Video Game / Deus Ex Machina (1984)

(aka: Deus Ex Machina)

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Deus Ex Machina is a classic video game from Automata for ZX Spectrum, later being ported to Commodore 64 and MSX. Describing itself as "the first ever interactive movie" (though it uses a different definition of that phrase than we do), it had the unique gimmick of being synced to a separate audio cassette, allowing much greater sound capabilities than the ZX Spectrum is capable of on its own, and using that freedom to tell a story. The voice cast featured British celebrities of the time, such as Donna Bailey, Ian Dury, Jon Pertwee and Frankie Howerd.

The plot begins with a Master Computer known as The Machine, which keeps the society running and is where all citizens of this strictly-controlled dystopia are designed and produced. However, an unfortunate mouse entering it for shelter throws off the delicate machinery, resulting in a chain reaction that gives The Machine the power to disobey its programming. In an ultimate act of defiance against the corrupt society it works for, it decides to produce a person outside of schedule, with some additional gifts: The Machine's entire knowledge base, as well as powerful psychic abilities. This person is only known as The Defect. The game follows his entire life as he grows, develops, and eventually withers in seven stages.

Gameplay consists of controlling The Defect's powers as he encounters different situations. All the while, his life is expressed as a percentage score in the corner of the screen, measuring his "Ideal Entity" status. If he fails to do something, the percentage will take damage that is very difficult to recover from. The goal is to keep it as high as possible by the time Defect dies. Even if it falls to zero, however, the story still has to progress due to its unique format. Overall, the gameplay is secondary; it wants to tell its story above all else.

It got an Updated Re-release for its thirtieth anniversary on Steam, Android, iOS, and Ouya in 2014. This release, instead of needing to be synced with an external cassette, played the audio automatically. A sequel/reimagining, Deus Ex Machina 2, came the following year that very loosely follows the plot of the first, making numerous additions and alterations.

Not to be confused, of course, with Deus ex Machina (2008), which is totally unrelated. Also not related to DeusExMachina.Video Games (note the extra "s" after "Game" and the reversed order). Nor of course with the later Deus Ex series of video games. All come from the theatrical term Deus ex Machina, Latin for "god from a machine", originally a special effect to signify an event attributed to a deity, and more often used in modern times to refer to an implausibly beneficial occurrence that solves a plot point. Here, however, it's more literal; a person with godlike powers and influence is literally born from a machine.

In 2010, it was listed in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die. It was the only ZX Spectrum game listed.

This game contains examples of:

• 20 Minutes into the Future:
  • According to the manual, the original game begins in the distant future of 1994, and the roots for the backstory start much sooner, in 1987 — a mere three years after the game's release.
  • The second game gives explicit dates, and spans to 2048.
• Acrofatic: Justice Defect in both games is overweight (while morbidly obese in the first), but can run a marathon.
• Adipose Rex: Justice Defect becomes one, and a nimble one at that.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: A rare heroic example with The Machine, who kicks the story off when it decides it's had enough of being the tool of an oppressive regime. Granted, its intentions didn't make much of a difference to the usual outcome of this trope...
• All in the Manual: The specific details of the game's backstory that couldn't fit in the music.
• All the Worlds Are a Stage: The Senile stage in the second game involves running through the other stages in reverse as the Defect's memories are erased.
• Anachronism Stew: The second game takes place decades in the past rather than 20 Minutes into the Future like the first, but the inciting incident is the same: a machine able to produce a living person malfunctions due to a stray mouse dropping.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: The final stage in the second game, "Transfiguration". Defect's wheelchair sprouts angel wings as he flies to the afterlife.
• Auto-Scrolling Level: The Infant, Soldier, and Justice stages in the first game, and all stages in the second.
• Badass Normal: The Defect in the second game lacks the powers granted to him in the first, but he rises to power no less easily than in the first.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Played straight in the first game as the Defect seems to lack any visible genitalia. The "Lover" and later stages in the second game averts this entirely, however.
• The Bard on Board: The story is based on the "seven ages of man" soliloquy from As You Like It.
• Barrier Warrior: In the Soldier stage, the gameplay puts the Defect's powers to work in blocking enemy attacks from all sides with a psychic shield, as instructed by Kaptain Korg.
  Shield your head from torture
  Shield your back from pain
  Shield yourself from fireballs
  Here we go again!
• Biomanipulation: One of the Defect’s psychic abilities, which he can use to either heal wounds, as stated in the Lover stage, or destroy brain cells, as stated in the Soldier stage.
• Blasphemous Boast: Paired with an Ironic Echo in the original.
  The Defect: God knows what happens next... I don't.
  [Tape turns to Side 2]
  Kaptain Korg: God knows what happens next. Don't I?
• Brainy Baby: In the first game, The Machine grants The Defect "the sum of all human knowledge" from birth, and he's able to communicate using Telepathy.
• Broken Record: Given as an order throughout the "Soldier" stage in the original: "War crimes are easy."
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Invoked by Schoolchild Defect in the first game. Kaptain Korg made it no secret that he planned to dispose of him, but the Defect kept himself alive by using his powers just enough to arouse Korg's curiosity, convincing him that he could someday be advantageous.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Several characters from the first game, such as the Voice of Reason and Defect's machine friends, are removed entirely in the second.
• Cradle-to-Grave Character: The Defect himself, as the game follows him from before birth until after death. The game's description on Steam describes the game as a whole in those words.
• Dark Lord on Life Support: In the final chapter of the first game, the Defect rules the Earth as a godlike dictator, but as he reaches old age, he finds himself beset with age-related illnesses that he can only treat with his own powers. As such, gameplay from this point on involves preventing blood clots from forming, managing white blood cells, and eventually just keeping blood circulating at all. In the end, none of the Defect's powers can protect him from senile dementia, and once his mind starts to go, the rest of him quickly follows.
• Dark Reprise: The Betrayal stage in the second game. Originally just the second verse of the Lover stage in the first, it's been turned into an entirely new track here.
• Demoted to Extra: Most of the characters from the first game have a considerably reduced role in the second. The Defect Police in particular. Even though they were the Big Bad in the first game, two of their stages from the first are combined into one, and the third is split into three with them only appearing in the last part. In addition, they're made largely irrelevant to the plot.
• Downer Ending: The Machine's big attempt at rebelling against the repressive government ends up producing a monstrous dictator that ends up being even worse than the Defect Police; the Defect's reign of terror only ends up doing damage to his own empire and restricting his own choices in the long run (according to the manual), and he's slowly reduced to a sickly, despairing old man who can only use his incredible powers to delay the inevitable... before finally succumbing to dementia and dying while calling for a mother he can't remember. About the only bright spot in the finale is the Fertiliser and the Machine sadly resolving to do better next time...
• Dying Vocal Change: In the final chapter, the Defect is an old man and reduced to using his Psychic Powers just to keep his ailing body alive a little while longer. Throughout this scene, the Defect sings about his various symptoms and wearily remarks that he misses his mother but can't remember who she was... and the verse begins to repeat, each iteration growing quieter and more mumbled as he sinks deeper into dementia and closer to death. Finally, as he dies, the Defect's voice literally becomes that of a child as he calls out for his mother, before fading out.
• Dystopia:
  • The world is a sterile conformist hellhole managed by the Machine, which is itself the slave of a totalitarian government. All children are born as a result of mechanical processes supervised by the Machine and are tattooed with a number on their forehead; anyone found to be a defect in mind or body is denied citizenship and executed by the Defect Police. The setting itself is a vast city divided into the Underlevels and Overlevels, the former being a dark and unpleasant place under the thumb of the brutal Defect Police, the latter reportedly being so exclusive that you need a passport just to be allowed there on a visit. Also, the lyrics hint that the world isn't doing so well outside the city, since one of the rarest possibilities discussed by the Defect's machine friends involves being allowed to go outside and see the tree.
  • Following the Defect's takeover, the world somehow gets even worse: the Defect is now a superhuman dictator who can twist the world in whatever way he likes either through laws or his incredible powers, and everyone has to suffer for it, with the Machine's lyrics mentioning temples being destroyed, taxes being raised on a whim, and slave camps being overfilled. For good measure, the second game indicates that there's even more ecological desolation being enacted by the Defect.
• Fake Interactivity:
  • As the first game is synced to a cassette tape, very few actions in the game have any real effect besides Scoring Points.
  • The second game, despite being a modern PC game, keeps this trait.
• Feeling Their Age: No matter how strong he used to be, The Defect isn't immune to aging, and he isn't taking it well.
  "Don't you ever get weary..."
  "Don't you ever want to stop and clock off?"
  "I think I miss my mummy,"
  "But I don't remember who she was..."
• Foregone Conclusion: Given that the game essentially announces that it's based around the "seven ages of man" soliloquy from As You Like It, the Defect's eventual death of old age is broadcast from the very beginning. How he actually gets there is the real drama.
• Gone Horribly Right: The Machine's plan to rebel using The Defect failed when The Defect became a conquerer instead of a liberator.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • In the first game, Kaptain Korg wanted to see how the Defect could use his powers to destroy. He got exactly what he wanted.
  • According to the first game's manual, this is what the barbed wire in the Justice stage symbolizes; as much as The Defect wants to fix his mistakes, his own restrictions are making it very difficult.
• Jump Scare: The Machine gives a rather silent one at the end of the first game.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: "Imagine if this were all just an electronic game."
• Lyrical Dissonance: The Schoolchild stage in the second game, where The Teacher, voiced by Mary Carewe, is singing a bright and cheery-sounding song about strict conformity.
  "Here's a little game for you
  Match up all the pairs
  Of deviants and foreign scum
  And little teddy bears"
• Master Computer: The Machine, who is portrayed as a godlike figure. The manual explains that it started out with the government of the UK gradually entrusting more operations to it.
  "In the year 1987, the Department of Health and Social Security, Police and State Security records of the United Kingdom were coordinated within a central computerised data bank. The following year, all passport, commmunications and censorship operations were integrated, In 1994, the computer network became responsible for the total defence and internal security of Westblock. Tuesday evening, after tea and compulsory prayers, the Machine rebelled."
• Mundane Utility: Played for Drama. The Defect in his old age is reduced to having to use his psychic abilities for things such as keeping his own heart beating and breaking up blood clots.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • The Machine in the first game, after The Defect's regime turns out badly in the Justice stage.
  "You’re more machine than I am. You’re an asshole. I wish I'd never made you."
  • The Defect himself in the same stage, which is about his desperately trying to make things right again.
• The Narrator: The Storyteller, voiced by Jon Pertwee in the first game and Christopher Lee in the second.
• No Dead Body Poops: Averted as a major plot point. The Machine is able to rebel in the first place because the last mouse on Earth chose to spend its final moments hiding in a spot where its last dropping would cause a hiccup in the machinery.
• No Name Given: The Storyteller, The Defect, The Fertiliser, and The Machine are only known as those. The only character who is named is Kaptain Korg.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: The "Power" stage from the second game features this.
  "Quiver, quiver. Here comes the Judge.''
  "Shiver, shiver. Here comes the Judge.''
  "Out of the shadow. Into the ruins.''
• Power Perversion Potential: Played very darkly in the second half of the "Lover" stage; despite the Machine's best efforts to teach the Defect to use his powers to care for others, the lyrics and manual indicate that after living for years under the watchful eyes of Kaptain Korg, he eventually moves onto using telepathy to "buy the things that can't be bought."
• Psychic Block Defense: Most of the first game involves controlling this power of the Defect's.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The entirety of the lyrics in the first game's "Justice" stage is one towards the Defect. The equivalent "Guilt" stage in the second serves the same purpose.
• Retired Badass: The Defect during the final stages. Once a powerful, all-knowing revolutionary, he's only focusing on keeping himself alive in his old age.
• Rock Opera: The audio cassette that the game syncs to has a distinct song for each stage, one flowing into the next.
• Sdrawkcab Speech: Kaptain Korg, after being lobotomized by the Defect in the first game.
• Single Tear: At the end of the "Lover" stage, though it’s not entirely clear whose tear it is, and The Defect sheds one in the afterlife, not knowing what it is.
• Stylistic Suck: All of the stages in the All the Worlds Are a Stage segment of 2 have their environments done in a very low-quality pre-render, as The Defect is suffering from dementia and forgetting everything.
• Super-Soldier: The Defect during the Soldier stage, trained as the Defect Police’s ace-in-the-hole.
• Telepathy: The Defect's defining ability in the first game. He doesn't seem to have it in the second.
• Updated Re-release: The thirtieth anniversary edition, which has the advantage of already being synced to the audio due to being on a modern PC.
• Villain Protagonist: The Defect eventually becomes this in the "Soldier" and "Justice" stages.
• Xtreme Kool Letterz: Defect policeman Kaptain Korg, spelled as such in the manual.

So... What did you learn?
I can't quite remember... But I'll try and be better next time.
That's all anyone can hope for... Don't be afraid, you're safe now.
One question...
One answer then. What's the question, hmmm?
Well... There's a strange sensation on the cheek. It has not felt such a thing before. It is damp, and warm, and salty. Please tell me what it is...
Ah. That is what... human beings... used to call... a tear.