Couchpotato spotted an opinion piece on Exputer about the Deus Ex series:

Home/eXputer Originals/Deus Ex Deserves Better Than Being A Scapegoat For Embracer’s Screw-Ups

The IP has weathered many pitfalls over the years, when will it be rewarded?

Story Highlights

• The latest misfortune in the Deus Ex journal is the cancellation of a new game by the Embracer group.
• Over the years, the series has seen many crises including canceled titles and management shifts.
• Deus Ex is a brilliant series and the last thing it deserves is being abandoned and forgotten.

Let me ask you a question. What would be your reaction if you learned that your favorite game series has gone through hell only to be abandoned? You come across a great series with 2-3 entries, and you fall in love with it over the course of going through the games. Then, when you realize its dreadful fate, what will overcome you? Frustration? Rage? Disappointment? I think it’ll be all of these; it sure was for me.

You must be wondering, what series am I talking about? It’s none other than Deus Ex, one of my most beloved IPs being dragged through the mud. Video games have come a long way and thus have accumulated a vibrant history. However, this period is filled with many such victims who were denied the chance to conclude the brilliant story they wished to tell. Deus Ex might be one of those, too, something it in no way deserves.

[...]

DXU24 is a project to run the original Deus Ex with the Unreal Engine 5:

DXU24 Development Update 2

00:00 Intro
00:40 Steam

Features
01:55 Detail Textures and materials
02:47 Morph Target Animations
03:43 The Event Buffer
04:39 VR and reimplementing DX's Weapons
06:30 VR weapon interactions
07:07 VR IFF
07:41 Modding DXU24
08:32 Bugs and Performance
08:56 Lighting Optimization

What's Left to Do?
10:23 Modding DXU24
10:45 Render Iterators
11:12 Viewports
11:27 DXU24 UI
11:46 End to End Streamlining
12:17 Decoupling the Camera
12:57 Performance and Visual Tweaks
13:24 Release Date

14:11 Outro

14:48 Current State of the Project intro
15:21 Deus Ex Intro cinematic
17:40 Deus Ex Training Level

This video does not cover ALL changes made over the last few months, simply the ones that I remembered to shoot footage for, do voice over for and edit into the video. There are plenty other minor changes as well.

DXU24 is an on-going project with a lot of things to do. The eventual goal is to have a user moddable, first-class VR experience for Deus Ex, first and foremost.

DXU24 is not a remake or a remaster, it does not recreate any copyrighted assets contained in target games. It instead interprets target games while they are running on your PC and adapts them to run in Unreal Engine 5 in real-time. A legal copy of any target game is required to run DXU24. 

Side-by-side comparisons shown in the video are recorded concurrently, showing both Unreal Engine 1 and Unreal Engine 5 running at the same time, no video editing was done to composite them side-by-side, it is a single screen capture of two separate applications.

Thanks Couchpotato!

WccfTech reports a rumour about a possible Deus Ex next installment by Eidos Montreal, now in the Embracer group:

Deus Ex May Return Under Embracer, Eidos Wants to “Do What Cyberpunk 2077 Couldn’t”

Following Embracer Group’s purchase of Square Enix’s Western AAA studios, most of the focus has been on what might happen with Crystal Dynamics and the Tomb Raider franchise, but what about Eidos Montreal? With another Guardians of the Galaxy game likely off the table, what might they be tackling next?
Well, according to Jeff Grubb on the latest episode of his Game Mess Mornings show, it seems they may be going back to the franchise they’re best known for – Deus Ex. While everything’s still very early, Embracer is said to be much more open to bringing back Adam Jensen, and Eidos Montreal is fired up to “do what Cyberpunk 2077 couldn’t” within the sci-fi RPG sphere.

[...]

Thanks Redglyph!

PC Gamer explains how to install Deus Ex in 2022:

How to have the best Deus Ex-perience in 2022

Our definitive step-by-step guide to setting up and playing one of the all-time great PC games.

It is accepted internet law that if someone mentions Deus Ex in passing, another person will reinstall it. Despite some clunkiness, it remains one of the strongest examples of the immersive sim over 20 years after its debut. A sprawling spy-fi adventure that offers multiple solutions (intended or otherwise) to almost every problem, and a surprisingly reactive story despite each playthrough taking you through all the same locations.

Its grungy cyberpunk world—deep with urban decay even as mega-corporations rule and security robots patrol the streets—feels as relevant now as it did back in the day, although some of the more paranoid conspiracy theories it presents might feel a little uncomfortable considering recent headlines. On the whole Deus Ex has aged gracefully, despite not being the prettiest of games even when it launched.

While the patched-up version of Deus Ex available on digital storefronts plays relatively well on modern hardware, a fresh play of Deus Ex deserves a more intricate tune-up—or even a complete overhaul.

[...]

Thanks Henriquejr!

Eurogamer reports on a mod called the lay-d-denton project that lets you play as a female in Deus Ex; which was originally a cut feature.

The mod is a significant effort. All of JC Denton's 1700 lines of dialogue have been re-recorded by voice actress Karen Rohan, under the vocal direction of Chris Rohan.

"The performance strives to faithfully preserve the character of JC," reads the mod description.

"Every single line was performed directly after listening to the original Male JC's read. While not blatantly copying every single line, the original performance was used as the primary anchor point for the line reads. Variations were only made after careful consideration.

"In addition, we have strived to preserve the more beloved community one-liners as accurately as possible."

[...]

NeverKnowsBest looks over the Deus Ex series.

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An in depth look at every Deus Ex game.

Introduction - 00:00
Deus Ex - 04:15
Deus Ex Invisible War - 39:39
Deus Ex Human Revolution - 1:02:18
Deus Ex Mankind Divided - 1:38:26
Conclusion - 2:04:14

The soundtrack for Deus Ex has been remastered according to SKNR.

SEATTLE – June 16, 2020 – Materia Collective is excited to announce Conspiravision: Deus Ex Remixed, a special 20th anniversary remix album dedicated to the original Deus Ex. Featuring remixes by original composers Alexander Brandon and Michiel van den Bos, Conspiravision spans 17 tracks and is available for pre-order today with a release date to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the game’s release on June 23, 2020. Materia Collective is releasing Conspiravision in digital and physical CD formats. The pre-order period begins today:

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

PC Gamer looks back at Deus Ex:

The story behind Liberty Island, Deus Ex's most iconic level

Making a masterpiece.

Since its release in the summer of 1999, Deus Ex has become one of the most beloved games on PC. Set in a bleak cyberpunk future, Ion Storm’s ambitious first-person RPG, which was directed by Warren Spector, features deep systems, sprawling levels, emergent play, and a thrilling, conspiracy-laden plot. But one afternoon in Austin, Texas, where the game was developed, designer Harvey Smith and other members of the team were convinced that the game they’d been working on for years was destined for failure. 

“We brought in Caroline Spector, Warren’s wife, and she was the first person outside of the team to play it,” says Smith. “She got off the boat at the dock and she picked up a box and threw it into the water. She got into the water and swam around. She tried to interact with a seagull. Then she tried to float on top of the crate.” 

[...]

Thanks Zloth!

@DSOGaming The Revision mod v1.4.0.1 is now available for the original Deus Ex, bringing improvements and fixes.

Caustic Creative has released a brand new version of its overhaul mod for the original Deus Ex, Revision. In case you weren’t aware of, Deus Ex: Revision is a large-scale re-imagining of the world of Deus Ex, bringing a tightly integrated aesthetic-oriented approach to the original gameplay.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

@PCGamesN Deus Ex Revision has a new massive update that expands many areas of the game like Area 51 and is now available on Steam, GOG and Moddb.

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As you can see from the trailer above, Revision applies a generous lick of paint to the 17-year-old game, but the changes are far more than cosmetic. A lot of maps have been expanded to feel more like real-life spaces, allowing them to fit in a lot of extra combat encounters, secrets and areas to explore. Some rushed-feeling later areas such as Area 51 have been enormously expanded, making them feel almost entirely new.

...

It's been just over two years since the initial release of Deus Ex Revision, and developers Caustic Creative haven't been resting on their laurels. To celebrate the second anniversary of their launch, they released a massive update, entitled Mystic, with a smaller update this week polishing it up even further.

[...]

Version 9.0 of the GMDX mod for Deus Ex has been released:

GMDXv9.0 Release Trailer

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GMDX is a modification of the classic video game Deus Ex for PC.
Frequently cited by fans to be the "Definitive Deus Ex Experience", GMDX faithfully improves nearly every aspect of the game in consistent logical fashion.
GMDX is available in English, French, German, Spanish and Russian.

GMDX also comes bundled with the excellent HDTP and New Vision graphics mods, and improves upon the efforts of both.

Official Website: http://www.gmdxmod.com
Download GMDXv9.0 on moddb: http://www.moddb.com/mods/gmdx/downloads

@Eurogamer they report that the Deus Ex series may go into hiatus due to disappointing sales from Mankind Divided.

Square Enix's shift in focus to its recently-announced multi-game Marvel project, combined with underwhelming sales of last year's Mankind Divided, mean the Deus Ex franchise has been placed on hiatus, Eurogamer understands.

This, despite Mankind Divided leaving the series with a number of hanging story threads. These plot points were intended to be resolved in a third game, which would also complete the trilogy of Deus Ex titles begun by predecessor Human Revolution.

Much of this remaining story was once intended for Mankind Divided, Eurogamer has heard, until the game grew too large in scope and had to be curtailed. (Even with this, Mankind Divided's development took five years). It's unclear if this untold story will now be left unresolved - or tied up in another medium, such as a graphic novel.

Mankind Divided's DLC, meanwhile, focuses on standalone stories. One final pack from the game's season pass - A Criminal Past - is set for launch on 23rd February and acts as a prequel to the main game.

@Reddit Defaultplayer001 shared the original design doc for Deus Ex who he got off Joe Martin, a writer who was writing about them. (Heavy spoiler warning.)

Majestic Revolutions - Joe Martin.pdf DOWNLOAD LINK

SO excited to share this with you, this is a document I've wanted to get my hands on for YEARS, and I just got in contact with the writer of an article on them, Joe Martin (Venerate his name and obey him in all things!), and he sent them to me! He was, as of the writing of the article, unable to fully share them, apparently this has changed.

Going through it is an absolute gold mine.

Tilson and the Ghoul are the best characters, the original endings are really fascinating(I love that if your too slow the ending changes!), and the game is so MASSIVE in scope, it outstanding to read. . I haven't even read it for 5 mins, shaking with excitement. I've only skimmed through these very briefly, haven't even had them for much more then 10 minutes. You'll all be going through them fresh with me.

If that wasn't enough he ALSO sent me Thief 4 (the cancelled modern day reboot! not the one we got!) design docs, and Ion storm Design documents!

Thief 4 Submission Document - Joe Martin.doc DOWNLOAD LINK

"The Thief series has always been held back by esoteric, unrecognizable fiction and passive,

slow-paced gameplay."

I wonder why this reboot didn't work out? /s
...

Complete Game Reviews made a retrospective video review for Deus Ex:

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We take a look at the original Deus Ex to see if it still holds up today.

Hardcore Gaming 101 is offering an in-depth look at the original Deus Ex and its Mac and PS2 ports, including screenshots comparing the different versions.

Note the article does contain spoilers.

A common problem with games that try to mix different genres and accomodate different playstyles is that they end up not being particularly good at any single thing. This is also true for Deus Ex, which is a clunky first-person shooter, a stealth game that gives more loud and lethal solutions than stealthy ones (and the stealthy ones you're given are often not the most reliable) and a fairly shallow RPG. Forunately, in this case the whole is much bigger than the sum of its parts and Deus Ex manages to be a great game in its own right regardless.

Deus Ex players control JC Denton, an anti-terrorist secret agent employed by United Nations. The character's abilites can be modified by distributing experience points (received for completing mission objectives and exploring different locations) to a set of skills ranging from the use of different weapons to hacking and lockpicking, as well as by installing and upgrading 'augmentations': nanotechnological devices inside Denton's body that allow him to use special skills like health regeneration, silent movement or resistance to bullets. Skills are fairly straightforward - just increase the ones you're using the most - but augmentations require a bit of strategic thinking as augmentation of each body part is permanent and usually requires choosing one of two mutually exclusive bonuses (e.g. either being able to lift heavier objects or doing more damage with melee weapons). Bonuses that come from skills are passive, while augmentations need to be activated and require energy to use.

Thanks Dark Savant.

Version 0.8 of the Deus Ex megamod GMDX was released.  GMDX extensively modifies the single-player campaign while "remaining true to the original design vision."

More information.

DSOGaming shows several videos for the upcoming Deus Ex Mod: GMDX 0.8:

Deus Ex – GMDX Mod Version 0.8 Releases December 20th, Gets Tons Of Videos Showcasing New Features

Deus Ex fans, here is something for you today. A really interesting mod for this classic title is coming towards your way. According to its description, GMDX addresses the many flaws of the game, polishes it to a very high standard, and adds new layers of depth. This mod will be released on December 20th, and below you can find lots of videos showcasing its features, tweaks and enhancements that will be implemented in Deus Ex. It looks cool, so be sure to watch the videos. Enjoy!

There is a new mod available through Steam or Moddb that updates Deus Ex Game of the Year Edition.

The improvements are as follows:

Deus Ex: Revision is a community-made overhaul of the 2000 classic. It features new environments, new music, and new world-building detail. It also bundles in some of the best modifications that the fanbase has made over the years, including Direct3D 9 rendering, high-resolution textures, high-detail 3D

Minimum System Requirements

OS: Windows Vista 64-bit
Processor: Dual-core 2.0 GHz
Memory: 3 GB RAM
Graphics: 256 MB DirectX 9-compatible GPU
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Hard Drive: 6 GB available space
Additional Notes: A faster CPU will deliver better performance. We do not recommend using a CPU slower than 2.0 Ghz. 32-bit operating systems are not supported.

[...]

Available Through Steam

Deus Ex: Revision is freely available through Steam. Everyone who owns Deus Ex Game of the Year Edition through Steam will find it available to install in their personal Steam Library.

The creators of the original Deus Ex, Warren Spector, Sheldon Pacotti and Chris Norden, take a trip down memory lane while playing their game fifteen years after its release:

Micah Curtis (TechRaptor) writes about the legacy of Deus Ex:

(...)

While not a unique setting in and of itself (many Cyberpunk stories are similar), Deus Ex’s setting is superior due to the narrative treating its outlandishness with seriousness, thus allowing for much better player immersion. In essence, Deus Ex was an early master of narrative plausibility. Rather than pointing at the setting with a tongue in their cheek and winking, they treat it with a serious face.

From a design standpoint, Deus Ex still stands as one of the bastions of player choice. Similar to Fallout, there are no classes within Deus Ex. Well, unless “awesome guy with sunglasses” is a class. Thus, during the course of the game, your skills are tailored to your play style. This kind of freedom is almost always welcome by the player, but if the world around you doesn’t allow for any type of play style to conclude in victory, it’s ultimately a hollow gesture. In Deus Ex, if you don’t want to kill a single soul, nothing is forcing you to. If you want to become Nanobot Rambo, that option is open to you.

You see, Deus Ex teaches developers everywhere a very important lesson. Player freedom is ultimately decided by the mechanics and the level design. If they aren’t in tandem with one another, the game is less of an experience for it. The fact that the game’s design is still referenced in this regard after fifteen years speaks for its staying power. When the player feels in control of their character, they’re immersed.

So, what is the legacy of Deus Ex? From my perspective, the series stands as definitive cyberpunk when it comes to its genre as fiction and definitive role playing in regards to video games. Fifteen years later, Deus Ex is still very relevant. With the upcoming Mankind Divided continuing the series, the expectations will continually be set high for the developers. When you’re one of the best, you’re expected to be the best, and many gamers out there hope that the series will continue to match the legacy of its predecessors. Even if things were to go sour for the current development team, Deus Ex has solidified its legacy, and one would even argue its immortality.

Gamasutra looks back to the development of Deus Ex (15 years ago) based on separate conversations with project director Warren Spector, lead programmer and assistant director Chris Norden, composer Alexander Brandon and lead writer Sheldon Pacotti.

Warren Spector: There's no question the development of Deus Ex was a high point for me. The team was like a dysfunctional family at times, but their commitment to the project and our mission was complete. People worked very, very hard to deliver on the promise and potential, that's for sure!

There was a very strong sense that we were doing something special... unique. That kind of opportunity - to make the game of your dreams with no creative interference - comes up very rarely in life, and I think everyone, not just me, knew that and, as a result, really swung for the fences.

Sheldon Pacotti: Deus Ex was total immersion for me.  I lived and breathed Deus Ex for a year, seven days a week, fourteen hours a day. I was just that excited by the potential of the game.  The only comparison I could make is to writing a novel, where you completely lose yourself in a fictional world until it becomes indistinguishable from reality.  

At the time, few people expected video games to represent reality or tell a story you actually believed in, so I was thrilled to find a team that was trying to make that happen.  But I had no idea if fans would "get it."  The most gratifying thing for me is the number of players, continuing up to today, who -- like good players in a paper role-playing game -- have stepped into the fiction and abandoned themselves to it.   A collective hallucination.

Alexander Brandon: Deus Ex is the game I hear the most about. I'm proud of everything I've worked on. Unreal pushed boundaries of level design and fantasy world exploration in the context of an FPS. Unreal Tournament honed multiplayer combat. But Deus Ex blew the doors off genres, and at the time, hardly anyone had done that.

The time that I spent on it was pretty incredible. And I hardly made any revisions to anything I did. I'd certainly change that in hindsight, but at the time what we did just worked.

Chris Norden: At the time, we had no idea what it was or what it would turn into. We really had no idea. We hoped it would be a success, at least critically, and it kinda turned into something...big.

Alex Kennedy has written an editorial at Games Industry on why he loved this game. 
A quote about the world:

Often you survive a firefight with a limp, which is pretty cool, and occasionally you apparently have both your legs blown off, leading to a desperate Pythonesque hump-for-cover. The same goes for the world. It drips with colour and incident, and there's so much of it. New York, Paris, Hong Kong ruined petrol station, jetliner, cathedral, nightclub, undersea lab, supertanker; graveyard, mansion. There was a White House level; there was a level in a space station. Neither made it into the finished game, but there are still way more levels than any sane player has a right to expect.

A quote on the story:

There are people who will try to tell you that that DE's storyline is silly. Technically, I suppose they're correct. I feel, though, that there should be more joy in their lives. The storyline is meant to be an unlikely kitchen-sink mash-up of X-Files conspiracy theories, and it is, but it's mashed up with verve and grace. Those seven years of scheming and preproduction show. The characters are uneven but elaborate, with the rough organic edges that come from editing and reworking the larger plot, like the sprues of extrusion-moulding. The revelations come steadily one after another for thirty hours of gameplay. There are books and newspapers everywhere, and none of them outstay their welcome: they all deploy this secret weapon at the end of a paragraph or two of text....

Do you agree with Alex Kennedy?

John Walker of RPS published the sixth and final part of his articles about whether Deus Ex is still the the best game ever. We finally get his verdict this time.

In the end, if I tweak the question to be, “Is this the best game ever of its kind?” then I think the answer has to be yes. But then, there are so few games of its kind, and there are even fewer that are any good.

But let’s not evade any longer. Is Deus Ex the Best Game Ever? No, I don’t think it is. And I’m surprised to see myself typing that, certain that I’d emerge from this experiment emboldened in my conviction.

What is? Well, like I said, it’s a stupid question. But I suspect that Thief might be the best Looking Glass/Ion Storm game. I think Planescape: Torment might be the best RPG. I think Day Of The Tentacle may be the game I love the most. I think The Longest Journey may be the game that has the strongest personal connection for me. I’m pretty certain you’ll disagree.

John Walker of RPS shared the fifth part of his article about whether Deus Ex is still the the best game ever. The fifth update talks about the ending as we await his verdict.

So it’s finished. It’s an awful lot longer than I remembered, and I had certainly forgotten huge chunks of it. Now I need to get my thoughts in order, take this wealth of new evidence and experience, and address the question that’s titled all these entries. Is Deus Ex still the best game ever?

John Walker of RPS shared the fourth part of his article about whether Deus Ex is still the the best game ever. The fouth part talks about Fratricide, Gratified & Dissatisfaction.

And so continues my chronicle of returning to Deus Ex fifteen years later, to see if I’m right when I tell anyone who comes near that it’s the best game ever. You can read the whole saga here.

In this fourth edition, I once more fail to save my brother, become increasingly frustrated with the limits of the game’s intelligence, and ponder whether real choice is actually usefully conveyed to the player.

John Walker of RPS continues his article about whether Deus Ex is still The the best game ever. The third part talks about a few problems he encountered with the game.

As my re-exploration of Deus Ex continues, I find my memories clashing with the reality of the game, as I try to establish if it’s still the Best Game Ever™. You can read the whole saga here. It’s accusing me of crimes I didn’t commit, an in turn, I start committing some crimes.

Just like the Witcher 3 it seems a few sites have published some new articles for Deus Ex this week. The first article is the second part of John Walker's editorial on RPS.

Here continues my attempt to discover if Deus Ex really is the best game ever, like my brain thinks. Part One is here. Today I yet again struggle to get the game working, then struggle to work within the game.

The second article is from Game Informer who continues their exclusive coverage of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, but talk instead on how Deus Ex changed the face of gaming.

In the early ‘90s, id Software flipped the gaming industry on its side when it popularized the first-person shooter with Doom and Wolfenstein 3D. Now shooters are one of the most common video game genres on the market, delivering everything from high-intensity shootouts like Call of Duty to thought-provoking stories like BioShock and even sprawling loot-fests like Borderlands. The diversity of today’s first-person shooter market is due – in large part – to the inventive trailblazing of the original Deus Ex. But to better understand the impact of Ion Storm’s original shooter/RPG hybrid, you have to time travel back to the beginning of its development, in the early ‘90s.

John Walker of RPS published a new article with his opinion on whether Deus Ex is still The the best game ever. The  first part talks about memories, and hardware renderers.

When asked, “What is the best game ever?” I always give one reply. “Deus Ex.” Back in the days when my passport still allowed me into PC Gamer Top 100 meetings, I would furiously argue that it should be no. 1, and indeed become furious whenever it did not. While I may pick another name if asked for my favourite game, when it comes to “best”, I always say Looking Glass/Ion Storm’s greatest moment. But what if I’m wrong?

In-case you still play the original Deus:Ex the following news should interest you. The Deus Ex: Revision mod will be released in February according to a new update.

We’re aiming to wrap up production, and ideally, launch sometime within the next ten weeks. As before, this is a loose estimate based on current progress and team member availability, and until environment design is finished, it will remain difficult for us to commit to a fixed launch date. In other words, we won’t know when we will release until we’re nearly ready to do so. This is simply part of making a non-commercial project with a widely distributed team; as much as we would love to, we can’t guarantee a steady development pace.

We know that development on this project can be frustratingly slow at times, so thank you for bearing with us. We’re closer than ever to completing this project, and we always appreciate your support.

Some of you maybe interested in the following article from VideoBrains. Joe Martin shared new information on deleted Scenes for Deus Ex, and the plot of Deus Ex 3.

Last week I spoke at VideoBrains and shared never-seen-before design notes for Deus Ex 3. This was an unmade Deus Ex game which Ion Storm was developing when it collapsed in 2005 – not Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which was developed by a different team.

I’m writing more about Deus Ex 3 at the moment for a larger article, but I also spoke about the importance of deleted scenes and why developers and journalists need to take a more active role in game preservation.

I came across a site called Play Stationing where they have news that we might be getting a Deus Ex: Remastered edition announcement at this years Gamescom.

Deus Ex. Whenever this game is mentioned, someone reinstalls it on to their computer. This is a gamer meme that started out as a bit of a joke, but it’s probably true. The original Deus Ex is often thought of as one of the best games ever made, and still stands out from the rest of the franchise. When the game originally released in June 2000, it had some truly innovative features. It was one of the first few games to mesh the RPG and FPS genre really well, and provided an almost open-world environment for you to explore. The amount of freedom is probably one of the best aspects of the game, because you could do almost everything you could think of. See a robot and think you might be able to hack it? You probably can. It was this freedom that made the game so good, despite the main character, JC Denton, looking like he had his head placed in a trash compacter.

I'm not getting my hopes up. and it might also be the next game in the series.

Richard Wordsworth posted a new article yesterday on kotaku with his opinion on how Deus Ex predicted the future. Here is a small sample of his article.

A piece of driftwood internet wisdom that sometimes floats past on gaming messageboards goes something like this: every time you mention Deus Ex, someone will reinstall it. Somewhere, wheezing for breath under the clutter of my room/workspace/habitat, is my original Deus Ex CD-ROM, which I bought aged 12 on a whim with pocket money. My reasoning was solid: I'd never heard of the game, but the back of the box promised guns and conspiracies, and the dude on the front was rocking some dangerously cool shades. Little Me might not have known much about global banking conspiracies or the Trilateral Commission, but you could coax him onto the cyberpunk neo-anarchist bandwagon with a pair of polarised Wayfarers and a trench coat.

Fourteen years later, I've lost my fake RayBans and even the local Brixton drug dealers don't wear trench coats. Sunglasses at night went out with Corey Hart (or at least with Keanu Reeves). Deus Ex did indeed have guns, but even at the time they were inexcusably horrible to use. The game's not even a looker anymore – more a kind of papercraft tribute to how you think you remember it looked, with weirder walking animations.

So why do I go back to it? Because leaving aside its wackier conspiracy theories, it's the quality – the prescience – of Deus Ex's story that makes it such a great game to play in 2014 – in a horrible, unsettling sort of way. Revisit the game today and nano-augmented super-agent JC Denton's quest to unravel a global conspiracy doesn't seem twee or outdated. Somehow, it seems timely: moment after moment of sneering, political philosophising about money, health, corporations and the poor, punctuated by regular, 400-volt jolts of "wait, when was this written?"

EDGE has posted a new retrospective about the orginal Deus Ex.

JC Denton was just a codename; Deus Ex’s sunglassed protagonist was really named after you. Emails from your closest friends used your real name even while mission briefings called you JC – a neat conceit to let voice actors address you naturally without robbing you of your identity. But the personality transplant of you into JC Denton gets more involved the more you play. He riffs off your dialogue choices, second-guessing your attitude to the people you talk to, but remaining non-committal enough to reserve your right to a mind-change. However gravelly his voice, that gently inquisitive tone makes him unusually soft-spoken, philosophical and smart for a hero, which makes it all the easier to stomach becoming him.

Characters know JC when the game opens, but no one knows what he can do. He has no significant past or track record because you weren’t there; the game can no more judge what he would have done than it can guess at his real name. Whether your brother, afterwards, is gruffly congratulatory of your professionalism or apoplectic at your insanity – “You’re a complete jackass!” his exact words – is a function of your personality rather than JC’s.

The story, intended in 2000 as enjoyably pulpy trash, looks meatier stuff to modern eyes. Ion Storm Austin excluded the World Trade Center from the New York skyline – to save on texture memory – and postulated that the twin towers were destroyed in a terrorist attack in the near future. You end up working for a terrorist group responsible for decapitating the Statue of Liberty with explosives – the copper carnage of which now serves as the headquarters of the anti-terrorist unit you betray and ultimately destroy. Bizarrely, there are even references to a worldwide avian flu pandemic breaking out shortly after the turn of the millennium.

Warren Spector has a new article on gamesindustry.biz talking about game design. He goes over what he calls the ,"The Deus Ex Rules of Roleplaying".

Back in the day - that'd be sometime in 1997 or, maybe, 1998 - we, the Ion Storm Austin team and I, were just getting started on the development of Deus Ex. There were plenty of people on the team who thought we should make an Ultima Underworld-style roleplaying game set in a near future setting and probably an equal number who asked, “Why don't we just make a shooter?” All you need to do is consider the end result, as neither of those was what I, and a small (but correct!) group, wanted to do.

If the game director and producer have just one job that matters it's to ensure that the entire team heads in a single direction, staying on course throughout the years-long development process. To that end, I drafted a set of rules, "The Deus Ex Rules of Roleplaying."

Modder FastGamerr has released a new total conversion mod for Deus Ex called Nihilum. The mod takes place in an alternate Deus Ex continuity.

In 2049, unsavory conditions are rampant throughout the world. As soon as it becomes clear that a terrorist attack in Shenzhen, China, was carried out by perpetrators with ties to international groups and that Hong Kong may be their next target - the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition (UNATCO) dispatches their first nano-augmented agent, Mad Ingram, into the city to prevent the situation from escalating any further.

Deus Ex: Nihilum (DXN, DEN or Nihilum for short) is a First Person Shooter mod taking place in an alternate Deus Ex continuity. It features new made-from-scratch original content, while also extensively featuring material from the UNATCO Born mod (used with permission from fender2k1, UB's project leader) and Deus Ex: Revision (used in accordance with the mod's license).

* Completely new score with 80+ tracks (over 2 hours of music)
* 2,200+ lines (more than 3.5 hours of audio)
* 7-13 hours of gameplay (estimate based on testers' playthrough times)
- Exploration is everything! While it can be baffling that people are leaving valuable items and other belongings out in the open, agent Ingram doesn't seem to mind!
- Encrypted datacubes: Remember, once you've hacked an encrypted datacube, you have to click on it again to make the datacube information window disappear.
- General rule on hacking: Keep in mind that you do not need this skill to advance the main plot itself. However, its general usefulness cannot be underestimated!

Dsogaming has an article bringing news that Sonic Augmentation a Deus Ex album is now available to everyone for free. So if you loved playing Deus Ex, and loved the music give it a listen.

“This EP arranges music from Deus Ex, released in 2000 for Windows, and also contains nods to both sequels, Invisible War and Human Revolution. The album features 8 songs from 10 artists that re-envision the original compositions of Alexander Brandon, Michiel van den Bos and Michael McCann in a wide variety of styles and genres while channeling the moods, sounds and imagery of the world of Deus Ex. The album also includes two tracks featuring original series’ composer Alexander Brandon collaborating with BAFTA-nominated composer Jimmy Hinson.”

Eurogamer looks at how Deus Ex evolved during the development process:

Story wasn't the only reason for editing Deus Ex away from its original vision, however - fiscal and technological realities played a role too. Sheldon mentions a mid-game level in the White House level as a particularly complex task for the level designers to realise and the decision was ultimately made to focus that effort elsewhere. In a post-mortem lecture filmed in 2008, Warren Spector lays decisions like this at the feet of designer Harvey Smith.

"On a daily basis I was building the rooms," explains a humble Smith. "So, I knew how big a room could be before the renderer would choke and how many guys we could have on screen. I had an intimacy with the tools."

Armed with this technological understanding, Smith approached Spector and argued for what he considers the two most critical changes to the original vision. The first was a new skill system with fewer abilities but more demonstrable effects - so the guns didn't do more damage but instead got easier to use as you advanced. The second was a trimmed down version of the story that abandoned the Mexican invasion and space stations in order to become more technologically feasible and narratively intimate.

The New Vision mod for Deus Ex offering a HD overhaul with new textures and renderer has been updated to v1.5 - the final release:

Deus Ex - New Vision 1.5

The final release of New Vision.

I'd like to sincerely thank everyone in the community for their support over the years; without you, I wouldn't have had the motivation to continue working on this project for 5 years of my life. I'd also like to thank someone else; if you're reading this you know who you are: thank you.

I hope you all enjoy the mod and I wish you all the best.

Game Informer has done a retrospective piece on this game. Here's the introduction:

Ben Hanson, Adam Biessener, myself, one of Epic Mickey 2's producers Raul Ramirez, and Warren Spector all sat down only to stand right back up and take a stroll down memory lane, making sure to stick to the shadows wherever possible. Spector talks about how he was moments away from signing a contract with Electronic Arts to create a Command & Conquer RPG, when John Romero called him up and made him an offer he couldn't refuse. We also take a look at at one of Warren's favorite games that influences his work even today with the development of Epic Mickey in our Replay Roulette.

A retrospective for this game can be found at Indian Video Gamer.  A quote on how time has been to this game:

How does it hold up today?

In a word, fugly. Yes, the years haven’t been kind to the game. In fact, you might find MGS1 a lot more palpable than a game based on the Unreal Tournament engine. However, there are a few high-def mods around that make it tolerable. If you’re a graphics wh*re, play the superlative Deus Ex: Human Revolution instead. Also, reading skills are a must because there’s a ton of interesting books and emails to be read within the game’s world that add to a story that’s as layered as it gets without getting overtly complicated.

GOG has added Square Enix to their catalogue, which means Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition is now available through the service.

I don't normally post this sort of stuff but I got a good laugh out of this. Deus Ex Unreal Revolution is a parody mod that "acts as a parody of Deus Ex: Human Revolution while providing commentary on the video game industry and modern gameplay mechanics. Features yellow highlighting, cinematic takedowns, iron sights, and regenerating health."

If you don't want to play the mod, watch the trailer at ModDB at the link above.

The first full version release of New Vision, a HD mod project for Deus Ex, has been released:

It's been 4 years in the making, but Deus Ex : New Vision is finally seeing the light of day in it's full form. With around 75% of the world textures remastered at high definition, the project is finally complete - and is available to download right now!

There's a Deus Ex retrospective on one of the Gamasutra blogs; here's a snip that rang true for me:

Despite its faults (the pulverisingly unforgiving difficulty for new players, clunky graphics even for turn of the millennium gaming and repetition throughout the middle act), the most depressing thing about Deus Ex is how little influence it has had over subsequent gaming culture. As the games industry grew and became more mainstream, much of the reckless experimentation that produced many of the greatest games of the late '90s (and a few of the worst: take a bow, Jurassic Park: Trespasser) was left behind in favour of a formula mentality. Derived in thought and execution from the sensibilities of the Hollywood blockbuster, for all its financial success the gaming landscape was made a less exciting place to play. Even Deus Ex's maligned sequel Invisible War dumbed down the RPG elements to make them more palatable, while the trailer for the series' third entry ignores real gameplay in favour of pre-rendered spectacle.

The 10-Year anniversary of Deus Ex inspired an avalanche of material at Rock, Paper, Shotgun.  This page gathers it all together, with highlights including a re-review and Deus Ex Made Me, with two developers explaining the influence of the game in their work.  It's also worth looking at The End of Looking Glass - 40 minutes of footage shot by a LG developer as everyone leaves the building for the last time, the dream over.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun is pointing out a DirectX 10 renderer by Marijn Kentie for Deus Ex (and Unreal, Unreal Tournament and Rune).  The change doesn't have a huge impact on the look of Deus Ex but it does help with future compatibility and perhaps combined with texture exhancement projects and the like might make for a for pleasant experience.  RPS points out the New Vision Texture Pack and, of course, there's the HDTP project.

Nice timing with our current poll, Steam currently has Deus Ex (and Invisible War) on sale for $2.50 each.  Those polygons are aging but you can't go wrong with a classic for that price.

Warren Spector teams up with Edge Online for The Making of Deus Ex, which outlines everything from plot problems to technology issues to government conspiracies (you couldn't have Deus Ex without a government conspiracy, could you?):

Along with Washington, further locations were purged. A visit to Russia, an abandoned space station, a moon base – all, according to Spector, jettisoned as the design tightened. “We redid much of the plot mid-way through development, when the designers realised our original story, in its totality, was inexpressible given our technology.” Other late changes would follow. “After blindtesting by some other studios, we redesigned the skill and augmentation systems fairly dramatically. And I think we were early in beta when we realised that we hadn’t planned things so players encountered NPCs several times – players weren’t establishing relationships with the characters so the story lacked resonance. We made a major pass at the plot so folks from early missions showed up again and again. That was a critical moment in the game’s development and it came very late.”

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has noticed The Namless Mod for Deus Ex that we have discussed a couple of times has been been released.  Head over to the official site grab the file (923Mb), a DVD ISO image (1.4Gb) or a link to the official torrent.

The folks from the Deus Ex project The Nameless Mod wrote in to say they've launched a new main site and released a launch trailer.  Head to the site to view it.

Cameron writes in to say The Nameless Mod for Deus Ex is going to be released soon.  I'm not familiar with the project, so here's the feature list:

    * An imaginative new setting unlike any game you've played before (yet very familiar to any netizen).
    * 59 levels of gameplay plus a new training mission, 6 intro and endgame cinematics, and three secret bonus maps!
    * 20 original new weapons, many of which are unique and may only be acquired once through the game.
    * Several unique pre-modded versions of original Deus Ex weaponry to be stolen from particular characters upon defeating them.
    * The ability to fight with your bare hands, or to make use of several different gloves to augment your furious blows.
    * A weapon shop where you can buy original DX weapons, equipment, and ammunition.
    * Hundreds of emails, books, newspapers, notepads, and datacubes.
    * Multipage info-devices allow for many pages per book or datacube for the really inquisitive player.
    * Over 100 entirely new character skins and many more combinations of old skins!
    * Actual nanoaugmented enemies. You can view their augmentations with the Targetting aug and disable them with EMP attacks.
    * More customization: Choose between two different character models, 5 different faces for each, and eyewear!
    * A ton of new decorations and items.
    * Two parallel story arcs, that branch early in the game, and plenty of side-missions.
    * An almost ridiculously responsive story with a detailed denouement at the end.
    * Choice and consequence: Major characters will remember if you knock them out.
    * A script of 200,000 words of dialogue, monologue, infolink messages, and AI barks.
    * More than 13,000 fully recorded lines of very high quality.
    * Eye-pleasing graphical detail with HDTP support!
    * New high-quality ogg music for every level (well over 100 tracks!).
    * A myriad of secrets, easter eggs, and little details to encourage replaying.
    * Goals will be updated as you progress through the missions.
    * Greater implementation of difficulty levels: Enemies and pickups will depend on your chosen difficulty.

This project apparently emphasises choices and you can check out a preview at ModDB.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has news that Deus Ex will be part of Gametap's free roster.  Here's a snip form their newsbit:

Gametap, that surging faucet of digital delivery, has announced that it’ll be featuring candidate for best game ever, Deus Ex, on its free games roster as of next week. The Big Ex joins Psychonauts and Thief: Deadly Shadows on its free game thinger. You will again be able to celebrate some of the greatest moments in gaming.

Well worth a look if you never got around to it originally.

Well-known gaming journalist Tom Chick has penned a Deus Ex retrospective for Gametap.  It's worth noting Tom isn't a fan but the article remains fairly balanced:

The world created by Deus Ex was a memorable one. It was oddly prescient, though not for supposing a terrorist attack on a New York City landmark (remember that the World Trade Center had already been bombed in 1993 and the Statue of Liberty had been destroyed in Planet of the Apes in 1968). Instead, it was prescient for suggesting a dramatically shifted political landscape in the aftermath of the attack. This was the starting point for wide-ranging flights of dystopian fancy, which tied together diverse plots and machinations. By the time you saved or doomed the world, depending on your choice of ending, you had dealt with every conspiracy theory in the book: black helicopters, the Illuminati, Area 51, Majestic 12, and so on. Deus Ex was nothing if not generous. Along the way were memorable characters like your cohorts and eventual rivals at UNATCO, your brother Paul, the snake-like Walter Simons, Tracer Tong, and of course, Bob Page.

There is very little information on what's planned for this game as yet, so it may not turn out to be an appropriate game for RPGWatch coverage, but Shack News reports that Eidos Studios today announced officially the third game in the Deus Ex series:

Eidos has announced the long-awaited third entry in the Deus Ex franchise. The game is being developed at the company's Montreal studio for unspecified consoles, though PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 editions are likely.

The game is currently at an extremely early stage. General studio manager Stephane D'Astous told Gamasutra that the team just received approval for the title's proof of concept. The team will be allotted up to two years for development, suggesting the game is targeted for holiday 2009 release...The existence of the title was suggested in an Eidos interview earlier this year...

...Deus Ex creator Warren Spector, who was also responsible for System Shock 2, is not likely to be involved with the project.

Harvey Smith is quoted at CVG about a moon-base ending that never made it into Deus Ex.  Presumably the topic came up because Witch boy is currently working on an Area 51 game called BlackSite:

"I didn't want to put Area 51 in Deus Ex!", its illustrious lead designer told PC Zone magazine recently. "I didn't find it that interesting. In fact, initially it was a moonbase. You were going to use the rocket to get to the international space-station (which in our fiction was just sagging and falling apart and barely held together), and from there you were going to use a shuttle to get to a luxury space-station which was going to be like the Titanic."

CVG is carrying a piece from PC Zone where Deus Ex was voted the best PC game ever in a 101 game countdown feature.  Warren Spector gets to join in the celebrations with a few comments award-night style:

First, let me say what an honour it is to have been associated with the development of Deus Ex - to see it named the "best game ever" is pretty incredible. I'd be lying if I said I didn't have great expectations for the game when I started thinking about it, and the team really rallied around the idea of changing the way people thought about and played videogames. But actually to be honoured as the best game ever? Well, that's just amazing.

Spector goes on to describe the input of various team members such as Chris Norton, Harvey Smith and Sheldon Pacotti.

Asbjoern wrote in to say that Deus Ex (and Deus Ex: Invisible War, Thief 3) are now available on Steam as part of the Eidos collection.