Wow. I was too lazy to use the spoiler tags, but also didn't want to spoil anything...so I was just extremely vague. As I understand it (spoilers about the first mission): Spoiler If you take too much time looking around Sarif Industries before your first mission, the hostages are killed (David says something along those lines IIRC, though I just ignored him, thinking it was just normal "hurry up" talk). Apparently if I had hurried up, I could have saved the hostages, or at least had the opportunity (you can fail to save the hostages of course). The whole time, I figured the hostages were supposed to die. Sorry Josie. At least I didn't get you killed. Answering my earlier question, I'm not sure there are really any decent PC mods available. Think I saw an inventory mod today (mostly adjusts stacking I think), which IIRC was mentioned as one of the first mods (or maybe the first mod). They've apparently unlocked the debug menu for the game though. Some amusing things about it (mostly the quote of the day parts), but seemed more like cheats to me (unlimited ammo, health regen tweaks, etc.). Maybe that will help in making progress on some mods though.
Heh... The game noted the "Padres vs Astros" were in the World Series (or implied as much). "Neither has won a World Series." (guess Astros going AL confirmed?)
Finished the game last night. Overall, it was a very enjoyable experience. Better yet, it felt like Deus Ex, which is what I think most fans like myself were worried about (and should be very happy to know). It is a very difficult thing to do IMO, and Eidos Montreal delivered. Definitely flaws. Some minor ones...although I suppose they mirror the flaws of the original Deus Ex (voice acting, dated graphics/engine, presentation could be better, etc.), so I don't think they should be major issues. I will say that while the graphics seem poor/average from a technical perspective, the art design of the game is excellent. Some parts of the game still look great, due to the art design I think (but then you see weird block characters with bad "hair"). Just can't help imagining how awesome the game could have looked if it was using the same tech from The Witcher 2, Uncharted, etc. It ran really well on my machine though, and I don't recall hearing about too many problems on the console versions, so can't diss their technical team too much (how many games look a little better, but run at 15-20 FPS frequently?). Loading could maybe be better, but I've seen worse. And just to repeat, the movies in the game have horrible quality. Sucks to have the ability to have full-HD 1080p CG/prerendered movies, but see them insanely compressed so they look like crap. Didn't really have any major complaints about the gameplay. The added stealth element was great, and I had a lot of fun with it. Bodes well for Thief 4 I suppose. And so fun to have so many ways to tackle pretty much any situation (sometimes I'd enter one way, then leave another). Feels like I missed some good parts of the game just because I never took those routes. Guess the boss fights could be better, and some might not like the "win" buttons in the fights...but then again, DX1 was like that to some degree, so I didn't mind them for some reason (I was actually disappointed in reading initially that you couldn't "talk" your way out of every fight, which I might have preferred, but still interesting to see you can take "shortcuts"). Also some decent "branching" storylines, although the Witcher 2 kind of blows everything away in that category. "Social battles" were pretty cool and an interesting evolution of that mechanic (not sure if other games have done anything similar?). I'd agree with what seems to be the consensus about what might be the game's biggest flaw, and that is the ending of the game. Suppose it wasn't horrible, but seems like it could have wrapped things up much better. A lot of things didn't seem addressed (or addressed very well). And some things could have been fleshed out a little more. Didn't care for the endings the player could pick (although the "secret" at every ending was nice). The narrative had some potential (it was better than DX1 in some ways IMO, especially handling subjects DX1 didn't really address IIRC), but think it didn't quite meet that potential. Definitely prefer the DX1 storyline (maybe nostalgia/time has aided it, but I did seem to enjoy it better). In their defense, this was a very ambitious story, and one that had to set in motion the events that would lead to DX1. And a lot of the flaws in the storyline are flaws that the majority of game don't have simply because those games don't even attempt a storyline as complex/deep as this (IMO). Games do end up being and/or having content cut, and unfortunately, this might be one of those things that was affected (not sure if it was, but I could see that being the case). I still enjoyed it, but as mentioned earlier, felt it probably could have been better. To sum things up, I'd strongly recommend people check out the game, assuming any of this sounds interesting (Deus Ex, complex storyline, 25+ hr replayable game, not running-and-gunning, multiple ways to accomplish missions, etc.). Eidos Montreal has definitely shot up on my list of developers to look out for (if nothing else, just due to how many jokes they put into the game). Looking forward to see how Thief 4 turns out, as well as possibly any future installments of Deus Ex. Not sure how they'll tackle the IP (maybe they can ignore DX2, like we all do), but I really do love the universe. And with it in good hands, even better. Wouldn't mind more Adam Jensen, although not sure how that could work out. For those of you that finished the game, I'd recommend checking out the intro movie (and maybe even the whole intro sequence) again. At least one of the voices speaking to Bob Page should be very familiar (despite an attempt at voice alteration).
