Sunday, September 25, 2011

A look at the original Deus Ex Part 1



Hey everyone. Now I know I promised you all that I would make a long blog post about the awesomeness as that is the original Deus Ex and how it helped changed game narration forever. However, because of a lot of projects that I have planned for me thanks to college I’ve decided to split these into parts.
As such, if you haven’t played the original Deus Ex and are planning too you might not want to read any of these posts are they will contain spoilers.
The following topics will be discussed:
1.       Setting
2.       The Overall plot and it’s pacing
3.       The Themes
4.       The Interaction between storytelling and gameplay
5.       Interaction
So let’s start off with analyzing the original Deus Ex with the first and foremost, the setting.
This cyber-punk dystoian setting takes place in the future around the 2050’s. The world has gone through radical changes such as corporations having more power then most governments and technology adapting to higher standings then they are today with the most powerful and popular ones being Augmentation.
Unlike the Human Revolution’s machine augmentations, there is a new form of augmentation known as Nano-Augmentation which uses nanotechnology. However, while this is a painless process unlike machine augmentation there are only a select few that have the DNA code to survive it.
If you also thought that the conflicts between augmenters and non-augmenters were bad in Human Revolution, then don’t be surprised to see it’s not improved at all. Rich and poor are even further apart, morality is still an issue, and terrorist groups still exist for trying to keep humanity “Pure.”
So far it just sounds like Human Revolution with not many changes.
That is until a huge historical event happens that changes the face of the world known as “The Gray Death”. A lethal pandemic is spreading across the world killing millions and there is no cure. It’s like Darrow’s signal that causes all augmented people to become insane only this virus affects people with a predisposition for nanotechnology. The nanovirus enters the body’s cells and the body rejects them as well as the cells they latched on too, killing the person.
The only thing can help stop it is a vaccine known as Ambrosia, made by the company VersaLife, except that this vaccine must be taken frequently and is in short supply. As such it’s only distributed to government officials, military personnel, scientists, and the rich. Because of this, the lesser classes begin to revolt as riots and terrorist organizations fighting for the common people spread worldwide.
In other words, the world is really messed up.
It’s like Human Revolutions problems taken to the tenth power and beyond and as you play the game you’ll see just how much the impact of the Grey Death has had on humanity. There is no trust among people, lower social classes suffer, and radical beliefs have spread throughout the world with everyone pointing figures at everyone.
This is the world you are forced to play in as J.C. Jenson, the main protagonist and it’s your actions that will reflect in this world and the future it will take.
What’s great about this world is that I always see this as the world for another great dystopian setting, Blade Runner. In both movies, technology has pretty much destroyed all of original nature and the society that lives around it are in a struggle between social order and chaos.
Human population is increasing, crime has gotten worse, technology is being mishandled, and overall humanity struggles to find its path in a dark future. It makes you question and wonder if this is to be our future. Technology is one of the most important aspects to everyday life now in our present day and it’s increasing faster each year. We have communication that can travel at the speed of light, we have computers that are as small as our hand that we can carry, we got medicines that can cure sickness that used to plague humanity for ages, and more. Living is easier because technology has improved everything.
However, like anything humanity creates it also can backfire at it. Technology is also used to hurt people in such cases as hacking, war, and even terrorism. Technology has also helped make us greedy, lazy, and in some cases non-social with others.  It makes you wonder if technology is going too fast for humans to fully use without abusing it and if we’re all going to head into a technological hell hole where our standings on society are fully focused on what technology we have.
There are also those who can’t afford technology or don’t have the means to use it. This gap is becoming more and more divided each day as those with just a single IPhone may seem like a normal people in places such as the US, but if you have something like that your already richer than 75 percent of the world.
And while technology also helps us living longer it also affects the population, but not in the way you might think. A study showed that societies who have more technology accessible to them have shorter population growth then other nations who don’t . The reason why is that people who have children want them to live and grow, but in places like Africa or Indonesia which suffers from poverty, disease, and constant war the chances of your child living are going to go down. As such people in these countries have as much children as possible so that their bloodlines can continue because of the none safe environment. If they were to have more technology accessable to them, they could suvive better and the growth would go down.
But not everyone can get it, as in Deus Ex that not all of technology can just be spread out. It has to be given at a certain time. The problem is that it’s not fast enough for some people and they argue and rebel thinking that the ones in control of this technology are just using it for themselves.
When you think about the world of Deus Ex is a possible future for humanity and it’s not one that we want. However, the game shows it’s believe that technology is the only way to save ourselves from total destruction while there are others who say that technology must be stopped total.
Relate that to our world today. Should technology be slowed down or stopped together? Should technology continue going and we use it to find a solution to the problem? The questions related in the game are very well related to real life. If a game can make you question the world you live in, then it’s done something well made. It’s made you ponder and imagine.
Well, that’s a good start. Hopefully, I’ll have my full Deus Ex Human Revolution review up next week as long as the next part of this blog series.
We are Gamers and we are Legion.
Later

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