Deus Ex

Eidos Montreal kept Prague small so something is always nearby to find. Mankind Divided's Prague hub has four train stations, a few hundred buildings and a couple of districts, and is packed with enterable interiors. Designer Hubert Corriveau says the team did not want players walking eight blocks of vanilla buildings to reach a mission: "We just wanted people to walk into the city and always have something to find."

It launched the same month as No Man's Sky, whose 18 quintillion algorithm-made planets repeat the same structures miles apart. Mark Brown holds Prague up as a hub that calls out to be explored, unlike Halo 3: ODST's dark, samey New Mombasa, and as proof that a world should be measured by meaningful content, not square metres.

Upgrade choices lock or open paths, so players find routes that fit. In Deus Ex games some paths are only open to certain augmentations, which makes skill choices visibly change what the player can do.

Interlocking systems produce strategies designers never scripted. In Deus Ex a gas grenade placed on an alarm becomes a trap once you are spotted, and MIB enemies explode on death, so luring one next to a fragile door and killing it opens a path.

Dishonored's Harvey Smith and Raphael Colantonio suggest entities broadcast general stimuli like fire or explosive damage rather than targeting specific objects, which makes entities easier to add and lets players find unplanned connections like the MIB door trick.

Deus Ex mixed System Shock's shooting with Thief's sneaking, then sold modestly. Ex-Looking Glass staff at Ion Storm Austin built Deus Ex from that lineage. It sold about 500,000 copies while Half-Life sold millions; Ion Storm Austin closed in 2005 as linear blockbusters took over.

Invisible War was forgettable. The new Deus Ex games are made by all new people and stay faithful, with slightly less emergent play, and the original's inconsistent bosses were changed in Human Revolution's director's cut.

Its formula hardened into a template that stalled the genre. A shooter with bionic or magic powers, played as stealth ninja or mass murderer, became the immersive sim template, sidelining Thief's idea of solving problems in ways that suit the character. Mark Brown argues the genre is better treated as an ethos than a feature checklist.

He saw Prey as a repeat of audio diaries, upgrade trees, hacking mini-games and stealth pathways.

Eidos Montreal kept Prague small so something is always nearby to find. Mankind Divided's Prague hub has four train stations, a few hundred buildings and a couple of districts, and is packed with enterable interiors. Designer Hubert Corriveau says the team did not want players walking eight blocks of vanilla buildings to reach a mission: "We just wanted people to walk into the city and always have something to find."

It launched the same month as No Man's Sky, whose 18 quintillion algorithm-made planets repeat the same structures miles apart. Mark Brown holds Prague up as a hub that calls out to be explored, unlike Halo 3: ODST's dark, samey New Mombasa, and as proof that a world should be measured by meaningful content, not square metres.

Eidos Montreal kept Prague small so something is always nearby to find. Mankind Divided's Prague hub has four train stations, a few hundred buildings and a couple of districts, and is packed with enterable interiors. Designer Hubert Corriveau says the team did not want players walking eight blocks of vanilla buildings to reach a mission: "We just wanted people to walk into the city and always have something to find."

It launched the same month as No Man's Sky, whose 18 quintillion algorithm-made planets repeat the same structures miles apart. Mark Brown holds Prague up as a hub that calls out to be explored, unlike Halo 3: ODST's dark, samey New Mombasa, and as proof that a world should be measured by meaningful content, not square metres.

Repeated slow walks through small streets make world-building details sink in. Graffiti, movie posters and signs fill every square metre of Prague. Players cross the same streets dozens of times on foot instead of passing at 50 miles per hour, so they actually take the details in.

Small environmental stories carry the theme better than the main plot. Level design and scraps of text hint at stories players piece together: a corpse with a casing linked to a Prague police handgun, a telescope aimed at Jensen's door, a trashed painter's apartment with clues on a computer and a pocket secretary in a vent. A bigoted anti-augmented politician's campaign office hides a seedy secret in the basement, commenting on prejudice more subtly than the heavy-handed main story.

Some of these questions are answered in side quests, others only by looking around. "These aren't just Easter eggs or secrets. They actively flesh out the world of Prague and speak to the game's themes."

A tiny map leaves no room for filler side quests. With no space for fetch quests, street races or enemy clearing, Mankind Divided's side missions work like TV bottle episodes built on character and dialogue. Jensen hunts a serial killer preying on augs, shuts down a fake police stop exploiting the oppressed and breaks up a drug operation killing augs.

The side quests also fill in Jensen's past between Human Revolution and Mankind Divided.

A small world also needs simulation depth, which Prague lacks. Warren Spector, director of the original Deus Ex, dreams of an RPG set in a single city block: "an inch wide and a mile deep." Prague falls short because time freezes between missions and characters stand around forever, ignoring guns or a bucket on their head.

Prague is a hub, not a true open world: it splinters into other areas for some missions and can be crossed in a few minutes.

Characters give real addresses so reading the world becomes navigation gameplay. In Mankind Divided, Chang says the hacker's snoop came from an unrented top-floor apartment at 33 Hlavni, and players find building 33; Johnny Gunn's name is on his buzzer. Emails, pocket secretaries and a map scribbled on a receipt point to Apartment 202, a complex by Pilgrim Station and a drug lab under the Zelen apartments.

Mark Brown: "navigating a virtual space is a challenge with a win and a fail state. And most developers just throw that away."

Keep waypoints optional but design the world to work without them. Mankind Divided still offers GPS-style markers, yet more than most games it holds up when they are turned off. It is not perfect: players sometimes still open the in-game map to fill gaps.

Every element follows global rules, so players can learn and trust them. In Looking Glass and Ion Storm games like Deus Ex, every alarm post works the same, every torch can be put out and doors share one generic mould. Enemies detect by sight and sound and run to trigger alarms, and footsteps are louder on tile.

Death is almost the only failure state; no level restarts because an ally died. In Deus Ex you can shoot any character, though plot-relevant ones are protected until the game allows it.

Interlocking systems produce strategies designers never scripted. In Deus Ex a gas grenade placed on an alarm becomes a trap once you are spotted, and MIB enemies explode on death, so luring one next to a fragile door and killing it opens a path.

Dishonored's Harvey Smith and Raphael Colantonio suggest entities broadcast general stimuli like fire or explosive damage rather than targeting specific objects, which makes entities easier to add and lets players find unplanned connections like the MIB door trick.

Treat unforeseen solutions like LAM mine ladders as the simulation working. Players can safely stand on LAM mines, so they stick them up walls as an endless ladder. Consistent rules produce "puzzle solutions that the developer simply didn't foresee."

Characters react to what players do in play, not in choice menus. Manderley tells JC Denton to stay out of the ladies restroom after the player walks in. The plot need not change drastically, but characters respond even to actions players thought nobody noticed.

Deus Ex chained the WASD keys to the narrative. Clint Hocking, who drew on immersive sims for Far Cry 2, said Deus Ex created "a chain of influence that cascaded between the narrative and the WASD keys," so small input-level actions echoed upward into the plot.

Spector designed Deus Ex around player expression and treating players as collaborators. Warren Spector says the team would "accept players as our collaborators" and put power in their hands, letting them deal with the consequences. Simulations let players explore a "possibility space", make their own fun and solve problems their way.

Immersion comes from letting go of the player's hand, not photorealism. Mark Brown notes such games will never be as flashy or profitable as scripted rollercoasters.

Deus Ex mixed System Shock's shooting with Thief's sneaking, then sold modestly. Ex-Looking Glass staff at Ion Storm Austin built Deus Ex from that lineage. It sold about 500,000 copies while Half-Life sold millions; Ion Storm Austin closed in 2005 as linear blockbusters took over.

Invisible War was forgettable. The new Deus Ex games are made by all new people and stay faithful, with slightly less emergent play, and the original's inconsistent bosses were changed in Human Revolution's director's cut.

The original Deus Ex gave a map as an aerial photo to decipher. Paul Denton hands over a map that is only an aerial photo in the notes, so players work out where they are and where to go by observing the space. Imperfect reference material makes players investigate.

Thief: The Dark Project did the same with incomplete, doodled sketch maps.