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Welcome to the The Phaeton Project Wiki

This is a always-close-to-but-never-quite-complete breakdown of everything in Ion Storm's Deus Ex and how it relates to each other -- and today's political and moral landscape.

The Phaeton Project

The name Phaeton is derived from greek mythology, Phaeton being the son of Helios and Clymene. He aspired to drive his father's chariot one day, but lost control and was struck down by Zeus. His epitaph is said to have read "Here Phaëthon lies who drove the Sun-god's car. Greatly he failed, but greatly he dared."

I can't recall why I wanted to begin this project in the first place; maybe it was some trailer for DX3 that I watched or maybe I had one of those oh-so-common twinges in my gaming consciousness that brought with it an urge to install and play DX again. Regardless, I knew what I had seen the first and second times through wasn't anywhere near anything, so I wrote it all down on the third time through, not intending to miss anything. I do know that I had a personal motivation to as well; I was struggling to find myself in the midst of some internal strife during my freshman year of college.

TPP gave me a way to morally improve myself, if I may be so pretentious. Deus Ex was a catalyst for me in my teenage years; it prompted me to challenge the status quo, to question what was being taught to me and my peers, and to think for myself when it was so easy to try and fit in with a crowd mentality. I consider the Phaeton Project (thus far) to be my magnum opus in gaming journalism and creation (since I can't create or code, this is as close as I'll get -- see my addendums for more ramblings).

First things first before you proceed:

This isn't everything. Deus Ex is broad and deep. There is almost no conceivable way to experience everything to its fullest in one or two playthroughs. I have tried and most definitely failed to find everything to be had in a "typical" playthrough (no cheats or late augs where they're not attainable, build a spy that has some fighting power; make a lot of silent takedowns but get messy now and again) while still exploring as much as possible. This was done in two waves. The first ended in Everett's apartment hideaway in Paris, just before sneaking into DeBeer's chamber and taking off for Vandenburg. The second wave finished the game. These waves were done fourteen months apart , for reasons to be explained in the future. I will attempt to make an organizational distinction, but there should be a uniform presenation and coherence throughout the project, with the exceptions of addendums and other notes. This may not occur in some instances, but I will work to resolve any discrepancies in style (which may have changed quite a lot in the interlude). I've amassed a large (2+ GB) database of savefiles, and though their quality is dubious, I intend to re-title them appropriately and publish them in a fairly large torrent should there be demand for it. Yes, I know of the Deus Ex wiki on this site and of the Deus Ex bible and of the thousands of other resources on the web concerning this game. I have read the entire DX bible but in terms of resources I will make tangential reference to them should it provide more accurate information or context, but this will be largely self-contained. I am attempting to round out the player's experience concisely and raise questions that I hope will provide a more meaningful, fulfilling experience. This is not, nor do I intend it to be, a walkthrough or a "let's play". The reader is expected to have a good knowledge of the game's workings, mechanics, story, and characters. This is a wiki, but I will lock it down from outside editing; this information and opinions that I've noted, created, and collated on my own. Contacts to correct information or provide credible sources to refute or prove claims/ideas/opinions /plans for global domination , however, are welcome and strongly encouraged. I chose a wiki due to its simplicity, its holistic approach to information, and its ease of use. Being a poor college student, however, I don't have the money for a domain of my own nor the expertise to run/code for a server. I'm learning as I go here. I've never taken part in editing a wiki, so this may take some time to piece everything together and digitize my notes. In regards to No. 7, I suppose I'll leave talk pages open and learn to use those. If activity is persistent, I feel it is my duty as an active redditor to launch and maintain a small subreddit concerning this wiki. Despite being a locked wiki, expect the information herein to change frequently ; current events aren't current after some time. Deus Ex is still relevant in 2011, and I expect it to continue to be relevant long after HR's release. As you read through this wiki, challenge yourself to learn more about what you don't know , particularly your government. Today's teenagers and college students commit the atrocious mistake of thinking and believeing that their government doesn't matter and can't affect them. They're dead wrong. Morality is what defines people; why be content with yours if it is illogical and hypocritical?

More Thoughts (Post-Analysis and Linkage)

Expect (scalable!) walls of text. Images would take many more months of work to retrieve. I do intend to pull a few where needed, however. All of Invisible War and most of Human Revolution are not being treated as canon for this project. This is a breakdown of only Deus Ex. I do not own Invisible War, and don't have (the money for) a machine capable of running Human Revolution. As it stands, this project is a skeleton for more work I'd like to do with it. Connecting characters, building a few timelines, and improving cohesion are the three biggest ideas for this project that I'll be working on soon. I also somehow missed the conversation with Morpheus; that is my top priority at the moment. Re-iterating number 1 from above -- this isn't everything. I've touched up on some areas that were crucial but missed out on during my playthrough for this project. It's been massively improved upon through the use of The Deus Ex Bible, a GameFAQs dump of every line of dialogue or text in the game, and the nuwen.net page. All of these and a few more are linked below. Links are questionable ; I hastily put them together and keeping an entire game straight in one's mind is very difficult. Some stuff is wrong. But I'm working on continuity errors of my own creation and working on fixing quite a few instances of 3AM logic. The fundamentals, however, should be pretty solid. "Key Pages" are all (very) loosely interconnected, but contain comments or information of note that is significant to understanding the plot, backstory, characters, history behind, or technology in the game of Deus Ex. If you're only here for a few minutes, pick a few of those to read through. Likewise, "Critical Pages" are one level up from the above , and contain comments or information crucial to what is noted. Both Key and Critical pages were pulled from the database last, so expect to wonder why they're there in the first place -- I only skimmed through with a vague idea of what should fall into these respective categories, so there will likely be a few oddities.

Resources You Should Be Familiar With Before Reading

Stephan T. Lavavej's Deus Ex page on nuwen.net. The annotated script is interesting at points, but doesn't go into details too often. Good for design concepts and documentation used before Deus Ex was even playable. Luke Kowalski and Anton Forsanders' GameFAQs dump of the entire game's script. This was immensely helpful in patching some holes in the digitization of my notes. I would very strongly urge all readers to have this open in a separate tab while reading through the project!!! That way, if you get lost (especially with some of the digitization early on), you can roughly follow where I am or even draw your own conclusions if you feel I missed something. This Rehost of Gamespy's Deus Ex Bible. Backgrounds on many characters, espcially Tracer Tong, were extremely valuable to have handy while owrking on this project. A must-read for any serious Deus Ex fan!

The Project Itself

Start reading!

Listing of each page in the project itself

Selected pages of note

Critical Pages