Deus Ex Eggs/References.

chris the cynic on 1/8/2003 at 21:35

I don't think it's been mentioned but it's so small I might have missed it if it was:

Nick Pausback (Page's clone), is a good friend of Chris Todd (guy who wrote in game text.)

Nick is also Syd Mead's assistant. Syd did the visuals in Blade Runner.

As for Wade Walker (Simons' clone)

Chris Todd and Dr. Wade Walker formed Murder of Crows was formed in 1997. Note that a murder of crows is a group of crows, like a gaggle of geese. Wade is one of Chris' best friends.

Murder of Crows did a game (never finished) which "had an interesting aesthetic that we dubbed "techno-occult," a bastard child of William Gibson and Umberto Eco."

WGibson works at Versalife. He received some interesting emails.

William Gibson is the author of Neuromancer, the book that started the "cyberpunk" genre of which Deus Ex is a part. Neuromancer had a vast Internet (I believe it was the first mention of an Internet of any kind in history, I'm not sure though) called the Matrix which people could jack into. (Sound familiar?)

You might have noticed that in the game when you hack it is called ICE breaker. ICE (intrusion countermeasure electronics) and ICE breaker are both terms invented by William Gibson in Neruomancer. ICE is now used in real life.

Z on 4/8/2003 at 15:31

A very interesting thread, with a lot of great info:

Here's some things I can add:

Tech Sergeant Kaplan at UNATCO HQ: I used to think this was a reference to Hitchcock's classic thriller North By Northwest, in which Cary Grant plays a New York advertising executive who is chased all over the US by a sinister group of criminals all because he was accidentaly mistaken for a CIA agent who was investigating the criminals. The agent's name was George Kaplan. I was certain this was a reference, because I had never heard the name Kaplan used anywhere outside of that film, but last year I discovered that it is, in fact, a genuine surname, albeit a somewhat rare one, so it could be a coincidence. Still, it's a possibility. And I recommend the film.

Minor Login Reference*: (Thanks to a friend of mine for pointing this out) In the OceanLab, there is a security room in the bulkhead between the flooded area with the transgenics, and the large cavern with the drilling machines (Where Simons appears) This contains a desk with a computer and a broken power-light which is emitting lethal arcs of electricity. If you hack the computer, you will see by the emails that this computer is operated by a guard or scientist named Yushio Ikagi. His login is YIkagi, and the password is doraemon. Doraemon is a popular cartoon/anime created in Japan in the late 60's. The show, and it's mascot (a small blue mechanical cat of the same name) were very successful over there at one point.

Helios: I always wondered at the logic of Daedalus + Icarus = Helios. I knew Helios was a Greek sun deity, but that in itself didn't seem to justify the logic. A couple of months ago, I was doing research on classical mythology for an unrelated project, when I came upon an entry for Helios, and I discovered some interesting things. First off, Helios is not the Greek god of the Sun, per se. That is considered an element of Apollo's portfolio. Rather, Helios is the Sun - the deitic incarnation of Earth's Star. More relevant, however, was this passage - I quote the book I found it in:

Quote:

From the New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology
As god of light, Helios saw and knew everything. Of him it could be said what Pindar said of Apollo: 'He is the god who plumbs all hearts, the infallible, whom neither mortals nor immortals can deceive either by action or in their most secret thoughts.' .....Nothing escaped Helios.

The relevance and meaning of calling the AI Helios should be obvious.

Keep those references comin' :D

Z

*Note that I had never heard of this before it was pointed out to me by a friend who knows a hell of a lot more about Japanese animation culture than I do. Still, it seems to check out.

chris the cynic on 4/8/2003 at 19:13

The bible is often mentioned, people calling JC Jesus Christ and such. Also that in the end JC can form a trinity with Daedalus and Icarus. This is wrong the trinity of the bible is of the Father (the creator) the son, Jesus (the humanity), and the holy ghost (the god on earth, protector of the deserving, the one who manages the earth, so on.)

The trinity of Deus Ex is of the UC (the creator) JC (the humanity) and Helios (protector of JC, just and fair ruler of earth, so on so forth.)

Kompi on 28/5/2004 at 02:23

Speaking of Syd Mead.. I haven't seen any notice to the reference to his movie Tron which is present in Deus Ex ^_^;;

Uhm, during the mission aboard that ship yeh're to sink.. there's a datacube yeh find that has shows the log of someone trying to log into whot looks like a Unix system. the password? "reindeerflotilla". Same as one of the main characters (Jason Flynn) has as one of his passwords in the movie Tron ^_^;;

yatima2975 on 10/6/2004 at 14:13

At the start of the HK mission, if you go into the Canal Road tunnel, one Chinese Military Police guy says: 'Move along' and another says 'Nothing to see here'.

Tej on 16/8/2004 at 22:52

I know this belongs to the Deux Ex: Invisible War discussion... how many of you have seen a reference to the Superman when JC builds himself a nice cozy place in the midle of the ice?

Wyclef on 19/8/2004 at 02:02

Chad of Silhouette mentions <A HREF="http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/bakhtin.html">Bakhtin</a>. Chad's spiel about conflict over meaning comports with the struggle of dialogism and his mention of multiple languages recalls heteroglossia. To stretch this a bit further:

Quote:

Bakhtin says that monologic language (monologia) operates according to centripetal force: the speaker of monologic language is trying to push all the elements of language, all of its various rhetorical modes (the journalistic, the religious, the political, the economic, the academic, the personal) into one single form or utterance, coming from one central point

A central point? Like Aquinas?

I'm not familiar with Aquinas personally, but to go even pretentiously further one could cite the account of St. Augustine in Wittgenstein's <i>PI</i>. The later Wittgenstein's no friend of monologic language, of course.

I've only recently started playing Deus Ex. I was impressed by the Bakhtin citation, and the game in general.

Late EDIT: Oh! Oh! When you're following Helios' instructions in Area 51, one login/password set is icarus/panopticon. The latter is very obviously a Foucault reference. Very appropriate, in light of Morpheus' musings on the surveillance society in Everett's digs.

Of course, I had to work Wittgenstein in previously, but it's not nearly as relevant as this.

Aerothorn on 20/8/2004 at 01:15

I don't know if this has already been said- sorry if it has- but according to Wikipedia's article on Deus Ex, there are many references to Snow Crash and The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson (not suprising, considering the latter is considered the definitive nanotechnology fiction). I haven't played Deus Ex in a while, and I only recently read Snow Crash, so I can't list them. Except the first sentence of The Diamond Age is "The bells of St. Mark's were ringing changes up on the mountain when Bud skated over to the mod parlor to upgrade his skull gun". As you probably remember, looking at e-mails in UNATCO HQ, Gunnther was requesting a skull gun.

Gage21 on 7/1/2005 at 03:55

Seraphic/8X only (ie potential spoilers)
-------------------------------------

I have looked around for this one and cant say I have seen it elsewhere. But I thought it was pretty basic, so am abit surprised it isnt common. Anyway, after you hack any ATM through-out the game, retry using the ATM. A long error will be displayed with the last four digits being MJ12 (in the form xxxxxx-xxxMJ12).

Having read what little information there is on the Knights Templar (at the cathedral) I can deduce that, since the Knights Templar invented modern banking (from their amalgamated wealth of gold) and later became the Illuminati who were later betrayed by Bob Page (who in turn leads the Majestic 12). The error message is a hint at who is in control of the banks. Namely Majestic 12 : MJ12.

Also, I cant help feeling Bob Page and Bill Gates are similar. They are both considered the richest men on the planet, both made their money from technology based companies. And their names have a visual connection, if only so slightly.

Agh, well, that was my $0.02 worth.

Take care.

EDIT: Oh, i nearly forgot, an interesting tid-bit. In Sector 3 at Area 51, by the cloning facility, there were four chambers. The empty one is the one JC Denton was created in. There are clones for Bob Page and Walton Simons on the opposite side, but now the interesting bit. If you look next to the empty chamber, you will see a clone inside with the name Alex Denton. When you start Deus Ex 2 : Invisible War, your characters name is Alex D (regardless of sex, since Alex is a unisex name).

SJamieson on 7/1/2005 at 08:54

Quote Posted by Gage21

Having read what little information there is on the Knights Templar (at the cathedral) I can deduce that, since the Knights Templar invented modern banking (from their amalgamated wealth of gold) and later became the Illuminati who were later betrayed by Bob Page (who in turn leads the Majestic 12). The error message is a hint at who is in control of the banks. Namely Majestic 12 : MJ12.

Not entirely, the Knights Templar didn't become the illuminati but the two shared common interests. The Knights Templar was the older organisation which founded banking and so on before being forced underground by the inquisition in 1299. From here various groups such as the freemasons took up the traditions and pratcises of the Templars.

Adam Weishaupt founded the Illuminati in 1776 and it too was forced underground by the church. Using freemasonry as as a medium it was able to spread widely and infiltrate many established groups such as the Banking industry, but primarily it's focus was the application of science and control of the masses.

In Dx we are told that the Templars re-emerged from hiding to challenge MJ12 and were defeated by Jospeh Manderly, so they went back into hiding till the time of IW.

As for the error, I'm not sure if it refers to the fact that MJ12 is running the banks or more technically that all transactions pass through the aquinas hub.

Quote:

Oh, i nearly forgot, an interesting tid-bit. In Sector 3 at Area 51, by the cloning facility, there were four chambers. The empty one is the one JC Denton was created in. There are clones for Bob Page and Walton Simons on the opposite side, but now the interesting bit. If you look next to the empty chamber, you will see a clone inside with the name Alex Denton. When you start Deus Ex 2 : Invisible War, your characters name is Alex D (regardless of sex, since Alex is a unisex name).

I think even in early hints for the game it was suggested that character you would play would be Alex Denton, the question was always about whether it would be the same Alex Denton as the one in the tube. (JC was also supposed to be a unisex character but it never worked like that)