Fixies & Ferraris

Back to Basics:Deus Ex

The following post I wrote back during the summer and never decided to publish it, decide to come back kinda clean it up(still has a bunch of mistakes but I am lazy).

This weekend I have finally beat Deus Ex probably for the 6th’s time. Even thought Deus Ex is a game from 2001 it still does things that no game has been able to do ever since. This is also for the preparation for the upcoming game sequel.

Moral Choices:
Games nowadays say they have moral choices sure that’s true but they are not natural choices. Great example of this is Bioshock. Bioshock is one of my favorite games I have ever played, so much that I am defiantly getting a tattoo later in my life that is based on the game, however the moral choice of either to kill a little girl or not is such a black and white moral choice that it is just not natural. Deus Ex approaches this from a whole different perspective there is an illusion like you are just playing a game, there is no menu with choices, no one tells you what to do. You just do like in real life, you as a person know where you stand on certain choices and go ahead and move upon this. Same as Deus Ex every time you play, you as a player plays how you want and next thing you know the story unfolds differently than the time before.

A perfect example is during dialogue sequences, there is no blatant thing that says Paragon or Renegade, you just choose. During one of the early missions you find out your brother is betraying the agency you and him work for in order to work for the”terrorist” he asks you to hear out the terrorist leader before you are suppose to take him to custody. After you talk to the leader for the first time another agent comes in and says she was order to kill the leader, even though you know the policy is to take him into custody and not kill him, if you listen to her the leader dies, if you keep talking to the leader you learn more about your past and the cause and slowly you start to see why your agency wants to cover it up, after each time you talk the agent who was assigned to kill the leader threatens you and after around the 4th time she kills the leader. Or you can decide to believe in his cause and your brothers cause and kill her.

Any decesion you make the game rolls with it,and if you dont kill her now there will be other opportuniesi to do so if your opinion changes of the situation.

To the right is a picutre of Navarra talking to you when she first comes in and sees you with the leader of the terrorists.

RPG:

Of course this is an RPG because of the moral choices but there is also good ol experience points. The gameplay RPG elements are dived into two parts: skills and augmentations. First the skills, you earn skill points by exploring new places, completing quests and actions, hacking and couple more ways probably but I am just forgetting. These are spent on things like pistols, heavy weapons, melee/first , hacking, swimming, environmental and many more. Using your skills to buy the new level for pistols will grant you greater accuracy, becoming “master” at swimming will let you be underwater for almost 4 times longer then normal this lets you do things like hide from enemies in water or find a different route to get into a guarded complex that without being able to hold your breath that long you would just die. Hacking is probably the most useful skill since even if you just have it upgraded once, you can hack anything, however improving you skill will let you hack faster which comes in handy when guards are patrolling some terminals. Hacking will let you get into emails which improve the consiparcy story that is in Deus Ex, or it will let you find secret passcodes that will let you get into a door with ammo/guns or an alternative route.

The augmentations are the meat of the RPG element. Since you are JC Denton are an augmented human, more so you are the future of human beings since you have the “bleeding edge” technology and are augmented via nano-machines and not the “old” ways of actual metal. So on the outside to any human being you look normal but really you can do things like jump 30 feet in the year, run fast, become invisible, lift objects such as vending machines. However, you cannot just get all augmentations and most augmentations are not just given to you but have to be earned.

This picture of the augmentation menu gives us a taste of the choices. Each body part can have certain amoutn of augments, and usualy each augmentaiton canister you get gives you a choice between two to places into the slot. For example do you want your eye to be able to see through walls or guide a spy drone that can send of EMP eventually. Do you want to run fast/jump high or do you want to be able to sprint in complete silence. These kind of choices open up the game for the player and create a true role playing experiance. I chose to be stealth so I chose to be able to not be heard while spriting, being able to cloack, send a spy drone, and self heal. With this combo of augments a tasering machine of the future able to run up to guys without them hearing and able to knock 5 people down in seconds and if someone did spot me I was able to just dissapear by using my cloack augment, finally if sentry robots were a problem I found a step to hide in order to send my spy drone and drop an EMP onto the bot. My JC Denton was an agent that tried to deal with the situation in a non lethal path, and he was a ghost.

In the end its nice to play a game that does not baby you, that deals with adult themes, and is not just a no brain shoot em up. Deus Ex presents what many people never thought video games could do, entertain and also educate. The game treats you as an adult and thus it makes it seem like I am watching a film Francis Coppola film rather than a Michael Bay flik.

Back in it

So, this last weekend has been pretty nuts. I have felt like I am in high school again. out of my last four days, I have basically spent 2 days just playing games and watching TV. I have finished LA Noire on Friday night which was excellent, then I watched a movie almost right afterwards. Saturday morning I basically did not move and watched Doctor Who, got to Season 5, then watched Fargo, a Korean movie, Romeo + Juliet, then something else, and then I started to play Witcher 2. I got to say my brain even hurts now from watching so much. I have probably watched more TV shows and movies in last 2 days then I did my winter quarter in total. Now I am strapping in for the finish. I have 2 essays for finals and then my Modern Physics which is my main focus.

This Wednesday I have interview with TiVo , super excited for it hopefully I will get it so then I will have a job for the summer that would basically complete my summer, if I don’t get this job I will continue to worry about the summer. Applied to eBay and another engineering hiring firm. Hopefully everything will work out.

My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.— Mark Twain

Phi Alpha Born, Phi Alpha Bred, When I die…

So last couple of weekends I have gone back to Merced and how freaking great has it been. When I first went, around 3 weeks back, I went for the first retreat for the new epsilon pledge class. I was very excited to see the new pledges, but more stoked to see all the friends that I missed so much. I went straight to school to find Ivan, it was awesome seeing him being a “shotcaller” and using the “internet”, then I saw 16, my boy. Just awesome. We went to eat at a Mexican place with the Knight House it was okay. When things really started to kick it up into a Merced notch was the night. During the night we drank, listened to music, caught up with homies and I guess 16 and I even danced to King of Leons song, don’t really remember that. The next morning was the actual retreat and so in the early morning we set off into a retreat mode.

As always with the great Merced house that I used to live in, we woke up early at 8 o’clock Ivan and I chatted, cleaned, listened to some good ole 90s music, while Steve and Matt left for the retreat. Ivan, Julie, Kim, Reggie and I decided to go to our favorite Tonys to catch some breakfast, which was phenomenal as always. Then Ivan and I had to do straight boss things at the allumni meeting. The meeting went well, kinda, it was crazy chatting on a speaker system, but it was in same time really cool chatting to people that are all across the nation.

After the meeting I headed off to the retreat where, we shot guns, drank some beers, drove some crazy cars, and traded war stories. Overall, what I needed, I had been missing everyone for a while and so the weekend was great, came back home on Sunday ready to start the next week of finishing up a project. Next time….EDF.

The Breakpoint

Part 1:

I have spent around the last two weeks playing Dead Space 1 and Dead Space 2 , and man after playing I got to say sure they are scary and yea they are both most excellent games, yet especially after second one I realized some thing about the main character, Issac Clarke. Issac is a silent protagonist in the first game yet, you still get his emotion he is just trying to save his love. Issac fights monsters and sees things that no human should be able to handle, yet he continues and goes on till the very end. In the second game Issac starts off with showing signs of dementia, where he sees his love talking to him as if she was still alive. Throughout the game, again Issac does things, and sees things that are just horrid. In the very end, Issac just sits down as if he was tired and done to give up, like its over. He went through all of hell came back and in the end once its over it just seems like he is done. This made me think do we really have a break point?

Sure, with physical violence we can be broken. Yet, when trying to achieve a goal, and when you’re mind is set, I feel like you can just push forward and conquer all. Playing these games just made me think that, yea you want to give up at points but if it’s truly worth it for you to succeed and you truly want to, there is no way for you to fail nothing can get in your way.

Part 2:

On a bright full note, the break point, ITS A 3 DAY BREAK! I am going home to see my parents for the first time in like 2 months. I am so excited to see them, it should be awesome. Also, I have some friends from home coming back also, and I am pretty excited to hang out with them.