Nightdive would “love to remaster Deus Ex”

The most recent Deus Ex game was cancelled by Embracer earlier on this year. Despite having spent two years in development, the group cited financial instability as the cause. While there might not be a new instalment in the franchise for a while, fans will be pleased to hear instead that Nightdive would “love to remaster” Deus Ex, alongside Outlaws and Arx Fatalis.

We recently spoke with Nightdive’s Larry Kuperman, Director of Business Development, who had plenty of exciting things to say about System Shock’s upcoming console remaster.

The original Deus Ex released back in 2000 – before I was born, might I add – and remains one of the most highly lauded games of all time. Its protagonist, JC Denton, is a leather-jacket adorned nano-tech-powered special ops agent, and the plot largely follows his attempts to prevent humanity’s downfall in the face of a pandemic. While the series has seen multiple new entries since, there hasn’t been a definitive remaster of the original aside from a PS2 release in 2002 called Deus Ex: The Conspiracy.

The original Deus Ex was built using Unreal, and with the System Shock 2 Remaster making use of NightDive’s proprietary KEX Engine, it’s likely that we could see Deus Ex in the same light too. It’s hard to recommend to people to play the original Deus Ex now. For the time; it was fantastic, revolutionary, and unimpeachable. Now though, its clunkiness is unavoidable, and it’s difficult to immerse yourself in spite the complex story and immersive storytelling.

With the success that Nightdive’s System Shock enjoyed on its release as the definitive way to play the game, there’s no doubt that an immensely overhauled Deus Ex would also benefit too. Not only that, but the noble effort made to preserve timeless classics is extremely important. For players, but also history’s sake too.

Just last year, a fan-made Unreal Engine 5 Deus Ex game was released. It was a seriously impressive project, even if the game did resemble a 4K Minecraft texture pack at times. Putting the game into hands of Nightdive would be extremely rewarding not just for the fans of the franchise, but also for the passionate developers at Nightdive.

Since the original Deus Ex developers had wanted to end the game with an homage to System Shock, it then seems fitting that Nightdive should be the ones to pick up the license. Here’s to hoping.