A small snippet of Deus Ex

I’ve just been reminded that I never posted here after I opened it, and since I’ve been thinking a lot about how I don’t play games anymore, and no one I ever tried to get to play Deus Ex ever got far enough to see this, what I consider the greatest dialogue in any game ever written, I thought I’d post about it.

So, below, you’ll find a short (but complete) dialogue copied from the game’s files between JC Denton, the player character, and Morpheus, a friendly artificial intelligence. This takes place in Paris, in a little room off a lab in one of the other characters’ bases. It’s a testament to the game’s level of detail that entering the room in which this takes place is not only not required, it’s not even hinted at. Yet, as you can see, the work that went into this is immense, demonstrating that the writers have a clear understanding of and interesting perspective on political philosophy:

Morpheus: JC Denton. 23 years old. No residence. No ancestors. No employer. No–
JC: How do you know who I am?
Morpheus: I must greet each visitor with a complete summary of his file. I am a prototype for a much larger system.
JC: What else do you know about me?
Morpheus: Everything that can be known.
JC: Go on. Do you have proof about my ancestors?
Morpheus: You are a planned organism, the offspring of knowledge and imagination rather than of individuals.
JC: I’m engineered. So what? My brother and I suspected as much while we were growing up.
Morpheus: You are carefully watched by many people. The unplanned organism is a question asked by Nature and answered by death. You are another kind of question with another kind of answer.
JC: Are you programmed to invent riddles?
Morpheus: I am a prototype for a much larger system. The heuristics language developed by Dr. Everett allows me to convey the highest and most succinct tier of any pyramidal construct of knowledge.
JC: How about a report on yourself?
Morpheus: I was a prototype for Echelon IV. My instructions are to amuse visitors with information about themselves.
JC: I don’t see anything amusing about spying on people.
Morpheus: Human beings feel pleasure when they are watched. I have recorded their smiles as I tell them who they are.
JC: Some people just don’t understand the dangers of indiscriminate surveillance.
Morpheus: The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms.
JC: Electronic surveillance hardly inspires reverence. Perhaps fear and obedience, but not reverence.
Morpheus: God and the gods were apparitions of observation, judgment, and punishment. Other sentiments toward them were secondary.
JC: No one will ever worship a software entity peering at them through a camera.
Morpheus: The human organism always worships. First it was the gods, then it was fame (the observation and judgment of others), next it will be the self-aware systems you have built to realize truly omnipresent observation and judgment.
JC: You underestimate humankind’s love of freedom.
Morpheus: The individual desires judgment. Without that desire, the cohesion of groups is impossible, and so is civilization.

There are a few more remarks that happen if you try to engage Morpheus in conversation further, but no further real dialogues are launched:

Morpheus: The human being created civilization not because of a willingness but because of a need to be assimilated into higher orders of structure and meaning.

This one is probably the most-quoted line in Deus Ex:

Morpheus: God was a dream of good government.

And, my personal favorite, which is particularly poignant when directed at JC and the player because of one of the three endings to the game:

Morpheus: You will soon have your God, and you will make it with your own hands.

Writing this post has almost convinced me that political philosophy is cool. I need to go read some epistemology to get back on track. Hopefully it will convince some of you who have only heard me talk about dumb parts of Deus Ex that it’s actually worth your time, though.