‘Deus Ex’ Did Good Work, and I Wish It Could Do More

For as many long-running franchises were born during the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 era—your Assassin’s Creeds and Borderlandsto name a few—some old series tried making a return. Among those was God ex, a series of cyberpunk role-playing games which just turned 20 years old and had an unfortunately short-lived return with a duology that under better circumstances, would’ve been a trilogy.

The original game hailed from Ion Storm on June 23, 2000 for PC and eventually PlayStation 2. At the time, its big claim to fame was being the directorial debut of Warren Spector, a producer on System Shock and the Ultima series, and having a mix of role-playing, shooter, and stealth elements. Considered one of the best games of all time and a key example of the immersive sim genre, wherein players have open-ended (and often emergent) solutions to problems crafted by the developers. While Ion Storm helmed the sequel Invisible War, the franchise eventually wound up in the hands of Eidos Montréal, who made its debut with a third Deus after previous attempts at Ion had failed before its closure in 2005.

And thus came 2011’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a prequel set decades before the first two games and which focused on mechanical augmentations rather than the nanotech found in its predecessors. As the game opens, augmented humans have become upper class owing to their newfound abilities while regular humans too poor or distrustful to be similarly augmented are lower on the totem pole. Amidst this divide, it falls to the newly augmented Adam Jensen to uncover a conspiracy and investigate the attack on his employer, biotech corporation Sarif Industries.

Human Revolution released in a year filled with heavy hitters from well-established franchises like Legend of Zelda and Uncharted. Other than it being a revival, what helped it stand out was how different it looked and carried itself. At a time when sci-fi games were looking at Star Trek or Halo for inspiration, the developers set out to put their own spin on cyberpunk instead of just replicating Blade Runner. That ambition certainly comes through in its visuals, which lean more toward the Renaissance than Japanese or Chinese culture that typically influences stories within the genre. Once players got their hands on it and experienced its mix of first-person stealth and action, the reception and sales were so strong, it seemed inevitable there’d be a sequel after Eidos finished the game’s DLC and Director’s Cut re-release that featured (among other things) much better boss fights.

That followup came with 2016’s Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, in which Adam and his task force investigate a train bombing in Prague and its potential connections to the Illuminati. Following the previous game’s chaotic event wherein Augmented people forcibly went insane (later dubbed the Aug Incident), they’ve lost their rights and become forced into ghettos. Mankind is an angrier game than its predecessor, with everyone resenting some person or organization to some extent, and while players choose Adam’s responses and actions, he generally keeps a level head throughout. Some have come around on him in the years since, but his unshakeable demeanor can make him come off more wooden and flat than the writers intended. He’s at his most fun in conversational boss fights, or when Prague cops try to hassle him only to discover he’s way above them on the law enforcement hierarchy.

All this anger and unease makes itself known throughout Mankind’s story mode. Golem City, a ghetto Adam skulks through in the game’s first act, is just full of despair as Augs try to make a life out of a bad situation. Cops are casually everywhere throughout Prague in the first two acts, and by act three, martial law has been enacted. When they’re not shooting Adam on sight, they’re rounding up anyone out after curfew or imprisoning suspected dissidents. Subtle, Mankind was not, and its writing earned plenty of criticism. Some found its topics and themes undeveloped, others thought the game already stepped in it with its pre-release controversy, which included the term “mechanical apartheid” and promotional art featuring the “Augs Lives Matter” slogan the developers insisted predated the “Black Lives Matter” slogan that began in 2013. Its biggest fault, though, is that it’s a middle chapter for a final entry that’ll likely never come.

After Mankind, Eidos Montréal moved on to Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy and co-developed Marvel’s Avengers. Embracer bought it and other parts of Square Enix Europe in 2022, and months later, reports alleged a third Adam-led entry was in the earliest stages of development. Embracer later killed the project and laid off staff working on it, and Eidos Montréal has since become a support developer for the upcoming Grounded 2 and Fable. This past January, Human and Mankind writer Mark Cecere revealed the team intended to have Adam’s actions unintentionally create the world of the original God ex, thus tying the two sagas together. At the moment, that’s all we know about how the studio’s plans for both Adam and the franchise at large, leaving things forever trapped in a cliffhanger.

Human Revolution and Mankind Divided were my introduction to God ex, and as such, I’ll always have a soft spot for them: they’re products of their time, but their atmosphere and immersion remain timeless. Eidos Montréal made a pair of games that were very good at what they did, and while the franchise’s DNA can be found in games like Dishonored and Cyberpunk 2077, it’s disappointing the studio won’t get to close out or expand the story on their terms. On the bright side, the original God ex recently came to PlayStation+, and the series goes on sale often, so it’ll always be there for old heads to replay and love, and for newcomers to see what it has to offer.

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