Arkane excels at worldbuilding and design (some of their environments and props are industrial design top-tier), and yet those qualities are increasingly wrapped up in the other gunk Arkane now indulges in.
DH2 and its expansion have their share of problems, but I think they had the right idea of where to take the franchise. Gameplay really opened up a lot with 2 characters to choose from and bringing back Delilah as the main antagonist was a cool idea.
I imagine hardware limitations and stability may have played a role in the nerfing of the gloo cannon. Probably why it also doesn’t stick to glass surfaces. The character designs were a weak point for me, they look like they came from Dishonored (obv same studio), but the exaggerated wrinkles and other grotesque facial features doesn’t jive well with the futuristic aesthetic IMO.
That is the only thing in the entire game that's missing. If it had allowed you to choose a side and maybe even give you multiple spots in the campaign to switch them with different effects, that would just be perfection. Just imagine the game allowed you to join the NSF just so you can later doublecross them and go "lol psyke".
This is definitely a classic. That and Deus Ex are timeless masterpieces.
gonna echo this point. You might not get a lot of the references unless you were there at the time because it's all a gigantic in-joke, but it's arguably the most in-depth mod package for DX1 next to revision and GMDX. Now that it's on Steam as a bundle with Revision, it's also less of a pain to install and set up.
I'm enough of a Jensen fan that I read the prequel novel for HR and MD. Between that and a lot of interesting nuggets hidden in and around Prague pointing to where they might have taken the story. I was fine with a central Prague hub as it felt real and had good attention to detail. I really feel like MD was sold short. HR was amazing. Too bad Jensen wont' find closure but that is better than having it fagged and pozzed out in the current year.
Most people have hit on some of these but yes it is. Especially for:
While I haven't played MD yet one thing I'm aware of is an easter egg where you can find pieces of the Roswell crash, implying the greys are extraterrestrials after all, wonder if that was something they planned on exploring further?
It's actually confirmed in the design documents that they are completely bioengineered.
Nah. It's just media trying to stay away as far as possible from the garbage fire that are contemporary "HURR THE JAB IS LIQUID SATAN JUICE TO TURN YOU INTO A GAY FROG BUY MY WATERFILTERS OR I'LL LITERALLY EAT YOUR ASS DURR" vs. "DURR ANYONE NOT GETTING THE JAB IS LITERALLY COMMITTING ANODA SHOAH!" shitstorms. There's no fun in exploring conspiracy theory when it has become a cultural battleground where the dumbest shitstains the western world has to offer scream at each other.
True and yet also in the design documents (which you inspired me to read), both in the original 1997 one and the revised 1999 one, reference is made to either JC finding a piece of alien tech or the reactor in Area 51 being made from alien tech, so who knows where they were going with that.
I think the Tong and Illuminati endings are somewhat similar. Even if Denton blows up Area 51, Tong's dream of living in villages with no infolinks or comms is an unrealistic scenario. If someone were to completely destroy all the oceanic Internet cables and major data centers powering the cloud infrastructure right now, everyone would still be sitting on enough tech and scientific knowledge to build it all back. Just like how Everett's claims about doing it right this time in his speech to JC is a covered-up half-truth. The real impact of these choices would be a reset of the cycle. No more Universal Constructors or Majestic 12s in the nearest future. I personally prefer Tong's Ted Lite over Everett's Globohomo 2.0 ambitions as well. Plus I don't want my character to become another Lucius DeBeers in 20 years' time.
