It's pure coincidence-there wasn't enough memory to include them-but eerie nevertheless, especially when you consider that the official in-game reason was that they were destroyed in a terrorist attack.Īre we heading toward Deus Ex's vision of a dystopian future? Well, maybe not. Look out on the horizon, and you'll see that the Twin Towers are missing. The main villain, Bob Page, is a cartoonishly evil billionaire, but nevertheless wouldn't seem that out of place in your typical Silicon Valley boardroom. Like Deus Ex's protagonist, JC Denton, we are not so far away from cybernetic augmentation ourselves. It was a rich and nuanced approach to gameplay that many games struggle to match today.Īll of this was wrapped in a story that, while very late 1990s/2000s, still feel prescient in some respects. If you were willing to take some time to explore, you could almost always find a backdoor of some sort, which was another one of Spector's basic design tenets. It was one of the first games to feature a tranquilizer gun, putting it ahead of Metal Gear Solid 2, which was still roughly a year away at the time. To broaden those choices, Deus Ex gave you all sorts of useful tools. Manage cookie settings Coming soon to Silicon Valley: Bob Page. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. More importantly, it forced you to consider how to approach a given situation: stealth, or guns blazing? While still largely smoke and mirrors, stealth did lead to more nuanced and interesting gameplay. A new approach had to be taken.Ĭoming on the heels of Thief and Metal Gear Solid, Deus Ex was one of several games to help popularize the stealth genre, which was new and novel at the time. But in Deus Ex, running in and opening fire almost invariably got you killed immediately. Quake and Unreal Tournament were the norm. While games like Half-Life hinted at more advanced games to come, first-person shooters were still largely built around arcade-like experiences. Most players weren't prepared for the type of experience that Deus Ex had to offer when it was first released. For reference, think about the difference between Dark Souls and Skyrim, which came out seven years ago, and Doom and Deus Ex. Just seven years later, Deus Ex appeared on the scene to provide a shockingly advanced gameplay experience that still holds up today. In 1993, Doom popularized the first-person shooter and changed games forever. It was a period in which PC gaming was evolving at an incredible rate. Its contemporaries included the likes of Baldur's Gate 2 and Fallout 2. Its progenitors were classics like Ultima Underworld, Thief: The Dark Project, and System Shock-incredible games that utilized open-ended design and creative audio work to introduce new types of gameplay. Deus Ex set a new standard for open-ended design when it launched in 2000.ĭeus Ex's was the culmination of an extended Golden Age for PC gaming in the mid-to-late 90s, and for RPGs in general. From the moment you chose between the sniper rifle, the GEP gun, and the mini-crossbow, to the moment that you decided whether or not you wanted to blow up the train station in a hostage situation (note: I wouldn't recommend this situation). That was perhaps the defining trait of Deus Ex, which helped to define an RPG subgenre that would later give rise to everything from Vampire: The Masquerade to Mass Effect. "Whether prep-lanned (weak!), or natural, growing out of the interaction of player abilities and simulation (better!) never say the words, 'This is where the player does X' about a mission or situation within a mission." "There should always be more than one way to get past a game obstacle. Phantasy Star IV: The End of the MillenniumĪll of Spector's rules are worth reading, but there's one in particular that stands out to me. The Complete List of the Top 25 RPGs of All Time Spector devised them while starting in on the development of Deus Ex, which would go on to become known as one of the best RPGs ever made. Some years ago, legendary game designer Warren Spector laid out his commandments for making a good RPG. We're counting down the 25 best RPGs ever on USG! Go here to see previous entries, and also make sure to subscribe to Axe of the Blood God for the accompanying podcast segments! Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team. This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247.
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