yes.
I did not play the latest version...
That's a lot of confidence considering you haven't played it at all. I guess I should feel flattered that you think so highly of my work despite not having really experienced much of it.
I do believe it will be a good first experience for people, yes.
The general advice (for games in general, not just Deus Ex) is usually "play vanilla first to see how the game actually is, then mod it". I can see why people say this, especially because a lot of mods tend to change games in very significant ways. However, I fundamentally believe that your first experience of a videogame is also a very personal and deep experience, and you will never get more joy out of a game than from your first exploration of it.
Given that, you want your first experience to be as pleasant, well-rounded, and generally as memorable as possible. Given how janky Deus Ex is (even with a lot of Vanilla friendly patch mods, like Transcended), I absolutely would recommend playing this version of GMDX for your first experience, as long as you go into it with some caveats and understandings.
Here's something to consider before playing:
This mod is NOT a completely 100% vanilla faithful experience. There are new mechanics, alterations to the maps, the addition of perks, and meaningful choices and consequences added to a lot of areas in Deus Ex. However, at the same time a lot of care has been taken to ensure it fits with the lore, direction, and style of the game, both in terms of gameplay mechanics, level design, and immersion features.This means, for example:
- You will see new content, but it will fit in alongside the old content seamlessly.
- Many of the mechanics will also feel ingrained into the game, as if they have been there from the start.
- While there are some significant changes (perks, hacking overhaul, new toggle augmentations and energy management, etc etc), there's no changes to the plot, no major map overhauls, no new weapons, and nothing specifically that will make you feel like you're playing a modded version of the game.
This does mean that you won't be getting an authentic experience, but you will be getting a good one.
Keep in mind that the original Deus Ex (and by extension all mods that attempt to retain the vanilla gameplay while fixing bugs or adding qol features) have the following major issues:
- Extremely poor sound design. Weapons use very repetitive, badly mixed and often overlapping sounds.
- Very clunky gameplay from a User Experience perspective, including active augmentations that should be passive (having to manually turn on an augmentation that makes your other augmentations more efficient every time you use them, what the hell!)
- Very unbalanced gameplay, including some extremely busted overpowered skills (Hacking) and some nearly useless ones (Swimming).
- A lackluster difficulty curve that tapers off towards the middle and eventually becomes a complete cakewalk. The final base is supposed to be a stronghold and it's pathetic.
- Horrendous graphics, which mostly come through in the maps. Very big open, empty, bland empty rooms a lot of the time, and awful 16-bit baked lighting that hasn't been updated in 25 years. The actual models and textures are okay which is why I recommend using the original graphics instead of HDTP and New Vision, but both will work alongside this mod just fine and are officially supported
GMDX fixes every single one of these issues and a whole bunch more, and it does it seamlessly and in a way that feels like it's always been that way.
Meanwhile, Deus Ex has a lot of strengths that are left intact in GMDX:
- Excellent atmosphere. While the maps can be quite bland at times, the music is on point, and the design of the areas is also good overall. GMDX enhances the maps in subtle and believable ways that feel like most veterans remember them. Other mods like Revision go completely overboard and you end up with maps that have lots of dead ends and extraneous details. GMDX eschews all that for a clean aesthetic that fits the original vision while polishing up most of the big boxy bland rooms.
- Good story. There's a small amount of cut content added, to taste, all of it based on real content by the developers rather than interpretations or "cool additions that would be nice".
- Good Music. The music is mostly unchanged, except for the addition of 1 track which is a remix of an existing track, and a few minor changes to where songs are placed, all done with the intention of allowing the original music to work at it's best, rather than replacing it or overshadowing it with "cool" music.
And then, to top it off, a bunch of QoL stuff has been added (specifically in this version that isn't in v9 or vRSD), including
- Belt Memory. You know how in modern games when you use the last item of a stack on your hotbar, it keeps the item in the slot, so that when you pick it up again it goes back to where it was? Deus Ex was released long before that was a thing. But now it has it.
- Autofilling. The original Deus Ex would automatically add items to the hotbar at the bottom of the screen whenever there was a free spot. While this was standard for the time, it's very annoying now. Anyway, it doesn't do that anymore
- Remembered Laser Sights. Deus Ex offers togglable laser sights on many weapons. However, you have to remember to re-enable them every single time you put the weapon away (which happens a LOT). This is made even worse in GMDX because of the addition of mantling which temporarily puts your weapon away while you climb. Now the laser state is remembered, and it will toggle itself back on when necessary. Which, honestly, is the bare minimum you should expect. Either way, it's here now.
- Proper dynamic music. Originally the game would continually restart the same track every time you entered a new area, so you'd be hearing the same 30 seconds of music sometimes repeatedly. If you died and reloaded the music would start again. On GMDX Hardcore mode (which is very very hard), I die a lot, and I got so sick of the music looping that I decided to fix it. Now, your position in the track is remembered through map transitions and through dying and reloading.
- Data Cubes show Images. Deus Ex contains a lot of written text, and sometimes images too. Whenever you find an image inside a datacube, you get a little screen that tells you "[Image: Walton Simons]" or whatever. To actually view the image, you have to go to the Images screen in the UI. Which makes for a horrible experience. Now, you can just view the images right when you read them.
- Enhanced Corpse Interactions. In the original game, right-clicking on a corpse will grab everything in their inventory. But, if they were carrying nothing, you will pick up the corpse instead. This is problematic because many of the corpses in the game contain nothing, so you're frequently picking up corpses by accident when searching them. In GMDX, the first time you interact with a corpse will always search it, even if it contains nothing, with a second click picking it up.
- Many other modernisation features including a stance display in the HUD, a fully dynamic crosshair, alternate weapon offsets and cutscene FOV adjustments to make the game look much nicer in widescreen or with a higher fov, the ability to use the number keys to select dialog topics, "Searched" labels on corpses you've interacted with, datacubes turning off their screens when you've interacted with them, inventory icons for modified weapons, and much much much more.
I would highly recommend giving this a go when it comes out (very soon, I promise!), even as your first Deus Ex experience. It will be a much better experience compared to the busted, dated but also excellent and timeless original version.[/list]
Here's something that didn't make it into the mod and probably never will, but was a fun little experiment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZsQOsL7EmE
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