This is a hot candidate for “most woefully underappreciated game in existence”. The Nameless Mod is a fan-made total conversion mod for Deus Ex from 2009, but really more of a full-fledged sequel, and, dare I say, easily a better one than all of the (still pretty good) commercial attempts.
It’s a rich, deep and cleverly crafted cyberpunk super spy simulator that not only rivals the original, but even delivers on some of its broken promises, like an honest-to-god branching storyline. Whereas Deus Ex had this feature cut and in turn tells pretty much the same basic tale every time, The Nameless Mod is much more flexible when it comes to forging your own personal narrative.
It took me until my latest playthrough to fully realize this, when I decided to playfully mess around in the game world, trying to pull at its seams a little. Instead of longingly staring at the best sword in the game without being able to afford it, I just hacked the security system, stole the sword and killed the shopkeeper with it. And instead of following the main objective of investigating a kidnapping, I gleefully told my friends and colleagues that I don’t give a shit and that they all suck, and went to work for the big evil corporation with the very clearly insane CEO instead. Whom I betrayed as well in the end, naturally.
So why have so many people in its supposed target audience of oldschool Deus Ex fans given up on The Nameless Mod after the first hour, or didn’t even bother to play? Surprisingly, this is the rare case when we actually have a pretty well-documented answer: It’s the story. You can see it all over internet comment sections: Just learning the premise is enough to seemingly turn off loads of potential players. Now what’s this controversial story premise?
Man, is it hard to explain. Which may be the first problem already. Basically, The Nameless Mod asks the superbly strange question “What if the Deus Ex online fan culture of the mid-2000s was a Deus Ex game itself?” The stuck-in-perpetual-night-time rainy near-future city the game takes place in is supposed to be a Matrix/Tron/Metaverse-like representation of the PlanetDeusEx forums, which actually existed in the 2000s, when this mod was made. Almost all of the characters you meet in the game are based on real users and moderators of the site. Some even voice-acted themselves. And the further you get in the story, the more you realize that it’s actually about the GameSpy network consolidating and commercializing internet video game fan communities, told in the form of a Deus Ex-like cyberpunk conspiracy thriller.
Now, mid-2000s internet forum culture and humor is a bit, as the kids say, “cringe” from today’s perspective, and The Nameless Mod wears its fan culture roots proudly on its sleeves instead of trying to imitate a commercial product, with all the freedoms and idiosyncrasies that brings. There is a side mission where you are tasked to get rid of a gang of “n00bz”, a fan fiction shop with characters pretentiously overanalyzing Deus Ex’s background lore, and two opposing cults, one worshipping llamas, the other worshipping goats. Sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish between worldbuilding and community in-jokes, and the last thing people want is to be reminded of the time when they made their first account somewhere and posted a “pirates vs. ninjas” poll, I get that. But honestly, I think the fact that The Nameless Mod depicts a once real online community, obsessed with the game it itself is based on, is kind of genius. And I hope the more distance we gain to this time period, the more we can appreciate this game as a unique postmodern artifact, a time capsule from a lost culture.
One last tip: If you’ve tried the mod in the past and dismissed it, give it another look. During the last few years, the game has been receiving regular updates again. The lead level designer has returned to the project with ten additional years of professional experience under is belt, completely remaking all of the maps, and it’s a night-and-day difference. A version of the mod also was integrated into the otherwise rather dreadful Deus Ex: Revision as a Steam Workshop release, which makes downloading and playing it easier and more convenient than ever before.
It’s a rich, deep and cleverly crafted cyberpunk super spy simulator that not only rivals the original, but even delivers on some of its broken promises, like an honest-to-god branching storyline. Whereas Deus Ex had this feature cut and in turn tells pretty much the same basic tale every time, The Nameless Mod is much more flexible when it comes to forging your own personal narrative.
It took me until my latest playthrough to fully realize this, when I decided to playfully mess around in the game world, trying to pull at its seams a little. Instead of longingly staring at the best sword in the game without being able to afford it, I just hacked the security system, stole the sword and killed the shopkeeper with it. And instead of following the main objective of investigating a kidnapping, I gleefully told my friends and colleagues that I don’t give a shit and that they all suck, and went to work for the big evil corporation with the very clearly insane CEO instead. Whom I betrayed as well in the end, naturally.
So why have so many people in its supposed target audience of oldschool Deus Ex fans given up on The Nameless Mod after the first hour, or didn’t even bother to play? Surprisingly, this is the rare case when we actually have a pretty well-documented answer: It’s the story. You can see it all over internet comment sections: Just learning the premise is enough to seemingly turn off loads of potential players. Now what’s this controversial story premise?
Man, is it hard to explain. Which may be the first problem already. Basically, The Nameless Mod asks the superbly strange question “What if the Deus Ex online fan culture of the mid-2000s was a Deus Ex game itself?” The stuck-in-perpetual-night-time rainy near-future city the game takes place in is supposed to be a Matrix/Tron/Metaverse-like representation of the PlanetDeusEx forums, which actually existed in the 2000s, when this mod was made. Almost all of the characters you meet in the game are based on real users and moderators of the site. Some even voice-acted themselves. And the further you get in the story, the more you realize that it’s actually about the GameSpy network consolidating and commercializing internet video game fan communities, told in the form of a Deus Ex-like cyberpunk conspiracy thriller.
Now, mid-2000s internet forum culture and humor is a bit, as the kids say, “cringe” from today’s perspective, and The Nameless Mod wears its fan culture roots proudly on its sleeves instead of trying to imitate a commercial product, with all the freedoms and idiosyncrasies that brings. There is a side mission where you are tasked to get rid of a gang of “n00bz”, a fan fiction shop with characters pretentiously overanalyzing Deus Ex’s background lore, and two opposing cults, one worshipping llamas, the other worshipping goats. Sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish between worldbuilding and community in-jokes, and the last thing people want is to be reminded of the time when they made their first account somewhere and posted a “pirates vs. ninjas” poll, I get that. But honestly, I think the fact that The Nameless Mod depicts a once real online community, obsessed with the game it itself is based on, is kind of genius. And I hope the more distance we gain to this time period, the more we can appreciate this game as a unique postmodern artifact, a time capsule from a lost culture.
One last tip: If you’ve tried the mod in the past and dismissed it, give it another look. During the last few years, the game has been receiving regular updates again. The lead level designer has returned to the project with ten additional years of professional experience under is belt, completely remaking all of the maps, and it’s a night-and-day difference. A version of the mod also was integrated into the otherwise rather dreadful Deus Ex: Revision as a Steam Workshop release, which makes downloading and playing it easier and more convenient than ever before.
2 Comments
@snak 2.0 is a total game changer. It turns a collection of awkward to navigate brown boxes into an awesome cyberpunk city oozing with atmosphere. They have remade everything but the last few maps by now, and have two more updates planned, one for the remaining maps, and a final one for secrets and easter eggs.
snak
1 year ago