Deus Ex devs say they weren't trying to make a statement when they made one of the most political games of all time

Considering the NSF soldiers yell "Fascist!" when they see you, I'd wager that at least someone was thinking about politics.

I, uh... what even is this article? "Deus ex devs" in this case is... two - a level designer, and Spector, who's the producer and director, but, you know...

Nothing from the design lead, Harvey Smith (who in Spector's own words, "functioned more as a co-director", and would later work on the Dishonored games, which pretty obviously have plenty of politics going on), or the writer, Sheldon Pacotti? https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/deus-ex-at-20-the-oral-history-of-a-pivotal-pc-game

Even Warren in this article I feel is being misinterpreted

"I'm a big believer that if you want to make a statement, you should make a movie or write a book," Spector told PCG. "What I thought about things didn't matter in Deus Ex. What I think is the right future for humanity is irrelevant. It's all about what each player thinks."

"what I thought doesn't matter" doesn't mean "I didn't put any of my views in the work" - it means "you, as the player, are free to ignore my views and come to your own conclusions". Have we sunk so deep into media literacy discourse now that "a work can have multiple interpretations" is something we're supposed to be mad about? The sentiment "if you want to make a statement, you should make a movie or write a book" isn't "games can't be political" - it's "games, as an interactive medium, are less suited to communicating a clear message". Which is, you know, true - the ability of players to interact with the world obviously throws a wrench in your ability to deliver a story. The "solution" to this in the AAA space has historically been to just... give up on actually looking into new methods to write narratives that take into account interactivity, and start making movies with gameplay segments interspersed between the scenes. Which I guess has worked out pretty well given all the TV adaptions, if what you're looking for in your artistic work is prestige and not, you know, actual art.

Spector says he didn't want "to tell them the state of the world, I wanted them to act and see the state of the world that resulted from their choices,"

This isn't in any way incompatible with the game being political - if anything, an effective political message is exactly one which shows you the consequences of a political action. Like, the end of the game is literally you making an ideological decision about the future of the world, with the final level constantly having characters calling in to exposit their personal ideology and try to convince you of it! It's clunky, sure, but it's obviously political.

Deus Ex, I'd argue, is fundamentally a pretty liberal game at its core in spite of the radicalism of its characters and factions. Its central politics are contained in the immortal JC Denton line "When due process fails us, we really do live in a world of terror."

Okay, now this is just straight up making me feel like I'm being gaslit. JC Denton the character is a naive liberal - the game, on numerous occasions, offers counterpoints to him. Him standing in front of a godlike AI, with full knowledge of the global conspiracy running everything, and saying "we just have to :vote: the Illuminati out" isn't supposed to be him being correct. The due process line is literally at the start of the game, and is a response to another UNATCO agent arguing that the agency should just shoot people on sight - the whole plot of the 1st section of the game is JC coming in as, again, a naive lib, one who genuinely believes law enforcement is doing good, and being repeatedly shown that most of his fellow law enforcers are bloodthirsty murderers, culminating in him betraying the organization. There's one character who expresses a reformist view and that "the only way to save the agency is for the good people to stay" - he is promptly kicked out of the agency and joins the resistance.

I guess we're doing "if a protagonist says it, it must mean the author endorses the viewpoint" again.

This is also an area where Deus Ex is pretty interesting, with regards to the whole player choice thing - you mostly don't get to choose JC's ideology in dialogue. You can choose it to some extent via your in-game actions, but JC mostly remains set - as, indeed, a lib. It is through dialogue with other characters that opposing viewpoints are presented - JC will try to argue, usually not very successfully. There is no "naive lib" ending - the closest is the Illuminati ending, described as "essentially 20th-century capitalism: a corporate elite protected by laws and tax-codes", and which ends with nefarious music over the main Illuminati guy saying "this time we will do it right", promptly followed by