[singing]
["My country 'tis of thee [singing]
["Sweet land of liberty [singing]
["Of thee I s--"] [Subtitles by danielsangeo] Welcome to the Game Dungeon.
Today, we're looking at "Deus Ex". This is a game I've been meaning
to cover for a while, and a new Deus Ex game is coming out soon so I thought now's a good time as any to
talk about the ones that came before it. Now this is a famous game and I'm sure
there's a hundred other videos on it, so why am I making one? Well, I think this is a pretty
significant game and I guarantee I'm going to say some things you're not going to
hear in any other review. In fact, I'm kind of surprised
that, as well known this game is, what ISN'T discussed about it. So I guess that's my job. Let's go! So the game starts off and two
guys are talking to each other making a lot of references to
events we know nothing about. It's obvious something is happening
and these guys are probably important and they're manipulating a disease
but that's all you really know. Now I admit, I can be kind of dumb sometimes when it comes to spy movies or
political thrillers where I honestly lose track of
what's going on with the plot. So I might never be completely sure
what happened, but it looked cool. Well, by making all these references to
things we know nothing about right away, Deus Ex is taking that approach
a little bit to the story. "Have you talked to Smithers about
Project Kneecap since the London Riot? "I think we should go ahead on
Phase 2 of the experiment." "O'Reilly won't know what hit
him until it's too late." "Foxfire is doomed." Now having played this game a couple times,
I have the benefit of understanding it NOW, but there's no way to not be a
little lost just starting out. And with that, we begin. And here we are. Deus Ex takes
place in the near-future. We get conflicting information as to when, but future games retroactively decide this
is the year 2052, so we're going with that. We start off at the docks on
Liberty Island in New York and a figure comes to greet us. [screaming] Okay, things get confusing fast so
I'll try to explain what's happening. This is our character's brother and he's
welcoming us to our first day of work at UNATCO. UNATCO is a peacekeeping organization sort of like a cross between
NATO and Homeland Security. Now this is an interesting first
day because terrorists have descended upon Liberty
Island, hijacked a drug shipment, taken a UNATCO agent hostage,
killed some UNATCO troops, and are armed with militia members
inside the Statue of Liberty. So my job is to go in solo and
apprehend the terrorists' leader. Okay, I have to stop right here and
say this would never EVER happen. Another thing I should mention is that Liberty Island is also the headquarters of
UNATCO, so this is on their front doorstep. So let's be clear: we're sending in
a day one rookie agent, BY HIMSELF, to resolve a hostage situation
with armed terrorists right outside our headquarters. Now granted, JC Denton here has
cybernetic enhancements so he's a little more capable
than the average soldier, but guess what? So do two other
senior agents ready to go. ["I wasn't exaggerating.
He's our best agent."] Yeah, that's your boss. He's
talking about him, not you. This would be like if armed
terrorists took an officer hostage across the street from NYPD headquarters and we sent in a guy who had top
marks in the police academy, no actual experience, to handle
it all by himself, even though he had SWAT teams ready to go. Anyway, it's not a big deal, but
I had to point that out. This isn't even obvious from the
get-go anyway. You don't find out that you're
actually at UNATCO headquarters until you bump into it later in the game. Now if you're astute, you'll put the
pieces together and things will click, but if you're like me, this will
feel more like a dream sequence where you're not exactly sure what's going
on here. But it's a good dream sequence. Deus Ex's approach to the storyline
is to spin you in circles a few times, give you a smack on the head
then send you on the way. So off we go. Let's go stop some terrorists. The gameplay on this first level is actually
very representative of the entire game. Deus Ex is not a game you can go
in guns blazing. Here, watch: HOOOOOOOOO! ["Now this is what I signed on for."] Yeah, I'm dead. The gameplay on Deus Ex is
somewhere in between a normal first person shooter
versus real life. You can only take a couple hits
before you're dead, less if you get hit in the head. So this game encourages
you to play carefully. In general, acting like a serial
killer out of a slasher movie where you pick off
unsuspecting victims one-by-one before you slink off into the shadows,
is going to serve you well in this game. It even lets you move the bodies so as
to not alert everyone else too quickly. My kind of game. Now you can just sneak past people, but that becomes an increasing
pain in the ass later. Alternately, you can try for
non-lethal takedowns, but that's not always an option
and frankly, it's harder. If you shoot someone
with a tranquilizer dart, they kind of behave like they
would in real life-- which is to say they run around
screaming for a good chunk of time, alerting everyone in a radius around
them, maybe setting off an alarm, until they finally collapse. Also, look at these cyborg guys. They
self-detonate as soon as you take them down. There is no non-lethal
takedown of these guys. I've heard it's technically possible to
beat this game without killing anyone, but it involves game exploits and
makes some areas much more difficult. While your brother is always whining about how you shouldn't kill criminals
with guns who are shooting at you, the gameplay suggests otherwise. So if you just imagine yourself
as Jason from "Friday the 13th", except with a badge and gun, then that's the sort of mentality
this game is optimized for. Even then, this game isn't all cookies
and ice cream regarding the combat. You start off barely being able to
hit a target ten feet in front of you, then there's this small delay
between each shot, so you never have
true semi-automatic control. But I actually love how the
aiming is handled in this game because this is also an RPG, so you
can level up your skills to get better. Because, let's face it, whether
you've never picked up a gun before or you're a seasoned veteran,
your bullets should still hurt. A lot. But aiming, that's something that
ties in perfectly with an RPG formula. I wish every RPG that had guns
handled it this way. Progress is a little slow in this game,
but it's slow in the best possible way, because there are people to talk
to, new areas to explore, conversations of enemies to overhear
before you murder them, and so on. All this combined with the hazardous combat makes it feel like an accomplishment
when you move forward in this game and just adds a sense of
significance to everything. Besides being able to talk to
everyone you see, you can also read emails, newspapers,
book excerpts, public bulletins... the game is chock full of
content. It almost rivals an MMO. So a level that might take you five
minutes to get through in another shooter, could take you forty-five minutes
to an hour to get through in Deus Ex because there's so much there. So back to Liberty Island, I rescue the Statue of Liberty and
apprehend the terrorists' leader. He surrenders because my trench
coat is better than his, and he has no hair. ...what? Anyway, from here I get new orders
to track down a drug shipment, and the game just keeps
expanding more and more. I get to deal with hostages,
fighting in the street, hostages, shantytowns, hostages, and pimp cleanup. That's another thing about Deus Ex is
that, even though this is in the future, and you have cybernetic enhancements, and occasionally see military
mechs walking around, the vast majority of the game
doesn't look that farfetched. I mean, hey, the slums of New York
still look crappy. Who could've guessed? ["Cops stop you, bro, don't talk back.
Tonight, they just shoot your ass."] See, that's just like today. Now I have nothing against going super
futuristic looking in other games, but in Deus Ex, this helps ground you and
adds a small touch of realism to things. Although, I think the number of rats
in the hotel lobby is a little high, even for New York. Also, while we're here, I want
to point out Smuggler's Den. When I first played this, I always thought this felt a little
tacked on in terms of the design. This is a 100% optional quest area,
it doesn't affect the main storyline, and it gives you a short extra mission
that you can't access by any other means. Looking on this now, I can see
this actually follows a DLC format: It's short but not super-short,
and it's very modular in nature compared to the rest of the game. It may sound dumb but this is
actually one of my biggest issues with DLC in story-driven games. Deus Ex is one cohesive experience. It's
great; you can get lost in this world. But when you turn something into DLC, just having a reminder that you
can buy the DLC rips you out of the immersion a little
bit--or at least it does with me. Even if you've bought the
content ahead of time, the damage is still done because
it's all ready primed you mentally to remember that this is a game,
not some other world. So, if I buy Deus Ex with the Smuggler's
Den add-on clearly advertised, then every time I hear about Smuggler
in game, I'm going to remember, "Oh, this must be the DLC." So instead of wondering who Smuggler is, or
thinking about something else in the world, I'm thinking, "This is the extra
part of the game I paid for" instead. For me, this is the damage of DLC. Every time you rip the player out
of the experience to remind them, yes, this is indeed a game-- ["Take off your shoes."] --it really harms the overall impact of
games with a lot of narrative like this one. And hey, this game pre-dates DLC
so this isn't even an issue. But I wanted to point this out
because it's obvious to me that if this game was made today,
Smuggler's Den would be DLC. The game really starts feeling
like its own world at this point. Besides a bar, clinic, hotel, subway... there's also a wealth of
side-alleys, warehouses, rooftops, hidden underground passages, and
all along the way, as many homeless people
as there are pigeons. And these are just
the ones out on the street. There are so many homeless
people that later you discover what's practically underground society
of them in decommissioned subway tunnels. Welcome to New York, 2052. [singing]
["Land where my fathers died [singing]
["Land of the pilgrims' p--"] From here, the plot takes some turns
and you go on a globetrotting adventure, following up leads and, uh... I forget why you're going everywhere you do. See, this game is so large that, by
the time you get to a main plot point, you've seen so much of the world around you, if you're not careful, you can lose track of why you were doing
what you're here for in the first place. The presentation can leave you spinning. Like I'm supposed to do favors for this guy because he wants to help out the local
gangs by giving them better sword designs. Now I DO owe him because he saved my life because I betrayed my organization because my brother got info from some guy saying he found evidence that my
bosses took bribe money and MAYBE were involved with
some shadier stuff? I want to emphasize that at no point prior
to my betrayal do we have proof of this. It's literally just an email from
my brother saying he HAS proof but we never actually see it.
It's all hearsay. It seems like it would make more sense
to just report that to other authorities? Or hell, just resign from your job? The plot here would be like if your
brother was involved in WikiLeaks and he said he KNEW another guy in WikiLeaks that said he knew the Director of
Homeland Security had taken bribe money. So your conclusion would be to send
classified information to militia groups with no PROOF of any of this, and go rogue. Now even if WikiLeaks is right, that still doesn't seem like the
correct course of action. And more importantly, you see
how we got off the topic as to why were helping some local
Chinese gangs. That's Deus Ex. But this guy DID save my life so I owe him, but even then, us stealing some
sword designs seems really aimless compared to everything else that's
happened up until this point. Besides just doing some locals a favor,
I don't even know what I'm doing anymore. I'm practically wandering aimlessly. But the world is so fleshed out
and the gameplay is just fun, so you just go with it. Well it just so happens that the
people who manufacture these swords ALSO manufacture that virus that
was mentioned earlier that's devastating the globe. So it all comes together now, except there wasn't really a good reason
for us to connect the dots to begin with. Deus Ex! ["Majestic... majestic..."] Later, the game just starts throwing one
conspiracy theory after another at you, with the Illuminati, the Templars, Area 51, lab-made mutants, men in black... okay... ...self-aware AI, Roswell aliens, world domination, and of course ends with a plan to
either control or blow up the Internet. It's a bit of a mess but the game
is so much fun the whole way, plus there's a little more going on
here that I'm going to come back to. So in Deus Ex fashion, let me give you
a chance to forget what I just said and let's talk about the music. The music in this game ranges from okay-- [guitar and synthesizer music] --to simply amazing. [synthesizer music] This game had four different composers but the majority of it was done
by Alexander Brandon, though Michiel van den Bos had
some really excellent tracks also. There's so much good music in this
game, people who have played it are going to have different answers
for which tracks are their favorites. Now this was one of the last mainstream
games to use MOD tracker music, which is like MIDI music except
it's a lot better because the composer gets to
chose his own instrument sounds. It does mean some tracks can
sound a little clunky, though. [pneumatic percussion music] "Clunky" is really a good way to
describe this game, actually. Even at later levels, the combat is
never what I would call smooth or fluid. Everything's a little rough around the edges. Why do I need a timer when I read emails? Why do I jump like a senior citizen? Why is a flashlight a super power
that requires specialized fuel cells? And pretty much any time you
have a game as huge as this is, you're going to have bugs and
shortcomings and Deus Ex is no exception. There are loads of small glitches. Like look at this: the troops have me
trapped in here. I can't get past them. They don't flinch from gunfire either. I literally cannot escape
without attacking them. Yeah, that's bound to make me
popular with the coalition. This is also a game where, if you're
trying to break it, you absolutely can. The first time I played, I was trying
to gain entrance to this compound but they were giving me a long
runaround for letting me in even though I only had 12 hours to live. Then they sent me to this lady
that they don't even like and she wants me to break into a
police station. Oh yeah, that's going to go well. So I decided, "Hey, how about I
use my cybernetic abilities "and just sneak into the compound?" Well, uh... that didn't go so well. My, uh... 'allies' and I weren't
becoming the best of friends. Plus, besides glitches, most of
the animations are very basic. Half the people in Hong Kong
don't exactly look Chinese. ["You missed them. They left
over an hour ago."] And their accents could use some work. ["Illegal products, of course, but
you find everything in the canal, ["things that have been lost,
thing people wants t'forget."] This is a game where you have to
use your imagination on like how a group of underground terrorists are all wearing conveniently
matching uniforms. Or how every major city you visit only
has a dozen or two people on the street. Or how you can drink ten 40 ounces
in five seconds and not die. You just can't take everything at
face value with a game like this. Another thing you have to overlook
is that, even though you're a hero, the game still encourages you to
play like a criminal anyway. If you're not breaking and
entering, picking locks, and stealing everything you can find,
you're going to have a hard time. It doesn't matter if you're
stealing from rich or poor, your own colleagues or complete
strangers, you need their stuff. At least with hacking into people's email,
you're trying to gather intelligence, but hacking ATM machines so you can
steal $100 is a little less classy. It would be like James Bond
sabotaged a vending machine so he could steal 20 bucks from it. This isn't a good game to overthink,
or at least not the gameplay. But for all its quirks, it does so many
little things to make it seem real. Even simple things, like
breathing animations add a lot. And it may look simplistic now, but this lip-syncing goes a long
way towards helping to immerse me. Or hey, if you shoot a foot soldier
a couple times, guess what they do. They run away! They don't come back either. That's
because they are scared for their life! How many first person shooters do THAT? Things like this add up. Though, I should probably mention that
because this was made on the Unreal Engine which is highly moddable, there have been
some serious mods made for this game-- total conversions actually. I haven't had a chance to play all these, though "The Nameless Mod",
I did give a shot. I didn't get very far, though, because if
you're expecting something like Deus Ex, you should keep looking. It's more like a runaway project
from an online community that's only intended audience is itself. It has a lot of humor that
breaks the fourth wall, isn't that funny and you're
probably not going to get it unless you were part of this community. I think this mod could possibly be
the largest inside joke ever made. At 14 hours of gameplay, it's an
oddity that you wouldn't think exists, but here it is. Additionally, "Deus Ex:
Revision" is the most recent and is intended to be an
overhaul of the original game, to add some more features,
particularly visuals. This one reminds me a little bit
of George Lucas going back and altering the original "Star
Wars" in order to enhance it. Although that's a little unfair because I think this mod respects the
source material more than Lucas did. Some things are better, others
are questionable. Like if you look at your boss's office here. It's looking a lot more posh now, but who would position a luxury office so
everyone has to approach you from the side? The original has a wall separating
things; you're always facing him. That's bad feng shui. Also, look at the beginning here. Let's stop for a minute and
imagine what was happened just before this conversation took place. Did they decide,
"Hey, let's both stand inside "the middle of this information
terminal because it will feel cozier"? This mod really accentuates how much thought was actually put into
the original's level design. A lot of areas start feeling too cluttered and you lose track visually of where
you should be focusing your attention. So not bad, but I would still recommend
anyone new to just play the original first. And while I'm talking
about the Unreal Engine, I have to point out that Deus Ex used
a trick the original "Unreal" did in that, if you get close to a wall,
you can see a secondary texture emerge. So on wood, you can see the grain, on paintings, you can see the
canvas texture, and so on. Now unlike Unreal, which did
this almost everything, Deus Ex only uses this on some textures, but this was so far ahead of
anything else for years. And then when you got close to something,
it wasn't a complete blur fest. Usually. Okay, now I'm skipping huge
aspects of this game, probably more than any other
game I've covered, but I want to keep moving because I
want to circle back around on something. While it's far from perfect and
has a lot of shortcomings, Deus Ex is a great game by
pretty much any measure. Yeah, all-time favorite of mine.
No surprises there. The thing is, I would argue from
a certain light, this is the most significant game ever made and it's for none of the reasons
I've discussed so far. I need to talk more about the
story because this is where I think most of the game industry doesn't
realize what it has with this game, or else can't talk about it fully
because they have to stay more objective. Well, not me; I can say whatever
the hell I want. So here we go. See, the story to Deus Ex exists
on two or three levels. The first level is what I would
call "fun video game story". You're stopping terrorists, fighting
against a malevolent organization, saving the world from a virus, uncovering
the Illuminati, blowing up mechs... this is nothing we haven't seen
in other games all ready. It's not too deep, you're not
meant to take this seriously, it's just to make the game fun. So if you ever hear someone
criticize the story to this game-- which you totally can do-- this is the layer they're talking about. The second level, which some might
say is still part of the first, would be the world story of the game. This is all the secondary stuff
independent of the plot where all these characters are
brought to life. You get to hear about all their thoughts,
fears, motivations and philosophies. The quartermaster here realizes
his organization is corrupt but still wants to save it
because of his personal creed. The Illuminati members see
proactive guidance of mankind as necessity for society to function. Even your boss believes he's being practical and trying to balance the needs
of the organization against political pressures to do things
that aren't in society's interests. The characters in this game have
a lot of depth to them and form a tapestry of views and
beliefs that bring the game to life. This part is extremely well done and
is the reason this game feels so real. Now a few other games have pulled this off but I think a lot of the game industry
has a difficult time writing characters to be as believable as ones in Deus Ex. Very few people feel contrived to me. In any event, this breaks far, FAR away from your typical Hollywood dialog
you see in so many other games. Now the third level I'll get to in a bit. This is the one that I think separates this
game from perhaps every other one made. When I played this game for the
first time, I was enjoying it, but I remember a specific moment
when I became hooked. When you confront the terrorists' leader--
you remember, the guy with no hair?-- listen to some of what he has to say. ["For a hundred years, ["there's been a conspiracy of
plutocrats against ordinary people." ["You have a single fact to back
fact to back that up?" ["Number one: In 1945, corporations
paid 50 percent of federal taxes. ["Now they pay about 5 percent. ["Number two: In 1900, 90 percent
of Americans were self-employed. ["Now it's about two percent." ["So?" ["It's called consolidation. ["Strengthens governments and
corporations, weakens individuals. ["With taxes, this can be done
imperceptibly over time."] I became VERY interested in this
game after hearing that. So yeah, that makes me kind of a nerd getting excited that a game is
talking about tax rates, but that's because I knew what
he was saying was actually true. Now it's a little more
complicated than what he says because it was never a pure 50%,
since there was also a payroll tax, but the point is, you bet
individuals are paying more taxes than corporations are nowadays. I mean, a better measure is the
effective tax rate. This isn't the official tax rate; this is the real tax for
corporations after all the loopholes. Also this isn't the year 2052. That
could affect your numbers, too. Now as for the self-employment thing, I wasn't able to get numbers as
far back as he's quoting, but what I did find shows that, yeah, self-employment is way
down from where it used to be. We have a ton more consolidation now. Now that number is actually going
up right now, but not in a good way. That's due to corporations using
less and less employees and hiring disposable contractors because
then they don't have to pay out as much for benefits, insurance, and so on. So if you do freelance work for what
amounts to less than minimum wage, congratulations, you're self-employed. This all adds up to power moving away from
the individual towards large institutions. Now the terrorist guy claims there's a conspiracy of plutocrats
against ordinary people. He goes on to say it's all the
Rockefellers and alludes to the Illuminati. Well, I don't know about that part but normal people being marginalized
and us entering a plutocracy? Uh, yeah, right again. Now I'll run through this as fast as I
can because I don't want to bore people. See, I'm not currently occupying the
Statue of Liberty with an armed militia so it's harder for me to get an
audience than this guy, but here we go. Besides the stuff he was talking about, there are so many metrics you can
look at that back up what he's saying. How about wages as a percent of
GDP? Yeah, that's been going down. So when you hear the economy is great? Well that's nice; that means
some shareholders making bank, probably not the actual
employees of a company. And hey, surely we're not living in a
plutocracy. I mean, we can vote, right? Well guess what? 91% of the time, whichever candidate has the most
money is the one that wins. So if you're an informed voter and weigh
candidate platforms, that doesn't matter. Ten times out of eleven, the only thing
that matters is how many ads Joe Voter sees and you can buy that. Want to know who's going to win the next
election? Money. That's who's going to win. But you might be saying, "Hey, those
officials can still represent us, right?" Well, no, not really. There's a famous study floating
showing that, over 20 years, almost 1,800 policy outcomes were
analyzed by financial influence, and showed that average citizens have
statistically no influence over policy decisions whereas wealthy individuals and business
interests had a significant amount. Even though politicians are
elected to represent the people, they really only represent
people that pay them the most. That might be why over half of
Congress is composed of millionaires. Now I'm focusing mainly on the USA, but stuff like this is manifesting
itself globally in different ways. Like hey, do you know it's been deduced
by analyzing bank data around the world that there's at least $21 trillion
in secret offshore bank accounts that aren't subject to tax? Yeah, I didn't say that number
wrong. It's $21 TRILLION. And that's showing us the most
conservative estimate. It could be $31 trillion, and that was
back in 2012. So it's probably higher now. And don't get this mixed up with a
completely different study in 2015 showing US corporations as holding $2.1
trillion in offshore banks to avoid taxes. That's small time compared to
what's out there. So, uh, yeah, back to Deus Ex. Seeing this in a game kind of blew my mind--
not because I've never heard this stuff, but I had never seen this in a mainstream
game presented with actual facts. You almost never see this stuff on
the news, or if it's in popular media, it's been simplified or distorted to the point
where it might as well be a kids' cartoon. Meanwhile, here's Deus Ex just slipping
it in the middle of a really great game and subtly showing how some of this works. There are reasons you see homeless
after homeless after homeless person. This is where a plutocracy takes us. Now unlike Deus Ex, I don't think
our current plutocracy transition is the result of an Illuminati conspiracy. I think it's more that ruthless
rich people tend to think alike and what we're seeing is a concerted
effort of many powerful individuals independently manipulating the
system to achieve their ends. So it's not a secret order with rituals
and shit--that would be kind of cool. No, it's more like a ruling class. See, a rich person with an agenda pays
lobbyists to influence politicians to get laws passed that further his agenda. That politician gets re-elected because
he has the money and cycle continues. Now unlike Deus Ex, that agenda
isn't to take over the world. ...at least, I don't think... Instead, it's usually some
flavor of changing laws so that businesses said person owns or is
invested in become even more profitable, at the expense of pretty much anything else. That's the important part; that's
what leads to every other problems. And by "rich", I'm talking Scrooge
McDuck or Richie Rich... uh... rich. If you're not on a first name
basis with multiple representatives on the national level you're not
even on this chart. And meanwhile, besides fueling politicians,
said rich person may simultaneously fund media organizations or think tanks
to promote narratives or even propaganda to try and get the rest of the
public thinking the way they do or at least suppress or obfuscate the scent. Hey, to add to No Hair's fact list here, in 1983, 90% of American media was
owned by 50 different companies. Today, the same 90% is controlled by six. So that means, if there's any agenda that
the people running them happen to agree on, they can direct the attention of
the whole country towards that. Or, more importantly, AWAY from
something they don't want to discussed. With that kind of influence, you
can affect the flow of history. Deus Ex! [piano] Now I know this is getting long
but the game goes a step further. When I first played this game, I
thought it was great, but I remember thinking so many references
to terrorism seemed a little over the top and almost preachy to the point
of detracting from the game. The Statue of Liberty has been
bombed by terrorists. There are frequent news
bulletins on terrorism. You work for an anti-terrorism agency. Terrorism, all the time. And then 9/11 happened. It's important to remember this
game was made BEFORE 9/11. Okay, for anyone younger in the
audience, I need to explain something. Hearing news commentators,
politicians, and the media in general talk about terrorism ALL THE TIME didn't
used to be normal, at least in the US. Prior to 9/11, the average
person heard about terrorists more from Arnold Schwarzenegger movies
than they did from the mainstream media. I mean they would still cover events, but it wasn't like clockwork multiple
times a week, if not every day. But since 9/11, it hasn't stopped. All the terrorism dialog in Deus Ex
doesn't even feel like an exaggeration now. The game was prophetic. I mean, everybody likes to point out that if you look at the New York City skyline
in the game, the two towers aren't there. Now this is just a coincidence; the real reason is because of a
texture size engine limitation but man, that sure goes a ways
towards future-proofing this thing. But back to terrorism. The way we talk about terrorism now, you'd
think it's the largest problem on Earth. Now I have to be careful what I say
here because this is the Internet, so let me be clear: Terrorism is a problem and should be fought. But hear me out. It's impossible to get an exact number, but we currently spend approximately
$100 billion a year combating terrorism. But any given year, more people die from
being hit by lightning than from terrorism. Most years, in the US, you're more
likely to die from bee stings. However, the thing with security
is, you don't see what you prevent. So you might think $100 billion
a year is reasonable. After all, almost 3,000 died from 9/11. But here's the thing: There's public evidence that the CIA
knew an attack from al Qaeda was imminent as early as Spring of 2001. They repeatedly tried to warn the Bush
administration an attack was coming so that they would put the
government on high alert. And during that time, there WERE some
al Qaeda contacts that slipped through that likely wouldn't have if we had
been on high alert like they advised. The Bush administration however did
not take these threats seriously. Now this is speculation, so we
can never know for certain, but there is hard evidence showing that,
if someone besides Bush was president, or if he simply took the CIA seriously, the 9/11 attacks might never have happened. Let that sink in for a minute. It's almost as if we're living
in an alternate bad timeline. Although, we did dodge the Cuban Missile
Crisis. That would've been worse. Man, I try to avoid politics in these
videos, but I can't for Deus Ex. It's just too relevant. ["In a former life, I was a mule dragging a
stone plow up a hill in northern Thailand."] The point of all this is it
wasn't a lack of resources that led to the 9/11 attacks. But none of that mattered. After 9/11, we ushered in the Patriot Act, UNATC--I mean Homeland Security,
the TSA, we invaded Iraq, we added counterterrorist
funding for local police, and the media has not stopped
talking about it since. We also lost some constitutional
rights in the process, are spending $100 billion a year on this, and it's not clear we're any safer
than before all this happened. In Deus Ex, UNATCO is formed after
the Statue of Liberty is bombed. Just like the two towers, this
is super-symbolic and mobilizes Congress to set up a
new agency to tackle the problem. But why are we setting up all these new
agencies and spending $100 billion a year when all we needed to do was to
let the CIA do its damned job? Because there's $100 billion a
year to be made on this stuff! Back to this chart, guess who
some of these rich people are. Defense contractors! Like Tony
Stark, except without the morality. This is what's known as the
"military-industrial complex". Essentially, if we're not at war
with somebody somewhere, then they're losing money and
they can't have that. So this is all the same thing as before,
except this one involves the military. So terrorism is our new global
enemy and it needs to stay that way so that Obadiah here can keep
getting a slice of that $100 billion. And not just him. Everyone who works at
Stark Industries or is connected to it. It's self-perpetuating. And as a bonus, the more time goes on
and you start hollowing out society, you might actually see some homegrown
terrorists trying to fight the system. Like the NSF in Deus Ex. And that in turn increases the demand
for more of a counterterrorist economy. It just keeps going. I'm normally not much a
conspiracy theory person, but if there's tons of evidence
for something happening, and there's a whole lot of money to be
made by NOT calling attention to it, then yeah, I get suspicious. Some of you may know that
Eisenhower in his farewell speech explicitly warned about the
military-industrial complex and considered it a greatest
threat to our democracy. ["We must guard against the
acquisition of unwarranted influence, ["whether sought or unsought, by
the military-industrial complex. ["The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist. ["We must never let the weight
of this combination ["endanger our liberties or
democratic processes."] But hey, he was only President
of the United States and Supreme Allied Commander during
World War II. What did he know? This is how the world works, guys. And that's the third layer of
the story of Deus Ex. It's more than a game. It's illustrating not only real world issues but arguably a couple of the biggest ones that are shaping everything
about our civilization and giving us a glimpse of how it
works and where it's taking us. I haven't seen any other game
come close to this. Oh sure, there have been other games with
rich first-person shooter and RPG mechanics or a tapestry of characters that
really flesh out the world, or extremely layered and
intricate plots and conspiracies. But all that is only what makes
this a great GAME. Some of the issues explored in
Deus Ex are RIGHT NOW indirectly affecting BILLIONS of people. We're seeing history being made
and Deus Ex sees it also. So for that, I give this the
Transcendence award. It's common for people to not
take games seriously because they're mostly just entertainment. Well if you read between the lines, Deus Ex gives you a better education
for what's happening to our world and what we should be concerned
about than the damned NEWS! And it's packaged in a highly
entertaining game so it can reach people it might
not normally otherwise. How's that for game relevance? ["Yes. Do exactly that. Keep me informed."] I mostly play games for escapism, so if
one is going to rip me back to reality, I appreciate it being
as awesome as this one. And this is sort of a repeat,
but I want it anyway: Some of this is real. See? "Real Conspiracies".
They're not kidding. Now of course, most of this isn't real. The vast majority of it is still
just fun video game filler, but what it does hit on is so poignant and in the land of the blind,
the man with one eye is king. Well, Deus Ex has that one eye open. So to wrap this up, let's talk
about the ending. We get THREE endings and they're ALL LAME! According to online polling, the
game takes 24-37 hours to finish and we get about two one-minute
game cutscenes for each and about two minutes for the
Illuminati ending. They're mostly just standing
around talking saying, "Gee, it sure is good we picked
the ending we did." Except for the Tracer Tong ending,
which has HARD CORE ACTION. Oh yeah. These endings suck. I'll talk more about them in the next
episode so stay tuned for the sequel. Okay, I guess I'll just end the episode with as much effort as this game
put into its ending. Deus Ex! [music] [clang] ["I'll be okay. Thanks."]
He's rough on the ending. I felt the same way the first time I played it. It seemed anticlimactic, just a multiple choice. When all you had to do was pick between three options, it trivialised all of them. You didn't earn the ending by doing anything different during your play-through. I saved and reloaded, picking all three in turn, just to see what happened.
The second time I played through Deus Ex, I realised I was having a hard time choosing. Which ending did I actually want? Anarchy, conspiracy, autocracy? There was no 'right' option. What was the best outcome? Was I even fit to choose? Factoring in what I'd seen and learned while playing the game, how were these three outcomes likely to play out? Who did I want left in charge? How did I want to change the world?
That's when I realised what I really liked about the ending. It's not a reward that you earn. This isn't a game with a "good ending" unlocked by saving all the innocents or finding the secrets. It's not even a conclusion to the character's journey, a happily ever after where the great evil has been vanquished and now it's time to relax (eg. Ocarina of Time, everyone dancing at Lonlon Ranch).
It's an ending that asks you to think back over the experience you've just gone through and decide how you feel about everything you've seen and learned. Given this glimpse into the future, what is best for the world? There's no good/evil, kind/asshole dichotomy either. That would be too easy.
It fits with Deus Ex being a game that tried to show its audience some of the hidden influences on the real world, and portray how they might affect the future (accurately, as it turned out). As this video spent its last 15-20 minutes analysing and detailing, it was more than a game, it was social and political commentary. It didn't just preach, it asked, and invited you to answer.
[removed]
I'm sure most of us have seen Deus Ex discussion before, but Ross is true to his word when he says he has things to talk about in the game that usually just isn't mentioned. Namely that the conspiracies in Deus Ex are shockingly close to our present day reality.
I'm honestly glad that he got really political towards the end of this video. He's right when he said that 100 other game reviewers have talked about the other aspects of this game, and to really drive home why the message of Deus Ex is so relevant today makes you appreciate what the developers were trying to say. That's actually why I like the new Deus Ex less; while there are irl parallels between what happens there and our world, the analogies are taken so far into the fantastical/sci-fi that it almost becomes cartoonish. I'm not saying that the stories are bad, but while the broad strokes are a reflection of our world, it breaks apart at the details.
I can't wait for part 2.
First Ross almost got me to join a cult, and now I think I'm on a list somewhere, quality bloody discussion as always.
Deus Ex 1 is one of my favourite games. Yes, that is very cliche, but it has that sheer "draw in factor" that very few games have. When I play RPG games with a lot of text, I play like I have ADD, and skip most of them. Not Deus Ex. I went out of my way to find every piece of newspaper, pad, text, etc. and read all of them, savoring each word. PC Gamer summed it up quite nicely; "You just want to find out what the hell is going on". You read read all the text here: https://nuwen.net/dx.html
Invisible War was something I couldn't finish. So when DX:HR came out, I was looking forward to it, but I always knew it wouldn't be a true Deus Ex, and it's not really, it's a FPS game with RPG mechanics. The original was a true RPG in a first person camera. I did enjoy HR a lot though, because of the incredible lore and world building.
I hope MD is great.
edit: To add more to the discussion, DX:HR brought Deus Ex into the "mainstream", and is considered to be a success. Does this mean all future Deus Ex games will be prequels to the original Deus Ex? If you do not know, the original Deus Ex takes years after Human Revolution, and cybernetics which is a large part of society (and the game itself) in the HR universe is all but pretty much dead, in favor of nano-augments. I can't see a developer creating a Deus Ex game that takes place after the original, since cybernetics and body modifications are such an integral part of the HR series. Or am I too cynical?
This is a great breakdown of the game and why it is to this day important. His political rant about corporate vs private tax, terrorism and the industrial complex is spot on.
I hope in part 2 he also goes into depth a bit about the issues with mass surveillance and how it ties to social networks. I know the encounter with Morpheus was only a minor detail in the game (and easily missed), but the topics discussed in that bit are another great example of how the writers of DX just nailed their predictions of the near future.
Jesus fuck on a shit. Someone needs to put Warren Spector and Hideo Kojima in a room together so they can tell us what will happen 20 years from now.
That end bit where he tied it to current politics and such was a long walk but I really enjoyed it when it was all tied together. I couldn't get into it last time I tried but think I need to give it another shot soon.