Deus Ex
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| Deus Ex {{#if:{{{image|}}}|<tr><td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;">{{{image|}}} | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Ion Storm Inc. {{#if:{{{publisher|}}}|<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Publisher(s)<td>{{{publisher|}}} |
| Release date(s) | United States |
| Genre(s) | First-person shooter Computer role-playing game |
| Mode(s) | Single player, multiplayer {{#if:{{{ratings|}}}|<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Rating(s)<td>{{{ratings|}}} |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows Mac OS PlayStation 2 {{#if:{{{media|}}}|<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Media<td>{{{media|}}} |
Deus Ex (commonly abbreviated DX) is a first-person shooter/role-playing computer game developed by Ion Storm Inc. and published by Eidos Interactive in 2000. Set in a dystopian world during the 2050s, 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.
The game sold quite well during its initial run and remains among the top selling RPG's. As of April 4, 2006, it is #68 in Amazon.com's top selling PC RPGs [1], #21 in top selling Mac RPGs [2] , and also appears in CNET's list of most popular PC role playing games [3].
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Etymology
The game's name is derived from the Latin expression deus ex machina (pronounced DAY-us EKS MAH-ki-nah), literally meaning "god from the machine", i.e. "a person or event that provides a sudden, unexpected solution to a story" (referencing the practice in Greek drama of using a machine rig to lower an actor playing a deity down to a stage, quickly resolving a drama). 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. Image:Deus-Ex-logo.png Some fans have speculated that the protagonist's name, JC Denton, is derived from the initials of Jesus Christ the savior sent 'from God' in Christian religions, leading some to believe that instead of referring to deus ex machina the title is actually meant to be translated literally as 'from God.' The names of several main characters reinforce this interpretation. Paul Denton, for example, uses the name of Paul of Tarsus, an early church leader during the formative years of the Christian church. However, according to Sheldon Pacotti, lead writer on the game, the name "JC" was merely chosen for its unisex qualities when the developers were still planning to let the player choose the gender of the main character. It should also be noted against the interpretation of Deus Ex as being translated 'from God' that if this were the intended meaning then the Latin word 'deus' is declined incorrectly and is in a word order very unusual for Latin prepositional phrases.
Overview
Image:Deus ex - in game screenshot.jpg
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 emergent gameplay has 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.Template:Fact 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 (Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age and Snow Crash, G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men, and the fictional book titled Jacob's Shadow). 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. In fact, only one character must be killed in order to progress the game, and it is possible to accomplish that without using any offensive weapons.
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 page from a fictional newspaper entitled The Midnight Sun recounting 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, Hotel Carone, Burden of 80 Proof, and Shifter, 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. The Mac community has been very vocal to Aspyr (the ones who ported it to Mac) and have very strong desires for a Mac OS X patch of the game, as it only works on Mac OS 9 or "Classic" environment currently. Newer Intel Macs are completely unable to run the game due to the phasing out of Classic OS support.
The music for Deus Ex was composed by Alexander Brandon, Dan Gardopee, Michiel van den Bos and Reeves Gabrels.
Critical acclaim
The game received numerous positive reviews. It won a number of awards and received many nominations, including British Academy of Film and Television Arts Game of the year [4], IGN Game of the year, and many Best Story awards.
The game has appeared in a number of Greatest games of all times lists and hall of fame features. It maintains a hold in newly created greatest games lists.
Awards
- GameSpy - Game of the year 2000
- IGN
- Best story (Both editors' choice and readers' choice)
- Game of the year (Both editors' choice and readers' choice)
- British Academy of Film and Television Arts - Game of the year
- Game Developers Choice Awards 2000
- Excellence in Game Design
- Game Innovation Spotlight
- Interactive Achievement Awards 2000
- Computer Innovation
- Computer Action / Adventure
- FiringSquad - Best Games of 2000 List
- The Adrenaline Vault - Featured Games for 2000
- Gaming Age - Best FPS of the year
- PC Gamer - Game of the Year
- Other awards, including numerous editors choice awards
Greatest games of all time lists
- #21 in IGN's 2005 List of 100 Greatest games of all time [5].
- #40 in IGN's 2003 List of 100 Greatest games of all time [6]
- #18 in GameSpy's Top 50 Games of All Time [7]
- #67 in GameFAQ's Top 100 Games of All Time [8]
- The GameSpy Hall of Fame [9]
Dating
The game is unclear as to what year exactly Deus Ex takes place in. A public terminal news bulletin points towards 2052, but in Area 51 nearing the end of the game, a datacube reveals JC's inception date to be in 2054, with another clone being created in 2055. The most commonly accepted date, however, is still 2052.
The question of Deus Ex's timeframe was cleared up by Deus Ex: Invisible War, in which a character refers to an event from the previous game as having happened in 2052.
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." [10]
In the game, it is mentioned that FEMA has assumed counter-terrorism responsibilities. Shortly after September 11th, it was announced that FEMA would be assuming counter-terrorism responsibilities, as part of the Department of Homeland Security.
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.
Other examples include rioting in Paris and the similarity of the Gray Death epidemic to the possible bird flu pandemic. Strangely also, there is a mention of 'Century Flu' within various newspapers in the game.
Several plot elements involve real-world conspiracy theories about ECHELON, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the alleged Majestic-12 and Roswell UFO incident.
In-Game Fiction
Deus Ex features a text-reading system where the Protagonist may read terminals, newspapers, books and notes found in various locations around the levels. These include two books, Jacob's Shadow (continued in Jacob's War in the game's sequel Invisible War) and The Man who was Thursday, with excerpts usually relevant to the players situation.
Jacob's Shadow
Jacob's Shadow is a work of fiction created by the writers of the game, but attributed to the fictitious Andrew Hammond. The first chapter displayed is Chapter Twelve with a subsequent six other chapters, fifteen, twenty, twenty-three, twenty-seven, thirty-two and thirty-four, which portray the cyberpunk themes of the game in the style of William Gibson. The book appears to be a violent, spiritual journey of a man named Jacob as he journeys worldwide (we can assume) to find a woman, whose name we never learn, through a city described as 'Hell'.
The Man who was Thursday
At various points in the game, the player can find excerpts of the real book The Man Who Was Thursday, by G. K. Chesterton, which was published in 1908. The Man who was Thursday is a detective story set in the time it was written, about a detective named Gabriel Syme trying to stop a council of anarchists.
Trivia
- Because the game has such gameplay freedom it is possible to finish the game without killing anyone, though in one case, the method required to do this may be considered exploitation of a glitch.
- Some of the robots in the game were inspired by the ED-209 robot from the movie RoboCop.
- The Plasma Rifle is a copy of the rifle used in the movie Darkman.
- Game designer Warren Spector didn't like the opening music. He was planning to tell the composer to compose something else. But after he couldn't get the tune out of his head, he was convinced to leave it as it was.
- The entire game takes place during night time over about five days.
- It is difficult to pinpoint the exact number of days portrayed in the game due to the games nonlinear nature, also as "Hacked" news terminals have recent news replaced with plot-related vandalism.
- The protagonist wears sunglasses for the entire game.
- The face of the character Ford Schick is based on that of Warren Spector. Several games that Spector has worked on in the past have featured cameo characters based on or named after Spector.
External links
Official Pages
Fan Sites
- Planet Deus Ex - Fan Community Website
- Deus Ex Gaming
- Deus Ex Online
- Deus Ex Machina
- alpha forum - One of the biggest forums of the game's multiplayer community
Modding sites
- Chronos - A single player modification utilizing bullet time.
- DXEditing - Fan Modification News Portal
- Deus Ex: 2027 - A single player modification
- Project HDTP - High Definition Texture Project
- Deus Ex: Reborn - Deus Ex conversion to UT2004
- 2020 (REDSUN 2020) - A Deus Ex Mod
- The Nameless Mod - A Deus Ex Mod
- UNATCO Born - A Deus Ex Mod
- Deus Ex: Zodiac - A Deus Ex Mod
Story Related
- The Deus Ex "Continuity Bible" from gamespy.com
- nuwen.net - Deus Ex - Includes in-game text (such as e-mails, books, and data cubes)
- Timeline of events in the game
Other resources
- Template:Moby game
- {{{2|{{{title|Deus Ex}}}}}} at The Internet Movie Database
- Template:Musicbrainz album
- Deus Ex Information Page
- Behind the Scenes Look in the Making of Deus Ex
- Game FAQ guides
- Deus Ex on Fileplanet - Deus Ex related files (patches, mods, etc.)
- List of links related to Deus Ex
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