[Rodeoclash]

I barely made it past the first 20 minutes before giving up for MD. Somehow the experience was wildly different from the HR despite the mechanics being mostly the same.

One thing I think was a big contributing factor to my enjoyment of the first game was the soundtrack. The first time you enter the Sarif Industries building and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAljZX-9HMI starts playing - chills.

[Melatonic]

I did the same thing - I was very confused at first. Once you orient yourself though in that initial city and get a bit into it then it becomes very very good. I think I may have been playing years after with all the bugs fixed and the DLC's added and whatnot but I thought they killed it with that game. Still hoping we get another!

[henriquecm8]

I also stop at the tutorial on my first try, then later I tried again, and now I like it more than Human Revolution, it's better in all aspects, except maybe the story for ending abruptly.

[ethbr0]

I see you Sarif Industries theme and raise you the UNATCO theme. ;)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JhjkBE3d3Uw&t=17m35s

From memory, that was also the first mirror in the game, and so the first time you saw... yourself (JC).

[smcl]

Isn't there a character creator that lets you choose your skin (and therefore see your "JC Denton") even before the game starts?

[aasasd]

> "JC Denton" is said to be a codename, and the player can create JC's true name and pick from a variety of preset appearances.

Hmmm, I don't remember that either—and JC is also sort of a meme with his default appearance (presumably), used as userpics on Youtube and elsewhere. So I guess many just picked the first look offered. Seeing as JC is considered very much a ‘blank character’, there probably wasn't much of a meaningful difference in the choice.

[smcl]

It's easy to miss that you can change the appearance (it's just a couple of little buttons) but you do see his head and shoulders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX_YSpI5a9s

[ethbr0]

I don't remember one, but it's been a few decades.

[Agentlien]

I don't know which game did it first, but I the first mirror I came across was in Duke Nukem 3D, 4 years before Deus Ex.

[aasasd]

The parent commenter means to say that for most of the game in Deus Ex, the player doesn't see the protagonist. (Can't remember if the cutscenes shown him from a third-person view.)

[ethbr0]

Point! YT confirms there were cutscenes on Liberty Island before.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jnbCwPwJNFY&t=3m30s

So maybe it was the first player-controlled viewing of yourself.

[aasasd]

The cutscene experience was funny if one happened to have both legs shot—so JC crawls around for hours, then stands up during a cutscene, and afterwards plops down again and proceeds to crawl to completion of the level.

[ethbr0]

I believe there may have been an unfortunate GEP gun incident where I found that out.

I kinda miss stuff like that.

Sadly, when things break like that now (looking at you, Bethesda) it usually leaves the game in an unplayable state, versus reverting to a known-good state.

[Agentlien]

Wow, I completely misread that comment.

[aasasd]

Fun fact: afaik many games, starting with Duke Nukem 3D, implement mirrors by just having the entire room built out behind the glass, with duplicates of the objects moving on that side. In DN, with some noclip trickery or something, one can move into the ‘mirror room’, or observe the whole level with the double rooms.

[Agentlien]

Yes, that's why you need to make such a room when making a map with a mirror in Duke Nukem 3D.

Modern games also do a lot of tricks when it comes to mirrors. Real reflections are expensive. Though they're becoming increasingly common thanks to the ray tracing hardware on recent graphics cards.

As a player I recently noticed that in The Last of Us Part 2, when you're in front of a mirror the windows give off an unnaturally bright light to hide that the outdoors area wasn't reflected.

[ak217]

Michael McCann is a genius and deserves way more credit for Deus Ex than he is given, but he was responsible for at least half of the Mankind Divided soundtrack too.

[omnibrain]

For years I used a playlist of the soundtracks of Deus Ex: HR and the movie Transcendence on shuffle for working on the PC.