Annotated version of an original Deus Ex design doc surfaces | Hacker News Reader

Annotated version of an original Deus Ex design doc surfaces

gamasutra.com

108 pointsImpossible34 comments

This is cool to see.

I even more enjoyed the oral history of Deus Ex development that it links to from the intro. A really fun, nostalgic, and pretty relateable read. And somewhat in contradiction to this post, has the quote:

> From what I can recall, there was no continuously updated design doc for Deus Ex. If there was, I never saw it and I didn't get access to it.

Another cool excerpt:

> Basic sounds in speech, like "ah" or "ooh" or whatever, they all have frequency fingerprints, basically. Even with the low CPU power at our disposal, I could do a really low-resolution fast Fourier transform to analyze the speech as it was being output to the sound card, chop it up and try to match it with phonemes. Then I could use that to send hints to the animation system to move the lips.

> So I had the artists animate the face bones, of which we only had like two, I think -- it was super low-poly -- and I had 'em go with eight phonemes to animate face poses for. Except, they'd do it on the base pose and I'd blend in the animations on the face in real time based on what the audio does.

… for a game that came out in 2000! Pretty cool.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/240456/Developing_Deus_Ex...

One famous piece of trivia about Deus Ex is that, if you look at the city skyline during the missions set in New York City, the Twin Towers are conspicuously absent. The real reason for their exclusion isn’t very interesting: something to do with memory constraints. So in the game’s fiction, the Towers were destroyed by terrorists. Deus Ex was released in 2000, a year before 9/11.

----

'How deus ex predicted the future'

https://www.google.com/amp/kotaku.com/how-deus-ex-predicted-...

The specifics here are that the New York skyline was originally two big textures covering two faces of the skybox. Late in production, to save video memory they cut one texture and replaced it with a mirror of the other one, of course cutting the side with the towers so that they wouldn't show up twice.

(Source is an old IGN interview that I hunted down ages ago, because every time this trivia shows up somewhere there tends to be a comment war about how removing a building from a skyline couldn't possibly save memory, blather blather.)

The pilot episode of "The Lone Gunmen" aired in March 2001, and details a conspiracy by the US government to remote control an airliner and crash it into the WTC to furnish arms sales:

"The Cold War's over, John. But with no clear enemy to stockpile against, the arms market's flat. But bring down a fully loaded 727 into the middle of New York City and you'll find a dozen tinpot dictators all over the world just clamoring to take responsibility, and begging to be smart-bombed."

https://youtu.be/EjbQ-BDh4PU

Although less conspicuous, there’s a similar story with Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2’s box art depicting a NYC skyline being bombarded (also released in 2000).

Deus Ex got me at the perfect time in my life (15 y/o pseudo-intellectual nerd) so I really loved the game, so reading this was great. Such was my nerd infatuation with this game, that as I was reading about the various locations, the corresponding music would pop into my brain almost immediately, a testament to the great soundtrack (eg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FZ-12a3dTI )

Especially interesting is seeing how the times and what we expect from videogames have changed, on page 23 there's a dejected nod to people expecting a 90s first person game to have multiplayer, even though it's primarily a single player RPG, but they'll do it as a bullet point to go on the back of the box.

Definitely agree about the soundtrack. I find myself listening to it while working quite a bit.

Ah, the good old times, when the cost of creativity wasnt so astronomically high. If you wanted to risk something, you would just take some time of the working-charts and do it, letting the team then vote on results. No- push your idea in front of the high council, no guiding whats left of it along the pipeline, you just wrote the dialogue, scripted the mission, reused some existing assets, and polished it till it was accepted.

Those where the days.

I am currently playing Mankind Divided and have been reading into the art direction from interviews with the art director.

I just love the world they have created and the way they utilize it to tell the story. One of their ethos is "show don't tell" and you can see they have really taken it to heart. The locations tell the story just as well as the dialog does.

You simple cannot compare Deus Ex 3 and 4 with Deus Ex 1. Deus Ex 1 is a much different and better game, a lot of thought went into it, the player can do so much more it's not even funny. No other game with Deus Ex in the name comes even close. Play Deus Ex 1 first and come back later, though some may never get into DX1 because the graphics hasn't aged that well.

We used to play Deus Ex 1 in a pair. The game was so different for each player and their playing style that it never got boring. We completed the whole game in this way.

One highlight that I remember was the explanation of mass surveillance being a replacement for less religion in a society. In the past people censored themselves because God was always watching. It was hoped that people would continue to censor themselves because Echelon was always recording and datamining.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b-bijO3uEw

This was an optional cut scene and not part of the main story -- my friend found this, I never got this cut scene when I played.

I agree that Deus Ex 1 is so special that anything after does not compare. This does not belittle the sequels, its just that the original was so good.

"God was a dream of good government" is a very interesting idea to ponder.

If you'd like more to ponder, the formation of the Roman Catholic church may be worth exploring.

Eastern Orthodoxy, with its "symphonia of powers" caesaropapism, is equally interesting IMO.

This was the most memorable dialog in the whole game for me. An incredible game with many things that make you think.

Also: "everytime someone talks about DX1, someone else will install DX1 again" most likely applies here :)

"Some people just don't understand the dangers of indiscriminate surveillance" @1:24. This games was so ahead of itself.

Oh I wasn't comparing the game itself, but the franchises art style and story telling has really flourished with 3 and 4 I feel.

I have played all 4 and loved each one, the charm and freedom of the first may not have been reached with it's successors but I feel like 3 and 4 at least really were fantastic games in their own right.

Totally agreed. It doesn't seem to be a popular opinion among hardcore fans of the first game but I think Eidos are really doing a fantastic job with the franchise.

Sure, the games are flawed ("press a button to pick an ending", immersion breaking boss battles, game breaking launch day bugs, silly DLC and pre-order bonuses) but the world and story they've built are absolutely spot-on. People seem to be quick to forget that the original had its fair share of flaws as well.

There is also the generational difference in cultural references: G. K. Chesterton VS 4chan.

Haven't played the sequels yet (I'll probably grab Mankind Divided now it's on Linux), but I recall that something very like "press a button to pick an ending" was a prominent feature of the first Deus Ex.

Then again, the original had a bunch of other little flaws, but none of them were really dealbreakers.

DX1 is surprisingly empty and small when you play it today. There was a lot there that isn't in the newer games, but a lot is also missing.

Small? The map of DX1 are bigger than DX2 and DX3. A lot is missing? Yes, in DX3/4 a lot of the features of DX2 and especially DX1 are missing, like all the interaction with physical world objects, persistent world - the newer games feel like rushed and no love was invested on little details, every map feels so static. And the maps have just a few NPCs in DX 2 and 3, compare it to GTA V and Watch Dogs 1 - that's how a up-to-date Deus Ex could look like, modern graphics, open world gameplay with hacking and free movement in missions and better story - yet DX3/4 have a boring small story arc, compared this to DX1 with its world spanning story.

It's too bad they didn't follow that for the story/social commentary though. The latter ended up being so hamfisted and shoved down your throat it was almost comical, and that's coming from a "bleeding-heart lib'rul" like me.

The stories and themes in HR and MD are certainly ambitious compared to most games - unfortunately the writing simply isn't up to the task. I don't know whether it's due to lack of skill, prioritization, resources, or perhaps courage to really say something original or controversial. Sheldon Pacotti's DX1 script, in comparison, is something truly special and comparable to some of the best SF literature there is. And that, starting from the pretty ludicruous premise that most conspiracy theories are actuall true!

Fascinating how the design doc simultaneously seems to describe an entirely different game yet already shares so many similarities with what would finally become Deus Ex.

EDIT: The postmortem linked at the end of the post also includes an even older pitch for the game from 1994 which has even less in common with the final release. It's amazing how the game mutated from "rugged ex-cop action movie shooter" to "cyberpunk conspiracy drama" where it's actually possible to beat the game without killing anyone.

> where it's actually possible to beat the game without killing anyone.

It's been a long time since I last played the game but I don't believe that's true without cheating.

without any bug exploiting, you can use killphrases on anne and run away from gunther (or use killphrase too). I think Howard Strong is the only guy you have to actually kill.

Technically you also kill (indirectly) the crew of the ship you scuttle, Maggie, the Area 51 staff who are outside when you diverted the missile etc.

http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/19502/is-it-really...

There's only one situation that requires tricking the AI to open a door for you (what some might legitimately consider an exploit).

Other than that (which I consider a design flaw) it's entirely possible to get by without killing anyone (though using non-lethal weapons to render people unconscious is of course still necessary at various times).

Is the actual PDF available somewhere instead of having to jump through Scribd hoops?

It's shared via Google Drive from the reddit post[0] linked in the OP: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2_-knUokw90RzIwUEJsU2pYdWs...

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/5crvld/full_dx1_desi...

https://nuwen.net/dx.html also has a ton of information about the game

Reinstalling.

The installation along with mods is less than a GB so I optimised by not uninstalling it in the first place.

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