— Malkavian Mod
Reference: Deus Ex [Windows video game]. (2000). Austin, Texas: Ion Storm.
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"As long as technology has a global reach, someone will have the world in the palm of his hand. If not Bob Page, then Everett, Dowd..." - Tracer Tong (Ion Storm, 2000)
Reference: Deus Ex [Windows video game]. (2000). Austin, Texas: Ion Storm.
I had no idea what I was in for, and as a 15 year old, I felt twists and surprises, and organic game reactions to things I did that blow my mind even today, and imo still haven't been matched. And leveling and skills truly mattered and were tied into the game. Inventory management and ammo was interesting, the interface was perfect. It also had a kind of intellectual curiosity (characters talking competently about surveillance state and capitalism!) in the dialog that I only ever felt in, say, Alpha Centauri and later, Disco Elysium. It's still the best PC game ever imo.
Edit: I think the most important thing about its legacy now, is that it engaged with conspiracies in a fundamentally different way, more like 90s X-Files style fascination and curiosity than anti-intellectualism of Alex Jones-style rabid misinformation. A critical nuance that gets lost when conspiracy cranks try to claim Deus Ex as theirs.
Now if only someone could make a game aping 'The Difference Engine' in the style of Dishonoured... the time is right for a steampunk equivalent!
Now with GMDX it's a must play.
It wasn't just misanthropy on our part.
Zooming out, macrohistorically[1], the amount of destruction that can be controlled by the individual soldier has increased, steadily at first, then exponentially in the modern era. Obviously the extreme example would be something like SADM[2], but this increase also includes the multiplying complex systems of the modern world - bulk ammunition, heavy vehicles, commercial aircraft. As the numbers needed for X level of destruction decreases, the span of viable ideologies increases; it's easier to convince 12 guys of nutty ideas than it is to convince 12,000. So, in the big view, the idea of big cultural icons getting flattened, this is something scifi has been kicking around for a while now. One could argue it's a significant pillar of "cyberpunk" worldbuilding: the persistent presence of the "crazies" wielding the modern tools of fuel, bullets, and nuclear bombs.
[1] Which is definitely the perspective of the Deus Ex creative team.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Muni...
Second, there's Open Deus EX (I think not GMDX compatible yet) and DX-Rust, which it is.
I still play to that game, and it's my favourite among Slashem and some few interactive fiction ones.
OpenDE: Fast, vanilla https://github.com/jarmitage99/OpenDE
DX-Rust: Slow, AI slop, but it can be improved. It supports GMDX https://github.com/Grissyelda/dx-rust
If you use Recomp Launcher you can install these with ease, even on Steam Decks.
"There's a tendency among the press to attribute the creation of a game to a single person," says Warren Spector, creator of Thief and Deus Ex.
The myth of the solo creator who heroically makes something amazing has a romantic appeal to a lot of people, especially those who dream of doing such a thing themselves someday. In truth, all great things in history have many collaborators and what we think of as the “creator” is often just a person who played the role of bringing together the collaborators, with perhaps a few other direct contributions.
But in the AI era, this solo-creator myth can now become reality, or if you are more cynical, just an even deeper delusion that exploits the non-consensual labor of millions for one’s personal benefit.
One thing strikes me however, as perhaps revealing my own naïveté:
> Lurking in the accusations against “wealthy bankers” is the oldest, ugliest conspiratorial trope of all, the idea — stemming from the 1903 forgery “The Protocol of the Elders of Zion” — that a cabal of Jews secretly run the world.
I never made that connection until literally reading this piece. Bankers weren’t all Jews, and not all Jews were Bankers. I had heard the stereotype, sure, but I never read said stereotype into such conspiracies or narratives. It just made logical sense that a newly-emerged global society formed around currency and trade would be manipulated by those people who specialize in said sectors, i.e. bankers and financiers. The fact said individuals continue having outsized import on daily news and current events almost cements the plot point as real prophecy instead of antisemitic nonsense, but I can also see how bad actors would tie hate speech to current events to boost their own platforms.
Just an odd bit of reflecting, is all.
I actually got chills during the surprise post-credits scene in Deus Ex: Human Revolution when the og Deus Ex theme started playing.
I can recommend the HD remix.
The gameplay and graphics don't hold up but the story was absolutely prescient around AI, billionaire oligarchs, and mass surveillance.
There's a portion in the game when your brother Paul is sick and he tells you to leave him to fight off enemy goons alone. Apparently you can fight your way through the hotel and he survives all the way to the end of the game!
I tried playing Alice a couple times when I got Steam in 2023, and I couldn't get into it. Made it about halfway through Half Life on a long flight, and same.
It's wild how games that were considered state-of-the-art when we were kids can feel unplayably unpolished today.
But probably the worst trend with modern remakes is taking the original games off of online stores or "upgrading" them to the remake thus making the original unavailable. Combined with the "demakes" trend above and it seems like we're actively destroying many historical games with these "remakes".
[1] https://www.digitalfoundry.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2021-...
When the game came out though the politics around conspiracy theories was very different. Deus Ex tried to cram in every conspiracy theory circulating at the time. MJ-12, the trilateral commission, Roswell...
klaussilveira•54m ago
New renderers, new engines, The Purist Mod, GMDX, The Nameless Mod...
izacus•39m ago
mjr00•31m ago
satvikpendem•11m ago
shmerl•34m ago
account42•27m ago
anthk•25m ago
matheusmoreira•33m ago
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3131640/Deus_Ex_Remastere...
giobox•26m ago
What has been shown so far looks worse than many of the free modded versions out there, and with AI lowering the bar for modifying games every week… As an experiment I asked Claude to take the source code from the browser port of the game that appeared on GitHub recently, add coop multiplayer, 32:9 ultra wide support and as much of the graphical enhancements from the remaster video.
It took about 4 prompts, and I have builds playable on Linux, MacOS and Windows, with coop. Gets well over 300fps on my Mac Mini as uses metal on an a Mac.
It really makes you think how long the business models of companies like Nightdive Studios (specialists in remastering old games for modern systems) can last, when you can “remaster” entire games in very few prompts.
komali2•15m ago
rjh29•12m ago
AlexandrB