About two weeks ago I was playing Deus Ex (that one PC game that everybody considers to be the greatest PC game ever) and I was on the fourth mission, specifically where [SPOILERS] you have to get on top of a previous NFS (the terrorist group) warehouse and send a distress signal to other NFS-associated groups [END SPOILERS]. Now, I'm told through magical voice-in-my-head communication that if I can't hack the necessary computers I need to use to finish my objective, there are datacubes (think notepads, only FUTURISTIC) that contain log-ins and passwords to the computers, the datacubes being located somewhere in the basement.
When I first came up to this challenge I already had the ability to hack computers, but since going down to the basement of the warehouse would yield multitools, lock-picks, and skill points I decided to go searching in the basement for the datacubes. As expected, finding the datacubes and getting to them wasn't easy. The basement was filled with deadly lasers, deadly turrets, and toxic gas of the deadly variety. So yeah, it was pretty much a death-trap just to find a couple of log-ins and passwords. I eventually did get past the murderous basement a couple of times and find the necessary information. But whenever I got my primary objective done, I would always be rushed by a couple of enemies and die (I didn't specialize in combat). This lead to lots of frustration with very little process.
I eventually decided to just hack into the computer and finish my objective that way and get on with the game (I wasn't even close to the 1/4th mark). But a little thought crossed my mind when I decided to do this;
"Why don't I try using the log-ins and passwords from the basement on the computers without going to find them first?"
Of course, I really didn't expect this to work since I've tried it in other, more modern games and it didn't work, but I decided to give it a try because I wanted to see how far Ion Storm thought ahead when designing Deus Ex.
Apparently, Ion Storm didn't like to play-test their game.
As a result, I was able to use the log-ins and passwords before I technically found them in-game. Of course, chronologically this would have made no sense and I probably would have collapsed all of time as we know it, but thankfully video games are a lot more forgiving when it comes to dooming the entire universe due to laziness.
...
You know, I like this idea of a pseudo-time-travel mechanic in games. Maybe I'll come back to this topic later in my blogging future.
When I first came up to this challenge I already had the ability to hack computers, but since going down to the basement of the warehouse would yield multitools, lock-picks, and skill points I decided to go searching in the basement for the datacubes. As expected, finding the datacubes and getting to them wasn't easy. The basement was filled with deadly lasers, deadly turrets, and toxic gas of the deadly variety. So yeah, it was pretty much a death-trap just to find a couple of log-ins and passwords. I eventually did get past the murderous basement a couple of times and find the necessary information. But whenever I got my primary objective done, I would always be rushed by a couple of enemies and die (I didn't specialize in combat). This lead to lots of frustration with very little process.
I eventually decided to just hack into the computer and finish my objective that way and get on with the game (I wasn't even close to the 1/4th mark). But a little thought crossed my mind when I decided to do this;
"Why don't I try using the log-ins and passwords from the basement on the computers without going to find them first?"
Of course, I really didn't expect this to work since I've tried it in other, more modern games and it didn't work, but I decided to give it a try because I wanted to see how far Ion Storm thought ahead when designing Deus Ex.
Apparently, Ion Storm didn't like to play-test their game.
As a result, I was able to use the log-ins and passwords before I technically found them in-game. Of course, chronologically this would have made no sense and I probably would have collapsed all of time as we know it, but thankfully video games are a lot more forgiving when it comes to dooming the entire universe due to laziness.
...
You know, I like this idea of a pseudo-time-travel mechanic in games. Maybe I'll come back to this topic later in my blogging future.
