Why does Holla Forums like the original Deus Ex?

In many of Deus Ex related videos, I see poltards shitting up the comment sections with their cancer regarding the "🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧bankers🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧" despite the fact that the game is quite obviously pretty leftist and critical towards fascism.

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twitter.com/Warren_Spector
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The revolutionary forces in Deus Ex aren't explicitly couched in socialist rhetoric so the average 🍔burger🍔s assume that it's lolbertarian Alex Jones tier anti-government revolt.

For the most part sure, but don't forget one of the endings you can choose literally has you side with the Illuminati and has you secure their capitalist hegemony with tax structures

Agreed, I've played and beaten it over a dozen times and nowhere does it use the words proletariat, bourgeoisie, or historical materialism.

How so? I was under the impression it was closer to being right-libertarian, but I agree it makes no promotion of fascist ideals.

The Illuminati ending is implied as an evil ending. I believe the author intended the Tong ending (anarchism) as canon.

It was pretty anti-corporate. Corporate power was as bad, if not worse than state power. The fact that corporations are more powerful than governments is presented as a bad thing.

Deus Ex relies heavily on conspiracy theories which fits right in with the Holla Forumsyp worldview. In the game social reality is explained not as a result of contradictions in material conditions but as the misdeeds of shadowy all-powerful organizations. There are a few exceptions — the game makes a handful of interesting comments on trans-humanism and surveillance — but overall it's Alex Jones-tier levels of nonsense.

The thing is, the game's lore was never meant to be taken that seriously; it was an exercise in over-the-top worldbuilding to begin with. Writers decided from the start to pick up all the demented conspiracy theories they could find and ask themselves "what if they were actually true."

Plus, the game's author is Jewish so here's that.

There no such thing as a "canon" ending in Deus Ex. Warren Spector who was massively influenced by D&D-style roleplay made it clear he wanted the player to be able to tell their own story, and even described Deus Ex fans debating whether the game was left- or right-wing as a success of that approach.

Well, the "revolutionary forces" in the game aren't socialist.

Deus Ex is a game about dialectics, that's for sure, but not the kind of dialectics of political economies.

The deepest points made in the game come from the AI and it's commentaries on human spirituality. It basically says that humans made up religion and the whole concept of god out of a need for a perfect system to govern their actions. It then suggests that it's the perfect candidate for the job if JC merges with it.

Despite JC's alarmist whining about how humans need to be able to make their own decisions, his arguments always completely miss the mark, as the AI doesn't really claim that it's going to decide everything every individual human does, it's just going to make the government work perfectly, and from a dialectical viewpoint I cannot see a reason why you would pick anything other than the AI ending. Presumably the AI would go on to implement state socialism and create a technocratic utopia from there on. A perfect AI would have no need for capitalism to direct it's planned economy, as capitalism is horribly inefficient and it would be like "wtf, I don't need this" and just eliminate it.

This. The (optional!) dialogue with Morpheus is based as fuck. I've always found it baffling that such good writing could coexist with Illuminati conspiracy garbage — but then again the uneasy mix of valid commentary and '90s schlock might be what makes Deus Ex so distinctive.

The antagonists are a handful of conspirators controlling government agencies to do their bidding, which doesn't contradict the right-libertarian belief of "crony capitalism" being the problem.

The Illuminati ending is book-ended with a sinister John Milton quote (better to reign in hell than serve in heaven) and the game's NPC dialog is overall slightly more titled towards ideas relating to anarchism.

Uh excuse me, are we forgetting Deus Ex: Invisible War actually exists? JC Destroying Area 51 *IS* canon, and it leads to The Collapse where isolated communities rebuild themselves, leading to the creation of the WTO and the New Order Church.

Deus Ex is a standalone and everything else is fan-fiction.

...

It's "canon" in the sense that it's what serves as a basis for the sequel (which is universally loathed and with which the original author was not substantially involved) because that was the most appropriate way to come up with a follow-up story. But there is no "right" choice in Deus Ex, that's the whole point of the game and why it was so popular when it was released.

I like the sequels as their own games. Deus Ex is a self-contained story that doesn't benefit from them.

Except for the fact that the game clearly portrays the “benevolent autocracy” of JC-Helios as the ending with the most benefits and least severe downsides.

Whether Helios can be trusted is left ambiguous and characters express their distrust in it.

Only barely, the bias towards it still obvious.

If that's of any use, the game's author is clearly a liberal.

twitter.com/Warren_Spector

They're like a mishmash of different political philosophies that are typically located on the fringe. The dialogues always deal with corporations and inequality, the symbols used and the names are more reminescent of right-wing libertarians.

A surprisingly mainstream and boring liberal, at that. But iirc he didn't write the game.

He was the major creative force behind the game, and as a director everything that was put in the final product had to obtain his approval.

That doesn't mean he took control over all aspects of it though, or even that he bothered setting guidelines for details like that.

The people he follow on Twitter look nothing like that politics that are defended on the game

The writer for Deus Ex was Sheldon Pacotti and he has a personal website: sheldonpacotti.com/
He does seem to be much more sophisticated politically than Spector.

Deus Ex is Doug Church's game. Spector was just a producer.

What? Warren Spector was both the director and producer of Deus Ex. I don't think Doug Church even worked on Deus Ex directly. You sure you're not thinking about System Shock?

It is.

Because it's a great game that doesn't lean on its message to cover up insipid gameplay.

The same reason they latched onto The Matrix: Babbyz First Redpill.


This. The game was a melange of (mostly American) conspiracy lore, as a result while it is incoherent as a whole, it ties deeply into pretty much any flavor of anti-establishment political ideology. Everyone from hippies, to survivalists, neopagans, Christian fundamentalists, deep greens, transhumanists, (of course) UFO skeptics, and everyone inbetween will find something. Also as a result of its origins from the fringe of the political process, while most of its commentary is garbled nonsense, some of it is (just like the conspiratard rhetoric it draws from) incisive and directly on the mark.

Based purely on the amount of effort put into each, the initially intended "canon" ending was probably Illuminati, since it involves a lengthy "boss fight" through the giant multi-level room against the UCs pumping out monsters, whereas the other two endings involve smaller puzzles in side alcoves.

DXIW's premise is a combination of all three endings, as the Illuminati still exist free of MJ12, there is a global dark age caused by Aquinas being blown up, and Denton has merged with Helios.