{"id":54834,"date":"2022-10-05T07:12:34","date_gmt":"2022-10-05T11:12:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=54834"},"modified":"2022-10-09T10:48:28","modified_gmt":"2022-10-09T14:48:28","slug":"deus-ex-pitch-part-5-underneath-the-bridge-post-mortem-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=54834","title":{"rendered":"Deus Ex Pitch Part 5: Underneath the Bridge (Post-mortem post)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note: Shamus had this entire series written and prepped to post (sans his copious editing prior to posting.) I will be posting these on Wednesdays until they are finished. Other old content will also post on Wednesdays as we find it and have time to work through it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The heli drops Troy Denton off on the roof of the Mirai Building in Tokyo. It’s nighttime. We’re here to get the source code for Denton’s\u00a0 augmentations. We want to find out how he got hijacked, and how we can prevent it from happening again.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our exploration is limited to the top-most floors of this massive office tower, so we don’t need to create the environment assets for a street-level location. The city can just be a really pretty skybox.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mission 5: Miri Technology<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I’m thinking this level should be a nod towards our visit to the VersaLife building in the original <\/span>Deus Ex<\/span><\/i>. We should have some encounters or conversations with rank-and-file office workers. There should be a few haggard, overworked guys scattered around. They’re not a direct threat, but they can summon guards or activate the security system if you spook them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The stuff Denton needs is down a few floors in the server room, behind some heavy security doors that can’t be hacked. We’ll talk about how to open these doors in a minute.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the original game, there’s this moment I found shocking on my first play-through. You’re wandering around the VersaLife building, generally trespassing and pilfering crap, when you run into an office worker. You walk up thinking he’s going to ask for the usual lame NPC stuff, but then he asks you to KILL HIS BOSS. I always liked it because it came out of nowhere and asked me to really consider what I was doing.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Well, this boss works for the Very Bad Guys. But he’s not really in on it, is he? But he’s obviously an abusive boss. Right? And I’m here saving the world or something. I think. I’m not really an assassin, but I’ve had to kill a lot of people already and this boss is obviously a bastard so it’s probably okay if I take him out. Right? I’m sure it’s fine. I’m still a good person.”<\/b><\/p>\n

I kinda want to do a different version of that same idea here. We can use this section to comment on the plight of office workers and crunch culture. Perhaps inspired by <\/span>my feud with the Taco Bell scheduling software<\/span><\/a>, I have this idea where there will be an AI running the office, assigning tasks, and keeping track of hours. Troy can talk to it and discover that it’s designed to maximize productivity, but it doesn’t have any understanding of workers and their needs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the workers like the AI because even though it’s an amoral, unfeeling machine with no regard for their lives, their overall workload has gone down since it was put in charge. The joke here is that this machine has discovered – through brute-force trial-and-error – what the flesh-and-blood managers refused to consider: That humans have limits and making people work more hours doesn’t always result in more work getting done. The amoral machine winds up being <\/span>less<\/b> cruel than the human managers it replaced. So if you don’t want to make life worse for these people, you can’t just smash the computer and be done with it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ways to get past the security door:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Kill the manager<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    One of the workers will give you the same “kill my boss” quest. Only this time, he wants revenge for the time his boss made him miss the birth of his daughter. Also he wants to make sure that the company can’t put the boss in charge of the schedule again. The worker will give you access to the server room if you’ll do this for him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    I find this funny because you’re here to investigate an assassination you’ve been blamed for, and now you have the opportunity to commit an assassination of your own volition.<\/span><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Smash the AI<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      If Troy talks to the manager, the manager will ask Troy to smash the AI. The manager sees that employees are only spending 60 hours a week in the office, when he was keeping them for 80. He thinks the machine is malfunctioning, and he’s worried that it’s going to replace him. The manager can’t smash the AI because the security cameras will see him doing it. But a random gaijin like you could do it and he wouldn’t be implicated. If you smash the AI, he’ll give you access to the server room AND he’ll give you the passwords you’ll need to get the source code you’re looking for.<\/span><\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Help the AI<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        The AI wants to increase productivity, but it can’t get more work out of the available staff. In fact, it’s worried that it’s going to have to reduce the workload even more as the staff become increasingly fatigued and stressed. However, it has observed that the secretarial staff goes home at just 5pm. Same goes for marketing. it theorizes that it could extract more useful work out of these other employees. It just needs to be put in charge of their schedules. If you’ll go over to the HR office (empty at this hour) and hack the computer, you’ll be able to put the AI in charge of the entire office. If you do this, the AI will open the security doors and turn off all the security equipment inside.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

        So you can murder an unarmed civilian who’s a jerk, or you can smash the computer and make life worse for the people in the office, or you can help the AI and make life worse for a different group of workers. And the three rewards are all a little different. The usefulness of these various options will depend on your specific character build. (And maybe there’s a fourth way where you have to brute-force your way past the doors, which will set off all the alarms and result in a huge messy firefight.)<\/span><\/p>\n

        The game should dial things back a bit here. We don’t need a ton of security in these offices. After the obstacle course at the Deep Storage server, the player is probably in the mood for something a little less intense. I’m assuming they won’t mind a section of low-key walking around and talking to people. It’s going to take a little bit of classic adventure game questing to figure out what we’re looking for and where to find it.<\/span><\/p>\n

        They will <\/span>eventually<\/b> have to deal with security, of course. Once he gets past the security doors, there will be a few guards and obstacles for him to contend with.<\/span><\/p>\n

        He’ll also discover that there’s DRM on his implants, so he can’t just patch out the exploit without bricking all of his augmentations. So Troy needs to somehow jailbreak his own brain \/ nervous system. Nobody here can help him do that, but at least he can get the source code.<\/span><\/p>\n

        Once he has the source, he returns to the roof and calls Alex on the radio.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

        —<\/span><\/p>\n

        Troy: I got you the source. Think you can use it to jailbreak my augs?<\/span><\/p>\n

        Alex: I could, but it would probably take a few weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n

        Troy: A few WEEKS?<\/span><\/p>\n

        Alex: We’re talking about five million lines of J# code with Japanese comments and no documentation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

        Troy: We don’t have that much time. Sooner or later I’m going to get too close to a public security camera or someone will take a picture of me and I’ll wind up on the PARASIGHT network.<\/span><\/p>\n

        Alex: (Defeated.) Yeah. And when that happens you’ll have every law enforcement agency in the western world on your tail.<\/span><\/p>\n

        Troy: Can you talk to Carter? Maybe he can help sort this out.<\/span><\/p>\n

        Alex: He vanished about 12 hours ago and nobody has seen or heard from him since then.<\/span><\/p>\n

        (Beat)<\/span><\/p>\n

        Troy: I’m thinking about this Morgan Everett guy the conspirators mentioned. They seemed to be after him. If we could get to him first, maybe he could tell us something.<\/span><\/p>\n

        Alex: It is SO WEIRD that you mentioned him. I just got an email a few minutes ago from someone claiming to be Morgan Everett, looking to contact you specifically. I didn’t know who it was. I was just going to ignore it until you mentioned him.<\/span><\/p>\n

        Troy: Can you set up a meeting?<\/span><\/p>\n

        We get a little exposition on the heli ride. Everett (or whoever this is) doesn’t want to meet in person. But he tells Troy to report to a pay phone at such-and-such coordinates and the two of them can talk.<\/span><\/p>\n

        Troy can’t believe it. A PAY PHONE?!<\/span><\/p>\n

        Interlude: The Wasteland<\/strong><\/h3>\n

        The heli drops Troy off in a parking lot in Southern California. Yes, another US location. I realize we’re seeing a lot of the US, but this location is thematically important.And to be fair, the original spent a lot of time in the US as well.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

        We’re on the edge of a vast tent city. It’s evening. To the north is a sad concrete bridge, where homeless people can take shelter from the rain. To the west is a drainage canal. To the south is a graffiti-covered convenience store. To the east is a police barricade. In story terms, the barricade is here to keep the homeless folks penned in so their tent city doesn’t spill into the nearby office park. In gameplay terms, they’re an impassable barrier because our level designers don’t want to actually build a full-scale replica of Los Angeles.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

        I don’t want the homeless people to feel like a single indistinct mass. I want them to feel varied and alive. These people should go against the typical “dirty bum” stereotype. They should be both male and female, in a variety of ages.No kids, though. That would be too depressing. Also, adding kids would be expensive since they would need all unique bodies \/ textures \/ voices.<\/span> These people have phones and laptops, and they’re wearing (wrinkled) office clothing. There’s a drainage gutter near the bridge where a few people are trying their best to bathe and wash clothes. At least some of these people must work in the nearby office park.<\/span><\/p>\n

        These people are going to have a lot of different viewpoints. Here are some things Troy might hear them say as he explores the area:<\/span><\/p>\n

        “The only reason this place exists is because corporations don’t pay us enough to afford housing. We oughta charge that police barrier, bust through, and burn down that office building. Then the companies will be just as homeless as we are.”<\/span><\/p>\n

        “This is all because the government won’t let anyone build housing. Just tear down ONE of those mansions on the edge of town and you’d have the space to build an apartment that hundreds of us could live in.”<\/span><\/p>\n

        “Don’t listen to the rest of these crybabies. The only reason we’re stuck out here is because we’ve got substance abuse problems we refuse to deal with. You dry up the flow of drugs to the city, and everyone out here will be in rehab by next week.”<\/span><\/p>\n

        “I’m not <\/span>really<\/b> homeless. Not permanently, anyway. I put all my money into crypto-chain virtual stocks. In a couple of months, I’ll be worth millions.”<\/span><\/p>\n

        “I’m working on an app for displaced people. It’s a way for us to share and review good tent locations. If you find a place with running water where the police will leave you alone, you can mark it on the map to help others find it. There’s safety in numbers! I can send you a beta key if you’re interested.”<\/span><\/p>\n

        Somewhere around here we should find a lore item like a newspaper or a laptop with a news story. The bombastic headline will identify Troy as “The Man Who Killed The Future”. It’ll talk about how the assassination was this intricately executed thing and how the killer had this incredible escape plan. This will all stand in stark contrast to the reality of confusion and improvisation that Troy experienced. The story should be full of hyperbole and inaccuracies. The joke we’re going for is that the people in charge of security have blown everything out of proportion to protect their own reputations, and then the news misunderstood the rest.<\/span><\/p>\n

        Sooner or later the player will explore the convenience store to the south. When they do, they’ll find an ancient, graffiti-covered pay phone that is still somehow operational here in 2044. It rings automatically as they approach.<\/span><\/p>\n

        Morgan Everett begins speaking as soon as Troy lifts the receiver to his ear:<\/span><\/p>\n

        Morgan: (Posh British accent.) Agent Denton. Impressive job of escaping the White House after that assassination. Not many could have pulled that off.<\/span><\/p>\n

        Denton: I’m a little busy. Let’s skip the flattery. (We should probably offer the player some tone-of-voice options for friendly, hostile, or snarky. I’m not going to map out a dialog tree here. Let’s just assume that the player is walking through this conversation, clicking on the non-friendly options.)<\/span><\/p>\n

        Morgan: Busy? I imagine quite the opposite. You seem to be out of a job. And given that you assassinated the man you were supposed to protect, I’m willing to bet you need to find a new line of work.<\/span><\/p>\n

        Troy: What, are you hiring?<\/span><\/p>\n

        Morgan: Maybe. We both seem to have our backs against the wall and I thought we might be able to help each other. I’m in need of help I can depend on, and you need\u00a0 a way out of your current predicament. Maybe I can clear your name, although it would probably be a lot easier to just give you a new one.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

        Troy: What do you need me to do?<\/span><\/p>\n

        Morgan: I want the same thing you want. I want to bring justice to the people that killed your boss.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

        Troy: When you say “justice”, are you talking about…?<\/span><\/p>\n

        Morgan: Obviously I’m not talking about calling the police and having them thrown in prison. Our enemies exist far above traditional law enforcement agencies. If they’re going to answer for their crimes, then we’re going to have to resort to something more… direct.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

        Troy: So you want me to kill them? You figure I’m an assassin now?<\/span><\/p>\n

        Morgan: There are lots of people I could call if I just wanted an assassin. I need something more than an assassin. I need a problem solver.<\/span><\/p>\n

        Troy: So what’s next?<\/span><\/p>\n

        Morgan: It’s too dangerous to meet with you while your head is full of machinery that belongs to someone else. And I don’t want you showing up on my doorstep with the PARASIGHT network looking over your shoulder. Lucky for you, the solution to both of these problems is in the camping grounds in front of you. Look for a man in an orange necktie, answers to the name Edward Webb.<\/span><\/p>\n

        (Click.)<\/span><\/p>\n

        Edward is underneath the bridge. He’s middle aged, with a haggard, defeated look about him. He’s wearing glasses, and looks like an old nerd. He freaks out when we know who he is, and freaks out even more once he learns we’re working for \/ with Everett.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

        Troy gets him to calm down, and Edward explains.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

        Edward: I used to be Everett’s technological advisor, but after a few years I got creeped out by the whole “Shadow Government” thing. It’s just… I know Everett means well, but what we were doing was still wrong, you know?<\/span><\/p>\n

        Troy: (Reaction line chosen by the player, where they can be casual, hostile, or guarded regarding Everett’s conspiracy. Edward will respond with knee-jerk defensiveness if you challenge him, and then the conversation continues…)<\/span><\/p>\n

        Edward: What I can’t figure out is how you found me. How Everett found me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

        Troy: We have this surveillance network called PARASIGHT that can…<\/span><\/p>\n

        Edward: I know, I know! I practically designed PARASIGHT! It’s one of the reasons I wanted out. The point is, I thought I knew how to spoof the system.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

        Troy: It’s not like you’re the only person working in the surveillance business. Other people have probably improved it since you left.<\/span><\/p>\n

        Edward: You’re right. If I really want to hide permanently, then PARASIGHT has to go.<\/span><\/p>\n

        They hammer out the details for taking out PARASIGHT.Is PARASIGHT too cartoonish and on-the-nose? Let me point out that in the real world, the FBI had a surveillance system named “<\/span>Carnivore<\/span><\/a>“.<\/span> Edward also admits that he’s the one who thought up the Morpheus Protocol. (He’s giddy to discover that it actually worked. And then he feels kinda bad when he realizes it means he helped kill somebody. But still, he probably doesn’t feel as bad as he should.) He agrees to create a hotfix for your hardware, and in return he wants you to take out PARASIGHT. He just needs the source code for your implants. (Which we already have, and which Alex emails him because our hero is too cool to send emails.)<\/span><\/p>\n

        It turns out that PARASIGHT is hosted even deeper in the Deep Storage facility we visited earlier. So we’re headed back to the southwest desert.<\/span><\/p>\n

        Mission 6: PARASIGHT<\/strong><\/h3>\n

        We’ve been here before. Maybe we’ll have a different entry point this time, and our eventual goal is a little deeper in the facility, but this bit should be pretty familiar and I don’t think we need to go over it again.<\/span><\/p>\n

        The one wrinkle is that Morgan Everett calls up near the end of the mission.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

        “Agent Denton. We need to take down PARASIGHT for the time being, but it really is a useful system and I’d hate to lose it forever. Please make a backup copy before destroying the hardware. We can reinstate the system once we’ve set things right.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

        The player chooses whether or not to make the backup copy before they destroy the server. And yes, we’re going to do the Hollywood thing and say that the server needs to be physically destroyed in a big explosion at the end. Ideally the player can do the deed directly with weapons or explosives, rather than just pushing a button. Or if the engine has (say) a cool fluid simulation, then maybe we can flood the server room. I’d leave it up to the level designers. They know their tools and what would look good. The important thing is that the player gets to do something flashy and destructive.<\/span><\/p>\n

        Just before reaching the final room, Troy comes face-to-face with Sam Carter, his old boss. It turns out Sam has been chasing Troy since the assassination. He was here investigating Troy’s last break-in here, and is somewhat surprised to see him returning to the scene of the crime. Apparently the footage of the assassination has been erased, and he assumes that Troy was attempting to cover his tracks.<\/span><\/p>\n

        He’s convinced that Troy is some sort of sleeper agent, and is hellbent on bringing him to justice. He’s taking the assassination very personally. Particularly the bit where you used HIS GUN to do the deed. At the same time, he’s noticed some of the irregularities in the setup, which you can point out to him:<\/span><\/p>\n

          \n
        • That Woman in Orange – what was her deal? We can’t place her at the scene of the crime, but she mysteriously vanished after the murder.<\/span><\/li>\n
        • Boy, that sure was a badly-timed glitch in the security cameras, wasn’t it?<\/span><\/li>\n
        • I was passed out on the floor when the cameras came back on. Normally assassins don’t begin their getaway plan with a nap.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

          Carter doesn’t want to believe that the kid he’s mentored for all of these years was a sleeper agent. And he can see there are a lot of weird things about this setup. On the other hand, all of the forensic evidence points at Denton. That was his gun, fired from where he was standing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

          So Sam’s loyalties are balanced on a knife’s edge. He straight-up tells you he <\/span>wants<\/b> to believe there’s some grand conspiracy, because that would mean he hasn’t been backstabbed by the person he trusted the most.<\/span><\/p>\n

          The player doesn’t know it, but we’ve been secretly keeping score in the background.<\/span><\/p>\n

            \n
          • Were you a flippant little shit on day 1? <\/span>(Bad)<\/b><\/li>\n
          • Did you get information out of Leo Gold in the first mission? <\/span>(Good)<\/b><\/li>\n
          • Did you clear Miami without killing any of the mystery SWAT guys? <\/span>(Very Good)<\/b><\/li>\n
          • Did you reach the secret-within-a-secret in Switzerland and get everyone’s name? <\/span>(Good)<\/b><\/li>\n
          • Did you kill any civilians in Miami or Switzerland? <\/span>(Very Bad)<\/b><\/li>\n
          • Were you a flippant little shit in the conversation where Carter gave you the gun? <\/span>(Bad)<\/b><\/li>\n
          • Did you kill a bunch of people escaping the White House? <\/span>(Bad)<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

            We assign points to all of these good \/ bad things. If your score is above N,We’ll need to do some playtesting to get a feel for a good value for N.<\/span> then Carter will recognize that you’ve conducted yourself like a trustworthy professional. If that happens, then you’ll be able to talk Sam into backing down and letting you pass because. If not, you have to fight him. Careful! He’s a toughie.<\/span><\/p>\n

            I don’t think we should reveal these numbers to the player. Carter’s reaction is supposed to feel like the cumulative response to your playstyle. I don’t want players doing math like, “I said the nice thing in conversation A so I can murder civilian B.” I don’t want people doing Mass Effect style “Paragon Math” while they play. I just want them to play how they want, and Carter will react accordingly. Players will figure this stuff out eventually, of course.Nothing can withstand the scrutiny of the speedrunning community.<\/span> But we’re not going to expose the artifice to them.<\/span><\/p>\n

            Troy exfiltrates, and we return to the tent city.<\/span><\/p>\n

            Interlude: The Cure<\/strong><\/h3>\n

            Troy reports his success to Edward Webb, who gives him a thumb drive that will jailbreak his augmentation suite.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

            Troy tells Alex that he’s going to need help installing this. She tells him to head back to the heli. Then we reveal that she’s actually sitting in the pilot seat. It’s a really small cockpit. She’s nestled in a little tangle of screens and keyboards.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

            Troy: Wait, you’ve been riding up front the whole time?<\/span><\/p>\n

            Alex: Not the whole time. Just the last few trips. I realized that our stealth ‘copter was a better hiding spot than my stall in the women’s restroom.<\/span><\/p>\n

            Troy: Why didn’t you tell me?<\/span><\/p>\n

            Alex: Didn’t want you to know. Was afraid of getting Morpheus Protocol’d. Speaking of which…<\/span><\/p>\n

            She takes the thumb drive and plugs a cable into wherever Troy keeps his cyber-USB port. His vision fades and glitches, just like before. After a few seconds, it subsides.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

            Alex: And done. Anyone you kill from now on is 100% your fault.<\/span><\/p>\n

            Now that PARASIGHT is neutralized and Troy is no longer a potential threat, Morgan Everett agrees to meet with them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

            We’re headed to the UK. We’ll chat with Everett next time.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

            Note: Shamus had this entire series written and prepped to post (sans his copious editing prior to posting.) I will be posting these on Wednesdays until they are finished. Other old content will also post on Wednesdays as we find it and have time to work through it. The heli drops Troy Denton off on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[618,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epilogue","category-projects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54834"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54835,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54834\/revisions\/54835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}