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Pull up the design materials for the original Deus Ex today, and you may be struck by what Ion Storm never quite managed to achieve. In a Gamasutra postmortem from 2000, designer Warren Spector presents a vision for the game that is actually two visions in competition - a splicing of genres to support a range of well-defined playstyles, versus the concept of a simulation in which there are no fixed outcomes, no pre-existing, over-arching formulations, just abilities and variables, chiming together under the player's hand. A simulation so intricate and responsive, it perhaps never had a hope of being made with the technology of the era.In his opening, Spector touches on the game's debts to shooters, role-players and narrative-driven adventures. "But more important than any genre classification," he adds, "the game was conceived with the idea that we'd accept players as our collaborators, that we'd put power back in their hands, ask them to make choices, and let them deal with the consequences of those choices." The dream, in other words, wasn't just to fold a few popular approaches into one another but to create a game that transcends category altogether, that is all but defined as you play.
Narrative and setting were intriguingly peripheral to this agenda, at least to begin with - Deus Ex may be the definitive cyberpunk game, with its dingy Blade Runner lighting, sleek trenchcoats and penchant for subcutaneous technology, but according to Spector, Ion settled on a sci-fi backdrop merely "to buy ourselves some room to play around - the real world, as we quickly discovered, was very limiting." One, very early pitch for the game then known as "Troubleshooter" featured a present-day setting and was modelled on the antics of 80s action stars like Steven Seagal - a blasphemous-sounding turn, given how avidly the franchise's present custodians have courted comparison with celebrity fashion designers and philosophers.
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