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Deus Ex (video game)

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Deus Ex
Box shot of the PC version
Developer(s)Ion Storm Inc.
Publisher(s)Eidos Interactive
Composer(s)
EngineUnreal engine
Platform(s)Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, PlayStation 2
ReleaseJune 22, 2000 (original)
May 9, 2001 (Game Of The Year edition)
Genre(s)First-person shooter, Computer role-playing game
Mode(s)Single player, multiplayer

Deus Ex is a computer game developed by Ion Storm Inc. and published by Eidos Interactive in 2000. Set in a dystopian world during the year 2052, with a cyberpunk story and setting elements, the game combines the action elements of a first-person shooter with the character development and interaction of a role playing game.

Etymology

The game's name is derived from the Latin expression deus ex machina, literally meaning "god from the machine", i.e. "a person or event that provides a sudden, unexpected solution to a story". These most obviously refer to the game's protagonist JC Denton and the cybernetic themes of the game. Also, Warren Spector (producer of System Shock), one of the game's designers, has stated the name was a dig at the typical video game plot, which tends to be laden with "deus ex machina" artifices and other poor script writing techniques.

Overview

The game is built based on a modified Unreal engine and Deus Ex is seen as combining a variety of gaming genres. The game featured environments often drawn from real locations, including a severely damaged Statue of Liberty, Hell's Kitchen in New York City, and the Wan Chai District in Hong Kong, among others. It was also notable for the complex tactical possibilities, where players could choose many different ways of achieving evolving goals, including stealth (akin to Thief), long-range sniping, all-out combat with various heavy weapons, character interaction, bypassing devices, computer hacking and use of objects in the environment.

This level of freedom required levels, characters and puzzles to be designed with an enormous level of redundancy - a single play-through of the game will miss hundreds of lines of dialogue, alternate routes and large sections of the environment. For this reason few games have managed - or even tried - to create a similar experience. Its uniquely liberal nature and emergent gameplay have earned it a large cult following who see it as a first step into a new level of interactive experience.

Deus Ex's plot drew together several current conspiracy theories into a narrative with characters having a deeper development than those of most FPS games. It also presented a philosophical dilemma in its conclusion where the player is given a world-altering choice, of which none of the options are broadcast in-game as the "right" choice.

The game's level of detail astounded the gaming world. As an example, one of Deus Ex's central topics is nanotechnology, the main character JC Denton is augmented by symbiotic microscopic machines called nanites and the game contains an impressive amount of literature on nanotechnology and defines its science quite accurately. The game contains many allusions to literature, both classical (e.g., story of Daedalus/Icarus) and modern (predominantly Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age and Snow Crash, as well as G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday). These details encourage the player to replay the game to discover and learn more about the world of Deus Ex.

The game was hailed by many critics and users as a significant step towards a "reality simulation", as one of the first games to truly pioneer the effect of moral choices, and one of the only games in existence based on violence to offer a non-violent alternative; killing is not a necessary part of Deus Ex.

The game did not originally ship with multiplayer support. Later versions provided multiplayer, as well as various game fixes. Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition, as well as containing all current game updates and a Software development kit, included a separate soundtrack CD and a mock-up newspaper page on recent events in the game's world. However, some distributions of the GOTY version do not include the soundtrack CD, and only have a PDF version of the newspaper page.

A version was also released for the PlayStation 2, named Deus Ex: The Conspiracy, was released on March 25, 2002, featuring improved character graphics and motion captured models. Some levels were changed and chopped down into smaller hubs due to the PS2's memory limitations.

A sequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War, was released in the United States on December 3, 2003, and then in Europe in early 2004 for both the PC and the Xbox. Plans for a Deus Ex movie were in the works, however the film is now listed on IMDb as "cancelled".

Despite its age and the release of Deus Ex: Invisible War the Deus Ex community is still very active. There are a significant number of websites which offer news, information, and resources to Deus Ex players old and new alike. Several groups of fans have also created and released modifications for Deus Ex, including The Cassandra Project, Zodiac, RedSun 2020, and Hotel Carone, which offer new plots, characters, weapons and more. Other modifications are still in development, such as The Nameless Mod, Deus Ex 2027, UNATCO Born, Chronos and The Novosibirsk Conspiracy, and are expected to release sometime in the near future. There are also various attempts by fans of the game to update the graphics using new higher resolution textures and models. The two most influential projects are called Project HDTP and DeusEx:Reborn.

Real world parallels

Although the story of Deus Ex is based on real world themes and events, a few fictional elements of the game world have seemingly spilled over into reality since the game's release in 2000.

During sections of the game where the New York skyline is visible in the background, the two towers of the World Trade Center are noticeably missing. Harvey Smith, one of the game's designers, explains that due to texture memory limitations, the portion of the skyline with the twin towers had to be left out, and the other half mirrored in place of it. According to Smith, during the game's development, the developers justified the lack of the towers by stating that terrorists had destroyed the World Trade Center earlier in the game's storyline: "We just said that the towers had been destroyed too. And this was way before 9-11. Years. That's kind of freaky." [1]

Some fans have also noted similarities between the anti-terrorist movement in the game, spurred by the Statue of Liberty bombing, and the post-9/11 "war on terror" in the real world. The sequel actually shipped with the tagline "The future war on terror" on the box art front.

Characters

Main article: Deus Ex characters.

References

  1. ^ Butts, Stephen. "DX: Visible Interview" (page 3), IGN, February 18, 2003.


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