Deus Ex - Boss Fights

[Danzavare]

Huzzah~! I hope you're back for good, I really do enjoy reading your articles Shamus~!

I have yet to play Deus Ex but I can relate your criticism to other gaming experiences I've had. It always frustrates me when I'm able to ace a section of a game only to completely fail at the end in a non-interactive cutscene. Likewise I really really hate bosses that force you to play a certain way when the rest of the game allows so many legitimate options to get through it. Bosses should be a clear highlight of a game but more often than not they're the worst part of it. (See: Most fighting games)

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Hello....when did you come back?

Welcome back anyway Shamus, I shall read the article forthwith, but was a shock to see you here. We've missed your DRM inspired ranting. You would have loved "From Dust".

On the subject of Boss Fights:

I think it's a throwback from the Arcade Era: With memory low and speech technology just coming in - the only way to provide an easy end of Act Turning Point was with the super-powerful bad guy.

It's a trick they do in the movies as well that can stretch back to the Pulp Era, where you need to show that the brave hero is totally outclassed by the bad guys but survives purely on his wits.

Case in point:

Now Gorn, in Star Trek, aren't anywhere this clumsy or stupid - they couldn't be if they were a star-faring race - but it gives Kirk a Boss Fight. Each of Shamus's points come in here.
Forced Kirk Stupidity (He's a Lizard in the Desert...), Forced Gunplay (Can't charm the pants off this one), Bad Gunplay(REALLY bad), Bad Combat Taunts (Rrrrsssssss!), Bad Storytelling (HUMAN GOOD, GORN BAD!)

BUT...it works because the audience understand this. It plays directly into the black/white world they live in.

Equally:

How about firing at them? Make a much shorter film.

To do this for a Stealth character though? You'd need someone who could out stealth you. So you'd be creating a new Boss character. And remember he needs those taunts to be memorable. Old Scorpion got huge fan recognition just out of "Come Here!".

Actually, I'd be interested to hear your Stealth Boss, Shamus. How WOULD you go about making a Stealth based boss that wasn't just "I can go invisible except when I'm firing"?

 

[Alexnader]

Nice article, welcome back. The point about the crappy taunts is one that I don't think we should have to be making in this world of high end gaming rigs and long cutscenes. It just immediately makes the whole boss fight look a lot more cheap.

 

[veloper]

Outsourcing is no excuse. A bad result is still bad.

 

[WaysideMaze]

Why isn't there a similar asterisk after Batman Arkham Asylum?
Play the same boss fight like SIX times? Pretty much convinced me to lay off Arkham City until it hits bargin bin prices

Batman had it's combat sections, and it's stealth sections. It never pretended that you could play the entire game as stealth and then lock you in a room with Bane.

The complaint with DX is that it the boss fights force you to change your play style (provided you weren't already combat). Batmans repetitive boss fights are a seperate issue.

 

[WaysideMaze]

You really don't need those augs. At no point in the game are you ever forced to get augs unless you REALLY want to restrict yourself somehow.

I disagree. The rediculous boss fights forced me to drop points into combat because my stealth setup was woefully inadequate to deal with them.

Combat was the only way to deal with the bosses. At no other point in the game was this the case, there was always another route, you just had to find it.

I never dropped points into any combat augs until the last boss, and I was playing on the hardest difficulty. With a stealth setup. So it can be done.

Fair enough, you managed it. I struggled.

The complaint still stands. The boss fights force you to take a combat approach. Whether or not you took the combat augs or stuck with just using stealth augs, it doesn't matter. There was no stealth, hacking, or social approach to any boss.

I didn't want to play combat. I wanted to outsmart my enemies, and sneak around them without being seen. Jensen walking into a spotlight, letting enemies get the jump on him, and having to run around a room throwing frags and shooting really wasn't the play style I wanted.

 

[BloodRed Pixel]

good article, though it´s just exclaimes the obvious it nonetheless spot on.

Weclome back!

 

[GrimoireOfAlice]

Hate to plug my own videos but seriously this topic is so overly whined about and so often badly reported.

First boss, Deus Ex Mode, No combat augmentations... Oh no so difficult.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S4wEa5CowE

Second boss, Deus Ex Mode, still no combat augmentations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eAnigO3tUA

By the third boss I had so many praxis spare I couldn't buy anything else without wasting points in stealth mind augments (total waste of points for anyone who has played metal gear or tenchu) or analysis hacking (really eidos, really?)
However here is my third boss run:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjyZiXHFYng

And finally the joke of the end boss, beaten in 3 seconds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR9t2J3NPJ0

I agree these bosses are bad but they aren't bad because they impede a stealth-er or hacker (Of which I was both). The whole concept of a game built on 4 pillar concepts is that you can focus on one of the four pillars and it'll unlock new routes and tactics for you. But at some point you will have to delve into all four pillars. After all pillars support a structure... The boss fights were obviously the unavoidable combat pillar element.

I can demonstrate this by pointing out that you cannot talk your way out of every fight... In fact there are only 8 or 9 vocal exchanges that really change the progress of the game. And yet diplomacy was supposedly one of the 4 pillars. Yet if you spec for the social enhancer you will still have to stealth, fight or hack most of the game.
The same applies to hacking, combat or stealth... At some point you will have to delve into all four aspects of the game. So how is a boss fight such a huge injustice exactly?

That aside... As shown in my vids above the boss fight mechanics were a joke... Seriously Eidos... In future if you can't afford to do it in house, don't bother. You outsourced the boss fights and still didn't give us upper heng, India or Montreal.

 

[WaysideMaze]

The complaint that boss fights aren't avoidable like they were in the original Deus Ex is very valid. However, there's comments on Shamus's blog from people who thought the steahtly approach to the boss fight (the first one, at least) was the easiest, with the lots of explosive barrels in the area making short work of him and the invisibility aug being used to get them without him seeing you.

So from a game mechanic perspective, the fights are diverse, with bosses being more than just beefoed up NPCs that you cover-based-shoot until dead.

For me, it's not so much that they weren't avoidable, just that there was only one route. Invisibility was useless early game, since the 3 second per battery limit and low battery recharge were a joke. Late game with more augments, sure, I used it all the time, but it was of no help in the first boss fight.
I honestly saw no stealth option to any of the boss fights.
The first one, I tried to stealth him but the second I shot he just zoomed right in on me and opened up with that automatic arm cannon. And whenever he couldn't see me he just flung grenades around the room till I died.
The second one did nothing but charge anyway, leaving no stealth option.
The third one, I suppose you could sneak around, but it was easier to just run around the edge in circle popping off shots when he appeared. And yeah there was a hack option for this boss, but he was the only boss where there was a second option.

To me, the bosses were precisely beefed up NPCs. They just felt like a strange design choice that detracted from the rest of the game.

 

[WaysideMaze]

I agree these bosses are bad but they aren't bad because they impede a stealth-er or hacker (Of which I was both).

The problem isn't that they're impossible for a stealth/hack run through. It's that a combat section is forced upon you. There is no stealth/hack option for these scenes, and it just feels out of place.
If I've sneaked through a whole facility full of cameras, armed guards and giant robots, to suddenly be stupid enough to get locked into a room with megaman and his wonderful arm cannon feels stupid. The boss fights should have included more options for completion.

The whole concept of a game built on 4 pillar concepts is that you can focus on one of the four pillars and it'll unlock new routes and tactics for you. But at some point you will have to delve into all four pillars. After all pillars support a structure... The boss fights were obviously the unavoidable combat pillar element.

I can demonstrate this by pointing out that you cannot talk your way out of every fight... In fact there are only 8 or 9 vocal exchanges that really change the progress of the game. And yet diplomacy was supposedly one of the 4 pillars. Yet if you spec for the social enhancer you will still have to stealth, fight or hack most of the game.
The same applies to hacking, combat or stealth... At some point you will have to delve into all four aspects of the game. So how is a boss fight such a huge injustice exactly?

You don't have to delve into all aspects though. If you aren't interested in social, fine, avoid it. You can fuck up every social aspect of the game and still complete it.

Same for stealth, you can run through the game screaming bloody murder and shooting everyone in sight, the game doesn't give a shit. Running around and shooting everything with a pulse is a viable game option.

Hacking? You never had to hack anything above some easy level 1s to actually advance the plot. I never dropped any points into the hacking augs and completed the game fine.

But combat? Combat is completely unavoidable. Solely because of these boss fights. And therein lies the main problem.

The 4 pillars gameplay doesn't (or shouldn't) mean 'All 4 pillars on one run!' but that you can mix and match which you feel like.

That aside... As shown in my vids above the boss fight mechanics were a joke... Seriously Eidos... In future if you can't afford to do it in house, don't bother. You outsourced the boss fights and still didn't give us upper heng, India or Montreal.

Here we agree

 

[Alfador_VII]

I tried and tried to beat the first boss for hours across a couple of days. I've been playing on the PC on normal mode, and well, nothing I try worked.

So I basically stopped the game right there and didn't go back

 

[rapidoud]

Shamus, from the tone of your article, you sound like a noob. I know on twenty sided you've said how you had to adjust your gaming style during your early days, but you make the fights sound as if they're a challenge by whinging about the same thing as everyone else without thinking about it (which you do not usually do, and Ben Croshaw doesn't usually either but his reviews have been pretty crap lately anyway). The boss fights are not hard, I built a 100% non-combat character (or at least, things that wouldn't help me in the fight) and on my 3rd try I beat Barrett, 4th try Fedorava, and Jaron I'm not up to yet.

 

[Caliostro]

Shamus you delightful bastard, you're back! I... I forgive you... Just never leave us again...

 

[Project_Xii]

Daymn, that article comes across with an awful lot of resentful whine. Especially when really, we're not talking about the same experience for EVERY person. Just the unprepared ones.

I personally only had problems with the first boss, and that's cause I was unprepared. I died once, I didn't blame the game. I blamed myself for not thinking ahead. Reloaded, back tracked into a previous room and grabbed a machine gun, and went back. Didn't die again. Bam, easy. After that, I simply remained prepared for anything. It seems obvious that the game would throw curve balls, and I should be ready to adapt to those.

So I maxed out damage resistance early and took a couple of flash/concussion grenades and a machine gun around with me: bosses never posed a problem again. It never hurts to be prepared, and what the hell else is a techno stealth/hacker going to carry around anyway? Mar bars and the two stun weapons don't take up that much space. Sinking all your skills into one kind of tree and expecting to breeze through the game without consequences is just laughable.

Also, I'm not sure if people are aware but there are tricks to killing the bosses pretty easily. Like stun-gunning the chick when she's standing in water, or punching the guy when he's jumping over a wall. For every person who whined about dying cause they charged straight at the boss or cowered to long, there's someone else who thought outside the box and realised how easy they could be, it seems.

 

[Mortuorum]

Great to have you back!

What really irks me is that Adam turns into a moron during the cut scenes leading up to the boss fights (and some non boss-related scenes as well). Trying to remain spoiler-free, there's one point where he just stands there like a slack-jawed idiot letting the target he's been stalking get away! In a game where player choice is king, that kind of railroading stinks of laziness. At least Commander Shepard would have had the "renegade trigger" option to punch them out rather than have to listen to their transparently-obvious weaseling.