<COMMENT>From the website of the ever excellent Kieron Gillen.
Used by permission from the author and PC Gamer editor in chief Ross Atherton.</COMMENT>
<P><B>Review: Deus Ex
<P>by Kieron Gillen
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<P>John Romero was right. Full stop. Ion Storm, formed as a reaction to the - c'mon everyone, let's be honest here for a few seconds - programmer lead Id, crystallised around a single molecule of thought: Design is law. Games are more about the artist than the artisan, the painting than the paintbrush, the taste of a meal rather than its look. Game design people. That's where it's at. The rest is just ephemera to distract us. At the only level that counts, the ancient ASCII based nethack is superior to the slickly vacuous Vampire. Repeat after me: Design. Is. Law.
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<P>Yes, Daikatana stank, stinks and will smell of decomposed half-ideas forever. But, as you all better realise by now, the best first person game ever was based on this principle. Except that's no longer true. Now the top two first person games ever were created using an engine licensed from an external source. With Half-life, it was Id's Quake. With Deus Ex, the basis is Epic's Unreal technology.
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<P>The advantages of this method is pretty evident. Even with a lesser team - Early Raven creating Hexen 2, for example - games move from conception to completion with greater speed. When the whole of a full development cycle can be devoted to the central game mechanics, the extra time to savour, consider and let a game breathe, a team can hone the edge of their blade infinitesimally. You want a random prediction? In ten years time the amount of 3D graphics engine creation in a team will be next to nothing. With Deus Ex as an example of the strengths of this progress, it'd be a hard man who'll grumble.
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<P>So. Why is Deus Ex so important?
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<P>Let's examine its intellectual family tree. It goes a little something like this. Ultima Underworld begat System Shock which begat Thief and Shock 2. Then Shock 2 met Half-life in a bar, shared a few drinks and begat Deus Ex. Then let Thief and Floor 13 (ancient black-and-white you-are-a-Government-Black-Agency game) be God-parents. Then the child grew up and put pictures of Syndicate on its wall, fancied Diablo at School and hung-out with Exile. And read Voltaire, Guy Debord, The Illuminatus, Grant Morrison, Machievelli and pretty much the whole content of a decently covered bookshelf. And wore a trenchcoat and shades.