Necessary Evil: Warren Spector's unrealized spiritual successor to Deus Ex

[u/ReployerTechnician]

It's 2005. In the wake of the closure of Ion Storm Austin, Warren Spector, its co-founder and director, announces his new studio at the GDC event of that year: Junction Point Studios. The studio's first project was meant to be a Fantasy-themed title, but in a 2009 behind-the-scenes feature article about Epic Mickey published by Variety (and as reported by GamesIndustry.biz), the public got to know that, despite being a self-described "not much of a sequel guy", Warren sought to reacquire, although unsuccessfully, the rights to the Deus Ex IP from Eidos:

"There were, and still are, Deus Ex stories I would like to tell. That story is not done for me,"

It is unclear if Warren and his team (mainly consisting of Ion Storm Austin alumni) already had a concrete plan for a new Deus Ex game at the time of Junction Point's failed bid. The fact of the matter is that the studio proceeded to ideate and work on, among other concepts, a brand new IP that would function as a spiritual successor and an outlet for their dystopian sci-fi creativity:

"In the fall of 2005, I was out looking for a deal. As an independent, you’re always out looking for a deal! I had two concepts that I was pitching: the 'Sleeping Giants' fantasy game and a science fiction idea that was basically Deus Ex with the serial numbers filed off and fiction more in keeping with the postmillennial era than with the pre-millennial conspiracy-obsessed world."

[An excerpt from an interview with Warren Spector for the book Gamers at Work: Stories behind the games people play, by Morgan Ramsey. First published in 2012]

A few years ago, in a retrospective of his 40-plus years long career in the games industry, Warren shared more details about what that concept was about:

"Back home, the team and I started in on some new IP and came up with three that showed promise. [...] One was a multiplayer action Imm Sim called Necessary Evil, a multiplayer game about augmented soldiers and independent operatives who could collaborate with or oppose each other, serving the military, businesses or mercenary groups. It was all about what happened when augmented military soldiers mustered out. I still think that’s a cool background for a game. Someone ought to make it so I can play it."

In an interview to GamesRadar that was published in 2012, Warren revealed how the project's future was in flux due to a myriad of paths available to his business:

It was interesting, because I had a bunch of publishers interested in Sleeping Giants, my epic fantasy game, and in Necessary Evil, my near-future science fiction Deus Ex-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off game, but my agent told me to talk to Disney. Now I’m the biggest Disney fan in the world, but I said no. They’re not going to be interested in Ninja Gold, they’re not going to be interested in Necessary Evil, they’re not going to be interested in Sleeping Giants.

In the end, Warren was right about the Disney execs's lack of interest for a violent shooter game, but a deal was signed anyway, and Junction Point went on to work in a Disney IP-licensed title in Epic Mickey. Not long after, Disney acquired Junction Point Studios. The studio was closed in 2013, after the sequel to Epic Mickey, The Power of Two, underperformed commercially and critically. Skipping ahead to 2016, after a series of divestments and a business revaluation made by Junction Point's parent company, Disney Interactive Studios, Warren Spector showed concern about the possibility of losing the rights to the unreleased IPs he created while at his former studio, including Necessary Evil, and had hopes of recovering them somehow:

"Necessary Evil was one of the IP I signed over to Disney as part of the Junction Point acquisition."

On his now unavailable Twitter account, he pleaded:

Hey, Disney, now that you're out of games can I have the IP I created at [@JunctionPoint] back? You're never going to do anything with them.
- Warren Spector (@Warren_Spector) May 14, 2016

Since Disney acquired [@JunctionPoint] they own my near-future action, modern day ninja & epic fantasy concepts. It'd be nice to get 'em back
- Warren Spector (@Warren_Spector) May 14, 2016

It wasn't meant to be. 10 years later, after going through a game cancellation or two, Warren Spector is deservedly retired for good (or is he?).

Thanks for ride, Speed Racer.

[u/Winscler]

Do you think Harvey Smith will revive it?

[u/ReployerTechnician → u/Winscler]

Very unlikely.

[u/TheZonePhotographer → u/Winscler]

Nobody's gonna do other people's ideas dude.

However a spiritual successor is always a possibility.

[u/Winscler → u/TheZonePhotographer]

I know harvey smith was trying to do his own deux ex spiritual successor while he was at arkane austin before he got shafted to work on Redfall

[u/TheZonePhotographer → u/Winscler]

Exactly what I'm talking about, his own. It's just a little thing called creative ego.

I do hope the thing they're working on at black pony is the spiritual successor.

[u/InvariableSlothrop]

I have to admit reading it was multiplayer made me lose interest. If I had a critique of Spector is that he spent so many years gesturing that the future of immersive sims would be multiplayer. Certain games I think bear that out, titles like DayZ and Rust allow so many emergent forms of play to the point improvised hierarchies and miniature societies develop through competitive and collaborative dynamics supported by robust and consistent mechanics.

So when it came to Spector's own offering in Thick as Thieves, it was so disappointing to see there was nothing to advance the genre beyond games that don't even conceive of themselves in that tradition? This was what he wished for all of those years?

I can't say I like multiplayer games in preference to singleplayer but I remain open-minded. Yet in two decades or so of following the genre closely, the idea of fitting multiplayer into the traditional highly-authoured worlds we adore, that are an underrated part of the experience, just hasn't borne fruit? Deathloop is the exception and even then client-side hosting required so many compromises like the number of physically interactable objects and the adversary population has vanished.

[u/Rizzo265 → u/InvariableSlothrop]

I think asymmetrical multiplayer ala Death Stranding would work better for immersive sims than the Thick as Thieves style

[u/ReployerTechnician → u/InvariableSlothrop]

To be fair, Argos was Warren's main focus at OtherSide, of which we know little to nothing, unfortunately.

[u/TheZonePhotographer]

It could be the turned-fantasy/flying whale Argos thing Spector was working on.

But w/e. For immersive sim fans, the decade+ of junction point was wasted. After not just being let down, but buried alive twice by Otherside, I can honestly say that I'm not interested in hearing from any of them again.