Taking advantage of the sluggishness of black helicopters, “gambling” is in a hurry to tell who ordered to cut out of Deus Ex all the drawings of the White House, how Warren Spapor did not give a capricious team to be incredibly talented people and why a project, where you are declared “you are a moron!", Received more than forty sockets" Game of the Year ".

You already know from our retro -resistance that the idea of ​​Deus Ex belongs to Warren Spector and Harvey Smith, but we will begin a story with the story about John Romero.

During work on Quake V ID Software The conflict has risen. A kind of debate of physicists and lyrics. John Karmak insisted that the game is most important in the game with a powerful graphic engine, and the rest is secondary. John Romero, on the contrary, claimed that the victory for the verified design of levels. At the end of 1995, he put an ultimatum: either the company creates two independent departments (one – designer, the other – technological), or he resigned. Departments created, but it did not solve the problems. In January 1996, Romero contacted his old friend by ID Software Tom Hall, who at that moment worked in 3D Realms , and invited him to establish an independent studio Dream Design.

In June 1996, shortly before Quake, Romero went on the offensive. He suggested to the leaders 7th Level , Small company from Dallas, Todd Porter and Jerry O’Flageti, to be part of the founders of Dream Design. In August, when Quake was already sent to print, John began negotiations with the president of the publishing house GT Interactive Ron Cesyimovits – and finally left the walls of ID Software, spite of the karmak on every corner of the sober, which fell to the ID to the ID without turning his hands. And although it was not possible to agree on financing from the first call (Ron refused), Romero did not stop it.

The new company was registered on November 15, 1996 – and by that time it was no longer called Dream Design, but Ion Storm. According to the original Romero business plan, the developers allocated $ 9 million, and in return they created three games in a year. Another $ 4 million was reserved for licensing the Quake engine (one for all three projects), renting offices and buying equipment. The total turned out $ 13 million.

Cunning John sent his business plan to all leading publishers. The auction began. The most tempting offer was made by the British company Eidos Interactive – $ 22 million for everything about everything and as much as 40% of deductions from future sales. Truly fabulous conditions! In January 1997, Ion Storm signed a contract for the development of six games: real -time strategies Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3 , shouter Daikatana , role -playing game Anachronox , a mixture of adventure with a real -time strategy Doppelganger And two more secret projects (neither https://golden-mister-casino.co.uk/ they nor Doppelganger have come out). There was no question about deus ex.

An offer that cannot be abandoned

At first, Ion Storm bathed in publishing money and basked in the rays of glory. Instead of engaging in the management of the company and level design, John Romero spent time on self -promotion in non -core press. Time, Newsweek and Rolling Stone magazines published big articles about a young successful developer: “John Romero must be a happy person. The GQ magazine calls him Quentin Tarantino from the video game, and he travels to Ferrari and the light yellow of the Hamvy all-terrain vehicle, let his hair are long to the shoulders ".

Ion Storm entered the market with the Slogan "ISN’T Just Playing Around" that it can freely translate into Russian as "they are not a fool here" or as "do not knit there are brooms". In all interviews, the developers tirelessly repeated the beloved motto of Romero: "Design is the law". What was only an advertising poster, where on a bright red background there was an inscription “John Romero’s About to Make You His Bitch”-“John Romero is going to make you his bitch”! And below, between the Eidos Interactive and Ion Storm logo, it loomed: “Suck it Down” – “Swell”. And, of course, Romero literally funded by ideas – but, as the story showed, the most successful of them was the idea to open an additional department of Ion Storm in Austin.

In mid -1997, Romero invited Warren Spector to lead the Austin Ion Storm and create a completely independent project in its walls. No financing problems, complete freedom of creativity – it was an offer that cannot be abandoned.

“I was a great supporter of“ immersing simulation ”in games, as in Ultima Underworld , For example, says the spector. – I wanted to push the boundaries of virtual worlds even stronger. Then I have been thinking about one game for several years, but I realized that neither in Origin Systems , nor in Looking Glass Studios I can't raise one. And Romero came and said: “Come on, make the game of your dreams. No restrictions ". It took me approximately two nanoseconds to say yes.

First into battle, and then we'll see

The first thoughts about Deus Ex appeared in the spector back in 1994, when he worked as a producer System Shock , But after the release, he cooled to Cyberpan and became interested in the study of various theories of the world conspiracy – many of which were useful when creating Deus Ex.

The first six months took the period. Most developers knew Warren perfectly: some came to him from Origin Systems, others from Loking Glass. “People often make a mistake, attributing all the glory to one person, in this case – to me,” says the spector. – Work on Deus Ex was exhausting, intense, any of us gave this game a part of himself. It is shameful to underestimate the contribution of each team member "".

The official announcement took place at the exhibition E3 1998, but at that time Ion Storm Austin could not boast of either screenshots or videos. There was not even a finally approved design document-and I had to get off with reasoning that Deus Ex an explosive mixture of James Bond and the intrigues of “secret materials” with amendments to the futuristic environment.

Around there are only conspiracies

“The millennium was approaching, and the theories of conspiracy were imagining everyone everywhere,” says the spector. – People seriously believed that it seemed to me complete nonsense. And I thought: what would happen if someone who sees the world in black and white tones fell into a reality in which all conspiracy theories were embodied? Into a world where even gray has several shades? I want to believe the townsfolk that someone controls what is happening, that all the events surrounding them are not random. Conspiracy theories give the people reassurance, because everything is better when at least someone has at least anyone on the bridge at the helm. I myself am in such fiction, of course, I do not believe, but I find it infinitely interesting. The guys and I excavated several dashing stories while we wrote the DEUS EX design document. You know, such things are going on at Denver Airport! Kidnapping of children, aliens, Masonic lodge, George Bush and Queen of Great Britain – in a word, you will not believe!"

The finished design document totaled three hundred pages. According to Warren, the original plot was a crazy long joke lasting 25 missions. The player needed to seize power during a state of emergency, to form a shadow government … More and more digging into history, the spector began to study the theories of the conspiracy surrounding the President Eisenhower, conducted his own investigations – up to the fact that he took out through a familiar copy of original documents. And she mined, although she could be fired for it.

For fun, the developers launched the site Unatco.Com , Allegedly the official resource of the Unatco gaming organization, which is almost no different from faceless government sites. One of the pages of this resource was mentioned by several real state institutions – so many people crossed the links that the servers fell from the stateites, and one of the government offices even tried to set her lawyer on Ion Storm Austin.

Bibliography of Cyberpan

Having accumulated a lot of interesting material, the spector and the team unexpectedly realized that all this was cool and … implausible. The garlands of the conspiratorial theories had to be hung on something, and the Christmas tree was put for them to collect one talented young scriptwriter-Sheldon Pakotti.

“Programmers who know how to write texts is a rarity,” the spector reports. – Authors who know how to program are still a rarity. Sheldon is two in one. In the era of cars, there are not many people who can talk about philosophy, nanotechnology, terrorism policy, dangers to life … "

And Sheldon spoke and spoke. In Deus Ex the player's eyes, a huge number of records come across: various messages, instructions, postal correspondence made from hacked computers and – real literary works. The breaks of the texts written by Pakotti himself seemed hopelessly little, and the screenwriter sat down the game by excerpts from his favorite books. DEUS EX has the “last and first people” of Olaf Stapledon, the “diamond eyelid” of Nila Stefenson, the “man who was Thursday” by Gilbert Kit Chesterton, the “common sense” of Thomas Pine, as well as several Aizimov’s novels from the “foundation” cycle. There was a place for classical works: the ancient Greek myth about Ikar and Grandfather, the treatise "The Art of the War" Sun Zi and "Richard III" William Shakespeare.

The story of one family

DEUS EX has an unusually long backstory – and for nothing. “I really wanted the hero to have a family, the real one, the one for which the player was worried,” the spector explains. -After all, saving your own brother is not for you to fight for some pixel bunch. I hope that as the players went through the question: what does it mean to be a person? Where the line, having crossed which you become someone else?"

It is still not clear where the name of the protagonist came from: the developers, telling about the formation of the secret agent Jace, contradict each other. So, the leading designer Harvey Smith says that in one of the first drafts they called Jaceh a descendant of Jesus Christ, hence the name (JC – the first letters of the words Jesus Christ). Warren Spector, on the contrary, claims that there was nothing like that, just initially he wanted to give the player the opportunity to choose the floor of the protagonist, and the name Jace was suitable for both a man and a woman.

But it is known for certain where the name of the game came from. The unusual phrase “Deus Ex” is the derivative of the Latin “Deus Ex Machina”, “God from the Machine”. In ancient theaters, these words were called an unexpected interchange with the involvement of a character that had not previously participated in the play: with the help of cunning mechanisms from under the ceiling of the theater, the deity was descended onto the stage and a wave of hand solved all the problems of the heroes. The spector specifically removed the last word from the name, “Machina”, so that the players break their heads over what the story ends with and whether it is about the opposing factions that seek to become God -like, or about unexpected turns in the plot.

Freedom of choice

With every day of Deus EX development, it has become more and more non -linear. “I was very careful that the players would not understand our game,” the spector shares. – I was afraid that they would compare our combat system with the combat system Half-Life , Our role elements with branded moves from RPG BioWare , silent ways of passing missions with discoveries Thief: The Dark Project And in the end, all the components will consider trivial and useless. However, I knew – it should be understood that at any stage of the game you can act as you want, they will forgive all the shortcomings. It was then that I realized that even those people who would never play a project created by hardcore for hardcores would like a realistic environment and freedom of choice. But the casket simply opened: several tasks were set before Jace, each of which could be solved in different ways, and the further development of the plot was determined by the non-indicating designer’s point, but the player’s free choice.

It was not easy to work on such a freedom -loving game. “At some point, we simply divided,” Harvi Smith sighs. – It turned out three groups, each of which wanted to create its own game. Deus Ex was born in conflict fire ". “It was,” the spector confirms. – Of course, I was engaged in a lot there, but, it is on my heart, I will say: I always felt that the most important thing that I did for Deus Ex, – this did not give a capricious team to be incredibly talented people to kill each other ".

The ending of the game eventually turned out to be three. “It would be stupid to reduce the whole plot to one, predetermined denouement,” says Warren. -Well, what is it: the whole game you make a choice, solve problems, form your unique gameplay style, and here-rr-r time! – It's over? No, we had different endings, and what the world Deus EX will become, the player chose himself ".

Powerful move

The engine added oil into the fire and the engine Unreal Engine , which, as it turned out, was not at all for the game like Deus Ex. Programmers Epic Megagames They hid him under a swift gameplay: they killed all opponents – ran on. And Warren needed so that in the frame there were several complicated animated characters at once, and the team endlessly fought over the optimization of the engine. By the way, it was the leading programmer Chris Norden that suggested Warren to change musical tracks depending on what was happening on the screen. “At first we wanted to use the Embipant Electronic compositions in Deus Ex Embient – you know, such timbre, without clear rhythm, very atmospheric. But then Alex Brandon and his colleagues from Straylight Productions wrote for us several amazing tracks, a little more swift and melodic than we planned. We began to tie music for the levels – and the game literally came to life. ".

The most of the Deus Ex artificial intelligence programmer Scott Martin, who had to turn the blanks collected from the training grounds, into realistic likenesses of living people, was tormented with the most, to make the opponents look for shelters, did not rush from side to side, do not run in the scary in the fright. the form of a combat helicopter and t.D.

“The artificial intelligence of Deus Ex as if threw us a glove, because our world is not just a world of enemies and friends. The behavior of allies and opponents depends there on the player’s actions, and this one hundred times complicates the work. There is, for example, such a moment: the player meets his brother. He can smile at you friendly, or he can declare from the threshold: “You are a moron!" – if many people were killed in the previous mission. Everyone was just blotch when they understood that the game reacts to their actions. It was a powerful move, I tell you, ”Harvi Smith shines.

For a long time, all scenes were shown with the view “from the eyes”, and only after long disputes the leading artist Jay Lee persuaded the spector to change the position of the camera to a third -person. “Jay Lee set the quality bar for all artists. He never complained about anything. In an inactive team of hot heads, which I included, it was akin to glue, which did not allow everything to fall apart into small parts, the spector admits. – Unfortunately, changing the first -person view to the third was the only way to properly submit dialogs, although I do not like all this kinematographic nonsense. Works – and okay. I hate videos. Every time someone again lets drool to another beautiful cartoon, I want to shout loudly: “Yes, this has nothing to do with gameplay! You have to play, not hypnotize the screen!"

Missing

Days fled one after another. Before the release planned at the beginning of 2000, there was less and less time, and the spector understood that he would not be in time for the appointed time.

Everything was in order with level design, but in the script due to constant changes and innovations, huge holes gaped. The developers asked the publisher for six additional months to debugged – and began to shred and patch up the game. There were not enough cards, texts. Some key characters appeared in the plot a couple of times at the very beginning – and then appeared only at the end. “It's good that they gave us these six months,” Sheldon Pakotti smiles. – We put everything in order there ".

At what price this "order" was given! The developers had to cut out several large episodes from the game-the lunar base, the space station, the underground laboratory, which was legended by the El Indio Guerrero area on the US border with Mexico and even a visit to Russia. But the most offensive thing is that the scene in the White House did not get into the final version.

“There were rumors,” says the spector, “that we deleted the White House because it was too similar to the real. Well, yes, we discovered some very interesting things there there. For example, when we combined photos available to the general public, maps from various sources and the construction plan, we noticed that they all conceal information about a small part of the building. As if this is some kind of hole. What is there – go guess! There were plenty of oddities at all, but we removed this level not because of the requirements of the government, but because several thousand small square rooms are very boring. What I really regret is about one carved conspiracy theory, very entertaining, I will tell you about the Federal Emergency Management Agency and, a memorial, the mechanism of the American constitution in the event of a global crisis ”.

The developers also wanted an artificial mind, Morpheus, to talk with the player on behalf of Thomas Edward York, the vocalist and guitarist of the Radiohead Rock band. The player would introduce questions from the keyboard and received meaningful answers to them. But it was unreasonable to spend time and debug the interface of syntactic analysis for the sake of the for the sake of the conversation, and this venture also had to be abandoned.

* * *

Finally, the team of testers was given the task: to go through Deus Ex the most incredible ways – without the use of firearms, using only explosives, with zero pumping the skills of the protagonist, etc.D. The game was tormented in every way, but it was not possible to clean the bugs to the end anyway. The disk went on sale – and people found how to open the locked doors, undermining the enemies standing next to them and at the same time retaining their master keys; They understood how to climb the walls, jumping from one glued mines to another, and thus go beyond the map. The spector shifted from the scene of the designers and put the players in their place – on a saucer with a blue bucket, giving them a dynamic checker, and still do not understand whether it has already exploded or so far is spinning and sparkling.