The Nameless Mod

Ghandaiah: OH DEAR GOD, I HAVE POCKETS!
King Kashue: Back to your office, Ghand!

An award-winning mod for Deus Ex, over 7 years in the making, that actually came out in March 2009.

The game is set in Forum City, a virtual representation of exactly that, a social internet forum. Forum City is a hub for myriad industries and social interaction, as the virtual forum has become the medium of choice for running society. This makes all the problems endemic to forums magnify a thousand-fold: flame wars are actual REAL wars fought between people of opposing ideologies, and crime committed in the forums is actual crime with real-life consequences. The Moderators of the forums, therefore, are powerful entities indeed, nigh-invulnerable beings with the power to stop anyone cold in the name of maintaining order.

The game starts when one of said Moderators disappears, causing an enormous vacuum in the city's established order. This happens at the worst time possible: two religious cults are engaged in all-out war inside the forums, and online crime is at an all-time high. The remaining Moderators have been spread too thin, and they can see disaster looming on the horizon. Enter Trestkon(that's you!), a former intelligence agent with old ties to the Moderators, who left Forum City years ago for reasons unknown. The Moderators ask Trestkon to investigate the disappearance of their colleague: what Trestkon does, who he allies himself with, and ultimately the fate of the entire city is in your hands.

See also Zodiac, an older mod for Deus Ex.

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In addition to all the tropes from Deus Ex, the mod provides examples of:
  • After the End: The game is set after the apocalyptic destruction of Deus Ex Incarnate, done through a process known as "Planetization."
  • Alien Geometries: The Voodoo shop
  • Anachronism Stew: A few minor examples exist in the game, such as articles about Half-Life 2 and Hitman: Blood Money despite the game taking place before either was released. A notepad late in the game has a list of some Deus Ex tropes, despite TV Tropes barely existing back then.
  • Anarchy Is Chaos: Averted with Ryan's ending. (There's some riots, but it's the same in all endings)
  • Ancient Conspiracy: The GameSpy aliens apparently controlled all of the cities in ForumPlanet since their founding.
  • Author Avatar: Literally, every character in game is the avatar of someone on forum city, and many of them did develop the mod.
    • In a straighter example, the player character is Trestkon, the project lead.
      • Though this is more of a benevolent case of an Enforced Trope, as the Lawrence "Trestkon" Laxdal didn't actually want to have himself represented as the main character, but the rest of the team convinced him.
    • Then we have the Narcissus Entity, pretty much the embodiment of this trope for the entire dev team.
  • Badass Longcoat: King Kashue, Slicer, and you, if you choose the correct appearance customisations - characters will even comment on it.
  • Berserk Button: Break Phas's TV when he's at the apartment.
    • Likewise, harm anyone at PDX HQ when allied with them. King Kashue will frown upon it.
  • Big No: Scara and Ryan if you ban them via the space station
    • Early in the game, you must choose to save or kill Silver Dragon, which decides whether you'll fight for PDX or WC for the rest of the game. The prize for saving him is hearing Scara deliver the most wonderful Cluster F-Bomb ever. (Scara is always foulmouthed, but this is just amazing.)
  • Bilingual Bonus: A hidden conversation with Jonas by "summoning" him via cheats in the DXI ruins has Jonas' lines in Danish. The conversation rapidly cycles through several tropes, most importantly Trestkon repeating everything Jonas says for the benefit of English speakers with Jonas acting as the Intelligible Unintelligible - which Jonas is quick to point out. Trestkon justifies himself by questioning how many Danish speakers will actually play the mod, while Jonas pessimistically questions how many people will play the mod.
  • But Thou Must!: Averted. You choose which faction to support, and the game reacts very differently to different dialogue choices.
  • Boss Battle: All of them avoidable.
    • Anticlimax Boss: All of the bosses you fight are still human, and fights can result in this if you carry stuff like Vortex Grenades, LAWs, GEP Guns...
    • Bonus Boss: Athena and Beefman.
    • The Dragon: Kylie Griffin.
    • Fighting Your Friend: Arguably Slicer and Deus Diablo if you are allies with WorldCorp. And Kylie Griffin if you rekindled your former relationship and did the Ryan ending on a WorldCorp game.
    • Puzzle Boss: You have to disable some machinery to kill both cult leaders in Beefman's case can be avoided by use of a vortex grenade.
    • Recurring Boss: ZeroPresence and Slicer, if you don't kill them when you first meet them, of course.
    • The Unfought: Phasmatis.
  • Boss Room: Spoofed in the WorldCorp story during the fight with Slicer.
  • Canada, Eh?: King Kashue will regularly poke fun at the fact that Trestkon is Canadian, for example in the first conversation the two have, he asks if Trestkon has been "cooking moose kebabs over a polar bear dung fire" while he's been gone.
  • Cherry Tapping: The fist description claims that they are "also good for showing off if you're too l33t to use actual weapons."
  • Cluster F-Bomb: Scara generally cusses a lot, but when you pick the PDX storyline and he finds out...
  • Conspiracy Kitchen Sink: Due to the nature of PlanetDeusEx Forum City being based on Deus Ex.
  • Cool Shades: Apparently, almost everyone, including you.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: Scara B. King. Oh god, Scara B. King.
  • Cyberspace: Forum City.
  • Dark Reprise: The WorldCorp ending theme to the PDX ending theme (even though you obviously can't get them both on the same playthrough).
  • Deadpan Snarker: Trestkon and Phasmatis usually.
  • Development Hell: The mod was stuck in this for nearly eight years.
  • Door to Before: In the Old Server Complex, you'll find a door in a room that is just out of reach. After beating the level, it is the door that takes you out of the offices.
  • Emergency Weapon: Fists.
  • Evil Laugh: Several characters do this, when Kill and Replace Doppelganger Treskton does this it provokes the response, "What the hell!? Who are you!? And why do you look like me!? And how come you can laugh like that when I can't!" from Trestkon.
  • Evil Versus Evil: The Cult Wars, though the Llamas get a Pet the Dog moment in the Where Are They Now? Epilogue if they win.
  • Fan Fiction: As a representation of an internet forum, a fan fiction shop exists in-game.
  • Fell Off the Back of a Truck: The PHAT rifle.
  • Flaming Sword: Deus Diablo has one. You can get it from Raving Nutter on day 2 on a second playthrough.
  • Flanderisation: In his mail (viewed through hacking), easter eggs (like NRC), and cheat codes (iamjonas makes everyone a cat), Jonas's personality is "really likes cats" and nothing else.
  • Fun with Acronyms: Certain important systems on the space station were named so to match internet terminology such as the LEETs (Large Excess Emergency Turbines) and the ROFL (Remote Orbital Frequency Laser).
  • Gadgeteer Genius: Deus Diablo, he built an inanimate object with the powers of a board admin something Gamespy couldn't do, hence why he was kidnapped.
  • Gannon Banned: Filler NPCs based on the default avatar of Gamespy forums will ask questions like "How do I get on the boat?".
  • Good Bad Bugs: (The real) Jonas has mentioned that an unimportant NPC sometimes accidentally provoked a particular robot into killing her while the player was in a conversation about whether or not that robot is able to kill at random. This "bug" was found too funny to remove.
    • Also before patch 1.0.1 Kashue will call Trestkon a "sick bastard" and attempt to kill Trestkon himself (as a moderator, he is immortal) if you kill anything in PDX... including fish or rats. This gets joked about in the patch notes.
  • Game Mod
  • Good Old Fisticuffs: Fists are a weapon that doesn't take up an inventory slot, but (at least according to the manual) they are quite useless.
  • Guns Akimbo: Trestkon's custom pistols.
  • Hand Wave: Averted. Abomination doesn't even bother explaining how he has the fake plans on himself.

Abomination: "You think too much, Trestkon."

  • He Who Fights Monsters: If Trestkon joins WorldCorp and gives his reason as "It is no worse than PDX", Kashue will use the quote at Trestkon.
  • Hopeless Boss Fight: You will be asked to kill Phasmatis in the WorldCorp story line, as a mod this would be impossible to win even if he didn't teleport your weapons to the bottom of building.
  • Robotic Psychopath: Alpha 2 Abomination the Second, son of the great protector of Lamar
  • I Can Rule Alone: An option in the WorldCorp endgame.
  • Impossibly Cool Clothes: Just look at Trestkon!
    • Justified Trope, it's cyberspace, real world physics do not apply.
    • Also, the datacube on 'forum accounts' says that the coolness of your avatars clothes is linked to how long you've been a part of the forum and your seniority.
      • Which explains why Guest forum goers look like Down Syndrome tools and talk like they're high on helium.
  • Improvised Weapon: Hammers, screwdrivers and wrenches serve as this.
  • Infinite Flashlight: Using one aug upgrade on the flashlight will make it drain no electricity.
  • Insecurity Camera: A new manned system is used in addition to the original Deus Ex system. The new system lets you sneak into the camera room and eliminate the guard. The rest of the trope still applies.
  • Interface Screw: At one point in the PDX story Trestkon downloads an insane AI into his brain, causing the screen to randomly spin, zoom and wobble. Latter, you may optionally allow one character to serve as Mission Control for a level. During this talks incessantly across the infolink at some points, which prevents you from saving the game. This while jumping precariously over an instant-death magma pit. No way it wasn't intentional (at least it is quite funny).
  • Friend on the Force: Phasmatis, Trestkon's former superior from his special forces days, functions as his friend in the government.
  • Instant AI, Just Add Water: Treskton was born of the countless misspellings of the protagonist's name.
  • Joke Weapon: Screw driver, the Llamas' and Goats' sporks/foons, plus the original game's pepper spray.
  • Katanas Are Just Better: Half the swords are Katanas.
  • Kleptomaniac Hero: Notably averted in the bars. Swiping drinks and snacks will get you a stern warning from the bartender. Continue, and then he will sound the alarm. A small glitch allows you to steal when the bartenders are talking to another NPC.
    • Not just in the bars, snatching items will make their owners react in some way to you. There's even one instance where you get bounty hunters after you.
  • Kill and Replace: Treskton aims to do this to Trestkon.
  • Kill Sat: The ROFL laser.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: NPCs will sometimes comment on how everyone looks alike (see One Steve Limit below). Another moment is when you sneak up on two mooks near a very dangerous looking jumping puzzle. One mook will comment on the point of it being there, saying that it is like "those stupid jumping puzzles in old video games put in instead of giving you more enemies to shoot."
  • Les Collaborateurs: Despot, and presumably the other Forum Planet admins as well.
  • Lighter and Softer: Compared to the original Deus Ex's World Half Empty, Forumcity at its rarely seen worst is a humorous Crapsack World and at its best, every non-villan lives Happily Ever After. As does Andreus, but no-one cares about him.
  • Ludicrous Gibs: Vortex Grenade + Victim(s) = This. Justified since the grenade does create a black hole that rips the victim apart.
  • MacGyvering: The new use for the Demolition skill is to make explosives out of household chemicals.
  • Malevolent Architecture: Despot's Apartment.
  • Mana: A PlanetDiablo merchant brought some mana potions to PlanetDeusEx by mistake, and you can find a lot of them lying around. They are ammunition for the Fire Staff weapon.
  • Mini Game: Pong, Tetris, and Breakout can be accessed in-game, fully functional. You can also access the mod's IRC channel in-game if it counts. Certain missions also require that the player solve a recontextualized mini-game such as Rush Hour. Raddish Adventure is platformer unlocked by obtaining all the Easter Eggs.
  • Mission Control: Various characters depending on the faction you support, most prominently Evil Invasion and That Guy. in the last mission, you also have Ryan and The Narcissus Entity.
  • Molotov Cocktail: Can be made with some household chemicals and a bottle of wine.
  • Multiple Endings
  • Multiverse, the: It is mentioned that Gamespy's other Planet sites have Forum Cities similar to the one where the game takes place. The most information given for any of them is PlanetHalf Life has a thriving mod industry. Design notes mention a PlanetHalo arms merchant who never made it into the game. The description of the "Mana potion" item mentions they were brought over by a planet Diablo merchant.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Despot, when he tells Trestkon he left Ghand in charge.
  • No Fourth Wall: The Narcissus Entity only actually addresses Trestkon in a single line, where he asks Trestkon his thoughts on the player's actions, and a single endgame conversation; every other time, he addresses the player. He exists as a tool to lampshade sequence breaking, replacing messages that depend on the support of a faction when neither can be used. For example, entering one area (Despot's Apartment) the password to which (Despot / GS_Rulez) has not been given yet will result in Narcissus asking Trestkon what he thinks of the fact that he was "able to recall information that was never inserted into this branch of reality". In its own words, "Your puppeteer makes its presence apparent".
  • No Pronunciation Guide: The developers have mentioned they cared about getting Jonas' name (pronounced with a y sound) pronounced right.
    • Even the man who has it as his real name gets it wrong sometimes (granted, the name is Danish, not English).
    • A running joke in the game is how unpronouncable the protagonist Trestkon's name is - a certain character will persistently pronounce it a new way every time he says it except if he gets angry.
  • Nonstandard Game Over: Killing Scara. B. King during your first meeting will result in such, as an avatar of the game's development team tells Trestkon that his actions are not supported (as in, they didn't program the quests to accommodate that action, as it would require an infinite amount of time to program reactions for everything), tells him he wasn't expected to survive, and after a conversation kills him via script functions, meaning that even God mode will not help you.
    • Killing or knocking out any person (except Jonas, who can be knocked out) in the PDX HQ when your allied with them will result in the game sealing the exits, and invisible NPCs coming down to mop the floor with you.
  • Not That There's Anything Wrong with That: Pops up in one of the out takes.
  • Not Quite Starring: Lawrence "Trestkon" Laxdal does the voices of a few NPCs, but not the lead who named after him. Jonas Waever DOES voice himself, however.
  • One Steve Limit: A conversation in the apartment building at the start reveals that all the guards (who all look exactly alike) are called variations of Jim or James in an extremely meta moment.
    • One member of DXO mentions DeusEx.org and Deus Ex Online were both created with the same purpose and merged because there wasn't room for 2 "DXO"s.
  • Only Sane Man: Trestkon, possibly Jonas, and the moderator staff.
  • Pacifist Run: Of course, it is a Deus Ex mod, after all. You can finish the game without killing anyone if you're allied with a certain faction, and if you work for the other faction you only have to kill two persons. (One of them can be killed by talking.)
  • Pamphlet Shelf: A new system for multipage books exists in an attempt to avert this, but many places still use the original game's system of multiple books for each chapter, such as the fan fiction shop.
  • Path of Inspiration: A hidden book reveals that every religion in Forum City was formed as part of a pact between the founders to secretly gain power.
  • Perma Death: This is how getting killed works in-universe, required killed people to start over. Though the game uses a standard save/reload system.
  • Playing with Fire: Deus Diablo, whose weaponry includes the above mentioned flame blade, a flamethrower, and as a moderator, the ability to make people spontaneously ignite.
  • Point of No Return: Three. The first is about halfway through, the second is just before the penultimate level, the third is just before the Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
    • The game will even go out of its way to warn you about the first one, with your corresponding Mission Control adviser warning you before you pass it.
  • Post Cyber Punk
  • Post Modernism: How very much.
  • Power-Up Letdown: Skills have gained new uses (Demolitions can be used to make Molotov Cocktails) resources for lockpicking/electronics are fewer (and now you have doors/pads of decent lock strength you can't just blow up) and make the respective skills decent investments, some computers need higher skill levels to hack while Swimming has been removed entirely (and replaced with Fists) in an attempt to fix this from the original game.
  • Relationship Values: Kylie Griffin, your Psycho Ex-Girlfriend, might like you more or less depending on what dialogue options you choose when talking to her.
  • La Résistance: DXO.
  • Retraux: The game's graphical ability mirrors the original Deus Ex's 2000 era graphics despite being finished in 2009 and set in 2004, even with the new assets.
  • Rhymes on a Dime: Grub, Partyzone DJ (voiced by Grub, sound effects creator) speaks like this.
  • Sequence Breaking: If you climb over a gate before you get the code, an NPC will ask how you did it and list a few methods.
    • The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: Naturally, the developers are fully aware of the ability to "grenade climb" and other oddities in the Deus Ex engine, they have been working on a 9 year old game for over 7 years.
      • Not to mention that most of the doors in the game have infinite strength. A good way to breeze through Deus Ex was to breech doors with explosives and rockets, which could usually be found almost everywhere. The Nameless Mod makes them much harder to find, forcing you to rely more on lockpicks, multitools, passwords, and alternate paths opposed to sheer force.
  • Shadow Dictator: Despot.
  • Shout-Out: Many. To Deus Ex, Snow Crash, etc...
  • Sidequest: Many more than in the original game.
  • Simultaneous Warning and Action: Goats have a REALLY long line for this
  • Skippable Boss: Pretty much all of them.
  • Slouch of Villainy / Clasp Your Hands If You Deceive as seen in this fanart of Scara that the developers used for his character portrait in the manual from version 1.0.2 and is "absolutely spot on".
  • Stop Helping Me!: You can ask an NPC called Beeblequix to help you open a few doors in one area, but his primary function is to distract you with his inane comments about his favourite soaps, dead rat anecdotes and even some music while you are attempting tricky platforming sections. You are unable to quicksave during his remarks. This is deliberate and lampshaded when he points out it was SO ANNOYING when this sort of thing happened in Deus Ex.
    • Thankfully you can turn down his help, and have the option to murder him (and his cat) if he pushes you over the edge.
  • Story-Driven Invulnerability: Averted, you can kill anyone who is not a moderator (and you do find a way to kill these in some of the Multiple Endings), you can kill boss characters like Kylie, ZeroPresence, and Slicer early in the game. However, it is played straight with Scara B. King. You can kill him, but you trigger a Nonstandard Game Over if you do it before The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
  • Talking Animal: It's apparently possible to choose an animal model for the Forum City avatar. Examples include a cat in PDX, a dog in the Llama temple and a wolf, with whom Trestkon worked in the past and who can give you a subquest.
  • Talking the Monster to Death: Because Cloudcuckoolander Ghandaiah's... ahem, "reality" is based entirely on his vivid and colourful delusions, it is possible to convince him to spontaneously burst into flame.
    • And in another, less extreme example, it is a possible solution for a minor side-quest early in the game where you talk a gang member into stopping their activities.
      • It is also possible to kill Silver Dragon by convincing him to flee the WorldCorp parking lot... and be gunned down by WorldCorp guards.
  • Talking to Himself: Though Jeremiah Costello voices both the lead and Scara B. King, the team deemed him good enough that it wasn't noticeable, so it was kept.
  • Talking Your Way Out: If ZP or Slicer survives his first confrontation with the player and the player loses the second confrontation this is required to continue the game.
  • Take That: The description of the "DaiKatana" weapon in its entirety (it takes up a huge chunk of the inventory, does pitiful damage and worst of all, hurts you when you use it) is one massive Take That at... Daikatana.
    • Trestkon notes after being given one in a series of fetch quest that he has been transported to World of Warcraft
  • The Gods Must Be Lazy: Despot could very easily stop the trouble with World Corp, or at the very least give banning powers to the remaining two moderators, but is more than content to sit on his ass in his apartment and watch TV. Some of his actions, or lack thereof in the Deus Diablo case is because he is secretly working with Game Spy, and because he has been mutated since the collapse of DXI.
  • The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Seriously, you'll know when you get there.
  • Tradesnark™: Every term associated with the Goat Cult always has a ™ added, even in subtitles.
  • Tropes Will Ruin Your Life: The fan fiction shop owners have the "start with one question, ask another, and another" effect. No matter how much you love Deus Ex, you are bound to have them tell you something you missed in the original game, or at least get a nice explanation of the historical background of the conspiracy theories that make up the Conspiracy Kitchen Sink.
    • One of them even warns you when you're about to enter a particularly long-winded conversation, which is littered with increasingly rude options for escaping the branch.
  • Uncanny Valley: Shadowcode has a pretty realistic face. The (admitted to be deliberate by the devs on IRC) This is creepy in a game where the graphics are intentionally designed to look like they are from 2000.
  • Video Game Caring Potential: King Kashue rewards Trestkon with extra credits or items for leaving human enemies alive.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can hurt and kill anyone who's not a moderator, Scara B. King or one of the two reanimated heads in the voodoo shop.
    • In contrast to King Kashue rewarding you for keeping enemies alive, Phas will reward you for doing the exact opposite
    • And then there is the new weapons. Blow up your enemies (or innocent victims) like a balloon with the PHAT-Rifle, create a mini-black hole with the vortex grenade and have it redecorate the room with their guts, or just set them ablaze with the firestaff.
  • Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Try killing or knocking out anyone in the PDX Building if you're allied with them.
  • Unwinnable: There are a few instances in the game where either a bug or a player action can result in you getting "stuck" forcing you to go to another save state, cheat to get past, or start over in a worse-case scenario. Using the vortex grenade can fling necessary items into unreachable spots, and in one level, a robot that blows open a door for you may prematurely stop if interrupted, runs out of enemies, or runs into a corner, preventing you from passing it without "nocliping" your way through.
  • Warp Zone: One between the different districts is made available upon the completion of a sidequest.
  • Wide Open Sandbox: Though later in the game it gets more linear.
  • What Could Have Been: The bonus material shows a lot about the early design. The city in the intro is an old version of the corporate sector that was dropped because, while it looked nice, it lacked in gameplay.
  • What the Hell, Player?: Many instances, for example, killing Kylie while you're allied with WorldCorp, or going on a killing spree in PDX HQ when you are allied with them.
  • Where Are They Now? Epilogue: Affected by your actions during the game.
  • Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: Llama high priest Beefman speaks like this. Jonas claims it's meant to make him sound like an idiot. Lampshaded by the party zone owner, who says that he speaks Elizabethan english for no reason.
  • You Bastard: You will get this a lot from the PDX gang during the World Corp storyline.
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