Deus Dead

 

So by now you're probably well aware of my many feelings about the horrific world destroying entity we all loving know as 'The Embracer Group'. A hellish concoction of primordial evils broiling and scheming before the first grass sprouted in the seraphim gardens and the dew of light first glinted some spark of creation. Now risen and collated into a tumorous leech clinging onto the edge of the ever-changing ocean of the corporate world, dangling flush green power with a gambler's wink, toppling empires and establishing dynasties with the flick of a wrist. Embracer's subtle reach snakes around our infrastructure enclosing about us like the ocean wall, embracing us all within the confines of their malignant machinations. Either that or they are a company well in over their heads that is just leaving the world scratching their noggins with every out-of-nowhere split decision!

Point in case being the recent reveal that Deus Ex- a storied video game franchise that holds two the greatest games ever made within the confines of it's entries (the original and Human Revolution) has been shelved despite the obvious potential the franchise has. It's not as though Deus Ex is an unloved franchise by any stretch of the imagination. 'Mankind Divided' may have not had the impact, or the sales, that the team or Square Enix wanted when they set it up as the spring board for their new universe of Deus Ex projects- (That's no exaggeration, by the way. Mankind Divided was literally marketed with a 'Deux Ex Universe' logo, which it retains within the producer credits- they invested hard into making that Square's next big franchise and it absolutely cratered.) But that was only because the game was not quite as spectacular as Human Revolution was. It was not from lack of interest, it was from expectant and unrelenting interest!

Deus Ex was the face of espionage sci-fi storytelling, combining robust roleplaying not just into the story and how you build the character's skills, but also the way in which you choose to move about the tight and multi-pathed levels. It birthed an entire sub-genre of games known as the 'Immersive sim', which I still retain is the worst name for a genre of games ever for how uninformative it is. Without Deus Ex we wouldn't have had the famed Dishonoured series. No Bioshock. No Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. And for the record- no Cyberpunk 2077! That's right- a lot of it's design is built squarely around the core tenets of immersive sim philosophy! We're talking about a grandfather of the medium here, getting shafted for no reason!

And it's not as though you can throw up your hands and declare the industry has simply moved on from games like Deus Ex- as though they no longer matter! This past year just saw the revival of belief in CDPR following the disappointment of Cyberpunk 2077. Years in the trenches, patching together smoking pieces of a solid but haphazard game resulted in the spectacular 2.0 update and Phantom Liberty DLC proving that you can stick lipstick on a pig. You know- providing that pig is one of those starlets in a Rom-Com that is a conventionally attractive model that the studio specifically made up to look 'conventionally ugly' specifically for the stereotypical makeover scene. In that ultra specific instance, that pig can rock the makeup.

It was this legacy that Embracer group snatched out of Square Enix's hands when they purchased practically all of Square's western properties in a firesale of undervaluation- and given the seven hundred other companies under Embracer's wing, one would think this was something of a safe space within which to work. Well, others might think that. Again, I've been suspicious of Embracer ever since I heard their name and went yep- that's the name of the bad guys in a 2010's YA novel. But it's becoming increasingly, and depressingly, clear that Embracer apparently have no clue what they're doing juggling all of these properties under their belt and it's starting to show dividends. Negative dividends, that is.

Eidos Montreal were reported to have been working on this Deus Ex game for two years now, and although it wasn't another Adam Jensen story according to the voice actor for that character- (Which is annoying- the final act of his narrative is begging to be told) it would have been a Cyberpunk sci-fi game riding off the success of Phantom Liberty back into a place of prominence. So long as Eidos maintained it's quality spirit, and given the recent Guardians of the Galaxy game they have, Deus Ex would sooth that ache we've had for a new entry. But for some reason, and it was Embracer's decision we are told, the project has been canned and upwards of 100 employees are on the chopping block for removal.

This is, of course, after Embracer brought Volition, squeezed one mediocre Saints Row game out of them and then shut the developer down. And how am I only just hearing that Free Radical Design was shut down by them in December last year? Those are the Timesplitter people, who had been holding on by the seat of their pants for nigh on a decade at this point- but all it took was a little exposure to chemical 'Embracer' to kill them stone dead. Starting to see what I'm saying about this company and how utterly, unforgivably, toxic they are? At this point they're inheriting the old EA reputation for hovering up companies, squeezing out the IPs and then firing all the employees- but at least EA has stopped that heinous act in recent years. (And at least they used their IPs every now and then!)

So Deus Ex after all time has become a dead franchise once again, and now Eidos Montreal has been severely kneecapped if it ever wants to try and pick the game back up again. Just another genius decision by the 'experts' over at Embracer. Seriously, I can't help but wonder if what they're really doing there is just trying to hog as many IPs as possible in order to licence them out to other studios for a payday without any financial expectation on their end- that's the only thing which aligns with they way Embracer have run their nightmare company up until now. At least Eidos is still alive, for now- we can hope for the future in some abstract fashion. You know, until Embracer rises up and swallows the sun to plunge us into an eternal darkness from within which Embracer can flog us all little remembrances of photons for a vastly exaggerated price. The Embracer demons- everybody!