Aspyr’s remaster of Deus Ex earned a fair bit of opprobrium (including from me) when it was revealed in September, and, well, that looks set to continue. Jerry O’Flaherty, art director on the original Deus Ex, gave his reaction to the remaster during a recent sit-down with FRVR. It did not seem positive.
“Oh, what the fuck,” said O’Flaherty. “No. This did not need to happen. Sorry whoever was involved in this. Oh man, yeah, no.” So not exactly a thumbs-up, there. Still, O’Flaherty does—sort of—get a bit more positive. “If you’re gonna do it, yeah, alright, why not? Why am I judging?” Which is less approval so much as it is resignation to the whims of fate.
I can’t fault the guy. Deus Ex was never a graphical powerhouse, but it had a vibe and a cohesive aesthetic all the way back in the year 2000. “You wanted to lean into what the engine did well and don’t do the shit that it doesn’t do well,” said O’Flaherty.
O’Flaherty recalls that a lot of the hand-crafted work that went into the OG Deus Ex wasn’t trying to achieve the kind of high-fidelity, ‘realistic’ look that so many remasters and remakes go for. “You’re not trying for efficiency, you’re trying for reality. And sometimes reality just isn’t exactly what you want. This is why Hollywood lights the shit out of their movies. It’s why they put a big screen up and then they light it like it’s sunlight. They want it to be exactly what they want.”
That, ah, doesn’t quite seem to be the approach being taken with the DX remaster. “They really turned those 1999 graphics into 2003 graphics,” wrote one disgruntled fan in the immediate aftermath of the game’s reveal. “How did someone not realise how awful those visuals look?” asked another.
My hope is that Aspyr either takes the criticism into account and changes its approach—which would almost certainly entail a delay—or at least put in a toggle to switch to the old graphics, as it did with its (very good, as far as I’ve heard) Tomb Raider remasters. If not? Well, we’ll always have Revision.
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