chris the cynic on 10/9/2003 at 04:41
I posted this on PDX, and figgured I'd give it to you as well.
The Italic stuff is quotations
We don't know much about the stuff that wasn't in the game, and I have to wait till after Deus Ex 2 is out to get help from Harvey Smith.
Just thought I'd list some of what we do know. If anyone knows something not here, please do tell.
In terms of what there was:
More than 200 characters
March 1998 = 300 pages of documentation
April 1999 = 500 pages, much of it radically different from what was written initially.
Left with 270 pages
More than 25 missions including:
Austin
Siberia
Washington, DC
NORAD
London
Sunken L.A. (post-earthquake)
Moon (Ada, AI that wanted to become a "benevolent" world dictator.)
Mt. Weather
Space station
Raids on concentration camps to free 2,000 prisoners from UN troops under FEMA control.
Hong Kong
Gordon Quick hid his journal under his bunk, and in it he admits his romantic feelings for the daughter of Max Chen, enemy of his triad. If there had been time and resources, she might have been a character in the game and the Romeo and Juliet scenario might have featured JC in the role of the Friar. If JC brought the triads together in Hong Kong, we can assume that Gordon and his love lived happily ever after. At least until JC brought about the end of the world...
The End
At the last minute, a few months before shipping, I suggested that we create a "losing" cut-scene for when the player dies in Area 51 and a cut-scene for evil players who wanted to join Bob Page - but we were out of time at that point.
X-51
There were certainly some cuts in the number of groups in the game. The cathedral in Paris was going to have Templar guards, for instance. Gary Savage's crew were going to be called "Salvagers" and they were going to be under attack by "Pirates," I believe, but again due to time restraints the pirates were replaced by MJ12.
In Mission 14's "silo" map there is a scientist named Howard Strong who has turned against the X-51 scientist. In a last-ditch effort to stop J.C., Strong tries sabotaging the rocket headed for Area 51. In the shipping version of the game, this boils down to Howard madly throwing grenades at J.C. Not what we had planned, originally, to say the least. The original Vandenberg storyline consisted of 2 factions, the Raiders and the Salvagers. The Raiders were a hostile group trying to get a hold of the Salvager base. Gary Savage (leader of the Salvagers) was (going to be) killed during the mission and Tiffany Savage (his daughter) would have only agreed to help the player if he could have brought the murderer to justice. According to the plan, Gary's body would have been found in the radioactive tunnels with a password scribed on the wall in blood (This would have been the login for his computer and would have pointed the finger at Gary's assistant, Howard Strong, exposing Strong's ties with the Raiders and his plans to take over the base). J.C. then could have fought through the Raiders to reach and kill Howard Strong, or, as wacky as this sounds, J.C. would have had to beat Howard Strong's killer spider bot in a battledome constructed for robot wars. This is where the spider bot actually came from. Then there was also a love story between Tiffany Savage and Ned Strong (Howard's son).
Slaves
There used to be a slave trader on a junk in Kowloon. JC was to board the junk, free the slaves (in order to talk to one critical one) and bring the slave lord to justice. He could arm the slaves and turn them loose against their former oppressors, but things got really messy when MJ12 attack helicopters located JC and began attacking the junk.
Z on 10/9/2003 at 14:36
Very interesting. Some of it (such as the battle-drome thing) sound a little wacky, but others are very good (I would have loved to have helicopters that actually attacked the player ala Half-Life) Some other ideas I remember that were interesting include the idea to have a text-parser interface for Morpheus so that you could debate with him more fully, although that would really have been quite a task.
I also vaguely remember reading about the original plans for DX. I can't quite remember the details, but I do recall that it concerned numerous secret factions vying for control of the world (not unline DX2, I suppose) and that a man named "Adam" was to be the main NPC.
Z
EDIT: Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I read that last bit in a GamaSutra article (probably their DX post-mortem) but I can't check since I don't have an account.
chris the cynic on 10/9/2003 at 17:00
That was from back when Deus Ex was Shooter.
Not sure when that was but you can read about it here:
(
http://nuwen.net/dx.shtml#shooter)
Has a lot in common with Deus Ex, also is quite different. I would have liked to have played it, but that would mean that Deus Ex would have never existed so maybe not.
Child of Karras on 12/9/2003 at 02:07
They probably cut out all that stuff so as to not give away too much.
chris the cynic on 14/9/2003 at 03:27
Actually some of the ditched plot will make it's way back. The Grays, which are not aliens (so say many devs), were to have a larger part in the plot, but this has been pushed into Deus Ex 2, so says Chris Todd.
Z on 14/9/2003 at 11:02
Very nice. I love the Gray concept, in part because I can use it to annoy a friend of mine who is a devout UFO conspiracist into believing that, far from discovering the truth about Majestic 12, he's actually being duped by them into believing exactly what they want him to. ;)
Z
theImmortalThief on 17/9/2003 at 07:55
Quote:
Originally posted by chris the cynic The Grays, which are not aliens (so say many devs),. I think the fact that they weren't alians was even mentioned in the game in some text, and that Bob Page had created them and was making everybody think they were alians for some reason I don't remember.
Z on 17/9/2003 at 11:49
Curiously, at least two interviews (both in German) One from more than a year ago, and another released last night, both alude to JC Denton "making an alliance with the aliens from Area51" in DX2. That doesn't exactly simplify the issue. Personally, I hope that they're not "real" aliens. The "aliens run the government" thing is a little too tired a cliche for my liking. But perhaps they could make it work. Still, aliens as "meme propaganda" are much cooler.
Z
chris the cynic on 17/9/2003 at 20:22
The game basicly says they arn't, Warren says they aren't, and noe chris says they aren't. I don't know how many more people we need to say that they aren't, I thought that the game made it clear without the devs saying they weren't. I figure the Germans got it wrong (just my guess) kind of like that interview that said Alex has a shadow.
Z on 17/9/2003 at 22:51
Indeed. Now that I think about it, OneEye replied to a thread about the first interview (at IS official) and said that they had mistranslated (or misinterpreted) Still, it does seem odd for the same thing to be mentioned, in exactly the same wordage, twice. Unless the second interview is just ripping off the old one, which is a distinct possibility.
Z
