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Latin expression deus ex machina, is a computer game, released in 2000 by Ion Storm Inc. and distributed by Eidos Interactive for Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh computers as well as the PlayStation 2 game console (under the title Deus Ex - The Conspiracy).
Created by a team working with the producer of System Shock, Warren Spector, and built on the Unreal game engine, the game combined the action elements of a first-person shooter (FPS) with the character development interaction of a role playing game. The game, set in a near-future dystopia, featured environments often drawn from real locations and that seemed to more accurately depict real environments than other games to date. It was also notable for the complex tactical possibilities, where players could choose many different ways of achieving evolving goals, from stealth (akin to Thief) and long-range sniping, to all-out combat with various heavy weapons, to character interaction and use of objects in the environment.
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
Deus Ex's plot drew together many current conspiracy theories into a narrative with characters with deeper development than those of most FPS games and presented a philosophical dilemma in the conclusion where the player must choose between courses which lead to the continuation of 20th-century style capitalism with all its flaws, returning the world to a dark age of medieval anarchy, or choose the peace offered by the benevolent dictatorship of an omnipotent and omniscient computer AI.
The amount of research demonstrated in the game's level of detail astounded the gaming world. One of Deus Ex's central issues is nanotechnology – the character, JC Denton, serves under the flag of UNATCO (United Nations Anti-Terrorist COalition) as an agent augmented by symbiotic microscopic computers called nanites. Deus Ex contains an impressive amount of literature on nanotechnology and defines its science quite accurately. Many allusions to classic literature and influences (predominantly Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age and Snow Crash) can be found throughout the game environment (in e-mails, books, mottos, and notes). Erudite individuals often find the game quite humorous. The environment encourages the player to replay the game frequently to discover and learn more about the world of Deus Ex.
The game was hailed by many critics and users as a significant step towards a "reality simulation", as one of the first games to truly pioneer the effect of moral choices, and one of the only games in existence based on violence to offer a non-violent alternative; killing is not a necessary part of Deus Ex. Some have complained however of technical flaws (the graphics were not state-of-the-art and the game ran slowly on machines not fitted with 3dfx video cards) and found the game too difficult to complete.
A sequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War, was released in the United States on December 3, 2003. As of mid-2003, plans for a Deus Ex movie were in the works. Spider-Man producer clone of his brother Paul Denton and a prototype created by shadowy organization Majestic 12 to test their nano-augmentation program. As a result of testing, Paul was found to have the right combination of biologic and genetic factors to make him a good test candidate for the nano-augmentation. To create more compatible test subjects, Majestic 12 produced clones of Paul, but most failed to accept the augmentations. His parents however, were by now infertile and so once again approached MJ12 looking for a method to become pregnant. MJ12 offered one, in the form of the implantation of an embryo, a clone of Paul, which would later become JC Denton.
Later, as Paul reached adolescence, he became more independent and MJ12 decided to have him and his parents killed while JC was sent to a Swiss school to be under more supervision. Paul escaped the attack, and JC grew up unaware of his early childhood with Majestic 12. After graduation, JC joined UNATCO, a UN peacekeeping organization. He then becomes involved in the events shown in Deus Ex.
Paul Denton is the older brother of JC Denton.
He was the first agent to successfully have nano-augmentations implanted into his body. He had worked for UNATCO; as Deus Ex begins, he returns from Hong Kong. Paul Denton looks very much like J.C. (perhaps their extraordinary similarities can be explained?), but he is of a wholly different stock of character; where J.C. is stolid, perfunctory, Paul is passionate and dedicated; where J.C. is cold, Paul is empathetic...
Nicolette Duclare is the daughter of Elizabeth Duclare. Nicolette is a relatively minor character, appearing centrally only in a single mission. She is 17, and while brave, is also foolhardy. After her mother's assassination she began working with the terrorist group Silhouette. She allows JC to locate Beth Duclare's chateau, and in so doing contact her old associate Morgan Everett.
Chad Dumier is the leader of the terrorist group Silhouette and a close friend of Nicolette Duclare. He has taken up residence in the Silhouette Bunker located in the Paris Catacombs, and is likely to remain there until the bunker is no longer under threat of siege by Majestic 12.
Morgan Everett is the acting leader of the Illuminati. His residence is somewhere in France, though the exact location cannot be confirmed.
Everett is highly paranoid, and receives visitors only after they have proven themselves to be loyal to the Illuminati. Even then he does not allow them to know the location of his compound, instead opting to render visitors unconcious with neuroparalytic gas and transport them in secret through his associate Toby Atanwe.
Everett's compound is quite vast, encompassing computer and nanotech laboratories, hydroponic growing vats, a repair depot, and a helipad.
Everett was the creator of the prototype AI codenamed Morpheus, which later became Echelon III, and was the architect of its successor, the Echelon IV AI known as Daedalus.
He was the mentor of Bob Page before Page left the Illuminati to form Majestic 12, and a close friend of Stanton Dowd.
Gunther Hermann is a top agent of the United Nations Anti-Terrorism Coalition, or UNATCO.
Standing an ample six feet eight inches tall, Gunther's already imposing appearance is made all the more terrifying by his heavy mechanical augmentation. He is well versed in the use of deadly weapons, being the Commandant of the UNATCO weapons course, and is never without his assault gun, plasma cannon, flame-thrower, and combat knife. With close to 1000 confirmed kills to his name, Gunther is by far UNATCO's deadliest agent.
Gunther has a heavy German accent, as well as a love of murder and mayhem that endears him to fellow mechanically augmented UNATCO agent Anna Navarre.
While his augmentations grant him strength and speed far beyond that of normal men, they are also prone to the degradation of any constantly operating piece of machinery. He receives significant wear in his line of work, and is often returning to Dr. Jaime Reyes for a tune-up.
Beneath his hard metal surface, Gunther is also a very sad and lonely agent. His severely scarring augmentation makes him a freak to the public eye, a monster with a gutteral accent who loves to kill. But in truth, Gunther is just a confused and frustrated robotic killing machine, a pitiful pawn of the beaurocratic high command. His long-time partner and fellow mech-aug, Anna Navarre, is the only real friend Gunther has in the entire world, and as a result he is fiercely loyal to her.
Gunther resents the almost infinite power of nano-augmentation, as well as the agents who utilise them, and often finds himself fantasizing about completely impractical augmentation he believes his superiors might offer him.
Gunther was also the creator of the "Skul Gun", an imaginary mechanical augmentation that would allow him to kill people with a glance. The concept was presented to his superiors, who assured him it would be forwarded to the appropriate researchers. He has received no answer.
Joseph Manderley is the director of the United Nations Anti-Terrorism Coalition, or UNATCO.
Manderley is a beaurocrat at heart, a proxy from the Treasury department installed by Majestic 12 to put a pretty face on their operation.
After the defection of Paul Denton from UNATCO and the capture of JC Denton by Majestic 12, Manderley was relieved of duty and replaced by Walton Simons.
Men and Women in Black are characters in this game.
Anna Navarre is a top agent of the United Nations Anti-Terrorism Coalition, or UNATCO.
Agent Navarre has a heavy accent, likely Russian. She stands roughly five feet ten inches tall, and sports fairly extensive mechanical augmentation (though not as instantly horrifying as fellow MechAug Gunther Hermann). She also has a thing for black leather.
Anna is not a stranger to blood and gore, in fact, she revels in it (Much to the chagrin of fellow agent Paul Denton). Like Gunther, Anna feels that the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist. But unlike Gunther, she prefers a silent, stealthy kill to an all-out frontal assault (as evidenced by her focus on stealth in her section of the UNATCO training course). She has even gone so far to have a cloaking augmentation installed.
Anna was JC's first partner after his arrival at UNATCO, but she was content to sit out their first mission outside Castle Clinton while Denton handled the guards inside. She is suspicious and somewhat hostile toward her nano-augmented colleagues, but has a more open mind than her cohort, Agent Hermann. Anna will put up with them, as long as they get the job done (in as bloody a manner as possible, of course).
Anna has something of a unique fighting style in that she always fires her assault rifle one-handed, while everyone else in the Deus Ex world has to use both hands to fire that weapon. She's also unusually adept at scoring headshots and bodyshots instead of simply spraying the arms and legs.
Bob Page was the main villain in the game and was a special protégé to Illuminati leader Morgan Everett. Although Page was a good student, he was impatient and short-tempered. Page and Everett developed Daedalus, an artificial intelligence (A.I.) program that would help the Illuminati keep track of and control the new communication technologies. The duo also started the project that Majestic 12 would eventually turn into the Gray Death virus. Page was a major power behind the push for nanotechnology, and was a part of the enhancement project that JC Denton and Paul Denton went though.
Page grew impatient with Everett's unwillingness to use the technology and the Illuminati's slow, gentle ways and rebelled by forming Majestic 12, that eventually took over much of the Illuminati's power structures and resources. The final blow to the Illuminati was when Page gained almost total control of the information infrastructure through the Aquinas Protocol/Hub at Area 51 and the Daedalus A.I., making it nigh impossible for the Illuminati to communicate using electronic means.
Secretly, Page is the head of Majestic 12. His ultimate plan is to merge with the artificial intelligence (A.I.) Helios to control the world's electronic systems, becoming an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent entity.
Publicly, Bob Page is the richest man on Earth; a trillionaire and head of the unbelievably large Page Industries. Page also likes to groom his image in the public eye as a great philanthropist, donating millions of credits to the needy, while secretly plunging the world into chaos to create the conditions that will allow him to achieve world domination.
Walton Simons is the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and a member of Majestic 12.
Simons is a close associate of Bob Page, and a very powerful man in Washington. He was appointed to FEMA through Page's manipulation of an unnamed senator infected with the Gray Death, and went to work immediately.
A strictly cloak-and-dagger man, Simons was the first higher-up on the scene after JC Denton's capture of NSF operatives in Battery Park, though his interrogations consisted mostly of numerous shotgun blasts to the chest.
The third successful nano-augmented human (After Paul and JC Denton), Simons is widely considered one of the most dangerous men in Majestic 12. Although he claims his augmentations are strictly for increased ability for work in FEMA disaster relief, he often travels with an escort of two or more Men in Black, and he is rarely seen without his plasma rifle close at hand.
Simons also has a tendency to overcharge his bioelectric reserves, causing an intermittent sharp pain behind his eyes.
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