Troubleshooter: Original Deus Ex Concept, Potential Fan Game
Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2014 8:36 am
When I learned of the original concept for Deus Ex as Troubleshooter, and that the germ for the idea started as early as Warren Spector's days with Origin Systems, I envisioned what it would look like if had been developed in the mid-90s. That led me to wanting to draw a retro box art of the alternate what-if Deus Ex in the style of System Shock 1's box art. Which I will show you now.
Hideous guy, isn't he? Well, I intended him to be Troubleshooter's equivalent of J.C. Denton. Why make him so pale and ugly? Well, his facial features were meant to pay homage to the odd face designs of System Shock 1's CG cutscenes, and I wanted to convey that he wasn't quite human like the pale Men in Black. The red sunglasses with the binary code is of course a tribute to Terminator 1. I was thinking of calling him O.T. Abrahams, and his brother N.T. Abrahams (a reversal on the J.C./Paul roles, where the younger brother now represents the old order and the younger brother represents the new, since O.T. stands for Old Testament and N.T. is New Testament).
The way I imagine the look of the fangame is that it would have the interface of System Shock 1, though with mouselook and stealth mechanics, and the setting would be complex realistic environments. Because I want to make it look like a really 90s game, I figured that visual inspiration could be borrowed from films like Terminator 2, The Matrix, Predator 2, Men in Black, Independence Day, The Fugitive, U.S. Marshals, GoldenEye, and perhaps the 2000 gritty film Traffic. Though the graphics engine of System Shock 1 can't generate the kind of environments I would envision (as far as I know), I was thinking about the Unreal Tech Demo from 1995 kind of had a little bit of a System Shock 1 vibe, especially the fact that the mouse (when you're not clicked the right mouse button to mouse-look) moves like the mouse in SS1's interface.
I was thinking it of having it done on another engine which has a SS1 feel to it, like the incomplete reverse engineered SS1 engine, or Revert-3D (2.5D engine which aims to recreate the SS1 feel, and is also incomplete, but I think had potential). All in all, I'm now wondering if Deus Ex can be modded to appear oldschool pixelated in its models and environments, and that the levels can be done the same way too.
For the gameplay, I envision it as being freeform as Deus Ex's, but with aspects of SS1, Strife, Rainbow Six, and a little bit of The Nameless Mod. I envision it as having levels like helicopter drop on the rooftop on the warehouse missions, levels where you have to save family hostages, and levels where you end up in facilities found in Men in Black and GoldenEye.
Hideous guy, isn't he? Well, I intended him to be Troubleshooter's equivalent of J.C. Denton. Why make him so pale and ugly? Well, his facial features were meant to pay homage to the odd face designs of System Shock 1's CG cutscenes, and I wanted to convey that he wasn't quite human like the pale Men in Black. The red sunglasses with the binary code is of course a tribute to Terminator 1. I was thinking of calling him O.T. Abrahams, and his brother N.T. Abrahams (a reversal on the J.C./Paul roles, where the younger brother now represents the old order and the younger brother represents the new, since O.T. stands for Old Testament and N.T. is New Testament).
The way I imagine the look of the fangame is that it would have the interface of System Shock 1, though with mouselook and stealth mechanics, and the setting would be complex realistic environments. Because I want to make it look like a really 90s game, I figured that visual inspiration could be borrowed from films like Terminator 2, The Matrix, Predator 2, Men in Black, Independence Day, The Fugitive, U.S. Marshals, GoldenEye, and perhaps the 2000 gritty film Traffic. Though the graphics engine of System Shock 1 can't generate the kind of environments I would envision (as far as I know), I was thinking about the Unreal Tech Demo from 1995 kind of had a little bit of a System Shock 1 vibe, especially the fact that the mouse (when you're not clicked the right mouse button to mouse-look) moves like the mouse in SS1's interface.
I was thinking it of having it done on another engine which has a SS1 feel to it, like the incomplete reverse engineered SS1 engine, or Revert-3D (2.5D engine which aims to recreate the SS1 feel, and is also incomplete, but I think had potential). All in all, I'm now wondering if Deus Ex can be modded to appear oldschool pixelated in its models and environments, and that the levels can be done the same way too.
For the gameplay, I envision it as being freeform as Deus Ex's, but with aspects of SS1, Strife, Rainbow Six, and a little bit of The Nameless Mod. I envision it as having levels like helicopter drop on the rooftop on the warehouse missions, levels where you have to save family hostages, and levels where you end up in facilities found in Men in Black and GoldenEye.