We suppose it was bound to happen eventually; Hollywood has got its grubby hands on the Deus Ex license, and is determined to digest it until it’s ready to excrete a movie. One word springs to mind, and that word is NNNNOOOOOOOO!!!
To be fair, there are positive signs. Although nobody terribly exciting from movieland is currently attached to the film, it’s already been promised that CBS Films (the company with the license, in case you hadn’t guessed) will, according to the slightly oddly written Variety report, be working “closely” with Eidos Montreal, and the brief synopsis seems to support this claim. “Film will follow [sic] an ex-SWAT security specialist who must learn to embrace the high-tech prostheses that replace much of his body in order to unravel a global conspiracy that involves an attack on a biotechnology firm tied to developing human enhancements.” The film will apparently be based on Human Revolution, which Variety erroneously identifies as the second Deus Ex game.
Although execs from both CBS and Square Enix trotted out predictable statements filled with hollow excitement (which we won’t bother reproducing here), a rather important issue is firmly ignored in the PR bluster. Part of what makes the Deus Ex games so great is the effect the player has on the world; the way that player choices affect what happens to different characters and, ultimately, how the story progresses and ends. Can this be replicated in a movie? Slap us with the fish of cynicism if you like, but we’ll plump for ‘no’ on this one.
it MIGHT be cool