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Author Topic: A Deus Ex style conspiracy mission/campaign  (Read 4202 times)

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Offline Morglor9

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A Deus Ex style conspiracy mission/campaign
« on: 29 Mar 2005, 19:51:49 »
Another idea that i'm gonna throw out.

basically, your a high ranking official in the Nogova army/police force (using Deadmeat's addons). You find out about a terrible conspiracy in the armed forces to overthrough the government. The player must decide whether to go along with it, or fight to stop it. either way contains risks: if you go with it, there is the risk of being exposed as a traitor, and executed. if you fight against it, you're looking at an uphill battle against a seemingly undefeatable enemy. the player must choose allies, and choose them wisely. i'm thinking about the ultimate OFP non-linear storyline.

Is anyone even interested in seeing this campaign happen?
Cymbaline

Offline Morglor9

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Re:A Deus Ex style conspiracy mission/campaign
« Reply #1 on: 29 Mar 2005, 20:59:23 »
So i take it there is absolutely no interest in seeing this happen.
Cymbaline

Offline Planck

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Re:A Deus Ex style conspiracy mission/campaign
« Reply #2 on: 29 Mar 2005, 21:40:44 »
You are of course dreaming if you expect many responses in little more than an hour.


Planck
I know a little about a lot, and a lot about a little.

Offline Morglor9

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Re:A Deus Ex style conspiracy mission/campaign
« Reply #3 on: 29 Mar 2005, 22:07:55 »
just an hour? must have lost track of time. thought it was longer than that. i hate mornings...
Cymbaline

bluehand

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Re:A Deus Ex style conspiracy mission/campaign
« Reply #4 on: 30 Mar 2005, 01:33:28 »
It's an intriguing idea.  I love Deus Ex, and played it right through several times.  But...

DX doesn't really give you a choice of which side to join.  You can choose your equipment, and your route through each mission, but the underlying story is firmly on rails.  And for a good reason.

Imagine, mission 1, you get directed to bust some smugglers, you go to the house, find the incriminating documents implicating the government.  Mission 2 you get sent to a bar where the guerrillas are reputed to hang out.  You use action menus to talk to some folk.  Do you arrest them or ask to join?  Mission 3 - there have to be a couple of these.  Mission 3a - as a member of the resistance, you steal guns from the police station.  OR Mission 3b as a loyal policeman you raid the resistance HQ and arrest / kill as many as possible.  Either way the mission designer has to make 2 missions, but the player only gets to play 1.  The more choices the campaign introduces, the worse it gets.  Eventually the player gets to mission 7 - the final battle, but by now it's mission 7e, and the designer has had to build 19 missions to get you there, followed by at least 4 ending movies (res/police win/lose).

Unless the missions are so good that a player will go straight back to the beginning to try it a different way, most of the designer's work will be wasted.  :'(

Offline Morglor9

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Re:A Deus Ex style conspiracy mission/campaign
« Reply #5 on: 30 Mar 2005, 07:10:15 »
nice to see another DX lover out there. have you tried any of the mods?
Cymbaline

Offline Morglor9

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Re:A Deus Ex style conspiracy mission/campaign
« Reply #6 on: 30 Mar 2005, 09:04:49 »
I think i would make this the same way as DX: one campaign, player goes through all missions. but there will be enough options to make for different play experiences.
Cymbaline

bluehand

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Re:A Deus Ex style conspiracy mission/campaign
« Reply #7 on: 31 Mar 2005, 11:14:13 »
I haven't tried DX mods - but that's drifting off topic ever so slightly.

You could certainly vary the player's approach to a mission: if you take the sniper rifle you can also have 1 airstrike, if you take the HK then 1 section of black ops will follow you, etc...

Might even be possible to build it into the mission, so at the start your CO talks about the mission, gives you action menu choices to decide how you want to do it, you choose and tell him, and that's the way it goes.  That kind of choice might well tempt players to try the mission again on a different approach.

Offline Fragorl

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Re:A Deus Ex style conspiracy mission/campaign
« Reply #8 on: 31 Mar 2005, 13:14:04 »
I feel compelled to post simply because of mention of Deus Ex (1), which is one of THE best games ever (rivals operation flashpoint even ;D). The same sort of feel might be translatable to ofp, simply because, when you think about it, Deus Ex did not offer really divergent plot progressions, but it tricked you into thinking that it did. There were maybe at most 3 places in the entire game where the story took a twist, and even then it didn't change the overall structure of the game. In fact, 1985 shows more of an alternate progression than Deus Ex, and it only had one divergance (after montignac/the other mission). This feature of branching possibilities is such a good one, it's a shame it's not used more. Or maybe it is, and I don't get out enough :P

On the other hand, the reason people don't make this style of mission is because half the missions probably don't end up getting played ::)

Imagine, mission 1, you get directed to bust some smugglers, you go to the house, find the incriminating documents implicating the government.  Mission 2 you get sent to a bar where the guerrillas are reputed to hang out.  You use action menus to talk to some folk.  Do you arrest them or ask to join?  Mission 3 - there have to be a couple of these.  Mission 3a - as a member of the resistance, you steal guns from the police station.  OR Mission 3b as a loyal policeman you raid the resistance HQ and arrest / kill as many as possible.  Either way the mission designer has to make 2 missions, but the player only gets to play 1.  The more choices the campaign introduces, the worse it gets.  Eventually the player gets to mission 7 - the final battle, but by now it's mission 7e, and the designer has had to build 19 missions to get you there, followed by at least 4 ending movies (res/police win/lose).

Unless the missions are so good that a player will go straight back to the beginning to try it a different way, most of the designer's work will be wasted.  :'(
I would really like to see something like this, but it would represent a lot of work.

By the way, IMO Invisible War took Deus Ex's good name and trampled it into the mud. What do you think.

Offline Morglor9

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Re:A Deus Ex style conspiracy mission/campaign
« Reply #9 on: 02 Apr 2005, 08:10:48 »
haven't actually played Invisible war, but i heard it was crap. Apparently warren spector only oversaw the creation, where for DX1 he actually wrote the story. but this is getting off topic a bit.

my problem with using the action menu to tell your CO wat ur gonna do (like in the resistance mission where u steal the tanks) you don't have the ability to change that method on the fly. when i played DX, i would usually sneak in with a scoped stealth pistol, then, as i neared the objective i'd usually turn on ballistic protection and go terminator on the bad guys. (Not that i'd try to script augs into OFP, i'm planning on making the campaign modern). I do like the airstrike idea, although not new to OFP, i think it would have been very handy in DX1, and in an OFP DX style campaign.

i'm thinking the only mission with different "branches" going off of it will be the second last one. that way there will be 2 or 3 end missions, each with a win and lose outro (although they may end up short and leave the player hanging. this is following in the spirit of DX1, as anyone would know if they've completed the game.)
Cymbaline

Offline Fragorl

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Re:A Deus Ex style conspiracy mission/campaign
« Reply #10 on: 02 Apr 2005, 11:31:12 »
Yes. But even so, it all took place on the same map(s), it was just what you decided to do that determined the ending. So maybe that would make the mission-maker's life a bit easier.

Offline Morglor9

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Re:A Deus Ex style conspiracy mission/campaign
« Reply #11 on: 02 Apr 2005, 19:03:52 »
agreed. making many missions when most players would only play one (I saved before the end of DX, so i could see every ending...) which would make it a waste of time and effort on my part.

I'm also thinking of making the campaign so that when you load a mission, all the briefing says is "talk to your CO" or something, then it's updated (as in DX) via real-time briefing.
Cymbaline

Offline Morglor9

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Re:A Deus Ex style conspiracy mission/campaign
« Reply #12 on: 09 Apr 2005, 22:22:26 »
ok, i'm working on the first (training) mission. i feel training is necessary because i plan to incorporate various items that aren't in normal OFP(keypads, hacking computers...)
Cymbaline

Offline Morglor9

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Re:A Deus Ex style conspiracy mission/campaign
« Reply #13 on: 14 Apr 2005, 22:40:36 »
training's taking longer than expected. does anyone know of a good editor extra training complex that i could use?
Cymbaline

Offline Fragorl

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Re:A Deus Ex style conspiracy mission/campaign
« Reply #14 on: 14 Apr 2005, 23:23:23 »
It depends whetether you want to make a deus ex-style mission or whether you want to recreate deus ex itself. The latter will be impossible (ok - never say that - very difficult); ofp has problems with even the simplest of indoor environments - Deus Ex was all but entirely based indoors.

Deus ex was all about cities, government agencies, conspiratories, artificial intelligences and such - and of course it took place all over the world. So it wouldn't make sense to have it on any of the BIS maps; they're all rural with no big urban areas, and there's just no excuse for it. On the other hand, there are some great maps out there with really large cities, decent-sized military bases and all the other facilities that would make this mission work. The only problem is, they've got biiiiiig file sizes, and this would instantly put many people off. But I think the trade off might be worth it, to preserve the feel of the game.

Anyhow, i'm not actually sure that that's even what you were getting at when you said
Quote
does anyone know of a good editor extra training complex that i could use?
but the point is a valid one none the less.