I am making the assumption based on the intelligent feedback that I frequently receive that my readership are educated and, more importantly, literate. I am also making the assumption based on that assumption that you have all heard the term "Deus Ex Machina". However, I am ALSO making the assumption that most of you have eventful lives that prevent you from obsessing over the precise meaning of obtuse, "artsy" terms, so allow me to fill you in on a bit of history here.

For the majority of early, recorded history, the goal of all culture was to praise the local gods in order to currey favour with them or avert their wrath - whichever the case may have been. Theatre was no different. The way in which a play would normally end would be that the protagonist realizes he's screwed up his whole life because he didn't worship god 'x' enough, and then the god in question would descend from the heavens and offer him a chance to go back and fix everything in exchange for more piety. (I believe the ancient Greeks were the first on record to do this, but somehow we ended up with the Latin name. Probably because the Romans did it more...and conquered most of Europe.) This acted-out celestial intervention was typically achieved by lowering the "god" (Latin: "deus") from ("ex") some kind of scaffolding by winch and pulley ("machina").

By modern standards, ending a story by hitting a reset button is just about the most unforgiveable thing a story-teller can do. Sure, the protagonist learns from his mistakes, resulting in a satisfying character arc, but seeing him attain his enlightenment consequence-free obliterates the story arc. It doesn't matter how good your protagonist is; if you undo the story - the only context in which your protagonist actually matters - you have undone your protagonist as well, and you end up with...what?...a massive waste of time, I guess.

Nowadays, even though we no longer generally get gods coming down from on-high to f*ck up our stories, the term "deus ex machina" continues to find use, loosely adapted as a lable or any kind of ending that fails to resolve sh*t and thoroughly disappoints us (see: Tom Cruise's "Vanilla Sky", my all-time most hated movie).

I can see what Ion Storm were thinking when they named their iconic franchise:

IO Employee #1: "The protagonist is a guy who becomes uber-powerful - god-like, even - through the use of mechanical implants. Hmm. Becoming a god from machinery, huh? If only we could find a title that is obvious enough to be ironic, but also sounds really smart. That way we'll get the fat-headed, intellectual nerds coming and going!"

IO Employee #2: "Hey, wait a minute! There's a Latin saying that's tangentally related to a remote interpretation of what you're talking about! 'Deus ex machina'!"

IO Employee #1: "Huh? They had cyborgs in ancient Rome?"

IO Employee #2: "I guess. I can't imagine what else it could mean."

IO Employee #1: "All right. Let's use that. But uh, let's drop the 'machina' part. That's a little TOO obvious."

The title, "Deus Ex", literally translates as, "God from".... GOD FROM WHAT!?

I realize that most of you don't sympathize with my anguish on this point. And I'm sure some of you are thinking, "well, the 'machina' part of the term is implied by the game being mostly about machines. Gosh, I feel really badly for this 'Indiscrimi' guy: He must be pretty stupid to miss an obvious connection like that."

My response to all of you is thus: Imagine if Epic Games' groundbreaking trilogy (which will shortly draw to a close); the very games that brought cover-based, third person shooting into vogue; the often immitated, never surpassed saga of Marcus Fenix and Delta Squad...were titled "Gears of".... Would you seriously be trying to tell me that that title is acceptable because the "War" is implied by the gameplay?

Let's go down the list: God of (War), Need for (Speed), Left 4 (Dead), Army of (Two), Call of (Duty), Prince of (Persia) Resident (Evil), Dead (Space), Super (Mario), Modern (Warfare) - the list is truly endless. If you can explain to me how any of these titles would pass on today's market, I will formally withdraw my campaign against the hanging statement that is Deus Ex's title. If not, welcome to the obsessives' club!