Talk:Deus Ex: Invisible War

message: "As a consequence of console-oriented development, the game's levels are significantly smaller than those seen in the original Deus Ex. The development for Xbox also has had consequences for the game's graphics; the game's characters are slightly less detailed and have somewhat lower polygon counts than those seen in, for example, Unreal II."
The lower polygon counts were not a consequence of console development, they were because of the custom lighting system. Creating shadow volumes for shadows is very resource intensive, and essentially one shadow 'doubles' the polycount being rendered. Add two lights, and that's tripling the polycount - ergo the polycount for objects had to be kept low. The same thing can be seen in ID Tech 3 games of the time (i.e. Doom 3), although they made stronger use of Normal Mapping.80.42.237.211 (talk) 11:47, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Technical 

message: There should be a section (near the top) that lists the numerous gameplay changes between the two, for example, mentioning such things as "universal ammo", lack of different damage for different areas (till a patch was released that only included some extra head damage), etc.
If these points aren't raised, then the article isn't really being very informing as to why people are upset at the sequel to the original Deus Ex. 18:32, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gameplay changes 

message: :"Alex is forced to kill her when she confronts him in JC's sanctuary."
If I remember correctly, this isn't entirely accurate. You can knock her unconscious just like most other enemies in the game.
If it's alright, I'm going to add a section on weapons and maybe biomods...
:I haven't played the game myself, but I remember reading that you can beat the game without having killed anyone. --Poiuyt Man (talk) 13:14, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You don't even need to knock her out. you can just run away. --Joeyjojo 04:30, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Billie Adams 

message: The large list of characters on this page is kind of messy...should there be a seperate "Characters of IW" article? --Chrismith 04:10, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Having a Deus Ex: Invisible War characters page similar to Deus Ex characters is a good idea. Um... I guess I'll make it when I have the time.... --KaiSeun 06:44, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Character Page 

message: There is a warning message that comes up that the article is currently 38K long and should be checked for size.  It also looks kind of long. --RJFJR 15:24, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article length 

message: Where is that boxart from? As IW is not exclusive to Xbox, and I have the PC version. And the two versions were released at the same time. --Codenamecuckoo 18:40, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Xbox cover 

message: First of all I don't see how it was a "consensus" that the two weapons articles be merged into their respective game pages as only about three people suggested it (admitedly myself included - with it meant only as a preference to deletion). I don't really see why it's necessary to merge either article as they will likely only clutter the article, and their current positioning in seperate pages seems to work just fine at this point. Discuss. -- Grandpafootsoldier 05:52, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It was the AFD close, and those lists need to be converted to vastly shorter prose instead of simply blandly listing objects that appear in the series. Right now, it doesn't explain at all why the guns are at all interesting to anyone, and fails to justify its existence over "Chairs in Deus Ex". Clearly they're an important part of the game, but it's more important to explain why than simply list each and every gun. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 19:20, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess many people meant merging these two into one. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 20:04, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly (reply to A Man In Black). Petros471 08:59, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, sorry. My mistake. -- Grandpafootsoldier 06:36, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge of "Invisible War weapons" page into this one 

message: Unlike the original game, Invisible War was intended from the outset to run on both the PC and a console platform, and its design reflects this; many elements of the game appear to be a compromise between the abilities and environments of both platforms. Some players perceived this dual release as Ion Storm "selling out" to the console crowd. Indeed, the initial (unpatched) default.ini file had many irrelevant configurations or misconfigurations; this ranged from Thief: Deadly Shadows references, (a game also developed by Ion Storm) to outright errors such as the Field of View being set to Xbox settings, and even a number of sections dealing specifically with Xbox hardware configurations.
In fan communities, debate has raged over what effect various design changes have had on the experience of the game: some fans voiced concern that the game has been "streamlined" (simplified) too much, with others agreeing that the changes were for the best. The game received generally positive reviews on its release, although there were some low-scoring ratings. The game was criticized for its inability to run on certain graphics cards, such as the GeForce 4 MX line of graphics cards from Nvidia due to its lack of pixel shaders, and for the relative shortness of the game compared to Deus Ex. The graphical performance of the game was also an issue many fans brought up; performance on the PC was reported to be dramatically worse on ATI Radeon video cards than comparable Nvidia GeForce products, and a number of reviews pointed out that frame rates on the Xbox seemed very low. Still other fans voiced concerns over the relative low quality of the in-game textures. A few even went so far as to create the DX2 HighRes Texture Pack, a community-made texture upgrade package which replaces existing in-game textures on the PC with high resolution fan-made versions.
Ion Storm released two patches for the game to address some major concerns. However, some argue that these do not go far enough and that the game is still problematic. To illustrate the extent of problems, at the time of the game's release, a pinned thread on the official forums was available for configuration modifications, although the most offending problems -- such as the Xbox-oriented HUD position, slow mouse response time, and inability to disable shadows -- were corrected with the aforementioned patches.
According to the publishers, Invisible War met sales expectations both on Xbox and PC.
This can probably be sourced and made useful, but right now it's terribly waffly, not least because not one single thing is attributed to anything but "fans" or "critics" or just stated passively "The game was criticized..." Additionally, there's a distinct lack of commentary on how the Xbox version was critically recieved, just a bunch of complaining about how the PC version was butchered. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 01:24, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticisms

message: The 'Overview' & 'Plot' sections of the article have lots of hyphens and just plain bad sentences. We should try to focus on fixing that crap up before adding new stuff. - ZFGokuSSJ1 23:40, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spelling & Grammar 

message: I removed the weapons list from this page. From a presentation standpoint it doesn't work very well, and just overall looks crappy (that's one of the reasons why it was on a separate page to begin with). If anyone has a problem with this, I've left a copy here for easy reference. -- Grandpafootsoldier 17:56, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: List issues

message: I bought this game at EB and it only had two CD's despite having space for 3 should I take it back? Jamhaw 16:24, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: First thing, this isn't a discussion board. Next time, go to a fansite, not Wikipedia. Second, no, the game only has two discs. -ZFGokuSSJ1 23:48, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Two CDS

message: Does the link "Full soundtrack download" breach copyright?  The readme in the link indicates that it's a rip, not a release. Vampus 17:20, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I was wondering that myself. The article says that the music was released from the game's official site, though. -Kris Schnee 01:06, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: At the official site for the game, the songs (or at least a very similar set; I haven't checked in detail) are freely available for download. So I figure that even if that readme doesn't make it clear that the songs were legitimately released, the company wouldn't mind you downloading from another site. -Kris Schnee 19:09, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Full soundtrack download 

message: The first Deus Ex's plot was honestly very linear except for basic action elements in each level which didn't count for much other then gaining extra money or weapons. In Deus Ex Invisible War, this is different where dialog options are much better and player choice actually changes story elements around in the game. It's much more like an RPG as the first was more Action. Can this be reflected in the Plot section? -Jake 08:15, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know what game you were playing, but your choices had very little consequences on the plot in the game - up until the very last couple of levels, nothing you did mattered (seriously - kill Nicolette DuClaire when you first see her - Chad doesn't care, still wants to work with you, and you just killed his WIFE!).  The dialog was wooden and uninspired.  Further, in the first one, you had the skill system, which meant that you didn't start off as a bad-ass super-agent - you had to earn it.  Your weapons were terribly inaccurate to start with, and only after patient and careful aiming did you end up with some semblance of accuracy.  Later, as your skills progressed, you could run&gun with the best of the FPS action heroes - all this as opposed to IW, where your guns were as accurate as they would ever be the first time you picked them up.  Let us not forget the dumbed-down inventory system and the universal ammo fiasco, to say nothing of location-based damage on both yourself and NPC's (headshots, anyone?).  The first game was a masterful balance of RPG and FPS elements, while the IW was a FPS with a few RPG-like elements tacked on.  ApokalypseCow (talk) 15:49, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

text: I'd go one step further and say that DX2 was actually a lot more linear than DX1. Not only was the plot almost completely unaffected by player choices, but the same goes for the action - yes the descriptions insist there are multiple approaches to problems but this is almost like the above discussion about whether collision detection can be considered a feature, insofar as the "multiple approaches" pretty much consisted of which weapon to pull out and what mods to turn on. This game was almost completely devoid of the multiple entrypoints and completely divergent methods available in DX1, and was really an all-out action game with a nod to imagination by adding the odd air vent here and there, often in rather ridiculous locations. I'd like to see a citable source that expresses this in an encyclopaedic fashion because I think it's a worthwhile point and an excellent example of the dumbing down of which this game is so frequently accused. Leushenko (talk) 00:03, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

text: Actually just to add to that rant - why does the section on player choice refer to the commandeering of an airship when there is no airship in the game? Leushenko (talk) 00:05, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the airship mentioned might be the one Sid Black needs you to steal back from what's-her-face, although it's been a while since I've played and I wasn't enamored with the game when I did, so my memory could be sketchy. Rnb (talk) 14:55, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Less Linear Plot 

message: shouldnt the part about ending include what happends to alex?
:What does happen to her? I just played all five endings and in none of them is her fate discussed.... Leushenko (talk) 23:55, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: yes that is what the 3rd game will be about then, thats why they have them --68.81.38.129 (talk) 00:53, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: ending

message: I remember when DX:IW was released, and how disappointed most Deus Ex fans were. It received a lot of criticism and if you asked most people, they would say it was a bad sequel and a bad game and everyone talked of how it was dumbed down. From reading this article, you would get the impression that it was a brilliant game that everybody loved and have no idea of how it was actually received.
So I looked through the history, and sure enough, it used to be quite different. In fact, it used to have a lengthy "Criticisms" section and actually mention many of the problems with it and why it happened (designed/developed primarily for consoles). It even included a quote from the lead designer saying where they went wrong. It seems that over a number of years the criticisms got gradually removed and the article changed to be more positive, ultimately culminating in quite an extensive (but probably unwarranted) rewrite by ProtoDrake. Essentially, history has been rewritten, and anyone who reads this article who wasn't around when the game was released will get a false understanding of its reception and quality.
I think one of the reasons for this is perhaps because published reviewers did review the game favourably, and it's those that are easy to get citations for. It was fan response that was overwhelmingly negative. Some versions of the page from 2007 even mention this. Anyone wanting to know the truth about this game should read older versions of the article. The further back in time you go, the closer to the truth you will get.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lytel (talk • contribs) 01:08, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Asking users to seek out older versions of the article is not the best approach. If player response was as negative as you claim,(I admit, I wasn't watching when it was released) then there should be some evidence that you can cite. Once you have that evidence, you can bring back the balance that the article is currently missing. Larrythefunkyferret (talk) 06:06, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Biased article 

message: Here's what I've found so far. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 18:14, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reference material