DEUS EX
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About the Game
Deus Ex is a first-person action adventure game published by Eidos Interactive in June 2000. The player controls JC Denton, a cybernetically enhanced agent of the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition. Set in a dystopian cyberpunk future, the complex and multi-threaded plot brings JC to cities all over the world to investigate an epidemic known only as the "Gray Death." The player has access to a wide variety of weapons, skills, augmentations, and items, all of which can unlock varied solutions to the game's many challenges. Deus Ex won several "Game of the Year" awards, and continues to appear on "best game of all time" lists more than 15 years after its release.
Deus Ex is a first-person action adventure game published by Eidos Interactive in June 2000. The player controls JC Denton, a cybernetically enhanced agent of the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition. Set in a dystopian cyberpunk future, the complex and multi-threaded plot brings JC to cities all over the world to investigate an epidemic known only as the "Gray Death." The player has access to a wide variety of weapons, skills, augmentations, and items, all of which can unlock varied solutions to the game's many challenges. Deus Ex won several "Game of the Year" awards, and continues to appear on "best game of all time" lists more than 15 years after its release.
Busted: Pacifist Run
Deus Ex was one of the earliest attempts to combine the first-person shooter, role-playing game, and stealth action genres into a single game. A natural challenge is to complete the game without dealing damage to enemies. Even on the hardest difficulty, the player character (JC) has a number of decisive advantages that make this possible:
As the game progresses, the player steadily acquires tools that further reduce the difficulty of the pacifist approach. Among these are the lockpicking skill, hacking computers to disable security systems, enhanced speed, and health regeneration. The main choke points of the pacifist run are boss fights, where the game attempts to force confrontation before the player can proceed. A variety of workarounds exist, such as:
The player can choose among these options depending on their definition of "pacifist" and their willingness to abuse the game engine. Outside of these more specialized encounters, the rest of the run can be completed without much difficulty, due largely to the weakness of the enemy AI and the generosity of resources provided to the player.
Deus Ex was one of the earliest attempts to combine the first-person shooter, role-playing game, and stealth action genres into a single game. A natural challenge is to complete the game without dealing damage to enemies. Even on the hardest difficulty, the player character (JC) has a number of decisive advantages that make this possible:
- Enemies have a very narrow field of view, trivializing most stealth encounters
- Enemies and cameras will forget the player's existence within 30 seconds of detection
- JC's movement speed allows the player to outrun most enemies
As the game progresses, the player steadily acquires tools that further reduce the difficulty of the pacifist approach. Among these are the lockpicking skill, hacking computers to disable security systems, enhanced speed, and health regeneration. The main choke points of the pacifist run are boss fights, where the game attempts to force confrontation before the player can proceed. A variety of workarounds exist, such as:
- Unlocking secret "killswitch" dialogue options to cause enemies to self-destruct
- Setting up environmental hazards to cause the enemies to kill themselves
- Positioning obstacles and explosives to cause the enemy's fleeing animation to unlock the exit door
The player can choose among these options depending on their definition of "pacifist" and their willingness to abuse the game engine. Outside of these more specialized encounters, the rest of the run can be completed without much difficulty, due largely to the weakness of the enemy AI and the generosity of resources provided to the player.
Design Analysis: Overpowered Panacea
There are three main constraints that govern how the Deus Ex player character can be built: skills, augmentations (augs), and inventory space. Regardless of playstyle, all three of these are limiting reagents. There are not enough skill points or upgrade canisters in the game to max out every skill and aug, and powerful items tend to be bulky, quickly filling up the available inventory space.
In all three of these areas, there is a wide selection of tools specifically for mitigating damage or recovering lost health:
With a broad set of options but limited resources, how can the player best compose these tools to solve the problem of health loss? This is where the balancing in Deus Ex falls apart, as it turns out that most of these options are strictly inferior to the Regeneration aug.
Health-related inventory items are tied to specific skills -- the effectiveness of the Medkit scales with the Medical skill, while the Environmental Training skill governs the use of powered armor items. As such, investing skill points towards damage control requires the player to keep certain items in inventory, and vice versa. This is problematic for both the stealth approach, which emphasizes the skills and items for lockpicking/hacking, and the combat approach, which emphasizes skills and items for weapon use.
To conserve on both skill points and inventory space, the obvious choice is to use augs for damage control. These augs can be divided into two purposes: combat and environmental hazards. Combat damage can be minimized without augs due to the weakness of enemy AI and the broad range of stealth options. Environmental hazards, however, are often unavoidable. Here the player is presented with one final choice: install several augs that each prevent damage from a specific hazard, or install Regeneration to recover health at any time.
In some cases, the specific augs are more efficient than Regeneration in terms of converting aug energy into health points. This would only matter if one of two things were true: if the supply of energy were limited enough to force the player to use it conservatively, or if hazards dealt damage so quickly that the player character would die before having a chance to use Regeneration. Neither of these are true. As a result, maxing out Regeneration allows the player to conserve aug slots, upgrades, skill points, and inventory space without sacrificing anything.
This represents an excellent example of how the more general option can dominate over the more specific options, unless constraints are added to diminish the utility of the former and encourage the latter.
There are three main constraints that govern how the Deus Ex player character can be built: skills, augmentations (augs), and inventory space. Regardless of playstyle, all three of these are limiting reagents. There are not enough skill points or upgrade canisters in the game to max out every skill and aug, and powerful items tend to be bulky, quickly filling up the available inventory space.
In all three of these areas, there is a wide selection of tools specifically for mitigating damage or recovering lost health:
- 2 skills: Medical, Environmental Training
- 7 augmentations: Ballistic Protection, EMP Shield, Energy Shield, Aqualung, Environmental Resistance, Aggressive Defense System, Regeneration
- 4 inventory items: Ballistic Armor, Hazmat Suit, Rebreather, Medkit
With a broad set of options but limited resources, how can the player best compose these tools to solve the problem of health loss? This is where the balancing in Deus Ex falls apart, as it turns out that most of these options are strictly inferior to the Regeneration aug.
Health-related inventory items are tied to specific skills -- the effectiveness of the Medkit scales with the Medical skill, while the Environmental Training skill governs the use of powered armor items. As such, investing skill points towards damage control requires the player to keep certain items in inventory, and vice versa. This is problematic for both the stealth approach, which emphasizes the skills and items for lockpicking/hacking, and the combat approach, which emphasizes skills and items for weapon use.
To conserve on both skill points and inventory space, the obvious choice is to use augs for damage control. These augs can be divided into two purposes: combat and environmental hazards. Combat damage can be minimized without augs due to the weakness of enemy AI and the broad range of stealth options. Environmental hazards, however, are often unavoidable. Here the player is presented with one final choice: install several augs that each prevent damage from a specific hazard, or install Regeneration to recover health at any time.
In some cases, the specific augs are more efficient than Regeneration in terms of converting aug energy into health points. This would only matter if one of two things were true: if the supply of energy were limited enough to force the player to use it conservatively, or if hazards dealt damage so quickly that the player character would die before having a chance to use Regeneration. Neither of these are true. As a result, maxing out Regeneration allows the player to conserve aug slots, upgrades, skill points, and inventory space without sacrificing anything.
This represents an excellent example of how the more general option can dominate over the more specific options, unless constraints are added to diminish the utility of the former and encourage the latter.