Yeah, that definitely sounds like something that I’d love to sink a bunch of time into. On to the wishlist it goes!

Oh, now that looks interesting! Immediately wishlisted.

Thanks for letting me know about that!

That’s that procedurally generated detective game, right?

I really need to try it because it seems right up my alley. From what I understand, it can get pretty intricate when it comes to the detective work which seems really interesting.

Got some stuff in my cart, but need to play some demos first before I hit the “buy” button. Surprisingly quite a few games I’m interested in have one available, which is nice.

In the meantime, I’ve started Case of the Golden Idol because I loved Return of the Obra Dinn and I know it’s highly recommended for fans of that.

Don’t know if I’m really feeling this as much, though. I’ll carry on, of course, because I still enjoy the detective puzzle aspect. But it isn’t drawing me in the way Obra Dinn did for some reason.

I remember first trying the original when I was like 11 or something.

At the time, I didn’t really understand much beyond “shooty shooty” when it came to games with guns (it would be shortly after this that I’d find stealth games and have that passion ignited), so I was given guns, used them how I usually did at the time and proceeded to get obliterated in the first level and gave up.

A few years later, after I’d gotten into stealth games, my love affair with immersive sims began.

Along with playing the Thief series, I went back to give Deus Ex a try and it all just clicked. I think it and Thief II were instrumental in cementing my love for the genre.

After playing and enjoying the first one, I played them all over the next few years and Mankind Divided is probably my second favourite after the original. Loved every moment.

Then fucking Square Enix does their bullshit, and then fucking Embracer ruined it for good.

All in all, I love Deus Ex and I’m super glad I found myself getting into stealth games and immersive sims, otherwise I would have missed out on it so many other of my favourite gaming experiences, Deus Ex being one of them.

What’s weird is that it’s like the only Looking Glass/Ion Storm/Eidos Montréal immersive sim franchise that doesn’t have a clear spiritual successor. For System Shock we got not only BioShock, but Prey (2017) as well. For Thief, we got Dishonored. For Ultima, we got Arx Fatalis/Libertatis (and early Elder Scrolls to a very lesser extent).

But for Deus Ex, we’ve got… I don’t know, Cyberpunk 2077, maybe? But the whole open world thing doesn’t really fit in with the usual gameplay loop of Deus Ex. There are a fair amount of great cyberpunk games, but none seem to really scratch that immersive sim itch. I guess Prey is pretty close as well (in addition to its System Shock influences), if you consider some of the body/power upgrades, but it’s not all that similar thematically.

I’d love for someone to come around and pull a Thanos by just going, “fine, I’ll do it myself”. If the franchise is dead, maybe now there’s more motivation for that, since, before a few months ago, we were still clinging to what little hope remained for the third Adam Jensen game. Or maybe someone already has and I’ve missed it.