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Comment by Areibman | Hacker News Reader

For fans of the game, Aspyr just announced Deus Ex: Remastered https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1RdKezTYNk

However, fans of the game are calling it "Demastered".

I think people will hate it somewhat because the older style and assets mixed with more modern lighting and textures (moreso, often AI upscaled ones), will look... kinda shiny and overall a bit off, same as happened with the GTA remaster, other launch issues aside.

That said, I am still in the minority that enjoys such attempts, if nothing else, then because at least these modern versions often run a bit better, with proper high resolutions and widescreen support, as well as sometimes receive some quality of life fixes to bring the game up to speed and make it play like something a bit more modern - the jank of early 2000s games is something I don't enjoy.

At the same time, there's no reason why a mod made by passionate members of the community couldn't do more or less the same, except often times a bit better, which is jarring - how some companies seem to do the equivalent of outsourcing it and try to produce something quickly and on a budget.

I think the best attempts at giving us a fresh look at old games that I've seen were the Mafia Definitive Edition https://store.steampowered.com/app/1030840/Mafia_Definitive_... and System Shock https://store.steampowered.com/app/482400/System_Shock/ although those are basically remakes, that just happen to stay true to the original.

The sales numbers show that you're not in minority for enjoying remasters.

There's a very loud cacophony from a minority of fans that get really really angry because someone touched their favorite thing and moved some rivets around. Similar to the effect where people were VERY VERY angry about the changes and omissions LotR movies did to LotR books.

If everyone who liked the original goes out and buys a remaster, then hates it, aren't they still counted as a sale? It's like a movie ticket, you don't know if the movie will be any good when you pay for it. I don't see sales numbers as being linked to quality or enjoyment.

Why would anyone do that? I would assume people can just read a review first before buying. Especially since they already played the original, so it isn’t like they would need to worry about spoiling the story for themselves.

Also, easy Steam refunds if the game was played for under 2 hours is a thing.

Steam offers refunds, but even still, why would someone buy a remaster without looking at any comparisons from the older versus newer versions?

"Moving rivets around" is how I might describe the recent SS2 remaster from nightdive, it was pretty good. This DX remaster is more like "let's have the cheapest contractors we can find run this venerated classic through an AI upscaler and charge 30 bucks for it". Notice the sign on the wall in the unatco break room that says "Stratigies" in the remaster trailer. DX deserves far better than that

On the bright side, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, while largely a different dev team was a fantastic game and scratched the itch for me when it came out. One of the few games in the last 15 years I’ve actually played to completion.

Same, I had zero expectations for HR and was very pleasantly surprised. Realistically it's probably the best follow-up to the OG that we'll ever get

It had some cool mechanics but was pretty meh on the storyline. I didn't really feel a connection to the characters like I felt with the original Deus Ex. Except maybe copter pilot girl

Eh. It didn't really feel like Deus Ex to me, spiritually. I think Prey (2017) hits way closer. I haven't played the System Shocks, so I don't know if they were aiming for that or for Deus Ex. I've heard some people from Looking Glass went to Arkane. It seems like there's only 5-10 people in the world who know how to make immersive sims and keep making action RPGs where you can upgrade your body and have quests with multiple viable approaches.

Prey was excellent. I agree it was more like DX1 than DXHR but the latter is still excellent too.

Human Revolution and Mankind Divided have been fantastic, I agree. Unfortunate we're never getting a third.

Square seemed mad they couldn’t micro transaction it.

It does, but right now there's one trailer out and it's already a cacophony of complaining. You haven't even seen the product.

I think the most apt comment I saw on the announcement was "Looks like they brought it from 2000 all the way to 2003".

And I think that’s enough.

Revision is much better than this and it was made by fans: https://store.steampowered.com/app/397550/Deus_Ex_Revision/

Given this "remaster" by Aspyr, I'm glad Nightdive exists.

Ironically, Revision is massively attacked, derided and review bombed by a subset of DX fans.

See e.g. GoG comments and comments down this thread.

I felt like outside of bug fixes and QoL improvements, Revision's maps and soundtrack were a downgrade compared to the original. I feel quite strongly about this, but I recognize it's also largely up to taste and it's valid to like those changes.

But for me, they made the experience worse and they were enabled by default. As a result, I gave it a thumbs down on Steam and did my best to explain my thoughts in detail. I received a couple dozen negative comments over the years on that review, largely in the vein of how dare I give negative feedback to a labor of love provided for free. That kind of argument did make me feel guilty, like I was being unfair to the developers. I eventually changed it to a positive review, and now I regret doing that. I allowed my genuine opinion to be clouded.

This was an extremely tame internet conflict overall, I'd feel ashamed to frame myself as a victim over so little. What I'm trying to say is that both sides are capable of failing to genuinely engage with the other.

It's definitely true that Revision has been to some degree unfairly attacked. There are purists who do not give it a fair shake and make ludicrously confident statements, peddling opinion as fact. But there's also legitimate reasons to dislike it. Not knowing you, I am not at all accusing you that you'd be lacking nuance on this topic. I'd just like to say as a general statement that discourse ends up healthier when people care about distinguishing between people who disagree with you versus people who disagree with you _and_ that are acting in bad faith.

How does it look worse than Deus Ex: The Recut Remastered, which came out six years ago?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmOCsiZgAbg

Remasters generally are worse than originals. There are rare exceptions, but usually you get either mixed bag, or outright worse experience than original. Ditto for remakes.

yes, looks ugly. Why can't people make games where every surface is flat, my brain loves the unrealistic perfection of it

I'm just pumped its coming to the Switch.

Meh; GMDX it's far better.

Fans of a game always crap on remasters so that means nothing really.

This one is a particular kind of bad.

HN posters usually present wrong statements as facts so yours mean nothing really.

See d2r, oblivion, etc.

As a GMDX user your comment and the Remaster are both irrelevant. The mentioned mod makes the 1st Deus Ex perfect. It enhances places, items, location, graphics... without breaking the original gameplay and mood to please Gen-Zers.

Yeah, d2r and oblivion are both great. Thanks for confirming my point :P

In a similar space, I'm pretty sure the recent remake & remaster of the two System Shock games were really well received, so that's hardly a given.

The System Shock 1 remaster in particular is excellent. It's not just a graphical improvement, they improved the controls and inventory interface and a host of other legacies from from DOS-era gaming that did not age well.

It's well received after launch, yes. There's been plenty of screeching about "not being true to original" and "this looks ugly" and "this looks wrong" on the way there though. Just like for this.

Especially for the first remake.

This is why I say the screeching right now based on a trailer means nothing. "Fans" always get mightily offended if someone touches their childhood favorites.

You don't have to be a fan of the game to see the trailer and think it looks bad. I'm certainly not a Deus Ex fan. I played it just once, years and years ago. Yet when they showed the trailer during State of Play I was shocked at how bad it was. It's clearly just some texture upscaling and an update to the lighting. The original looks ugly and this remaster manages to look uglier.

An example of a remaster done right was Halo 1 (which is actually quite an old remaster at this point). They threw a new graphics engine on top but also remodeled and retextured everything. That's what I expect out of a proper remaster.

While I enjoyed CE:A, it had issues. The big one was the loss of bump-mapped textures making everything look flat. They only show up when you use a flashlight.

I don't care for Deus Ex, but looking at the screenshots I struggle to tell which one is the remaster. It's very clear that they messed up the lighting and the overall mood though. I'd be offended as a fan.

As a fan of C&C, the C&C remake was _awesome_.

D2R was also very good.

Games people love usually have a large portion of spontaneity behind their success. This is hard to faithfully capture even if that's your intention, and remasters are usually done on a tiny budget for profit by people who often aren't even familiar with the OG game, which doesn't really help.

There are exceptions though, and also there are some remasters that are not faithful but are good on their own.

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