Vadim Verenich
08-13-2008, 11:41 AM
If Mr.Valen would not mind, i will re-post my message here, since it would be of general interest:
As a hardcore fan of Deus Ex' profound narrative, i want to share some ideas of developing a bold and rich plot of DX3. Honestly speaking, my dream is making of DX3 story to look like someting similiar to Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum", Pynchon's "Crying of Lot 49" or even to Robbe-Grillet's "Projet pour une révolution à New-York" using technique of so called frame story (as you know is a narrative technique whereby a main story is composed, at least in part, for the purpose of organizing a set of shorter stories, each of which is a story within the story—or for surrounding a single story within a story).Hence,each chapter of plot (or mission, using game design terminology) could cover a specific element of conspiracy or cyberpunk theories, which becomes increasingly difficult over the course of the scenario. Like in Robbe-Grillet's books the first chapters could be written in the present tense (to be a sequel of DX) and from the first person point of view. The last chapters could be then written partially in the third person past and partially in the first person present ( to depict gane protagonist's mediation over DX "prequel"events). This technique could satisfy both parts of DX fan comminuty (some part of this community looks for DX sequel, other -demands a prequel).
In my humble opinion, one of the biggest mistakes in DX:IW is undevelopped story. The main character was very moderate and somehow depersonalized (for sake of gameplay with its declaration of nonlinearity, while Deus Ex has a very strong and geniune protagonist with a good balance of dramatic action and dark humour. It was that type of humour players missed in DX:IW.In DX:IW secondary characters were basicly unchanged (with some excpetions) , while in DX most of secondary and even some tertiary characters underwent significant change. Also the flexibility of Dx plot allowed gamers to speculate over possible events that were coded by game designers to not happen (for instance, what would happen to JC, if he remained with Unatco com and so on). DX:IW with its seemingly more interactive and nonlinear gameplay does not even trigger such thoughts in gamer's mind. I hope that you will find a right balance between plot and gameplay, even if it is a very difficult task to perform.
As a hardcore fan of Deus Ex' profound narrative, i want to share some ideas of developing a bold and rich plot of DX3. Honestly speaking, my dream is making of DX3 story to look like someting similiar to Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum", Pynchon's "Crying of Lot 49" or even to Robbe-Grillet's "Projet pour une révolution à New-York" using technique of so called frame story (as you know is a narrative technique whereby a main story is composed, at least in part, for the purpose of organizing a set of shorter stories, each of which is a story within the story—or for surrounding a single story within a story).Hence,each chapter of plot (or mission, using game design terminology) could cover a specific element of conspiracy or cyberpunk theories, which becomes increasingly difficult over the course of the scenario. Like in Robbe-Grillet's books the first chapters could be written in the present tense (to be a sequel of DX) and from the first person point of view. The last chapters could be then written partially in the third person past and partially in the first person present ( to depict gane protagonist's mediation over DX "prequel"events). This technique could satisfy both parts of DX fan comminuty (some part of this community looks for DX sequel, other -demands a prequel).
In my humble opinion, one of the biggest mistakes in DX:IW is undevelopped story. The main character was very moderate and somehow depersonalized (for sake of gameplay with its declaration of nonlinearity, while Deus Ex has a very strong and geniune protagonist with a good balance of dramatic action and dark humour. It was that type of humour players missed in DX:IW.In DX:IW secondary characters were basicly unchanged (with some excpetions) , while in DX most of secondary and even some tertiary characters underwent significant change. Also the flexibility of Dx plot allowed gamers to speculate over possible events that were coded by game designers to not happen (for instance, what would happen to JC, if he remained with Unatco com and so on). DX:IW with its seemingly more interactive and nonlinear gameplay does not even trigger such thoughts in gamer's mind. I hope that you will find a right balance between plot and gameplay, even if it is a very difficult task to perform.