Deus Ex is one of the most influential games of all time. It has left its mark on almost every computer role-playing game succeeding it. Yet, Deus Ex does not remain in the popular consciousness just because of its gameplay but because of its supposed ability to predict world events. The world of Deus Ex is a sci-fi dystopia in which every conspiracy theory you can think of is true and happening at the same time. In 2000, Deus Ex left the World Trade Center out of the New York skyline due to a memory error, with the in-game explanation being the towers were destroyed in a terrorist attack. A year later, it was credited with “predicting 9/11.” This was the first incident that made people believe that Deus Ex could predict the future, but another major world event would bring people’s attention back to the game nearly 20 years later. Deus Ex’s world is afflicted by the “Gray Death,” a disease that caused a pandemic on a scale unthinkable in 2000. So when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Deus Ex was once again credited with foretelling the future.
So, is Deus Ex actually capable of predicting the future? Not in the slightest. A work can’t be truly apocryphal. Even media that tries to foretell world events, like Nostradamus’s “Les Prophéties,” require significant truth-stretching to be said to “predict the future.” The only evidence supporting his claim to have foretold 9/11 is that he said, “At forty-five degrees, the sky will burn.” It’s also important to note that Deus Ex was written as a satire; described as “James Bond meets the X-Files,” “Deus Ex” feels like a greatest-hits compilation of conspiracy theories from the last 50 years. If you buy into the idea that Deus Ex is an accurate reflection of the world and what is to come, you also have to accept the more out-there conspiracy theories like FEMA Camps being created to imprison Americans, secret societies like the Illuminati and the Knights Templar having the power to influence geopolitics, George Washington’s supporters controlling all future elections through the “Society of the Cincinnati” and other right-wing hoaxes that can be disproved with half a Google search. To have a conversation about what Deus Ex warns us about, it’s important to first separate the satirical aspects from the rest of the story to not feed into right-wing propaganda that serves to derail discourse about serious issues.
So what does Deus Ex tell us about the future? Deus Ex’s greatest accomplishment wasn’t predicting 9/11 but predicting how the U.S. government would respond to a terror attack. In the wake of the terror attacks in New York in the world of Deus Ex, the U.S. government chartered the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition an international organization to combat terror worldwide. The immediate real-world comparison for UNATCO is the U.S. Post-Patriot Act and how they became seen as the “World Police.” UNATCO answers to no one but is coincidentally based in New York on land donated by the Rockefeller family. While the goal of UNATCO was initially intended as a counterterrorism task force, the jobs UNATCO fulfills are described in the game as “any transgression of the legal code.” UNATCO has an unlimited reach and no one to hold them accountable.
This lack of oversight is reflected in the gameplay too. JC Denton, the player character, is a UNATCO agent for the first few missions. Taking a pacifist approach is discouraged by the game mechanics; ammunition is scarce for nonlethal weapons, you earn fewer experience points and gain less bonus gear and your fellow agents mock you, calling your approach “cowardly.” Civilians in the game refer to UNATCO as an army, rather than a police force. What “Deus Ex” is trying to communicate through this is that any attempt for one country or organization to try to police the globe is an inherently colonialist practice. If such a group exists with such little scrutiny, it will only be able to destabilize the world. If you look at America’s interventions post–9/11, specifically in the Middle East, this was exactly the case. Deus Ex’s warning to us was not that 9/11 was going to happen but that if someone attempted to police the globe, only disaster could result.
Deus Ex’s second cautionary message is to be seriously wary of billionaires’ attempts to get involved in politics. In the real world, this is a losing battle, and has been for a long time, but Deus Ex gives us a bleak premonition of what the future will be if nothing changes. Deus Ex isn’t a classic dystopia like “1984” or “Brave New World” but a cold police state where the middle class has gone extinct. If you look at the growing wealth disparity that started in 1980s America, you will see that the future that Deus Ex lays out isn’t terribly unrealistic. The National Secessionist Forces, the main opponent of UNATCO in the U.S., attempts to steal vaccines from UNATCO and distribute them to the needy and rail against the US government for being supposedly run by the super-wealthy. At one point, JC learns that the Trilateral Commission, a real-world and in-game NGO founded by David Rockefeller, is the one controlling the Deus Ex U.S. government. Members of the real-world Trilateral Commission include Jimmy Carter, Henry Kissinger and Jeffery Epstein, so to say that an NGO where presidents and businessmen collaborate affects American politics isn’t an absurd claim by any means.
Another NGO cited by real-world conspiracy theorists as controlling world politics is Bilderberg, another group to foster global cooperation, with notable attendees to the conferences being Bill Gates, Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger (once again). These groups benefit from the conspiracy theories being spread about them, as they delegitimize criticism about how billionaires inform global policy. When right-wing conspiracies occupy the dominant discourse of a topic, it becomes impossible to talk about these issues without being lumped in with the conspiracy theorists, and being automatically discredited. Not to propose a conspiracy theory of my own, but when a crackpot conspiracy appears around a serious issue that warrants attention, a part of me believes that it was started as a means of deflection from these large organizations. Deus Ex attempts to shine a light on these issues by treating them with the respect they deserve, as they bear consideration. The only difference between what the Trilateral Commission does in our world vs. Deus Ex’s setting is that their maneuvering in our world is far more overt.
Deus Ex still holds up all these years later because it’s a deeply intelligent work that can be analyzed through political philosophy and can be put in conversation with real-world events even 24 years after its release. While it is sadly incapable of telling us exactly what will happen in the future, it imparts upon us the need for a healthy skepticism of modern institutions, as well as the need to hold the wealthy to their word. That said, if you still want to take Deus Ex’s timeline as gospel, I recommend preparing now for Los Angeles to fall into the sea.
Daily Arts Writer Nicolas Eisenberg can be reached at niceisen@umich.edu.