Dsogaming has an article bringing news that Sonic Augmentation a Deus Ex album is now available to everyone for free. So if you loved playing Deus Ex, and loved the music give it a listen.

“This EP arranges music from Deus Ex, released in 2000 for Windows, and also contains nods to both sequels, Invisible War and Human Revolution. The album features 8 songs from 10 artists that re-envision the original compositions of Alexander Brandon, Michiel van den Bos and Michael McCann in a wide variety of styles and genres while channeling the moods, sounds and imagery of the world of Deus Ex. The album also includes two tracks featuring original series’ composer Alexander Brandon collaborating with BAFTA-nominated composer Jimmy Hinson.”

Eurogamer looks at how Deus Ex evolved during the development process:

Story wasn't the only reason for editing Deus Ex away from its original vision, however - fiscal and technological realities played a role too. Sheldon mentions a mid-game level in the White House level as a particularly complex task for the level designers to realise and the decision was ultimately made to focus that effort elsewhere. In a post-mortem lecture filmed in 2008, Warren Spector lays decisions like this at the feet of designer Harvey Smith.

"On a daily basis I was building the rooms," explains a humble Smith. "So, I knew how big a room could be before the renderer would choke and how many guys we could have on screen. I had an intimacy with the tools."

Armed with this technological understanding, Smith approached Spector and argued for what he considers the two most critical changes to the original vision. The first was a new skill system with fewer abilities but more demonstrable effects - so the guns didn't do more damage but instead got easier to use as you advanced. The second was a trimmed down version of the story that abandoned the Mexican invasion and space stations in order to become more technologically feasible and narratively intimate.

The New Vision mod for Deus Ex offering a HD overhaul with new textures and renderer has been updated to v1.5 - the final release:

Deus Ex - New Vision 1.5

The final release of New Vision.

I'd like to sincerely thank everyone in the community for their support over the years; without you, I wouldn't have had the motivation to continue working on this project for 5 years of my life. I'd also like to thank someone else; if you're reading this you know who you are: thank you.

I hope you all enjoy the mod and I wish you all the best.

Game Informer has done a retrospective piece on this game. Here's the introduction:

Ben Hanson, Adam Biessener, myself, one of Epic Mickey 2's producers Raul Ramirez, and Warren Spector all sat down only to stand right back up and take a stroll down memory lane, making sure to stick to the shadows wherever possible. Spector talks about how he was moments away from signing a contract with Electronic Arts to create a Command & Conquer RPG, when John Romero called him up and made him an offer he couldn't refuse. We also take a look at at one of Warren's favorite games that influences his work even today with the development of Epic Mickey in our Replay Roulette.

A retrospective for this game can be found at Indian Video Gamer.  A quote on how time has been to this game:

How does it hold up today?

In a word, fugly. Yes, the years haven’t been kind to the game. In fact, you might find MGS1 a lot more palpable than a game based on the Unreal Tournament engine. However, there are a few high-def mods around that make it tolerable. If you’re a graphics wh*re, play the superlative Deus Ex: Human Revolution instead. Also, reading skills are a must because there’s a ton of interesting books and emails to be read within the game’s world that add to a story that’s as layered as it gets without getting overtly complicated.

GOG has added Square Enix to their catalogue, which means Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition is now available through the service.

I don't normally post this sort of stuff but I got a good laugh out of this. Deus Ex Unreal Revolution is a parody mod that "acts as a parody of Deus Ex: Human Revolution while providing commentary on the video game industry and modern gameplay mechanics. Features yellow highlighting, cinematic takedowns, iron sights, and regenerating health."

If you don't want to play the mod, watch the trailer at ModDB at the link above.

The first full version release of New Vision, a HD mod project for Deus Ex, has been released:

It's been 4 years in the making, but Deus Ex : New Vision is finally seeing the light of day in it's full form. With around 75% of the world textures remastered at high definition, the project is finally complete - and is available to download right now!

There's a Deus Ex retrospective on one of the Gamasutra blogs; here's a snip that rang true for me:

Despite its faults (the pulverisingly unforgiving difficulty for new players, clunky graphics even for turn of the millennium gaming and repetition throughout the middle act), the most depressing thing about Deus Ex is how little influence it has had over subsequent gaming culture. As the games industry grew and became more mainstream, much of the reckless experimentation that produced many of the greatest games of the late '90s (and a few of the worst: take a bow, Jurassic Park: Trespasser) was left behind in favour of a formula mentality. Derived in thought and execution from the sensibilities of the Hollywood blockbuster, for all its financial success the gaming landscape was made a less exciting place to play. Even Deus Ex's maligned sequel Invisible War dumbed down the RPG elements to make them more palatable, while the trailer for the series' third entry ignores real gameplay in favour of pre-rendered spectacle.

The 10-Year anniversary of Deus Ex inspired an avalanche of material at Rock, Paper, Shotgun.  This page gathers it all together, with highlights including a re-review and Deus Ex Made Me, with two developers explaining the influence of the game in their work.  It's also worth looking at The End of Looking Glass - 40 minutes of footage shot by a LG developer as everyone leaves the building for the last time, the dream over.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun is pointing out a DirectX 10 renderer by Marijn Kentie for Deus Ex (and Unreal, Unreal Tournament and Rune).  The change doesn't have a huge impact on the look of Deus Ex but it does help with future compatibility and perhaps combined with texture exhancement projects and the like might make for a for pleasant experience.  RPS points out the New Vision Texture Pack and, of course, there's the HDTP project.

Nice timing with our current poll, Steam currently has Deus Ex (and Invisible War) on sale for $2.50 each.  Those polygons are aging but you can't go wrong with a classic for that price.

Warren Spector teams up with Edge Online for The Making of Deus Ex, which outlines everything from plot problems to technology issues to government conspiracies (you couldn't have Deus Ex without a government conspiracy, could you?):

Along with Washington, further locations were purged. A visit to Russia, an abandoned space station, a moon base – all, according to Spector, jettisoned as the design tightened. “We redid much of the plot mid-way through development, when the designers realised our original story, in its totality, was inexpressible given our technology.” Other late changes would follow. “After blindtesting by some other studios, we redesigned the skill and augmentation systems fairly dramatically. And I think we were early in beta when we realised that we hadn’t planned things so players encountered NPCs several times – players weren’t establishing relationships with the characters so the story lacked resonance. We made a major pass at the plot so folks from early missions showed up again and again. That was a critical moment in the game’s development and it came very late.”

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has noticed The Namless Mod for Deus Ex that we have discussed a couple of times has been been released.  Head over to the official site grab the file (923Mb), a DVD ISO image (1.4Gb) or a link to the official torrent.

The folks from the Deus Ex project The Nameless Mod wrote in to say they've launched a new main site and released a launch trailer.  Head to the site to view it.

Cameron writes in to say The Nameless Mod for Deus Ex is going to be released soon.  I'm not familiar with the project, so here's the feature list:

    * An imaginative new setting unlike any game you've played before (yet very familiar to any netizen).
    * 59 levels of gameplay plus a new training mission, 6 intro and endgame cinematics, and three secret bonus maps!
    * 20 original new weapons, many of which are unique and may only be acquired once through the game.
    * Several unique pre-modded versions of original Deus Ex weaponry to be stolen from particular characters upon defeating them.
    * The ability to fight with your bare hands, or to make use of several different gloves to augment your furious blows.
    * A weapon shop where you can buy original DX weapons, equipment, and ammunition.
    * Hundreds of emails, books, newspapers, notepads, and datacubes.
    * Multipage info-devices allow for many pages per book or datacube for the really inquisitive player.
    * Over 100 entirely new character skins and many more combinations of old skins!
    * Actual nanoaugmented enemies. You can view their augmentations with the Targetting aug and disable them with EMP attacks.
    * More customization: Choose between two different character models, 5 different faces for each, and eyewear!
    * A ton of new decorations and items.
    * Two parallel story arcs, that branch early in the game, and plenty of side-missions.
    * An almost ridiculously responsive story with a detailed denouement at the end.
    * Choice and consequence: Major characters will remember if you knock them out.
    * A script of 200,000 words of dialogue, monologue, infolink messages, and AI barks.
    * More than 13,000 fully recorded lines of very high quality.
    * Eye-pleasing graphical detail with HDTP support!
    * New high-quality ogg music for every level (well over 100 tracks!).
    * A myriad of secrets, easter eggs, and little details to encourage replaying.
    * Goals will be updated as you progress through the missions.
    * Greater implementation of difficulty levels: Enemies and pickups will depend on your chosen difficulty.

This project apparently emphasises choices and you can check out a preview at ModDB.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has news that Deus Ex will be part of Gametap's free roster.  Here's a snip form their newsbit:

Gametap, that surging faucet of digital delivery, has announced that it’ll be featuring candidate for best game ever, Deus Ex, on its free games roster as of next week. The Big Ex joins Psychonauts and Thief: Deadly Shadows on its free game thinger. You will again be able to celebrate some of the greatest moments in gaming.

Well worth a look if you never got around to it originally.

Well-known gaming journalist Tom Chick has penned a Deus Ex retrospective for Gametap.  It's worth noting Tom isn't a fan but the article remains fairly balanced:

The world created by Deus Ex was a memorable one. It was oddly prescient, though not for supposing a terrorist attack on a New York City landmark (remember that the World Trade Center had already been bombed in 1993 and the Statue of Liberty had been destroyed in Planet of the Apes in 1968). Instead, it was prescient for suggesting a dramatically shifted political landscape in the aftermath of the attack. This was the starting point for wide-ranging flights of dystopian fancy, which tied together diverse plots and machinations. By the time you saved or doomed the world, depending on your choice of ending, you had dealt with every conspiracy theory in the book: black helicopters, the Illuminati, Area 51, Majestic 12, and so on. Deus Ex was nothing if not generous. Along the way were memorable characters like your cohorts and eventual rivals at UNATCO, your brother Paul, the snake-like Walter Simons, Tracer Tong, and of course, Bob Page.

There is very little information on what's planned for this game as yet, so it may not turn out to be an appropriate game for RPGWatch coverage, but Shack News reports that Eidos Studios today announced officially the third game in the Deus Ex series:

Eidos has announced the long-awaited third entry in the Deus Ex franchise. The game is being developed at the company's Montreal studio for unspecified consoles, though PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 editions are likely.

The game is currently at an extremely early stage. General studio manager Stephane D'Astous told Gamasutra that the team just received approval for the title's proof of concept. The team will be allotted up to two years for development, suggesting the game is targeted for holiday 2009 release...The existence of the title was suggested in an Eidos interview earlier this year...

...Deus Ex creator Warren Spector, who was also responsible for System Shock 2, is not likely to be involved with the project.

Harvey Smith is quoted at CVG about a moon-base ending that never made it into Deus Ex.  Presumably the topic came up because Witch boy is currently working on an Area 51 game called BlackSite:

"I didn't want to put Area 51 in Deus Ex!", its illustrious lead designer told PC Zone magazine recently. "I didn't find it that interesting. In fact, initially it was a moonbase. You were going to use the rocket to get to the international space-station (which in our fiction was just sagging and falling apart and barely held together), and from there you were going to use a shuttle to get to a luxury space-station which was going to be like the Titanic."

CVG is carrying a piece from PC Zone where Deus Ex was voted the best PC game ever in a 101 game countdown feature.  Warren Spector gets to join in the celebrations with a few comments award-night style:

First, let me say what an honour it is to have been associated with the development of Deus Ex - to see it named the "best game ever" is pretty incredible. I'd be lying if I said I didn't have great expectations for the game when I started thinking about it, and the team really rallied around the idea of changing the way people thought about and played videogames. But actually to be honoured as the best game ever? Well, that's just amazing.

Spector goes on to describe the input of various team members such as Chris Norton, Harvey Smith and Sheldon Pacotti.

Asbjoern wrote in to say that Deus Ex (and Deus Ex: Invisible War, Thief 3) are now available on Steam as part of the Eidos collection.