law-abiding explorers, walking or driving, it's not treated as much more than a distraction. In fact, the way the random collectables are made more spaced out and harder to spot with each game, it's almost like they're subtly mocking players for wanting to explore the world thoroughly and slowly.
@@cupriferouscatalyst3708 I fully disagree. There's little of value to experience or do in GTA's 'open worlds' on legs. There's a lot of useless, empty and non interactable space. You're basically just there for the view, which despite Rockstar's almost grotesque amount of manpower that put together this game it's not necessarily as much of a view walking through it as other open world games. Even driving or flying through the landscape, things of interest or value are pretty sparse and the gameplay quickly very repetitive. GTAV's open world isn't that good in my opinion, it's a nice backdrop to the game's missions. This is also why I didn't get much into online because GTA has one of the least interesting open worlds of an online game. Despite it's 'open world' you'll spend most of your time doing boring, tedious, repetitive grinding of lazy repetitive missions. I don't think Rockstar have ever made great game worlds, they're mostly just something to mess around in with cheats until you quickly get bored. It's their writing and missions that carry their games, which makes me ask why they make their games open world at all.
haha, yeah. i was like "hm, keep an eye out for 33... oh. there it is. good good." but still, be default there would be a big blue dot on the front door too!
Between this video and Super Bunnyhop's, the world/stealth systems/storytelling of Mankind Divided is really grabbing my interest. Is it necessary that I play Human Revolution first or could I just dive right into this?
I'd recommend playing HR. Depending on what you're after, you might find it to be the better game anyway! HR has the better plot and characters, and I enjoyed the "globetrotting adventure" setup and larger-scale plot more than being confined to one city. MD has much smoother moment-to-moment gameplay and more interesting combat.
Well, I wasn't expecting hot boys in here, I just finished Mankind Divided today and wanted to know what others thought about it. I know I'm late to this, but playing the Deus Ex games in the order they were released is probably the best way to go about it.
Yeah. I'm glad that Botw 'broke the curse' of gigantic,but bland openworlds. It's world might be quite big,but it is just as immersive. Quirky enemies,inventive mechanics to toy around with,charismatic characters and fun sidequests...it might have a lot of empty areas,but luckily enough,that actually plays out on it's favor,it makes exploring so enjoyable. Climbing a mountain and finding something you didn't expect at the other side,it's just...man I love that game. P.S:I'm sorry for rambling so much,came' here uninvited,but that things you guys said made me think about Botw and I just couldn't help myself.For me it is almost the only big-map,yet-not-bland open world game.
100% agree. Open worlds are fun to look at and explore but if there isn't much happening apart from how vast it is, then what's the point? I've played Cyberpunk and loved the story and characters, but one of the most serious flaws of the game is Night City being so dead and empty, an amazing vast illusion that has no depth. And then you look at the Yakuza games and how they've managed to make a small town so alive and huge because its full to the brim with stuff to do in every game ever. Literally allowing the player to interact with almost everything like cabaret clubs, restaurants, karokes, arcades, bowling centres, dance clubs and so many more that i haven't even encountered yet, since i've only played Kiwami and 0 so far. Each game has various different minigames that are addicting as hell, they may aswell be games on their own. Not to mention all the random and wacky side quests you get, which is an endless amount lol. You can just spend hours exploring Kamurochō without ever feeling the need to play the main story.
It's one of my favourite games.. have me that "spy" feeling like no other game has given me.. chaos theory comes close. Alpha protocol too.. idk all three of these games are my favourites lel
It was ruined by Square Enix microtransaction inclusion before the release and DLC missions like 'Desperate Measures' and 'System Rift' felt like cut content from the main game.
"Open world" has become less and less of a selling point. If you just have an objective in an open field, it absolutely does not matter how many angles you can approach it from, there's no meaningful difference. If you compress everything down and offer actual differing paths then that actually incorperates some decision making into your approach, not just "hm I can go left or right". Haven't played Mankind Divided yet but everything I hear about Prague sounds fantastic. Great vid. Also - those Majora's Mask and The Fly references, a man after my own heart.
If the big world is a selling point, make it relevant to gameplay besides means of travel. How about a quest/mission where a certain NPC has to be killed with different angles of approach that lead to different tactics. Should I just walk over and go into an open battle. Should I come over a hill and snipe him? I could be stealthy and either backstab him or use poison. Or what if I approach form the road and just use persuasion. Make the open world part of the gameplay.
the last open world i truly enjoyed playing in was FarCry 3. That game actually had a bevy of options when approaching camps and i enjoyed planning my moves. I suppose you could say the same about MGSV but i got way too bored with that game when it went to Africa. MD was a huge step back in the right direction.
This game deserves so much more praise. Deus ex is by far my favorite franchise that square enix owns the rights to. I really hope they make a 3rd chapter
It's staring to get to the point where "Big world" is synonymous to "Bad Game" for me. Every time I hear a Dev emphasize how Big and expansive their game is I start to worry.
same here, I really loved the first two batman games and the first two witchers, but the newest ones became super repetitive and pointlessly time consuming. A real shame. I guess the devs just had to try it.
Just finished this game, 48 hours registered (and I still didn't play the Jensen stories); I don't know why the press said this game was "short", I think we're dealing with people who rushes throught the main quest and think they saw everything. That's another point people usually underestimate: most of players don't know how to relish a game like this. When I installed Mankind Divided I've spent maybe 5 or 6 hours just getting inside apartments and appreciating the views - seriously, there is almost zero of reused textures in this game, it's amazing. Now the game sold poorly, we probably won't be seeing a sequel in the near future (IF at all), and even if it comes, it will probably be an open world, like they did with Shadow of The Tomb Raider.
@@KingLich451 Yeah, I kind of get that; but that plot was damned from the begining, I mean, there was no way Jensen would take a turn in his main goal to go against Iluminatti all by himself, lol! The way the game ended, it not only paved a way to a sequel, but I think they reached a point where they have no choice but end Jensen story while starting JC Denton one, thus linking both games. In other words, Square Enix is kind of procrastinating the way how the franchise would come full circle.
I played the game without knowing much about it, never saw any reviews, news or discussions on it. I was completely oblivious to any issues or fan uproars. When I was playing what would turn out to be the final scene, I was thinking how interesting the third act was going to be and just started to really get into it. I was waiting for the advanced weapon mods in particular (similar to the ones in 'Human Revolution'.) I was pretty upset when the credits rolled. I took my time and exhausted all side quests and explored each area before moving the story forward. I don't have an agenda or interest in saying the game was too short. I really wish it was a great game because I love the series dearly. It breaks my heart.
I finished the game around the 50 hour mark too. The problem wasn't the lack of content, but rather the lack of content in the main storyline. I finished every single sidequest I could find, but when I finally got around to playing a story mission I felt like I'm progressing at light speed, and I was right. The main story ended so fast and suddenly with so few missions. I didn't have this feeling with Human Revolution, which I think is just the right length of story for this type of game.
I don't think it's a question of how small a world should be, but rather, the densty of the world. For as big as it is, I can remember about 80% of Bloodborne's city of Yharnam, and I think a level designer should be focusing more on what makes a place memorable, and then on how big to make the world.
I haven't played Bloodborne, but the Souls games aren't that big. They look larger than they are because their level design is excellent and the dense enemy encounters force you to stop. But I comlpletely agree with you, this is the approach games should follow. I remember most of DS1 for this same reason.
Yeah, and a lot of the time you had to know where you were going. You never want to miss any parts of the game because of the excellent gameplay, so you go round and round, and with all the times you die you become familiar with the place. And with good level design, it becomes even more memorable. Also, it felt so big due to all the hidden paths that link up.
Souls games are the perfect example of great story telling through environment and attention to detail. I think you get the same things he is talking about in this video, but somehow FROM actually manages to spread these across larger worlds.
Bloodborne isn't that big. No from software game is. Like Metroid Prime before these games might not be very open but it's actually more inviting to explore.
The souls games just hamfistedly stack a million skulls or gravestones or whatever on everything. They're great games, but I wouldn't consider them examples of good environmental storytelling unless the story they're telling is about Hot Topic.
Deus Ex's Prague atmosphere is hard to describe. It is a city you dont want to be in and even if you are an augmented secret agent, you still feel unnerved, and your mental and physical states shrinking as you explore at night.
Holy Hell, I thought I was alone in this opinion. The past two Deus Ex games are both phenomenal games, I was convinced no corner of TH-cam shared my opinion. Fuck yeah, great video!
I loved Mankind Divided equally as much as Human Revolution. I preordered MD, fully expecting Adam to have a proper trilogy. With the trailers, I knew it was a second game in a planned trilogy and I was fine with that. Then Square abruptly decided to cancel the 3rd game and I was pissed. I actually wanted to cry when I heard the news that Deus Ex was canned. I lost respect for Square after that and I boycotted their Avengers game
I wasn't a massive fan of the Prague setting just because it wasn't as immediately evocative to me as Hengsha or Detroit were in the previous game (although a lot of that could have just been down to the gold aesthetic GODDAMN THAT WAS SO GOOD WHY DID THEY GET RID OF IT). That said, this was a really interesting perspective on something that maybe gets lost in discussions of how badly the game fumbles its larger narrative. Thanks for this! Also I am very happy to see Yakuza talked about in any positive capacity so cheers for that too. gonnae go run a gangster orphanage brb
Interesting, especially in Detroit I found the gold theme annoying personally. I felt it worked much better if more subtly in Hong Kong. All that to say I didn't really miss it in mankind divided.
I just completed this game yesterday and I'm pretty sure it's one of the best games ever made. Deserves way more prestige than it has. Every room is filled with detail. Everything is connected and everything you do matters. So impressed. Haven't played anything like it. I don't think I've ever played a game that recognizes the player's role in it to this extent.
Agreed at 100%. It's sad how Square Enix decisions harmed this game, this could have easily been the 2016 GOTY. But for me it was, it even was my favorite game of last generation !
You analyze and detail everything we did in Prague in the most perfect way, I couldn't have formulated it better myself ! That's some great videos you have here, and also, thanks :)
@@erteple2647 Hey! Yeah he name came up a lot on the art side, I think some of the sculpture were a tribute to him but I don't want to say nonsense, I could ask the artists who worked on the project (although they might be lurking here :P)
@@moutrave hehe nice :D those flowing pills especially seemed like something he'd make. i see his stuff almost every day, to the point where giant cars with legs and tumors on drainpipes become the norm. thanks for the reply 👍
@@erteple2647 haha yeah I bet. The floating yeah I'm pretty sure this is when he was mentioned. I mostly remember just really wanting to be able to jump on them :p which we can if I remember properly :D
The island in The Witness is another example of this. What's funny is that nothing is named so you the player have to decide, "Okay, this is the swamp, where the tetris pieces are, and this is the beach, where the symmetry puzzles." You make your own mental labels and apply them to both the physical space you see and the maps you find.
The island is also packed to the brim with world-building details. The "story" is told almost exclusively through architecture, as that's just about all you encounter. You see the layers of structures built by successive generations and try to piece together how this space was used at different times. Every structure you encounter hints at the values of the society that built it and how those people related to the world around them.
The dense and deliberate structure of the island also allows the developers to have greater control over how you encounter new information. You are technically free to roam as you please, but many areas are designed to funnel you down a particular path in order to direct your attention to an interesting new detail. In a game that relies so heavily on close observation of the world for puzzle and story purposes, this ability to edit and direct the player's experience without ever taking away their first-person camera controls is very important.
Developers have a hard time knowing WHY they're using tools like open world. It's like writing in third person vs first person; or choosing a camera angle while directing. There's no objectively better option, but it's important to know the strenghs and weakneses of each one you have so you can capitalize on it to make a greater game. This is the difference between the success of Deus Ex and the failure of No Man's Sky. The former uses it's ingredients masterfully the same way a chef would, while the latter is more like a (bad) cook, picks and chooses arbitrarily from recipes and mix stuff up in a pot hoping it gets good.
As most of your videos, this is one that I would like twice. The message you leave here: "praise games that make full use of their space" is very important for this industry. Thank you for your job.
It's interesting about No Man's Sky. It seems like a failed experiment, but like all experiments, we learn something. Could their procedurally generated tool be applied to something else? A smaller scale city that's different for every player, now that could be really interesting.
Dan Root Perhaps. I believe the core problem with procedural design is that it can often be bland, with worlds and levels that have no sense of purpose. Quite simply, there's no human touch.
Yeah, IMHO they should be used to speed up development, not to replace level design in the final game. If they used this to just create an environment then fill it manually with stuff it would make their work easier.
Check out some roguelikes, the genre uses procedural generation extensively and it's sometimes used pretty well in terms of logical worldbuilding. Of course, doing it well is much more difficult than just generating random heightmap with random colours like No Man's Sky does.
But it's a failed experiment of something that worked really well in a different context. Daggerfall did procedurally generated worlds decades ago and it was one of the best games out there.
6:37 Honestly, opening a map and manually charting a route with the details I have is something I personally find incredibly satisfying. It's almost a puzzle or test to me.
And how many games provide this feature? I tried playing Assassins Creed Black Flag without the minimap .. there is no way to navigate anywhere, not with your ship and not while running around as Edward. Right now I am really searching for games where moving around without markers is possible - any recommendations? (Preferably newer games, playing old games on 4k is horrible)
@@johnleorid I've really grown fond of turning off the minimap and objective markers when I can. Surprisingly, you can actually do this in The Witcher 3 despite it being such a big game. I was completely lost at first and I constantly had to check my minimap. I honestly thought about turning the minimap back on but, I stuck with it. Eventually, you just start learning all of the roads, the landmarks, and towns. It really made me connect with the game's world.
Well, this is the video that pushed me over the edge. A new video of yours popping up in my feed is always one of the highlights of my day, the quality is so completely consistent, the content is always fascinating and entertaining... So, looks like I'm making a Patreon account. #GMTK
This is the exact philosophy that pulled me into Prey. The small stories I could make out just by putting pieces together made a psychopathic trip through a space station 50% horror themed and the other 50% tour guide/explorative driven
throwing in this one for big open worlds that really work - Shadow of the Colossus. It oddly feels small because of how empty it is, but it tells such a strong story with the environment. The land in the game is as much a character as anything else and really deserves particular praise for how well done it was.
I truly LOOVE your series! I'm a commandblocker (a dude who makes games in Minecraft with its ingame commands) and I really appreciate your lectures about how to do stuff and what to watch out for. Keep up the good work!
Mark, you REALLY have to play Gothic 2: Gold Edition. Especially considering the fact that ELEX is just right around the corner. It's 10 bucks on Steam but it's a truly insightful experience on how to build immersive worlds and stories in RPGs.
I am probably only person in whole world who enjoyed first Gothic way more than second one. Really enjoyed how well were "videogame" things explained in it. Like why there are no kids, like 3 female characters and why is everybody asshat. Also Gothic 1 has smaller and more packed world, whereas Gothic 2 goes too much open world for my taste.
Hopefully he can get it to work on his rig. I am angry at Steam for releasing the three Gothic titles unoptimized for any version of Windows past 98 (at least it feels like it anyway). I managed to get into the first 10 minutes of Gothic 1 with clunky controls that barely worked because I was using a user-made fix that just barely made the game playable on Windows 8. Steam needs to get its act together and either get the publisher to scrounge up some devs to make a working version of the games, or remove them from its sale list altogether.
As a gamer who has been playing since ages, I came across you and your videos just by chance. I love you how explain stuff which most ordinary people might miss, or how certain segments of a game work so much better than other similar games. You have a follower for life!
Surprisingly, Shenmue crops up to my mind. For a first 3D Open World Game (OPG), it literally nails whatever points you've mentioned Mark. Right from a hyper detailed/compact world to literally asking people for directions. It was immersive as hell. In fact, now in retrospect, my favourite tasks were going to locations just mentioned. Being a new person in town, it felt unbelievably realistic to ask people for the way, thus adding to that sense of discovery.
After the clusterfuck that was Cyberpunk 2077, I appreciate this game so much more. Instead of playing Cyberpunk 2077...I'd rather just go back and replay this again.
Really? I found this game to be quite boring. What I disliked the most about this game is that it punishes you if you really cut loose. You are supposed to be a killing machine and yet you are reduced to being forced to creep through ducts like a thief. Another thing that I realised is that you don't actually need those fancy upgrades to your systems. They are just...there. You can do a stealth takedown on just about any enemy even without them. I really don't know why this franchise is hell bent on forcing the pacifist playthrough on its players.
@@Skyknight12 Really? Because I found Cyberpunk 2077 to be quite boring. Even more boring because it froze and locked up my PS5 every 15 minutes. Infact I could write a 1000 word essay on everything wrong with Cyberpunk 2077 and everything Mankind Divided does better than that game. and the game forcing you to be stealthy and a pacifist was a problem in the first game. It's not in this one. Infact that was the number one thing players complained about in Human Revolution, that you were punished for being violent. They remedied that in Mankind Divided. If you want to be aggressive and kill people. You can. I always found Deus Ex to be much more satisfying as a stealth game anyway, If I just want to run and gun. I'll go play Call of Duty or something. I liked Mankind DIvided's story and characters way better as well. I always found Adam Jensen to be way cooler and more likeable than V. V is an asshole no matter what dialogue choices you make. and even though you get to customize V's appearance, and choose what they say. V doesn't really feel like a character you created. They still feel like a established character.
@@Skyknight12 it's an Immersive sim. you need to think outside the box before you act. you can also go in guns blazing if you can use your skills and guns appropriately. System shock 2 and The Original Thief games were like this as well
@@Skyknight12 On pc, some of these flaws (like the fact that you earn more xp from neutralizing enemies non lethally) can actually be fixed with mods. As for the non-lethal takedowns, yes, they are a bit overpowered since they don't do enough noises.
It's also a good time to remember just how amazing the "worlds" of truly great "Metroidvanias" and Survival Horror games has been. Even some survival action games (Dead Space comes to mind). Where you remember a tightly packed with details (at least, as much as the technology allowed) small interconnected worlds that are some much more full of character and memorable stuff, than even some of their sequels that went with "bigger and louder" approach and all this amazing stuff got lost as a result.
I love old Gothic games (1st and 2nd). The way that open world worked was connected to rpg elements. You start the game in dangeorus world, powerless, forced to sneak and avoid stronger enemies, while hunting smaller beasts for limited loot and xp. So you had to learn not the terrain or layout, but all monsters hideouts, all safe paths between them. And later, when you get your gear and skills, you'll come back to all of them. That was a great satisfaction, to kill all those orcs you had to run from. Also, it seem so natural, it took no great efford to lern a map, unlike many other games. Years after I steel remember a lot of orc camps, molerat caves and e.t.c. Just who was where. In TES and many others you have this system, where world adapts for your character, monsters grow bigger teeth while you master new spells to fight them. In Gohic world was more or less static, so you had a long path from a cowardly pray to a fearless hunter. So it was not about the depth and detail, but challenge and interaction. You needed to know the map not for estetics, it was vital, not just rewarding. And this is what seem to be missed in many todays openworld RPG's.
Since I was a kid I loved that stuff. The Lego Star Wars III hub ships are amazing. The thing I remember most, though, was when after playing Crash 2 and 3 on the ps1, I played Crash Twinsanity and it just transformed the hub area in something else entirely, a mixture between hub world and open world platforming. Mind = blown.
sd19delta the hub of Lego: Star Wars DS is fantastic! The way that all of your characters walk around makes the game feel alive and the way you can have a little fight with a character makes the hub world better than some of the levels. I think one of the Lego star wars Wii games and the PC version use the same hub.
The two Lego Island games would make a great point for this video. The first one had a small and dense island that you ended up knowing by heart. I got really attached to it. In the second game, they made it much bigger and very empty. It was depressing and unwelcoming. It felt like a step back in time.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided to this day is an amazing game that doesn't get the credit that it deserves and the amount of detail the team at Eidos Montreal put into the game.
I think an excellent example of a smaller open world being made is the Dishonored series. And yes, you may say that Dishonored series is not open world, and it's not. It's mission are however. The huge massive spaces are packed with detail to explore, loot to find, notes to read, and tons of enviornmental storytelling to uncover.
This channel is great, exactly what I'm looking for regarding video games and the creation aspect of them. Deus Ex Human Revolution's take on Shanghai is pretty amazing and one of the most memorable city hubs ever created. I now need to go finish Mankind Divided.
I am really really enjoying ManKind Divided. I love the small open world and love the eye to detail in the different enviroments. I agree that more devs should make smaller open world and fill them with meaningful things to discover. Now that I have written this comment I will go back to Prague and explore some more.
I knew literally nothing about this game somehow, kinda love finding games that have been out a while but are great. I recently played Killzone Shadow Fall and it was great
It's an interesting point in the Corriveau quote that "game design requires us to be of a certain pace": world size and detail should be tuned to the pace of gameplay. The scale of NMS works if you're after a very slow, meditative style of game: more ambient and relaxing than driven and exciting. I enjoy just going for a walk on a new planet for a few hours, maybe with a vague goal in mind, but mostly just taking in the details and the atmosphere (and I'm still finding tiny delights and surprises after 100+ hours). There's a place for tightly-packed narrative games in tiny, densely-designed spaces (Gone Home, for instance), and a place for huge self-directed sandboxes.
Of course, yes. But right now the industry is focused almost entirely on the huge sandbox stuff and I'd personally like it to be a bit more balanced with more small worlds :)
What I love about these smaller worlds/hubs is that I actually know them like I know my own neighbourhood. So if a mission asks me to go somewhere, I actually know how to get there without even opening the map. Big worlds get explored through the hud-radar, smaller worlds with your own eyes.
Here now after Cyberpunk 2077's release, and I suddenly realized that Mankind Divided is everything Cyberpunk wanted to be. A tight-lipped protagonist, commentary on prejudice and current world problems, role playing systems... Somehow they lost sight of it during development because they scaled it too far. They wanted The Witcher 3's scale, but the Witcher series is based on a book series, which in turn was based on Polish and European folklore. Cyberpunk is based on a table top role playing game. The world feels less immersive because there's not enough material to draw from and it's stretched out across a barren city with far too many problems like broken police AI, quest variety etc. They would've been far better off telling a contained story like Mankind Divided's, but maybe that's the problem? Maybe then the games would be too similar and there was no real reason to tell the same kind of story again in Cyberpunk 2077, just using other scenery. Can't begin to imagine the problems that haunted Cyberpunk's release, but scale certainly seems to be one of them.
wait, from what i heard that tabletop game has insane level of lore and world building and iconic legacy characters and interactions between them to make an engaging game. so it is not in the source material to blame, but cdpr for biting more than they can swallow within corporate deadline.
I know it's not entirely what you're talking about, but Dark Souls's Painted World of Ariamis is an absolutely exquisite example of utilizing every square inch of usable space. There isn't an inch of wasted level geometry there.
Fun fact: It was the first level created during development, as a test. That's why it feels like a complete area, unconnected from the rest of the world.
jmiquelmb Yeah, I think I remember it being a rejected area for Demon's Souls, and since it went through so much refinement over so much time, much more than any other area in the game(s), it's of course better designed.
has anyone played Lord of The Rings online? it's one of the biggest open worlds in an mmo, and traversal can be painfully boring, however for a LOTR fan like myself, the experience of traveling from bag end to rivendell via weathertop Bree, the barrow downs, Tom Bombadil's house, and Buckland in one sitting, a journey that took three hours: the length of time it takes me to read that part of the fellowship of the ring incidentally, was deeply cathartic. besides that, if you are familiar with the games lore, the environment is created in deep realism. when I went off of the beaten track in the barrow downs, I got lost and was marauded by whites (this happens in the book) and this was entirely unscripted. similarly, wandering across landmarks in the game allowed me to navigate based off of the storytelling of the novels in a very similar way that the hobbits and Aragorn did during this part of the novel. this natural and authentic recreation of a fictional world for me made up for the Lord if the Rings On line's many flaws, just a personal opinion.
Have you even played Cyberpunk? Night City is much smaller than any of The Witcher 3's maps, and it's super dense and rich with detail, you can wander off into literally any alleyway and you're bound to find something interesting. Love it or hate it, Cyberpunk feels like an open world Deus Ex in almost every way.
@@malek0093 for me CP2077 is like Deus Ex + Mirror's Edge + Shadow Warrior + Watch Dogs + Doom.. and guess what ? I love all these games, so I couldn't be happier with this one, certainly of the best games I played in recent memory..
@@malek0093 okay thats just not true yes its dense and the parts of the map does tell a story but vertical traversal sucks in CP i played both HR and MD after CP and I can say that CP offers way less traversal options that either of them. There is always a pathway that's best suited and built for your very specific style of play and augs for both HR and MD. The verticality with the vents is insane. I agree that environmental manipulation in CP is better than DX but the traversal is just so limited. When playing DE, the map itself is a puzzle and is core to the gameplay loop. No mission is ever designed with the same layout. Which is why even though all you do is stealth the gameplay feels different enough to justify it being fun. For every DE map there is at least 5 stealth ways to get to the objective area. For CP, its a maximum of 3 - one w double jump, one with hack/technical, one with str.
@@ashrafhaider598 How about YOU shut the fuck up. 2077 runs like absolute dog shit on consoles they charged full price for. This posters comment is valid.
I'm from Czech Republic, and it's so amazing seeing Prague in a game and recognizing the language even when I'm so used to English. Shame I can't play this game. But after this video I certainly will. Love your videos and after each one I'm thinking: "I'm gonna play this one when I get a console". Man, you really help me through this pandemic. School is just KILLING me. Keep it up.
Kamurocho is such a great "open world". Over time you start recognizing all the street names and various landmarks like the millennium tower and the various shops, eateries, and attractions. In Yakuza 0, Nishiki mentions heading over to Pink Street and I didn't have to use the mini map; I knew exactly where I was going! Yakuza is an amazing series and I highly recommend it. Yakuza 0 is cheap and a great starting point!!
This is exactly how I wish to explore IRL world but too afraid of consequences/other people's perception of me just wandering in -seedy- any parts of any place.
I have to say MD is such an amazing game. People say the story sux, but the real story isn't obvious you have to figure it out and find it yourself just like dark souls in a way. The more you put into the game the more you get out. The real character is the world and it proves you dont need a huge open world to make a realistic world. Anyway the story thats hidden in MD is the true star and its really amazing once you figure it all out. Sadly many people dont bother and just go from marker to marker and miss all the work put into the game. If you are new to MD i would recommend turning all the makers off, explore and try and figure out what the world is telling you and i promise you , you will have a great time.
Im playing mankind now, big fan of the saga since the first, dont know why didnt play this one before, I LOVE IT! playing on give me deux ex difficulty, is a beautiful ride!
Real shame that it was released unfinished. Everything apart from the actual story and not screwing up with cut content as dlc or microtransactions that the game could do well. It absolutely smashed it. Imo it could be one of the all time greats as a stealth action fan if it wast screwed around with by the publishers
I just want to say that this is the first video I've ever seen from your channel, and I really liked it. Slick presentation, strong point being made, well produced. You've got a new subscriber.
Thank you for this video! I really enjoyed DX:MD and Prague was my favourite location. I spent so much time walking around, looking in every corner, looking for all the stories being told and it's just so well done! As for the main story being ham-fisted, I don't really agree. I agree that some aspects of the high concept is a bit iffy, but I really enjoy how the game uses privilege in its storytelling. Like, how Adam is part of the augs who are now looked down on, but he's so visibly different from the rest because of the quality of his tech, his nature (not dependent on anti-rejection drugs), his work, etc. He can literally walk into the no-aug zones, like the train, with little to no consequence besides some time-consuming hassle dealing with cops. As someone mentioned in a comment below, you as a player end up using the aug-only train in order to avoid spending time with the cops, and thus conforming to what's expected of you as an aug. It's really well crafted! Back to environmental storytelling: Dragon Age II was also mentioned in the video. I loved and played this game a lot, and also participated in providing feedback to the developers on their now-defunct official bbs. BioWare still interacted a lot with fans at the time and received a lot of great feedback about how the city of Kirkwall, while already very good imo, could have been even better serving the story by changing up details in the city as time progressed (10 years pass during the game). Some of that insight was obviously put to good use in follow-up Dragon Age: Inquisition, but I think the considerable fan-rage at release regarding the smaller scope of DAII compared to its predecessor ended up taking priority during the development of Inquisition. They also seem to have had to cut a lot of major features because of tech limitations when working on what was at the time both current and next-gen technology, which also contributed to the feeling of emptiness in some spaces. I hope they'll go back a bit to Dragon Age II for the next game, and I really believe that DE:MD is a good example that they could use for inspiration. Again, thanks for a great video! Followed, and will check out more of your vids!
I loved the world in this game. It felt so real. I liked how they made it small-ish but dense. A very nice change of pace compared to so many of the huge open worlds.
To the most extent I agree. I just felt that when you have such a small open world, there could have been a lot more small detail interactivity than there already was. I would have wanted to be able to use the restaurant and cafés the way you would in the real world. It could even have gameplay mechanics (like overhearing/talking to someone that initiates a quest), be able to go to the back room of a weapons dealer to see the weapon on display instead of the computer, buy small minigames at the eletronics store that you could play on Jensen's TV, pick out specific food/healing items at the convience store (instead of the bland directional dialogue choices) etc.. Also, be able to break into every single building, even if they were irrelevant to the quest, with a moral dilemma mechanic that unless you do a mission, you'll somehow be punished by raiding people's home (like having the police investigating/suspecting you easier if you do a lot of crimes). Those are my input notes for the developers if they wanted to make a new DX. Small thing, but the details that would make the game a game with that little extra in it. MD was a great game either way.
Deus ex is by far my favorite game series of all time. I've played through Mankind divided close to a dozen times and I always seem to stumble across something new every time.
Another thing I want to throw in (sort of late, and Human Revolution spoilers) is a big choice in the first game of the Deus Ex reboots; the control chip. Villain wants to implant people with new control chips, turn them crazy, masquerades as a hardware recall on existing augmentation control chips. It's even a quest you get, before figuring out what's going on; go upgrade your control chip. But the game world says something else, something different. When your controls start to spark and whirr it's not just you; enemies and civilians also clutch their heads in pain, indicating that it's an external problem. Hidden emails mention disruption in the chip production schedule, or faint evidence that relevant officials were bought off. All these tiny clues that go against the "go here and do this" main quest. And when you have a showdown with the villain she confidently points a remote at you and clicks the button. If you figured it out, and left the "upgrade your chip" quest incomplete, she looks at you with horror as you stride forward and crash te remote. It's a really powerful moment that interacts well with the in-world storytelling they bud into the game
Just wanna say thank you for this video. Not only was the content interesting, but it encourage me to play DXMD again with smaller HUD, no radar & object locater just feel more immersive in this game. The small stories like murdered wife in Golem City, the missing daughter from the father who lives in the same apartment complex as Jensen & others, made the game more interesting. I just finished playing System Rift (one of its DLC) & had a fun time exploring Palisade Blade. I think I've spent almost six hours completing that DLC. I hope their is a sequel to DXMD.
I’m hella goddamn late, but recently I decided to give DE: MD another try, having had tried it 2 times previously. I ended up loving it and played Human Revolution. I generally preferred human revolution, even though it was the older game. It just got everything right imo
This is why I loved Super Mario Odyssey so much. The kingdoms were like tiny little worlds with their own challenges and own secrets to discover. I love having a smaller space to explore, as I tend to want to collect everything more so than I do in larger open world games. For example, I beat BOTW, but haven’t finished like 5 side quests just bc the map is so huge that sometimes the barren space makes me bored? It’s amazing during the first play through as you’re exploring a world all on your own, and the scope is mind blowing. Afterwards though it just feels like too little is in these wide open spaces sometimes. Great video GMTK. I have been binging your stuff so much lately so I just gotta say I appreciate your content so much in helping me understand the mechanics and concepts about game design.
This reminded me of Shenmue and Shenmue 2, and the first 2 Fallouts. The original Shenmue is enclosed in a small japanese city, people have schedules, I don't remember if you have a map or get one eventually, but you sure don't have any gps or compass, you go to houses on this street, apartment this or that, shops open from x to x hours, you need to rustle this tattoo guy before a certain date I don't remember why, but you have 2 or 3 days only, and it's weekend and you can't find him on his shop so you have to look for him on a few bars, you miss him and you have only monday to find him before that limit date passes, and if you make it in time, maybe you have to do something else but it's too late because you lost too much time following other lead and that train passed so now you have to follow another lead to eventually make it to China for the 2nd game, where everything is bigger, still contained and much more detailed, if you miss a quick time event (yeah, really new) that is not fight related, you don't lose the game and retry, you lose track of whomever you were following and you lose a few days tracking him/her again, you need to work for cash (on the 1st game as well), train and win fights, there are a lot of time limits and things you can do only to a certain point, is not easy to lose, but is not easy to win either, at least not by modern conventions, you can take it slow and follow the leads that take you around town or rush and try to make the deadlines before the early trains passes, and depending on the choices and playstyle your experience is unique, your notebook ends up FULL of missed leads and after the 1st playthrough you can finish in a fraction of time by going straight through the shortcuts and knowing where you are going instead of searching on every corner where is that street, shop, person that can't find since 3 days ago. Awesome experience. And well, Fallout 1 and 2 are much of the same beast on a diff genre, but still cointained games with small but detailed towns, except for the big cities, you rarely have more than 3 or 4 unimportant people on the smaller towns in fallout 1, on the 2nd, everything is bigger and the unimportant NPCs have multiplied, but the importants as well, everyone has their motivations and does everything for a reason, nothing more satisfying than talking the end game boss to kill himself because he is wrong and hasnt seen it yet, great stuff.
Maybe Chibi Robo falls into this category as well. It is just a small house as the whole world, but it feels quite alive because of the characters that inhabit it. Older tech, to be sure, but there's something magical about it. As always, thanks for doing these videos. They are exceedingly helpful!
Shit about Mankind Divided all you wants, you can't deny that the level design is top notch! Also - funny that both No Man Sky and Mankind Divided came out in the same month, and both are contrasts in terms of level design!
Lyall James I found the main story to be rather lackluster compared to Human Revolution, and the scale of your decisions weren't as big; the fate of the world was never hanging in the balance. Not saying that MD was bad, per say, but it was certainly lacking.
Tyler Rosencutter i prefer it over human revolution. The whole next generation of discrimination towards the augmented was so good for deus exs dystopian future, i loved it. The only downside for me was the ending was way too soon and sudden.
Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door to name another. Rogueport acting as the hubworld opens up new areas and new interactions each time you return with new abilities and it allows you to notice the secret areas that were hidden away before. Where once you saw a fence, now you see an opportunity to turn sideways and slip through. Crack in the wall? Now it's not just aesthetic, but a chance to blow a hole and reveal some treasure.
Big maps are great for vistas but smaller maps are better for the people and their lives. Unless you talk about a hermit living in the mountains. I think it is rewarding finding something in a space you didn't expect it or had to work for it.
I could never agree with the philosophy that every open world game has to always have things spring up every 5 seconds for the player to do, or worse, to reward them for simply taking two steps off a path. Small, compact and detailed world might work for many games, but for me personally, in games like Skyrim or GTA I would often take much larger worlds where travelling from one point to another is a substantial undertaking. This is purely for immersion purposes though and only my personal taste because I tend to put immersion above all else in games. I absolutely hate how in Skyrim you can see the entire world from a tall mountain or how GTA5 is set on a pretty small island too. Funnily enough, I think older entries of those franchises, like Morrowing or San Andreas, while having smaller worlds, worked better in that regard because of limited view distance (as well as open worlds being somewhat novel). In my ideal RPG you would have a long trek between locations and vast expanses to get lost in and find incredibly rare hidden stuff or simply scenic views (the rarity of which makes them more valuable). But it would also have some sort of in-universe fast travel system, like Skyrim's horse carriages. But the sense of a long journey is like nothing else for me. It even happens in linear games, if there's several long story-less levels in a vaguely same environment between story-important locations. When you get to one, you go "whew, I finally made it!". Or just starting a new world in Minecraft and taking off in an arbitrary direction without stopping to mine or build. It's probably a pretty niche outlook but it's always depressing to hear everyone praising "small but dense" worlds. (Denseness also means the world can feel incredibly tailored for your excitement and it ends up feeling fake and manufactured completely breaks immersion. Similar to convenience things like Skyrim's dungeon shortcuts that always cut out almost all the backtracking).
I wholeheartedly agree. Games like GTA enormously benefit IMHO from having a huge world that feels real. Sure, it isn't packed with content in every square inch, but it can be just as fun to just run around and look at the beautiful scenery or simply observe the people going about their lives around you. It is incredibly immersive and it allows you to create your own quests and challenges rather than providing a limited set of options that will eventually run out and stopping you from enjoying it to the fullest potential. For me, this is what open world is all about. When I want more complex and authored experiences I look for different kind of games, which can be just as fun but do not need to be open at all (in fact, they usually work better when they aren't).
5:48 Man, why can't more games do this? I hate getting a quest, and getting exact directions on the mini-map. Remember the days of old where you were given directions? NakeyJakey mentioned in his RDR2 video that it was rumoured that turning off the mini-map would result in people giving you directions. Sadly, that wasn't the case.
One of the best bits of subtle design Mankind Divided does in the Prague hub is the checkpoints coming out of the train stations. You have to go through them practically every five minutes, and if you go through the non-augmented part of the checkpoint, you'll be stopped, scanned, and admonished for using the 'natural' part when you're augmented.
At first, I made a point to defy the system and go through the route I was told not to - screw you, unjust prejudice! - but over time, this became annoying and slowed down my gameplay, so I got into the habit of just using the augmented section to speed things up. Then it hit me: I'd just essentially accepted the fact that an unjust system was dehumanising me (or my character) for the sake of convenience and safety. Instead of constantly pushing back, even when there was no actual consequence beyond inconvenience, I'd buckled under and stayed quiet.
It's a brilliant illustration of how these systems work and how they force people into following them, even if those who aren't affected by them might think they'd fight back, and it's probably the best way in which Deus Ex uses its medium to illustrate its themes.
Exactly, I think many people might have overlooked the significance of those checkpoint segments. It really does "show" you the story, rather than just "tell" how life is in Prague. Very insignificant, but excellent use of environmental storytelling.
I seem to recall some points in the game where you get shot for breaking the rules like that, but it's been a while since I've played so I don't remember the details. May have been later in the game that it starts happening, or in a different scenario
That was very well articulated. Thanks for sharing!
Well if you kill all the guards this is no longer an issue. I killed pretty much everyone on the street with no consequence lol
Did you also notice that some passengers on the non-augmented carriage also give you dirty looks?
The geometry of the streets in Prague are what is viewed by many to be good Urban Design in general. Older cities like Prague with a medieval and earlier structure are appreciated for their ability to organize all/most of one's real life spaces in walkable distances on streets proportioned with enough intimacy to notice the weave of lives that have made it their place. Human Revolution's successor demonstrates what we call good human scale. This sits in contrast to the city built for the car which might say something about how games with such models are best experienced in vehicles; GTA would be agonizing as a pedestrian and the detail while the human depth of Mankind Divided's Prague would barely be noticed as you'd drive past it in seconds. Even adding a few open parking lot parcels or widening the roads in Eidos' Prague would detract from the experience. The speed one travels through the city, real or game, heavily informs your level of engagement with it.
It might not matter to cyborgs with lvl 10 cyberlegs, but to anyone else who wants to get around without cars, smaller, denser cities are great.
Also the city is super clean. Freakishly so. To the point that I actually cringed at gorgeous bits of grafitti.
Playing GTA as a pedestrian is interesting. You notice that Rockstar really does put a lot of detail into pretty much every single area, and add a lot of quirks to the NPCs, the weather and other systems to make the minute-to-minute experience less repetitive, but the sheer size of the cities and the slow walking speed of your character makes it obvious that at the core, every GTA is still an action driving game. Even when trying to drive at regular speeds and not break traffic laws you'll notice a lot of details to tempt you into driving recklessly. The frequency of red lights, the random speeding cars, collisions and police chases, as well as many obvious illegal shortcuts, like walking streets and breakable fences. While they do cater to law-abiding explorers, walking or driving, it's not treated as much more than a distraction. In fact, the way the random collectables are made more spaced out and harder to spot with each game, it's almost like they're subtly mocking players for wanting to explore the world thoroughly and slowly.
Well said
@@cupriferouscatalyst3708 I fully disagree. There's little of value to experience or do in GTA's 'open worlds' on legs. There's a lot of useless, empty and non interactable space. You're basically just there for the view, which despite Rockstar's almost grotesque amount of manpower that put together this game it's not necessarily as much of a view walking through it as other open world games.
Even driving or flying through the landscape, things of interest or value are pretty sparse and the gameplay quickly very repetitive. GTAV's open world isn't that good in my opinion, it's a nice backdrop to the game's missions. This is also why I didn't get much into online because GTA has one of the least interesting open worlds of an online game. Despite it's 'open world' you'll spend most of your time doing boring, tedious, repetitive grinding of lazy repetitive missions. I don't think Rockstar have ever made great game worlds, they're mostly just something to mess around in with cheats until you quickly get bored. It's their writing and missions that carry their games, which makes me ask why they make their games open world at all.
That is the least subtle No. 33 I've ever seen.
haha, yeah. i was like "hm, keep an eye out for 33... oh. there it is. good good."
but still, be default there would be a big blue dot on the front door too!
Haha, it was so big I missed it the first time.
definitely not subtle for sure, but it actually looks not unlike a lot of signs on apartment buildings i've seen here in the states
@@WhiteArgus Well it's based on the ones in Prague which look exactly like this
The guy would probably tell you “it’s the only street number I remember… the rest are a little smaller.”
I love the game philosophy the original creator of Deus Ex had in mind.
Check out Ultima Underworld II from 1993!
Between this video and Super Bunnyhop's, the world/stealth systems/storytelling of Mankind Divided is really grabbing my interest. Is it necessary that I play Human Revolution first or could I just dive right into this?
I suppose you might want to play Human Revolution anyway.
I'd recommend playing HR. Depending on what you're after, you might find it to be the better game anyway! HR has the better plot and characters, and I enjoyed the "globetrotting adventure" setup and larger-scale plot more than being confined to one city. MD has much smoother moment-to-moment gameplay and more interesting combat.
My man! It's the Jakey! Seeing this was a year ago, how did u like the game?
Well, I wasn't expecting hot boys in here, I just finished Mankind Divided today and wanted to know what others thought about it. I know I'm late to this, but playing the Deus Ex games in the order they were released is probably the best way to go about it.
+TNB12 I also finished Mankind Divided yesterday! What a neat coincidence.
Adam Jensen approves.
he never ask for this
It’s always cool to see voice actors be invested in the characters they portray
He's not just any voice actor. He's the best voice actor :D
I asked for this.
And he's Greek too!
FINE, I'll play Vampire before the year is out. Ya big bullies.
www.moddb.com/mods/vtmb-unofficial-patch
enjoy!
you forgot to put Transistor in the used game footage list.
You really should:) The writing and the world are worth alone:)
Just remember that the game becomes a piece of turd when you finish the chinatown part, so get the console ready for the godmode.
I think you may be confusing that with the Deus Ex hacking mini-game?
100% agree. I'm really sick of bland, gigantic open worlds. Depth over breadth any day.
i would much rather have 5 minutes of "oh my god that was amazing!" then 70 hours of "meh"
Yeah. I'm glad that Botw 'broke the curse' of gigantic,but bland openworlds. It's world might be quite big,but it is just as immersive.
Quirky enemies,inventive mechanics to toy around with,charismatic characters and fun sidequests...it might have a lot of empty areas,but luckily enough,that actually plays out on it's favor,it makes exploring so enjoyable. Climbing a mountain and finding something you didn't expect at the other side,it's just...man I love that game.
P.S:I'm sorry for rambling so much,came' here uninvited,but that things you guys said made me think about Botw and I just couldn't help myself.For me it is almost the only big-map,yet-not-bland open world game.
Like Beyond Good and Evil 2 ¬¬
I too like depth over bread.
*Laughs in dark souls*
Cyberpunk should have looked to this and Dishonoured for inspiration. Open Environments beats open world.
100%
It depends
Also Yakuza
100% agree. Open worlds are fun to look at and explore but if there isn't much happening apart from how vast it is, then what's the point? I've played Cyberpunk and loved the story and characters, but one of the most serious flaws of the game is Night City being so dead and empty, an amazing vast illusion that has no depth.
And then you look at the Yakuza games and how they've managed to make a small town so alive and huge because its full to the brim with stuff to do in every game ever. Literally allowing the player to interact with almost everything like cabaret clubs, restaurants, karokes, arcades, bowling centres, dance clubs and so many more that i haven't even encountered yet, since i've only played Kiwami and 0 so far. Each game has various different minigames that are addicting as hell, they may aswell be games on their own. Not to mention all the random and wacky side quests you get, which is an endless amount lol. You can just spend hours exploring Kamurochō without ever feeling the need to play the main story.
I really wish Cyberpunk was more like Deus Ex
IMO Mankind Divided is way too underrated.
The curse of the deus ex game
It's one of my favourite games.. have me that "spy" feeling like no other game has given me.. chaos theory comes close. Alpha protocol too.. idk all three of these games are my favourites lel
Fuck Square Enix
The curse of immersive sims
It was ruined by Square Enix microtransaction inclusion before the release and DLC missions like 'Desperate Measures' and 'System Rift' felt like cut content from the main game.
"Open world" has become less and less of a selling point. If you just have an objective in an open field, it absolutely does not matter how many angles you can approach it from, there's no meaningful difference. If you compress everything down and offer actual differing paths then that actually incorperates some decision making into your approach, not just "hm I can go left or right".
Haven't played Mankind Divided yet but everything I hear about Prague sounds fantastic. Great vid.
Also - those Majora's Mask and The Fly references, a man after my own heart.
If the big world is a selling point, make it relevant to gameplay besides means of travel.
How about a quest/mission where a certain NPC has to be killed with different angles of approach that lead to different tactics. Should I just walk over and go into an open battle. Should I come over a hill and snipe him? I could be stealthy and either backstab him or use poison. Or what if I approach form the road and just use persuasion.
Make the open world part of the gameplay.
the last open world i truly enjoyed playing in was FarCry 3. That game actually had a bevy of options when approaching camps and i enjoyed planning my moves. I suppose you could say the same about MGSV but i got way too bored with that game when it went to Africa. MD was a huge step back in the right direction.
MGS5 was so huge and yet so empty. MG: Survive was so small yet so irritating.
Death Stranding is honestly really good
This game deserves so much more praise. Deus ex is by far my favorite franchise that square enix owns the rights to. I really hope they make a 3rd chapter
While you're waiting for a third Jensen game or just a new deus ex game in general, look into the older deus ex games?
dude. Squeenix put the lid on DX. No more sequels.
@@paulstaker8861 really?
@@Neko.Virtual yup
It's staring to get to the point where "Big world" is synonymous to "Bad Game" for me. Every time I hear a Dev emphasize how Big and expansive their game is I start to worry.
This.
same here, I really loved the first two batman games and the first two witchers, but the newest ones became super repetitive and pointlessly time consuming. A real shame. I guess the devs just had to try it.
TheAazv17 Witcher 3 worked for me, because all side quests were telling cool stories.
Makes sense, I still mostly got bored of having to ride around so much mostly, but I know a ton of people really likd that game.
Got really exited though when Jonathan Blow talked about the Witness being an open world and trying to make it as small as possible.
Just finished this game, 48 hours registered (and I still didn't play the Jensen stories); I don't know why the press said this game was "short", I think we're dealing with people who rushes throught the main quest and think they saw everything. That's another point people usually underestimate: most of players don't know how to relish a game like this. When I installed Mankind Divided I've spent maybe 5 or 6 hours just getting inside apartments and appreciating the views - seriously, there is almost zero of reused textures in this game, it's amazing.
Now the game sold poorly, we probably won't be seeing a sequel in the near future (IF at all), and even if it comes, it will probably be an open world, like they did with Shadow of The Tomb Raider.
it wasn't short at all but it ended so very sudden, don't you think?
@@KingLich451 Yeah, I kind of get that; but that plot was damned from the begining, I mean, there was no way Jensen would take a turn in his main goal to go against Iluminatti all by himself, lol!
The way the game ended, it not only paved a way to a sequel, but I think they reached a point where they have no choice but end Jensen story while starting JC Denton one, thus linking both games. In other words, Square Enix is kind of procrastinating the way how the franchise would come full circle.
I played the game without knowing much about it, never saw any reviews, news or discussions on it. I was completely oblivious to any issues or fan uproars.
When I was playing what would turn out to be the final scene, I was thinking how interesting the third act was going to be and just started to really get into it. I was waiting for the advanced weapon mods in particular (similar to the ones in 'Human Revolution'.)
I was pretty upset when the credits rolled.
I took my time and exhausted all side quests and explored each area before moving the story forward.
I don't have an agenda or interest in saying the game was too short. I really wish it was a great game because I love the series dearly. It breaks my heart.
I finished the game around the 50 hour mark too. The problem wasn't the lack of content, but rather the lack of content in the main storyline. I finished every single sidequest I could find, but when I finally got around to playing a story mission I felt like I'm progressing at light speed, and I was right. The main story ended so fast and suddenly with so few missions. I didn't have this feeling with Human Revolution, which I think is just the right length of story for this type of game.
The DLC missions felt like cut content from actual game. Except for Criminal Past story.
I don't think it's a question of how small a world should be, but rather, the densty of the world. For as big as it is, I can remember about 80% of Bloodborne's city of Yharnam, and I think a level designer should be focusing more on what makes a place memorable, and then on how big to make the world.
I haven't played Bloodborne, but the Souls games aren't that big. They look larger than they are because their level design is excellent and the dense enemy encounters force you to stop. But I comlpletely agree with you, this is the approach games should follow. I remember most of DS1 for this same reason.
Yeah, and a lot of the time you had to know where you were going. You never want to miss any parts of the game because of the excellent gameplay, so you go round and round, and with all the times you die you become familiar with the place. And with good level design, it becomes even more memorable. Also, it felt so big due to all the hidden paths that link up.
Souls games are the perfect example of great story telling through environment and attention to detail. I think you get the same things he is talking about in this video, but somehow FROM actually manages to spread these across larger worlds.
Bloodborne isn't that big. No from software game is. Like Metroid Prime before these games might not be very open but it's actually more inviting to explore.
The souls games just hamfistedly stack a million skulls or gravestones or whatever on everything. They're great games, but I wouldn't consider them examples of good environmental storytelling unless the story they're telling is about Hot Topic.
Deus Ex's Prague atmosphere is hard to describe. It is a city you dont want to be in and even if you are an augmented secret agent, you still feel unnerved, and your mental and physical states shrinking as you explore at night.
Holy Hell, I thought I was alone in this opinion. The past two Deus Ex games are both phenomenal games, I was convinced no corner of TH-cam shared my opinion. Fuck yeah, great video!
I loved Mankind Divided equally as much as Human Revolution. I preordered MD, fully expecting Adam to have a proper trilogy. With the trailers, I knew it was a second game in a planned trilogy and I was fine with that. Then Square abruptly decided to cancel the 3rd game and I was pissed. I actually wanted to cry when I heard the news that Deus Ex was canned. I lost respect for Square after that and I boycotted their Avengers game
Here after CP2077 dropped. Man I didn't respect this game enough. Got to play it again.
Well, with world size (and this also applies to game length), here's a good way of putting it, I think: volume does not necessarily equal mass.
That is... pretty damn succinct. Going to nab that phrase if you don't mind!
Irish Nonsense Gaming I don't mind at all!
Matthew Campbell Mathematically, volume can often be far larger value than the mass that holds it. I guess that's the point
@@raymondv.m4230 duh
Its not about size, its about how you use it
Size does matter after all.
@@JulesD92 right? ;)
at least not with [REDACTED]
Your wife told me different
Was literally gonna say the same thing
I wasn't a massive fan of the Prague setting just because it wasn't as immediately evocative to me as Hengsha or Detroit were in the previous game (although a lot of that could have just been down to the gold aesthetic GODDAMN THAT WAS SO GOOD WHY DID THEY GET RID OF IT). That said, this was a really interesting perspective on something that maybe gets lost in discussions of how badly the game fumbles its larger narrative. Thanks for this!
Also I am very happy to see Yakuza talked about in any positive capacity so cheers for that too. gonnae go run a gangster orphanage brb
the highest of high five for the comment on the gold aesthetic, it gave the game so much personality, like the green and blue for the matrix did
yeah, i do miss the black and gold thing. Prague's beautiful but it could be city 17 or dishonored's city. human revolution looked unique.
I don't recall a gold aesthetic to HR; but, if it's not in MD, I can only imagine its to signify the end of a golden age of augmentations.
Did you play the Director's cut?
Interesting, especially in Detroit I found the gold theme annoying personally. I felt it worked much better if more subtly in Hong Kong. All that to say I didn't really miss it in mankind divided.
I just completed this game yesterday and I'm pretty sure it's one of the best games ever made. Deserves way more prestige than it has. Every room is filled with detail. Everything is connected and everything you do matters. So impressed. Haven't played anything like it. I don't think I've ever played a game that recognizes the player's role in it to this extent.
Agreed at 100%. It's sad how Square Enix decisions harmed this game, this could have easily been the 2016 GOTY. But for me it was, it even was my favorite game of last generation !
You analyze and detail everything we did in Prague in the most perfect way, I couldn't have formulated it better myself ! That's some great videos you have here, and also, thanks :)
greetings from near prague. i was wondering, with all the futuristic and evocative art in this game, were you at all inspired by David Černý?
@@erteple2647 Hey! Yeah he name came up a lot on the art side, I think some of the sculpture were a tribute to him but I don't want to say nonsense, I could ask the artists who worked on the project (although they might be lurking here :P)
@@moutrave hehe nice :D those flowing pills especially seemed like something he'd make. i see his stuff almost every day, to the point where giant cars with legs and tumors on drainpipes become the norm. thanks for the reply 👍
@@erteple2647 haha yeah I bet. The floating yeah I'm pretty sure this is when he was mentioned. I mostly remember just really wanting to be able to jump on them :p which we can if I remember properly :D
The island in The Witness is another example of this. What's funny is that nothing is named so you the player have to decide, "Okay, this is the swamp, where the tetris pieces are, and this is the beach, where the symmetry puzzles." You make your own mental labels and apply them to both the physical space you see and the maps you find.
The island is also packed to the brim with world-building details. The "story" is told almost exclusively through architecture, as that's just about all you encounter. You see the layers of structures built by successive generations and try to piece together how this space was used at different times. Every structure you encounter hints at the values of the society that built it and how those people related to the world around them.
The dense and deliberate structure of the island also allows the developers to have greater control over how you encounter new information. You are technically free to roam as you please, but many areas are designed to funnel you down a particular path in order to direct your attention to an interesting new detail.
In a game that relies so heavily on close observation of the world for puzzle and story purposes, this ability to edit and direct the player's experience without ever taking away their first-person camera controls is very important.
Jonathan Blow saying that it was an open world which they made as small as possible got me really exited.
I loved to play Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, one of my favorites.
Developers have a hard time knowing WHY they're using tools like open world. It's like writing in third person vs first person; or choosing a camera angle while directing. There's no objectively better option, but it's important to know the strenghs and weakneses of each one you have so you can capitalize on it to make a greater game.
This is the difference between the success of Deus Ex and the failure of No Man's Sky. The former uses it's ingredients masterfully the same way a chef would, while the latter is more like a (bad) cook, picks and chooses arbitrarily from recipes and mix stuff up in a pot hoping it gets good.
Great comment. Like everything, an open world is a design decision. It shouldn't be made carelessly.
As most of your videos, this is one that I would like twice. The message you leave here: "praise games that make full use of their space" is very important for this industry. Thank you for your job.
It's interesting about No Man's Sky. It seems like a failed experiment, but like all experiments, we learn something. Could their procedurally generated tool be applied to something else? A smaller scale city that's different for every player, now that could be really interesting.
Dan Root Perhaps. I believe the core problem with procedural design is that it can often be bland, with worlds and levels that have no sense of purpose. Quite simply, there's no human touch.
Yeah, IMHO they should be used to speed up development, not to replace level design in the final game. If they used this to just create an environment then fill it manually with stuff it would make their work easier.
Check out some roguelikes, the genre uses procedural generation extensively and it's sometimes used pretty well in terms of logical worldbuilding. Of course, doing it well is much more difficult than just generating random heightmap with random colours like No Man's Sky does.
It's gotten quite good over the last year. The updates have made it into what we were originally promised.
But it's a failed experiment of something that worked really well in a different context. Daggerfall did procedurally generated worlds decades ago and it was one of the best games out there.
6:37
Honestly, opening a map and manually charting a route with the details I have is something I personally find incredibly satisfying. It's almost a puzzle or test to me.
And how many games provide this feature?
I tried playing Assassins Creed Black Flag without the minimap .. there is no way to navigate anywhere, not with your ship and not while running around as Edward.
Right now I am really searching for games where moving around without markers is possible - any recommendations? (Preferably newer games, playing old games on 4k is horrible)
I agree.
@@johnleorid I've really grown fond of turning off the minimap and objective markers when I can. Surprisingly, you can actually do this in The Witcher 3 despite it being such a big game. I was completely lost at first and I constantly had to check my minimap. I honestly thought about turning the minimap back on but, I stuck with it. Eventually, you just start learning all of the roads, the landmarks, and towns. It really made me connect with the game's world.
Well, this is the video that pushed me over the edge. A new video of yours popping up in my feed is always one of the highlights of my day, the quality is so completely consistent, the content is always fascinating and entertaining...
So, looks like I'm making a Patreon account. #GMTK
Much appreciated!
This is the exact philosophy that pulled me into Prey. The small stories I could make out just by putting pieces together made a psychopathic trip through a space station 50% horror themed and the other 50% tour guide/explorative driven
throwing in this one for big open worlds that really work - Shadow of the Colossus. It oddly feels small because of how empty it is, but it tells such a strong story with the environment. The land in the game is as much a character as anything else and really deserves particular praise for how well done it was.
Riding alone for large swaths of time sets the mood. 100% necessary
I truly LOOVE your series! I'm a commandblocker (a dude who makes games in Minecraft with its ingame commands) and I really appreciate your lectures about how to do stuff and what to watch out for.
Keep up the good work!
Mark, you REALLY have to play Gothic 2: Gold Edition. Especially considering the fact that ELEX is just right around the corner. It's 10 bucks on Steam but it's a truly insightful experience on how to build immersive worlds and stories in RPGs.
I am probably only person in whole world who enjoyed first Gothic way more than second one. Really enjoyed how well were "videogame" things explained in it. Like why there are no kids, like 3 female characters and why is everybody asshat. Also Gothic 1 has smaller and more packed world, whereas Gothic 2 goes too much open world for my taste.
If I remember correctly, Gothic 2 takes place in the same world from first game, no?
DavehCZ Partially, but it adds two big open world-like locations. It's something like 4 times bigger than Gothic .
It take about a half from G1 and adds about 2x more of new space.
Hopefully he can get it to work on his rig. I am angry at Steam for releasing the three Gothic titles unoptimized for any version of Windows past 98 (at least it feels like it anyway). I managed to get into the first 10 minutes of Gothic 1 with clunky controls that barely worked because I was using a user-made fix that just barely made the game playable on Windows 8. Steam needs to get its act together and either get the publisher to scrounge up some devs to make a working version of the games, or remove them from its sale list altogether.
As a gamer who has been playing since ages, I came across you and your videos just by chance. I love you how explain stuff which most ordinary people might miss, or how certain segments of a game work so much better than other similar games. You have a follower for life!
I love your Videos. I just finished Deus Ex today.
You are by far my favorite TH-camr
Thank you!
Surprisingly, Shenmue crops up to my mind. For a first 3D Open World Game (OPG), it literally nails whatever points you've mentioned Mark. Right from a hyper detailed/compact world to literally asking people for directions. It was immersive as hell. In fact, now in retrospect, my favourite tasks were going to locations just mentioned. Being a new person in town, it felt unbelievably realistic to ask people for the way, thus adding to that sense of discovery.
So, that means that Deux Ex Mankind divided did the detective work better than LA Noire?
After the clusterfuck that was Cyberpunk 2077, I appreciate this game so much more. Instead of playing Cyberpunk 2077...I'd rather just go back and replay this again.
Amen
Really? I found this game to be quite boring.
What I disliked the most about this game is that it punishes you if you really cut loose. You are supposed to be a killing machine and yet you are reduced to being forced to creep through ducts like a thief.
Another thing that I realised is that you don't actually need those fancy upgrades to your systems. They are just...there. You can do a stealth takedown on just about any enemy even without them.
I really don't know why this franchise is hell bent on forcing the pacifist playthrough on its players.
@@Skyknight12 Really? Because I found Cyberpunk 2077 to be quite boring. Even more boring because it froze and locked up my PS5 every 15 minutes.
Infact I could write a 1000 word essay on everything wrong with Cyberpunk 2077 and everything Mankind Divided does better than that game.
and the game forcing you to be stealthy and a pacifist was a problem in the first game. It's not in this one. Infact that was the number one thing players complained about in Human Revolution, that you were punished for being violent. They remedied that in Mankind Divided. If you want to be aggressive and kill people. You can. I always found Deus Ex to be much more satisfying as a stealth game anyway, If I just want to run and gun. I'll go play Call of Duty or something.
I liked Mankind DIvided's story and characters way better as well. I always found Adam Jensen to be way cooler and more likeable than V. V is an asshole no matter what dialogue choices you make. and even though you get to customize V's appearance, and choose what they say. V doesn't really feel like a character you created. They still feel like a established character.
@@Skyknight12 it's an Immersive sim. you need to think outside the box before you act. you can also go in guns blazing if you can use your skills and guns appropriately. System shock 2 and The Original Thief games were like this as well
@@Skyknight12 On pc, some of these flaws (like the fact that you earn more xp from neutralizing enemies non lethally) can actually be fixed with mods. As for the non-lethal takedowns, yes, they are a bit overpowered since they don't do enough noises.
It's also a good time to remember just how amazing the "worlds" of truly great "Metroidvanias" and Survival Horror games has been. Even some survival action games (Dead Space comes to mind). Where you remember a tightly packed with details (at least, as much as the technology allowed) small interconnected worlds that are some much more full of character and memorable stuff, than even some of their sequels that went with "bigger and louder" approach and all this amazing stuff got lost as a result.
I love old Gothic games (1st and 2nd). The way that open world worked was connected to rpg elements. You start the game in dangeorus world, powerless, forced to sneak and avoid stronger enemies, while hunting smaller beasts for limited loot and xp. So you had to learn not the terrain or layout, but all monsters hideouts, all safe paths between them. And later, when you get your gear and skills, you'll come back to all of them. That was a great satisfaction, to kill all those orcs you had to run from. Also, it seem so natural, it took no great efford to lern a map, unlike many other games. Years after I steel remember a lot of orc camps, molerat caves and e.t.c. Just who was where.
In TES and many others you have this system, where world adapts for your character, monsters grow bigger teeth while you master new spells to fight them. In Gohic world was more or less static, so you had a long path from a cowardly pray to a fearless hunter.
So it was not about the depth and detail, but challenge and interaction. You needed to know the map not for estetics, it was vital, not just rewarding. And this is what seem to be missed in many todays openworld RPG's.
Perhaps you could make a video about hub areas in general like, Super Mario 64 or the older Lego games.
Since I was a kid I loved that stuff. The Lego Star Wars III hub ships are amazing. The thing I remember most, though, was when after playing Crash 2 and 3 on the ps1, I played Crash Twinsanity and it just transformed the hub area in something else entirely, a mixture between hub world and open world platforming. Mind = blown.
sd19delta hell resident evil 7 and Dark souls have pretty damn good hub worlds
sd19delta the hub of Lego: Star Wars DS is fantastic! The way that all of your characters walk around makes the game feel alive and the way you can have a little fight with a character makes the hub world better than some of the levels. I think one of the Lego star wars Wii games and the PC version use the same hub.
The two Lego Island games would make a great point for this video. The first one had a small and dense island that you ended up knowing by heart. I got really attached to it. In the second game, they made it much bigger and very empty. It was depressing and unwelcoming. It felt like a step back in time.
sd19delta diddy kong racing, and why no one has a hub world in racing games any more
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided to this day is an amazing game that doesn't get the credit that it deserves and the amount of detail the team at Eidos Montreal put into the game.
WTF are you talking about Mark? I love drooling over a game's graphics and vastness while doing the same boring, meaningless tasks for 200 hours.
r/wooosh HeartxFrost
@HeartXFrost dude it was sarcasm
I think an excellent example of a smaller open world being made is the Dishonored series. And yes, you may say that Dishonored series is not open world, and it's not. It's mission are however. The huge massive spaces are packed with detail to explore, loot to find, notes to read, and tons of enviornmental storytelling to uncover.
GOTHIC 1 and 2 - you should give it a shot. The devs carefully crafted those worlds - you can say "stone by stone" its famous for its authentic feel.
This channel is great, exactly what I'm looking for regarding video games and the creation aspect of them.
Deus Ex Human Revolution's take on Shanghai is pretty amazing and one of the most memorable city hubs ever created. I now need to go finish Mankind Divided.
I am really really enjoying ManKind Divided. I love the small open world and love the eye to detail in the different enviroments. I agree that more devs should make smaller open world and fill them with meaningful things to discover.
Now that I have written this comment I will go back to Prague and explore some more.
I knew literally nothing about this game somehow, kinda love finding games that have been out a while but are great. I recently played Killzone Shadow Fall and it was great
It's an interesting point in the Corriveau quote that "game design requires us to be of a certain pace": world size and detail should be tuned to the pace of gameplay. The scale of NMS works if you're after a very slow, meditative style of game: more ambient and relaxing than driven and exciting. I enjoy just going for a walk on a new planet for a few hours, maybe with a vague goal in mind, but mostly just taking in the details and the atmosphere (and I'm still finding tiny delights and surprises after 100+ hours). There's a place for tightly-packed narrative games in tiny, densely-designed spaces (Gone Home, for instance), and a place for huge self-directed sandboxes.
Of course, yes. But right now the industry is focused almost entirely on the huge sandbox stuff and I'd personally like it to be a bit more balanced with more small worlds :)
Definitely one of the most well-deserved subscriptions I've ever made. Full of praise for you, my friend.
Playing Mankind Divided.. I just never wanted it to end 🙂
does it ended?
@@dosven3495 for now there will be a final game to end Adam's story
What I love about these smaller worlds/hubs is that I actually know them like I know my own neighbourhood. So if a mission asks me to go somewhere, I actually know how to get there without even opening the map. Big worlds get explored through the hud-radar, smaller worlds with your own eyes.
Yeah, similar thing happens in Yakuza games
3:26 "Why is this corpse here?" Oh boy it must've been one of THOSE nights.
Here now after Cyberpunk 2077's release, and I suddenly realized that Mankind Divided is everything Cyberpunk wanted to be.
A tight-lipped protagonist, commentary on prejudice and current world problems, role playing systems...
Somehow they lost sight of it during development because they scaled it too far.
They wanted The Witcher 3's scale, but the Witcher series is based on a book series, which in turn was based on Polish and European folklore.
Cyberpunk is based on a table top role playing game.
The world feels less immersive because there's not enough material to draw from and it's stretched out across a barren city with far too many problems like broken police AI, quest variety etc.
They would've been far better off telling a contained story like Mankind Divided's, but maybe that's the problem?
Maybe then the games would be too similar and there was no real reason to tell the same kind of story again in Cyberpunk 2077, just using other scenery.
Can't begin to imagine the problems that haunted Cyberpunk's release, but scale certainly seems to be one of them.
wait, from what i heard that tabletop game has insane level of lore and world building and iconic legacy characters and interactions between them to make an engaging game. so it is not in the source material to blame, but cdpr for biting more than they can swallow within corporate deadline.
I know it's not entirely what you're talking about, but Dark Souls's Painted World of Ariamis is an absolutely exquisite example of utilizing every square inch of usable space. There isn't an inch of wasted level geometry there.
Fun fact: It was the first level created during development, as a test. That's why it feels like a complete area, unconnected from the rest of the world.
jmiquelmb Yeah, I think I remember it being a rejected area for Demon's Souls, and since it went through so much refinement over so much time, much more than any other area in the game(s), it's of course better designed.
almost all areas of dark souls 1 were amazing
Pedda ZZ Well, i'd have to disagree. A big part of the game's second half feels incomplete, specially the Izalith path.
you call it the second half but it is actually more like 1/3 of the second half
The sheer amount of detail packed into this game's environments remains unprecedented.
has anyone played Lord of The Rings online? it's one of the biggest open worlds in an mmo, and traversal can be painfully boring, however for a LOTR fan like myself, the experience of traveling from bag end to rivendell via weathertop Bree, the barrow downs, Tom Bombadil's house, and Buckland in one sitting, a journey that took three hours: the length of time it takes me to read that part of the fellowship of the ring incidentally, was deeply cathartic. besides that, if you are familiar with the games lore, the environment is created in deep realism. when I went off of the beaten track in the barrow downs, I got lost and was marauded by whites (this happens in the book) and this was entirely unscripted. similarly, wandering across landmarks in the game allowed me to navigate based off of the storytelling of the novels in a very similar way that the hobbits and Aragorn did during this part of the novel. this natural and authentic recreation of a fictional world for me made up for the Lord if the Rings On line's many flaws, just a personal opinion.
Drew Casy-Snow you need to read the books for that impact though
@@leprechaunluck24 you say that like reading LOTR is a bad thing, those books are amazing
Majora's Mask is definitely my favourite game. Thank you for the video of your games, it has helped me to find more games that I like.
Cyberpunk 2077 should have learned more from this.
Shut the fuck up
Have you even played Cyberpunk? Night City is much smaller than any of The Witcher 3's maps, and it's super dense and rich with detail, you can wander off into literally any alleyway and you're bound to find something interesting. Love it or hate it, Cyberpunk feels like an open world Deus Ex in almost every way.
@@malek0093 for me CP2077 is like Deus Ex + Mirror's Edge + Shadow Warrior + Watch Dogs + Doom.. and guess what ? I love all these games, so I couldn't be happier with this one, certainly of the best games I played in recent memory..
@@malek0093 okay thats just not true
yes its dense and the parts of the map does tell a story but vertical traversal sucks in CP
i played both HR and MD after CP and I can say that CP offers way less traversal options that either of them. There is always a pathway that's best suited and built for your very specific style of play and augs for both HR and MD. The verticality with the vents is insane.
I agree that environmental manipulation in CP is better than DX but the traversal is just so limited. When playing DE, the map itself is a puzzle and is core to the gameplay loop. No mission is ever designed with the same layout. Which is why even though all you do is stealth the gameplay feels different enough to justify it being fun.
For every DE map there is at least 5 stealth ways to get to the objective area. For CP, its a maximum of 3 - one w double jump, one with hack/technical, one with str.
@@ashrafhaider598 How about YOU shut the fuck up. 2077 runs like absolute dog shit on consoles they charged full price for. This posters comment is valid.
I'm from Czech Republic, and it's so amazing seeing Prague in a game and recognizing the language even when I'm so used to English. Shame I can't play this game. But after this video I certainly will. Love your videos and after each one I'm thinking: "I'm gonna play this one when I get a console". Man, you really help me through this pandemic. School is just KILLING me. Keep it up.
Kamurocho is such a great "open world". Over time you start recognizing all the street names and various landmarks like the millennium tower and the various shops, eateries, and attractions. In Yakuza 0, Nishiki mentions heading over to Pink Street and I didn't have to use the mini map; I knew exactly where I was going! Yakuza is an amazing series and I highly recommend it. Yakuza 0 is cheap and a great starting point!!
Huge Deus Ex fan.
Very informative video.
Enjoyed your commentary style so i subscribed.
Great job Sir.
This is exactly how I wish to explore IRL world but too afraid of consequences/other people's perception of me just wandering in -seedy- any parts of any place.
My friends always bash DXMD but there are really awesome things about it. Thanks for covering its world.
I have to say MD is such an amazing game. People say the story sux, but the real story isn't obvious you have to figure it out and find it yourself just like dark souls in a way. The more you put into the game the more you get out. The real character is the world and it proves you dont need a huge open world to make a realistic world. Anyway the story thats hidden in MD is the true star and its really amazing once you figure it all out. Sadly many people dont bother and just go from marker to marker and miss all the work put into the game. If you are new to MD i would recommend turning all the makers off, explore and try and figure out what the world is telling you and i promise you , you will have a great time.
Man if deus ex:hr was a movie it would have won Oscars in all categories, especially that score
Man this game is so underrated. I had a blast exploring Prague.
Only two videos in and I can already tell you're going to be one of my favorite channels; likely of all time.
I didn’t think I would like Mankind Divided because I didn’t like Human Revolution, but I loved Mankind Divided.
Im playing mankind now, big fan of the saga since the first, dont know why didnt play this one before, I LOVE IT! playing on give me deux ex difficulty, is a beautiful ride!
One of the best games I've ever played. Story, graphics, gameplay and environmental design are all great. Too bad it's terribly underrated.
This game is underrated. One of the best ever imo
Its very shitty idk why people like it
Yakuza 5 does something similar with its 5 different cities that are all pretty small but packed with all kinds of stuff from actual Japan
Real shame that it was released unfinished. Everything apart from the actual story and not screwing up with cut content as dlc or microtransactions that the game could do well. It absolutely smashed it. Imo it could be one of the all time greats as a stealth action fan if it wast screwed around with by the publishers
yeaah, publishers royally fucked the game's potential, gotta thank and praise square enix for ruining all future possible deus ex games...
I think the Hitman series is a great example of a "meter wide a mile deep" philosophy.
Yes, especially the latest one
I just want to say that this is the first video I've ever seen from your channel, and I really liked it. Slick presentation, strong point being made, well produced. You've got a new subscriber.
Thank you for this video! I really enjoyed DX:MD and Prague was my favourite location. I spent so much time walking around, looking in every corner, looking for all the stories being told and it's just so well done! As for the main story being ham-fisted, I don't really agree. I agree that some aspects of the high concept is a bit iffy, but I really enjoy how the game uses privilege in its storytelling. Like, how Adam is part of the augs who are now looked down on, but he's so visibly different from the rest because of the quality of his tech, his nature (not dependent on anti-rejection drugs), his work, etc. He can literally walk into the no-aug zones, like the train, with little to no consequence besides some time-consuming hassle dealing with cops. As someone mentioned in a comment below, you as a player end up using the aug-only train in order to avoid spending time with the cops, and thus conforming to what's expected of you as an aug. It's really well crafted!
Back to environmental storytelling: Dragon Age II was also mentioned in the video. I loved and played this game a lot, and also participated in providing feedback to the developers on their now-defunct official bbs. BioWare still interacted a lot with fans at the time and received a lot of great feedback about how the city of Kirkwall, while already very good imo, could have been even better serving the story by changing up details in the city as time progressed (10 years pass during the game). Some of that insight was obviously put to good use in follow-up Dragon Age: Inquisition, but I think the considerable fan-rage at release regarding the smaller scope of DAII compared to its predecessor ended up taking priority during the development of Inquisition. They also seem to have had to cut a lot of major features because of tech limitations when working on what was at the time both current and next-gen technology, which also contributed to the feeling of emptiness in some spaces. I hope they'll go back a bit to Dragon Age II for the next game, and I really believe that DE:MD is a good example that they could use for inspiration.
Again, thanks for a great video! Followed, and will check out more of your vids!
I personally think that too many games are going open world these days and the devs end up not knowing what to put in them.... cough *wild lands*
I loved the world in this game. It felt so real. I liked how they made it small-ish but dense. A very nice change of pace compared to so many of the huge open worlds.
To the most extent I agree. I just felt that when you have such a small open world, there could have been a lot more small detail interactivity than there already was. I would have wanted to be able to use the restaurant and cafés the way you would in the real world. It could even have gameplay mechanics (like overhearing/talking to someone that initiates a quest), be able to go to the back room of a weapons dealer to see the weapon on display instead of the computer, buy small minigames at the eletronics store that you could play on Jensen's TV, pick out specific food/healing items at the convience store (instead of the bland directional dialogue choices) etc..
Also, be able to break into every single building, even if they were irrelevant to the quest, with a moral dilemma mechanic that unless you do a mission, you'll somehow be punished by raiding people's home (like having the police investigating/suspecting you easier if you do a lot of crimes).
Those are my input notes for the developers if they wanted to make a new DX. Small thing, but the details that would make the game a game with that little extra in it.
MD was a great game either way.
I refer to worlds like in Deus Ex and Yakuza as "open areas" because I see them as an in between of hub worlds and fully open worlds.
Here from 2019: I really hope you played Gothic 1 and 2 by now.
Deus ex is by far my favorite game series of all time. I've played through Mankind divided close to a dozen times and I always seem to stumble across something new every time.
I replayed Dishonored 10 times and I still love it, level design is so good
Another thing I want to throw in (sort of late, and Human Revolution spoilers) is a big choice in the first game of the Deus Ex reboots; the control chip. Villain wants to implant people with new control chips, turn them crazy, masquerades as a hardware recall on existing augmentation control chips. It's even a quest you get, before figuring out what's going on; go upgrade your control chip. But the game world says something else, something different. When your controls start to spark and whirr it's not just you; enemies and civilians also clutch their heads in pain, indicating that it's an external problem. Hidden emails mention disruption in the chip production schedule, or faint evidence that relevant officials were bought off. All these tiny clues that go against the "go here and do this" main quest. And when you have a showdown with the villain she confidently points a remote at you and clicks the button. If you figured it out, and left the "upgrade your chip" quest incomplete, she looks at you with horror as you stride forward and crash te remote. It's a really powerful moment that interacts well with the in-world storytelling they bud into the game
I absolutely cannot believe you've never played Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines! It's aged well IMO and definitely deserves your hours. :)
Just wanna say thank you for this video. Not only was the content interesting, but it encourage me to play DXMD again with smaller HUD, no radar & object locater just feel more immersive in this game. The small stories like murdered wife in Golem City, the missing daughter from the father who lives in the same apartment complex as Jensen & others, made the game more interesting.
I just finished playing System Rift (one of its DLC) & had a fun time exploring Palisade Blade. I think I've spent almost six hours completing that DLC. I hope their is a sequel to DXMD.
I’m hella goddamn late, but recently I decided to give DE: MD another try, having had tried it 2 times previously. I ended up loving it and played Human Revolution. I generally preferred human revolution, even though it was the older game. It just got everything right imo
This is why I loved Super Mario Odyssey so much. The kingdoms were like tiny little worlds with their own challenges and own secrets to discover. I love having a smaller space to explore, as I tend to want to collect everything more so than I do in larger open world games. For example, I beat BOTW, but haven’t finished like 5 side quests just bc the map is so huge that sometimes the barren space makes me bored? It’s amazing during the first play through as you’re exploring a world all on your own, and the scope is mind blowing. Afterwards though it just feels like too little is in these wide open spaces sometimes. Great video GMTK. I have been binging your stuff so much lately so I just gotta say I appreciate your content so much in helping me understand the mechanics and concepts about game design.
This reminded me of Shenmue and Shenmue 2, and the first 2 Fallouts.
The original Shenmue is enclosed in a small japanese city, people have schedules, I don't remember if you have a map or get one eventually, but you sure don't have any gps or compass, you go to houses on this street, apartment this or that, shops open from x to x hours, you need to rustle this tattoo guy before a certain date I don't remember why, but you have 2 or 3 days only, and it's weekend and you can't find him on his shop so you have to look for him on a few bars, you miss him and you have only monday to find him before that limit date passes, and if you make it in time, maybe you have to do something else but it's too late because you lost too much time following other lead and that train passed so now you have to follow another lead to eventually make it to China for the 2nd game, where everything is bigger, still contained and much more detailed, if you miss a quick time event (yeah, really new) that is not fight related, you don't lose the game and retry, you lose track of whomever you were following and you lose a few days tracking him/her again, you need to work for cash (on the 1st game as well), train and win fights, there are a lot of time limits and things you can do only to a certain point, is not easy to lose, but is not easy to win either, at least not by modern conventions, you can take it slow and follow the leads that take you around town or rush and try to make the deadlines before the early trains passes, and depending on the choices and playstyle your experience is unique, your notebook ends up FULL of missed leads and after the 1st playthrough you can finish in a fraction of time by going straight through the shortcuts and knowing where you are going instead of searching on every corner where is that street, shop, person that can't find since 3 days ago. Awesome experience.
And well, Fallout 1 and 2 are much of the same beast on a diff genre, but still cointained games with small but detailed towns, except for the big cities, you rarely have more than 3 or 4 unimportant people on the smaller towns in fallout 1, on the 2nd, everything is bigger and the unimportant NPCs have multiplied, but the importants as well, everyone has their motivations and does everything for a reason, nothing more satisfying than talking the end game boss to kill himself because he is wrong and hasnt seen it yet, great stuff.
I can't wait until Shenmue 1&2 gets released on pc. I only played a little bit of Shenmue and I liked it alot. And I loved Fallout 1 & 2.
Shenmue 1 sounds like Warren Spector's dream game. And, curiously enough, it got made before DX1 was even out.
Maybe Chibi Robo falls into this category as well. It is just a small house as the whole world, but it feels quite alive because of the characters that inhabit it. Older tech, to be sure, but there's something magical about it.
As always, thanks for doing these videos. They are exceedingly helpful!
Shit about Mankind Divided all you wants, you can't deny that the level design is top notch!
Also - funny that both No Man Sky and Mankind Divided came out in the same month, and both are contrasts in terms of level design!
Don't see how anyone can shit on it. This game was really ebjoyable.
Lyall James I found the main story to be rather lackluster compared to Human Revolution, and the scale of your decisions weren't as big; the fate of the world was never hanging in the balance.
Not saying that MD was bad, per say, but it was certainly lacking.
Tyler Rosencutter i prefer it over human revolution. The whole next generation of discrimination towards the augmented was so good for deus exs dystopian future, i loved it. The only downside for me was the ending was way too soon and sudden.
Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door to name another.
Rogueport acting as the hubworld opens up new areas and new interactions each time you return with new abilities and it allows you to notice the secret areas that were hidden away before.
Where once you saw a fence, now you see an opportunity to turn sideways and slip through. Crack in the wall? Now it's not just aesthetic, but a chance to blow a hole and reveal some treasure.
Cyberpunk 2077 made me appreciate DE Mankind Divided a lot more recently.
Wow someone actually mention Gothic...one of the most underrated games ever, and one of the best RPGs out there...
This game will turn into cult like status, if it hasn't already. I should try it sometime in the future
I know I’m very late but I appreciate you making the acronym that spelled out, as a new viewer.
Big maps are great for vistas but smaller maps are better for the people and their lives. Unless you talk about a hermit living in the mountains. I think it is rewarding finding something in a space you didn't expect it or had to work for it.
This video, this channel and this game deserve MUCH more views, attention and credit!
I could never agree with the philosophy that every open world game has to always have things spring up every 5 seconds for the player to do, or worse, to reward them for simply taking two steps off a path. Small, compact and detailed world might work for many games, but for me personally, in games like Skyrim or GTA I would often take much larger worlds where travelling from one point to another is a substantial undertaking. This is purely for immersion purposes though and only my personal taste because I tend to put immersion above all else in games. I absolutely hate how in Skyrim you can see the entire world from a tall mountain or how GTA5 is set on a pretty small island too. Funnily enough, I think older entries of those franchises, like Morrowing or San Andreas, while having smaller worlds, worked better in that regard because of limited view distance (as well as open worlds being somewhat novel). In my ideal RPG you would have a long trek between locations and vast expanses to get lost in and find incredibly rare hidden stuff or simply scenic views (the rarity of which makes them more valuable). But it would also have some sort of in-universe fast travel system, like Skyrim's horse carriages.
But the sense of a long journey is like nothing else for me. It even happens in linear games, if there's several long story-less levels in a vaguely same environment between story-important locations. When you get to one, you go "whew, I finally made it!". Or just starting a new world in Minecraft and taking off in an arbitrary direction without stopping to mine or build. It's probably a pretty niche outlook but it's always depressing to hear everyone praising "small but dense" worlds. (Denseness also means the world can feel incredibly tailored for your excitement and it ends up feeling fake and manufactured completely breaks immersion. Similar to convenience things like Skyrim's dungeon shortcuts that always cut out almost all the backtracking).
I wholeheartedly agree. Games like GTA enormously benefit IMHO from having a huge world that feels real. Sure, it isn't packed with content in every square inch, but it can be just as fun to just run around and look at the beautiful scenery or simply observe the people going about their lives around you. It is incredibly immersive and it allows you to create your own quests and challenges rather than providing a limited set of options that will eventually run out and stopping you from enjoying it to the fullest potential.
For me, this is what open world is all about. When I want more complex and authored experiences I look for different kind of games, which can be just as fun but do not need to be open at all (in fact, they usually work better when they aren't).
GTA works because you don't need unique/well crafted locations to make driving fun
5:48 Man, why can't more games do this? I hate getting a quest, and getting exact directions on the mini-map. Remember the days of old where you were given directions?
NakeyJakey mentioned in his RDR2 video that it was rumoured that turning off the mini-map would result in people giving you directions. Sadly, that wasn't the case.