Deus Ex (video games)

Deus Ex (also Deus Ex Universe). Ion Storm (2000-2003), Eldos Montréal (2011 f.), primary developers. Eldos Interactive (2000-03), Square Enix (2011 f.), Feral Instructive, publishers. Initial release: 2000.[1] For further information see Deus Ex Wiki, opening paragraph on page as of 3 November 2021 (information on number of games is dated).[2]

Series of role-playing games, at six as of November 2021, according to Wikipedia entry:

Deus Ex (2000), Deus Ex: Invisible War (2003), Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011), Deus Ex: The Fall (2013), Deus Ex Go (2016) and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (2016).

Summarized at the fan site: "Set in a dystopian near future, the universe, stories, and artwork of the series are heavily influenced by the cyberpunk genre. The series is inspired by films such as Blade Runner, Escape from New York[3][[4]] and RoboCop as well as numerous other cyberpunk works of fiction."[5]

Discussed by Esko Suoranta at Symposium: The CyberPunk Culture Conference, "Pants Scientists and Bona Fide Cyber Ninjas: Tracing the Poetics of Cyberpunk Menswear," published SFRA Review 50.4 (Fall 2020).[6][7] Suoranta quotes Bruce Sterling's comments in his intro. to Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology on reflective sunglasses as "the symbol of the sunstaring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws" and notes

It is no surprise that the fringe-character Sterling describes [...] is easy to co-opt for militant power-fantasies. Adam Jensen, the hero of the Deus Ex franchise [...] is a case in point [...]. Starting out as a security officer, he is ripped apart by explosions and gunfire and fitted with a fully cybernetic body by his employer Sarif Industries, becoming a RoboCop[8] with free will in a dystopian near future. In the games of the franchise, he works for Sarif Inudstries, gray-ops counter-terrorism units, and seeks to uncover actions of the Illuminati. His cybernetic augmentations allow him to see and punch through walls, employ hyper-reflexes, blades in his forearms, and invisibility, making him a Swiss-army-cyber-knife with only the most dangerous villains able to oppose him. Jensen is thus the cyberpunk as superhero, a vigilante fighting against terrorism with his incredible augmentations. He is part of the militarized world of enforcers, embodying extra-legal justice and distributing it through degrees of violence (it is possible to complete the games almost completely without killing, but Jensen still remains very much embedded in networks of violence).

Cf. and definitely contrast prosthesis as a motif and theme in "Masks" and "No Woman Born," as well as the original and continuing incarnations of RoboCop.

RDE, with thanks to Esko Suoranta, finishing, 3Nov21