Deus Ex seems to go back into the past

Dedicated to the discussion of OTP and Deus Ex in general.

Moderators: Master_Kale, TNM Team

SkrillaX
NSF
Posts: 86
Joined: Sun Oct 02, 2016 4:43 am

Deus Ex seems to go back into the past

Post by SkrillaX »

Think about Human Revolution. Think about LED Screens and futuristic doors with hand recognition and automatic locking systems. Think about medical tables that automatically takes care of the patient's problems. Don't even make me mention futuristic solar powered cars, and special bullet trains. Remember. This is 2027. :lol:

Now this is Deus Ex. 2052. Odd 2000's looking vans. Old, potted plants with no nanotechnology. Simple wooden tables and old doors with no special interface. Also. A 1970's black hawk with no solar power or any other modes of power. Just an old retro black hawk. Not to mention hanging meat and wooden sampans. =D>


The point is that as the years go on. 25,20 the technology seems to go backwards. If an ordinary biotech company can afford this 800-BEE, then I cannot see why a well-funded anti terrorist coalition can get a sleazy old chopper. Remember. The year of release is not an excuse. Please think of something else. <_< Also, don't think about starting a fight here +o(
SkrillaX
NSF
Posts: 86
Joined: Sun Oct 02, 2016 4:43 am

Re: Deus Ex seems to go back into the past

Post by SkrillaX »

And everytime someone mentions things from the 1940's or 1960's . Except for Tong of course. Like nothing happened during 2000-2052. Can't they make it a bit interesting like mechanized wars in the 2030's or interplanetary invasions in the 2040's. ?
Made in China
MJ12
Posts: 466
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 7:55 pm

Re: Deus Ex seems to go back into the past

Post by Made in China »

Deus Ex didn't have a year or date mentioned in game - those have been decided by the sequels, which have been decidedly more futuristic even though being set anywhere from early to late 21st century.
Also, the Square Enix ones don't have shit for continuity - my guess is that Eidos Montreal tried making a futuristic game, got the IP dumped on them early in development, and we've got this chimera of stuff that's not really Deus Ex, but somewhat draws inspiration from it regardless.
Cybernetic pig
Illuminati
Posts: 2284
Joined: Thu Mar 08, 2012 3:21 am

Re: Deus Ex seems to go back into the past

Post by Cybernetic pig »

Eidos Montreal's Deus Ex isn't canon. It's very disjointed from the events of Deus Ex, tosses away design principles that defined it, and none of the people involved with the development of the first games were involved with the latter.

Deus Ex is an intellectual property that was inherited by Square-Enix when they bought Eidos Interactive. They have the right to call it Deus Ex and use concepts from it, but that doesn't make it Deus Ex. The only things that make people overlook all this is because the new games with the Deus Ex name do share baseline concepts in common, and that they think they're good games. I don't think it's Deus Ex at all but I do think they are good (not great) games, so I'm not too salty about it because quality trumps all and it could have been far, far worse.
RoSoDude
Thug
Posts: 39
Joined: Thu Dec 01, 2016 11:08 pm

Re: Deus Ex seems to go back into the past

Post by RoSoDude »

Made in China wrote:Deus Ex didn't have a year or date mentioned in game - those have been decided by the sequels, which have been decidedly more futuristic even though being set anywhere from early to late 21st century.
Also, the Square Enix ones don't have shit for continuity - my guess is that Eidos Montreal tried making a futuristic game, got the IP dumped on them early in development, and we've got this chimera of stuff that's not really Deus Ex, but somewhat draws inspiration from it regardless.
Deus Ex actually has a number of references to the current year in various written media in the game world... See the wiki for details. I don't recall if anyone explicitly states it's 2052, but there is a report on chlorine and water treatment intended to guide policy in the next year, 2053. One need not invoke the design documents to gather the year in which Deus Ex takes place. Doesn't take center stage, but it's there.

I agree that Square Enix's prequels tossed or reworked a fair bit of DX's world to make their new games, but it's a lot more faithful than I'd have suspected. From the last game's plot they're clearly trying to set up, albeit rather clunkily, the MJ12 takeover of the Illuminati and introducing a lot of the key players in DX. The plot is a confused mess but some of that is actually from it bending over backwards to fit the timeline. The whole Aug Incident bullshit is contrived, but it's the only way they can go from the utter excess of shiny mechanically augmentations in Human Revolution to the state of them in DX -- mostly only for military/security purposes, and heavily scrutinized in the public eye. The problem was with Human Revolution and its obsession with "what makes us human, prosthetics wheeeee". Mankind Divided had a terrible main narrative, but was converging much better to DX in world-building and tone.

You could be right about Human Revolution originally not being a Deus Ex game, although I frankly couldn't say. It's where a lot of the problems start, and even though I think they did a decent (not amazing) job at condensing some of Deus Ex's core systems and narrative elements, if not overall philosophy, there are a lot of areas where it feels more like "Metal Ghost in the Akira: Yellow Blade Runner Edition" as Ross' Game Dungeon put it. From the few hours I managed of Invisible War, I think Eidos Montreal's games are better successors, but they also pervert many of the core design principles of DX (I will never shut up about the atrocious XP system, why do people give this a pass). My opinion is colored by the fact that I played Human Revolution first and then said "hey, this is like HR but better in nearly every way" when I played DX. Also by the fact that I think Mankind Divided fails more on its own merits (awful/truncated narrative, overall lack of challenge, Game Divided/Augment your DLC) than by comparison with DX.

Anyway, the OP reads like someone complaining that the original Star Wars movies had worse technology than George Lucas' greenscreen prequels. So... you blame the prequels. Although to be fair to Eidos Montreal, I don't think it's as jarring here. Cyberpunk is an odd genre in that it usually involves a direct projection of current technology into its next immediate step. For DX and a lot of other works before the turn of the century, this meant that we were still using (slightly sleeker) landline telephones and computers with bulky disk drives. Current cyberpunk gives us slightly sleeker smartphones and tablet computers. I predict that we'll reach a point where anything we could call "cyberpunk" is totally unrecognizable from its origins, because it involves the very technology we were predicting before. I think there's a quaint charm about say, the opening cinematic to System Shock, that results. Technological continuity of a prequel is thus impossible (or it would be jarring from a modern sense!), but it's the same basic idea.
Made in China
MJ12
Posts: 466
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 7:55 pm

Re: Deus Ex seems to go back into the past

Post by Made in China »

Oh, thanks! That was an interesting read. To be honest, the report is kind of vague and can't be seen as a definite chronological marker - reports can be made years in advance, and I think that was left sort-of vague as a design choice. The Deus Ex bible states it's indeed 2052 - but there's a lot of whacky stuff there, like Mexico (IIRC) seceding from the US. I feel like most of what was cut wasn't cut for deadlines, but for quality assurance. I see them cutting the specific timeframe as an artistic choice - it makes it timeless, and makes its predictions and messages universal rather than false (or even true!) prophecies.

And yes, the prequels namedrop a lot and try to foreshadow events in incredibly explicit ways - I don't think it's a sign of respect, though. It's more like using a wrecking ball to hammer a nail - it destroys what it sets to create. Because I don't care about Lucius DeBeers and Morgan Everett's past life - Deus Ex was very clear about that. It wasn't about people, it's about the concepts they represent, and I don't think they nail it down. They just try connecting stuff to other stuff, like a Frankenstein's monster that's made entirely out of feet - it might be able to stand on its own, but it looks weird and when you actually think about it it doesn't make any sense.

Also I don't think cyborgs will be mainstream by 2027. It doesn't even make sense internally - at this point Adam is just a brain connected to a robot, and an overpowered one at that - and yet the only opposition he faces is from very-clearly partially-augmented people.
Yet the robots he sees are mostly drones. Why would you make a RoboCop and not at least experiment with an ED209? Or a Terminator? In Deus Ex they argue of man vs. machine. In the prequels they don't argue - they are physically fighting, and they don't even consider fighting fire with fire. It's ridiculous.
SkrillaX
NSF
Posts: 86
Joined: Sun Oct 02, 2016 4:43 am

Re: Deus Ex seems to go back into the past

Post by SkrillaX »

Couldn't they just put futuristic NYC streets instead old 1990's brick walled ones. Also. DX's 2052 lacks neon lighting. Which is an essential part of all futuristic games
Cybernetic pig
Illuminati
Posts: 2284
Joined: Thu Mar 08, 2012 3:21 am

Re: Deus Ex seems to go back into the past

Post by Cybernetic pig »

SkrillaX wrote:Couldn't they just put futuristic NYC streets instead old 1990's brick walled ones. Also. DX's 2052 lacks neon lighting. Which is an essential part of all futuristic games
:roll:
User avatar
Jonas
Off Topic Productions
Off Topic Productions
Posts: 14224
Joined: Sat Apr 24, 2004 9:21 pm
Location: Hafnia

Re: Deus Ex seems to go back into the past

Post by Jonas »

Cybernetic pig wrote:Eidos Montreal's Deus Ex isn't canon.
This raises a complicated question. Who gets to define what's canon? If not the people who own the IP, then who? Does it have to be the same author as the first work in the franchise?

If Human Revolution isn't canon, what's to stop us from naming Invisible War not-canon as well?
Jonas Wæver
Chief Poking Manager of TNM

I've made some videogames:
Expeditions: Rome
Expeditions: Viking
Expeditions: Conquistador
Clandestine
Made in China
MJ12
Posts: 466
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 7:55 pm

Re: Deus Ex seems to go back into the past

Post by Made in China »

That's like asking "what's art?" when art snobs consider paintings made by dogs as art. It really isn't down to who made a certain object or construct - it's about how it made you feel. That's why we already have coined terms such as "spiritual sequel", because even though it can't be considered as a sequel, it does resonate with the same people and echoes the same themes.

Logic dictates, therefore, that there is the opposite construct - a betrayal of the original concepts from the same author, IP, whatever. So if something can be considered an unofficial sequel, what's stopping us from declaring some of the canon not-canon? It all comes down to resonance with the original fanbase, and communities with those. Invisible War flopped, and a large part of the community might consider it non-canon. Human Revolution didn't flop, but I feel like it didn't resonate with the same fanbase for the same reasons - it was extremely different in design and theme to the original. It's a complicated subject which can be thrown out the window with the argument "if you don't like it, just pretend it doesn't exist within that universe" - it's not like it's hurting you.

If you can't live with that, I propose another metric - fanbase retention times acceptance within that fanbase, divided by availability. It's probably rough, but if that data was available I'm guessing you'd see a trend. More importantly it denotes which factors make a sequel true to the original or the IP in general.
Cybernetic pig
Illuminati
Posts: 2284
Joined: Thu Mar 08, 2012 3:21 am

Re: Deus Ex seems to go back into the past

Post by Cybernetic pig »

Yeah, there is no regulatory body of canonical status (nor of quality, which is what gaming press is meant to do, but that's another subject). Best answer one can give is the proof is in the pudding, or that the general consensus of the fans decide.

Invisible War fits the plot events, continuity, setting, core design principles etc better, but the selling out of the gameplay is a big factor as to why people like to pretend it doesn't exist, which is fair enough. HR has a touch better gameplay so people seemingly overlook the other factors.
It's nice to have an example of gameplay trumping all among players. Not enough of those.
User avatar
Jonas
Off Topic Productions
Off Topic Productions
Posts: 14224
Joined: Sat Apr 24, 2004 9:21 pm
Location: Hafnia

Re: Deus Ex seems to go back into the past

Post by Jonas »

Made in China wrote:It really isn't down to who made a certain object or construct - it's about how it made you feel.
A-hah. So in that case I suppose I can decide that Deus Ex itself is not canon, that in fact only the original design document is canon, and you're not going to call bullshit on that, right?
Cybernetic pig wrote:Yeah, there is no regulatory body of canonical status (nor of quality, which is what gaming press is meant to do, but that's another subject). Best answer one can give is the proof is in the pudding, or that the general consensus of the fans decide.
So are you gonna conduct a survey to determine if the community considers HR and MD canon or not? Or are you saying what you meant to write was "I personally don't consider Eidos Montreal's Deus Ex canon"?
Jonas Wæver
Chief Poking Manager of TNM

I've made some videogames:
Expeditions: Rome
Expeditions: Viking
Expeditions: Conquistador
Clandestine
User avatar
Shadowdancerxxl
NSF
Posts: 63
Joined: Thu Nov 24, 2016 3:10 pm

Re: Deus Ex seems to go back into the past

Post by Shadowdancerxxl »

Cybernetic pig wrote: Invisible War fits the plot events, continuity, setting, core design principles etc better, but the selling out of the gameplay is a big factor as to why people like to pretend it doesn't exist, which is fair enough. HR has a touch better gameplay so people seemingly overlook the other factors.
It's nice to have an example of gameplay trumping all among players. Not enough of those.
Yeah well both Invisible War and Human Revolution were ok games, but as far as I'm concerned Deus Ex is dead.

Unless they make a proper sequel that's set in an alternate timeline (because I doubt many people would mind ignoring Invisible War altogether xd) or just simply make up a new universe I doubt they can make a game as good as Deus Ex.
Continuing Invisible War would be a mess, especially if they wanted to merge the endings like they did with the original game.
Even though Mankind Divided was an improvement over Human Revolution, Adam Jensen's story is limited, because we already know how it's going to end so there's only so much you can do with the story.

About the new games being canon or not: Yeah, why not. Doesn't mean I have to like it.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/gmdx A mod that improves Deus Ex's gameplay, maps, visuals, audio etc. whilst staying loyal to its original design? Yes my friend, you may touch yourself with the light now.
Cybernetic pig
Illuminati
Posts: 2284
Joined: Thu Mar 08, 2012 3:21 am

Re: Deus Ex seems to go back into the past

Post by Cybernetic pig »

Jonas wrote:Or are you saying what you meant to write was "I personally don't consider Eidos Montreal's Deus Ex canon"?
Pretty much yeah. Although of course that's what I meant, as I have no authority on the matter, or have the same authority as every other informed fan. Like I said though, the proof is in the pudding. It contradicts/retcons Deus Ex, isn't built of the same principles, and has little development connection with the original developers.
SkrillaX
NSF
Posts: 86
Joined: Sun Oct 02, 2016 4:43 am

Re: Deus Ex seems to go back into the past

Post by SkrillaX »

Yeah, like I made a futuristic no entry zone. Like the 2020's or 2030's why couldn't they put these?
Attachments
Capture.JPG
Post Reply