Deus Ex recently celebrated its 25th birthday. But in a parallel universe, PC gamers with eight arms and two heads are commemorating the 25th anniversary of a first-person Command & Conquer game to blow C&C Renegade out of the water. That’s because Warren Spector’s platonic ideal of the immersive sim very nearly became part of Westwood’s beloved strategy universe, so desperate was the legendary designer to realise his vision.
This all happened before Deus Ex had a name so frequently mispronounced as “Juice Sex” back when it was little more than a wad of paper with the codename “Troubleshooter”. Spector wanted to make an open-ended near-future simulation starring a supercop protagonist known as Jake Shooter, which strayed away from the aliens and fantasy heroes that were so prevalent in the medium.
“I was sick to death of space marines and alien invasions and mages with fireballs and pointy hats. I had made enough of those and wanted to do something different,” Spector told PC Gamer.
Spector conceived Troubleshooter in 1994 while still working at Origin Systems. He struggled to sell the concept internally, but he succeeded at convincing Westwood to pony up for basically the same game with C&C wrapping:
“I was about to sign a contract with Westwood to make a Command & Conquer RPG”, Spector explains. “My plan was just to take the genre-mashup, player choice elements from Troubleshooter and set it in the C&C universe. From a gameplay perspective, I was at a point where I was going to find a way to make it one way or another, even if it meant making another damn sci-fi game!”
In the end, fate intervened in the form of Doom co-creator John Romero, who essentially wrote a blank cheque for Spector to join Ion Storm to realise his vision with no strings attached. So Spector joined Ion Storm, forming his own studio under the name in Austin. Troubleshooter became Deus Ex, Jake Shooter became JC Denton, and the rest is history.
Although I wouldn’t change Deus Ex for the world, part of me is curious about what the games industry would look like had Spector signed that contract. Is there a reality where immersive sims flourish after Command & Conquer: Troubleshooter becomes the biggest-selling game of the decade? Or does the project get cancelled two years in when Westwood’s execs realise the preposterous ambition of Spector’s idea? Only those nostalgic, C&C-loving octopuses know.