So, a much-deserved ~Deus-Ex-Fan-Club is coming together on DA, and that club has brought to my attention this exercise for Deus Ex fans, which is to write up a "proper" sequel treatment for Deus Ex (this is a pretty popular theme given how maligned Deus Ex: Invisible War is). So, here goes, and I fully expect this treatment to be very unpopular...

Deus Ex is a friggin' great game but...

I don't think a direct sequel is/was a good idea at all. In order to have one, the game's multiple endings would either have to be reconciled (through some clunky storytelling à la Invisible War) or a single ending would have to be given preferential treatment, which would be saying in no uncertain terms that players who chose one of the other two endings chose "wrong," which is definitely a bad thing.

I would've made the Deus Ex franchise into a series of stand-alone installments, not unlike the Zelda franchise... Okay, so the Zelda franchise technically has some sort of continuity with hundreds of years between installments, but this is a formality at best. The designers tell a different story that they feel like telling with the same characters and work it into continuity as an afterthought. I wouldn't even bother with the afterthought.

So what does that leave us with? We have a cast of characters who I would reduce to their most basic traits in order make them more versatile. You would be JC Denton, a more-or-less blank slate with a mysterious look about him. Your brother would be Paul Denton, and he'd be a generally nice guy and a hit with the ladies (this was meant to be a bigger part of his character in the original DX as I understand it). Anna Navarre would be a bloodthirsty woman, Gunther Hermann her sidekick. Manderley would be a bureaucrat, Simons and Page would be antagonists (one might argue that always knowing Page and Simons are bad ruins potential stories, but we knew they were bad from the beginning of the original Deus Ex too, and that game turned out pretty damn well), and so on.

We also have a conspiracy-based story, a near-future setting (this is very important, I think), and an overall theme of "this is where society is going, and it's bad news." Feasibility comparable to the original game is important. I wouldn't say nanotechnology per se is a must in terms of story, but given it's success as a game mechanic in addition to the skill system, I'd keep it around.

I realize that this isn't exactly a specific treatment... But given how long the DX development bible was and that my concept for continuing the franchise basically means writing a new bible from the ground up... Well, maybe later.