MACHINE GOD

DEUS EX's influence can be quietly felt throughout gaming like the tendrils of a clandestine organization, but it could have ended up a Command & Conquer game if not for an unlikely intervention. This is the story of how it was made, 25 years ago

- Robert Zak

Even for those who haven't played Deus Ex (charlatans), the name carries weight, echoing 25 years on from its launch through the halls of gaming history like that of a half-forgotten Hellenic deity; its pioneering commitment to systems and experimentation as a form of player expression mixed into the foundations of so many games that came after—from Dishonored to Cyberpunk 2077, from Oblivion to Far Cry.

A genre mashup, an 'immersive simulation', a conspiracy thriller that offers wide, webbing paths through each mission (which might come down to creating a stairway of crates of increasing size, bribing junkies with drugs or kids with candy, or carving straight through with a cybersword). There were many ways to pitch Deus Ex back in the day, but none of them particularly succinct. Deus Ex is a game that shines not in the boardroom, but in the hands of the gamer, with its toybox of skills, augmentations, and sprawling levels in their hands.

Getting the game to that point, however, would prove to be an almost insurmountable challenge for its creator Warren Spector.

Spector's first pitch for a proto-Deus Ex was at Origin Systems around 1994, after he had completed work on Ultima Underworld 2. Troubleshooter, as it was known, was to be a "real-world roleplaying game" borne of Spector's weariness of gaming's rigid tropes at the time. "I was sick to death of space marines and alien invasions and mages with fireballs and pointy hats," he begins. "I had made enough of those and wanted to do something different."