Deus Ex 3 Announced

Gamasutra has the news that Eidos is already hard at work on a Deus Ex 3 . The company announced this project along with a brand-new studio in Montreal, which will be developing the title. "According to [General Manager Stéphane D'Astous], Eidos Montreal currently has two groups -- a Q&A group that is responsible for testing all of the developer's games from anywhere in the world, and an in-house development team that D'Astous says has just passed proof of concept for Deus Ex 3. 'This game was very highly rated at its release in 2000, and we have this great huge mandate to do the third one, and everybody is very excited,' added D'Astous"

Nope no Spector

[OneMemeMofo]

An article over on bit-tech.net talks about how Warren Spector has no ties to this one. So I wouldn't really expect a return to the exceptionally immersive world of the first Deus Ex. I hope they do take into consideration how badly the second one was rated and sold compared to the first one. However I don't have very high hopes for it. bit-tech.net story: http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/07/24/warren_spector_not_bothered_about_deus_ex_3/1/ [bit-tech.net]

Re:The Missing Moment

[Elemenope]

*Spoiler alert* for those precious few of you still haven't played these two games.

DX1 had several of those "oh shit, I'm on the wrong side" moral moments (NSF are fighting the good fight?!, the Red Arrow are merely duped pawns?!, Tong wants me to end civilization as we know it?! Sonofabitch!!), but one thing I didn't appreciate about DX1 was that besides recognizing those moments, there are precious few choices that *matter* that follow from them (such as saving your brother in the Hotel escape). The other thing I didn't like about DX1 was that the sides, once they are clear to you, are fairly cleanly cut 'good guy'/'bad guy', and the good guys were not willing to go as far as the bad guys at achieving their ends.

For all its ways in which DX:IW fell short, its moral universe was more realistically grey, and the choices were among parties that were *all* fairly ruthless and were asking for your allegiance not on the basis of warm cuddlies, but actually making a philosophical or ideological appeal. And you were free to choose between the radical direct democracy managed by the AI, the syncretist fuzzy-wuzzy religionists who were secretly partnered with the radical capitalists, the Luddites (who of all the factions are played the least sympathetically, if only to be fair, because the entire world around your character is one giant argument in their favor), or the fucking Borg.

I also liked the moment in DX:IW where you catch up to Tong to here him regret destroying civilization as we knew it. It was a cute moral note to the point that everything didn't turn out as neatly as the characters at the end of DX1 described it would (if you took their respective sides).

DX1 had fantastic gameplay, its characterizations were richer, and of course it was longer and more absorbing, and for those bits it will remain a head above its sequel. I just don't think that the charge of a lack of moral immediacy and ambiguity can be rightly lodged against DX:IW.