So, what did I miss about the following:
Why did Zeke Sanders try to help me then later ambush me in a situation that seemed unrelated?
How useful is the social augment? The only time I failed to talk someone into what I wanted was Sarif when I wanted him to tell me about the backdoor in the security system. Did you have an equally easy time?
Also, what happens if you don’t get your chip replaced at a LIMB clinic?
The social augment is really useful, not only do you get to manipulate people easier (except Malik… don’t use a CASSIE on her), but you get 1k exp for successfully completing a persuasion.
If you don’t get your chip replaced all that changes is:
On the third boss fight Zhao can’t turn off your augments, I knew the chip was schmuck bait, but I thought I had to take it to activate a side quest.
I find the stun gun to be invaluable in boss fights. Stun them the pop a few head shots or lob a grenade then duck behind a wall before they recover. I’m pretty sure they also do actual damage to bosses because I finished off both bosses 1 and 2 with it.
Zeke is Isaiah’s brother so it makes sense that he’d be there, but it did bug me that I didn’t have an option to talk him down.
EMP mines are your friend. Grenades too, especially for the first fight. You don’t need them for the third, though it’s nice. But they utterly wreck Boss #2’s day.
So, the tutorial told me that it’s usually best to avoid confrontation, but if you must takedown somebody…
I don’t know. For this first mission at least I’m finding that like in the original, I’m a happier camper if I can start getting people out of my way. Plus, I enjoy knocking out a whole room one guy at a time. And then I certainly don’t hate having the run of the place while I check to make sure I haven’t missed anything.
I put my first praxis into hacking turrets, even though I could easily get around the one I found, for similar reasons. I like to clear the way. But I do worry about whether I’m going to wish I had advanced my social skills, other hacking skills, or what have you. How soon do these start becoming crucial? Or should I stop worrying about it and build as seems expedient at the time?
Depends on how much exploring you do. As soon as the first mission is over and you are lose in Detroit you can find use for up to lvl 5 hacking, not to mention high jump and heavy lifting. Although I’m fairly sure there are other ways around everything.
Yep, my perspective on stealth is that they can’t spot you if they’re all dead. When you find a silencer, buy it and your “sneak and take them out one by one” tactic will be quite effective.
Hacking is nice, it’s where I put my points early on and it paid off. I would keep some points in reserve to be used when you encounter a problem that requires an augment. At first, you’ll be starved for praxis points but by the end, I didn’t really know what to do with them. I might hold off upgrading to level 4 hacking until you get to China unless you really like sniper rifles.
I’m usually the type who really likes invisibility. Yet I hardly used it in this game. The energy consumption is just too high.
With my Amazon pre-order, I get a free silenced sniper rifle, but since I’m actually playing non-lethal, it’s just taking up room right now. I’ll want to go through again and play in all-headshot mode at some future date.
The only thing that really bugged me in the beginning of the game was finding out after investing Praxis points in increasing my battery capacity, I can still only recharge the first cell. I suppose it makes things more strategic; chugging down a few granola bars in a vent before popping out and giving the ragdoll physics a workout.
Even with the Invisibility Aug fully upgraded and possessing 3 full batteries, relying on it like I did in the first Deus Ex is out of the question. It really serves as more of a bandaid; letting you stealth past areas where cover is minimal in some situations, and helping escape enemies you inadvertently alerted in others. The energy drain really prohibits longer use unless you have serious stocks of cyberboost in your inventory. This does make sense though when you consider that the technology is supposed to be more new at this point in the game’s timeline.
The social aug also opens up options that you wouldn’t have without it. For instance, when you’re posing as a hitman and talking to officer O’Malley, you won’t even get the option of asking for payment up front without the social aug (he fronted me 1k credits, which made taking him down so much sweeter). Similarly, you can’t convince Tindall to give you the security footage without doing him a favor first, unless you have the social aug.
I use invis mostly to get across sparse cover in areas with lots of mooks. I usually don’t have it on for more than a few seconds. Also to run past lasers. Oh, I also used it at the beginning of the first boss fight so I could grab some gas canisters to throw at him without him blowing them up in my hands, heh.
It also seems death gurgles carry pretty far into the room, alerting people way too easily. I chose to stick with nonlethal takedowns for this reason, though it’s pretty satisfying to exterminate those Belltower bastards one by one (or two by two) with lethal takedowns on occasion.
That Reflex Aug is one of my favorites. And I found a particularly fun use for it after a Chinese ‘Lady of the Night’ side-mission where you knock out a scummy pimp and drop him off his roof to make it look like a suicide/accident.
After that, I found myself entranced by the effects gravity has on knocked out Belltower goons. Did you know that they’ll ragdoll around any objects in their path on the way down? A real challenge was dropping them on their still-breathing comrades while they patrolled on the ground. Then I would wait until several clustered around the body so I could use the Icarus Aug. So much fun.
I do feel a bit guilty about drowning those Detroit punks in their electrified sewage though. They may have just been misguided.
The first thing I find to spend money on is the information from Latisha (very sensitive portrayal by the way, Eidos). That comes out to about 7000 buckazoids for the whole round, but some of it I think I would have stumbled on just dicking around. Did anybody find they needed to blow such a big wad on this?
Where is this? I don’t remember any such character. What information did you get?
In this game, you usually have several ways to get the same result. Often the alternatives are bribing/talking/hacking/exploring.
I don’t think I got any information from the Letitia character that I wouldn’t have worked out on my own. $1000 to be told that the guy in the boarded up petrol station is an arms dealer? Not a good investment.
Actually, the economy in the game seemed a bit out of whack… people saying they were going to give you lots of money and you’d get $2000, which isn’t really a great deal when you consider it’d basically buy 1 new weapon and a bit of ammo for it, and not even half a praxis kit.
This does touch on a reason why stealth/persuasion combos are a bit broken:
You get more experience for stealth takedowns. Not bad on its own, considering you’ll on average get more for killing things since you’ll be killing more people than stealth players take down. However…
You’re practically guaranteed Ghost, and Smooth Operator is relatively likely if you’re not too careless with the bodies, these are HUGE experience bonuses. Yes, you can get them with lethal, but it’s much less likely than if you’re specifically focusing on avoiding encounters. The hacking bonuses are also no slouch later in the game.
Persuasion = silver tongue, an absolutely redonculous (1k) exp bonus.
So I’ve been talking about exp, so what? You said money. Well, it’s to point out you ALREADY have an abundance of praxis points. This makes the following worse:
You don’t need to waste too much on ammo. Sure, you may get some stun or tranq gun ammo, but most vendors have about two darts for about 100c a pop, oh lawdy lawd am I overspending! Tranq ammo, while not common, isn’t rare, and it gets almost abundant on later levels, and if you’re really playing stealth you only need it on occasion, especially since melee takedowns are sufficient for most cases.
You don’t need to buy weapons. Seriously, you have two weapons: Stun Gun and Tranquilizer Rifle, you can get one for free on the first mission, and the other shortly after if you poke around the right places. Hell, you probably won’t even really use your stun gun, since any time you can stun gun you can probably do a melee takedown. You may get another weapon for bosses (which stun gun is also rather useful for), but usually whatever you find in levels will get you through just fine (I did the whole thing with a barely modded machine pistol for bosses).
You can bypass bribes with the social augment, if you’re good enough at playing the CASSIE game. This saves many, many cases where you’re wasting 1k+ credits on bribes. I think the only time I bribed someone was to complete a sidequest to leave some chick alone after returning her augment to them, and I already had too much money.
This leaves you buying one thing… praxis points. You already have too many (1-3), making you even more overpowered (not that you’ll find much you want to spend it on, I saved mine for a rainy day and had two left over on the final boss, never feeling I really missed any upgrades that “would have been nice”, and I wasted a few just so I could take the easy way out of a situation instead of the long way). I guess every once in a while I bought some hypostims for bosses, but again, those are only like 100c and there’s usually a limit to buying 2.
I found ammunition to be the major problem early in the game, and the Praxis points I found to be unevenly distributed- at the start, when I could really use them, there didn’t seem to be that many available, and later on in the game (when I’d pretty much gotten everything set up to suit my play style) there seemed to be heaps of them available so I ended up doing things like upgrading the invisibility cloak and getting the alert timer just to find some way to spend them.
It’s worth bearing in mind I’m not playing total stealth, and there weren’t any points in the game where I couldn’t afford to do anything (and I didn’t have to bribe people since I got the social interaction augment early)- but even so, something about the game’s money didn’t seem properly balanced to me.
I didn’t talk to any Letitia in the game. I found out about the arms dealer from a pocket secretary I grabbed during the factory mission.
Early on, I found myself hanging onto just enough money to buy 2 praxis at each of the first 2 Limb clinics and whatever weapon upgrades I could use from the arms dealers. After that, I really had no use for money. I also never had to bribe anyone, as the social aug was the very first one I bought.
I was hurting for Praxis going through the first 2 or 3 sidequests in Detroit, but after the XP from those, I was able to keep 1-2 in reserve to buy whatever aug I felt fit the next conundrum I found myself in. I think I ended up going into the final boss fight with 8 or 9 unspent Praxis and some 60k or so unspent credits.
I’m glad to hear the stealth route pays off. Frankly, it set Deus Ex apart in the first place. I never even tried the first game in straight shooter style, but it seems to me it would have been harder, and frankly there are lots of shooter games I could be playing instead. I remember at the time the term “first person sneaker” was bandied around. I think it’s been a decade since I last heard the term.
Once again, I’m a crusader with compassion and a personal sense of justice that does not prevent me from lifting any cred chips or power bars I see lying around. I try not to bother anybody in the course of my exploits right up to the point where I humanely strangle them into unconsciousness and stuff them in a nearby bathroom where the sight of them won’t disturb their friends’ peace of mind as I rifle through their pockets. My heart, you see, is still human. All too human.
One thing that I found weird is that even if you’ve tried to spare innocents throughout the whole game, at the end, it seems extremely difficult to sneak your way out of
killing masses of cryptozombies in Panchea.
Was anyone better at it than I was?
More generally, your supposedly working for a billionaire CEO who has the money to have your limbs replaced with super-cyber gadgets, but apparently won’t spring for a well stocked ammo locker.
I think its obvious that in the future, they take Chris Rock’s advice regarding the pricing of bullets.