Mount Weather

Mount (Mt.) Weather, in various design documents and prerelease concepts of Deus Ex, is a secret government facility that serves as a bunker for government officials during a national crisis, as well as a site for technological research.

While Mt. Weather was originally planned to have a significant role in the story, it was entirely cut from the game as development progressed. No mention of Mt. Weather is found in either the finished Deus Ex game or any of the subsequent titles in the Deus Ex series. Because Mt. Weather was developed to a playable state before being cut entirely, it has been described as one of the "truly deleted scenes" of Deus Ex.

Deus Ex development history

Mission description in Majestic Revelations design document v5.3e

Shooter: Majestic Revelations design document

In the design document for Shooter: Majestic Revelations (an early concept of Deus Ex), Mt. Weather is a secret bunker for United States government officials after the country was placed under martial law due to a nationwide drug crisis engineered by Majestic 12. The facility is located underground and can only be accessed via tunnels from Camp David and the White House. Majestic 12 plans to assassinate the government officials there, including president Philip Mead Riley and his cabinet, by sabotaging the oxygen system of the facility.

In a mission taking in the middle act of the Shooter: Majestic Revelations concept, JC Denton finds a way into Mt. Weather and saves the government by fixing the sabotaged environment system or otherwise supplying oxygen to the facility. The following named characters are listed as part of the mission:

• President Philip Riley Mead
• The First Lady, Rachel Mead
• The First Son, Philip Mead II
• The First Daughter, Sarah Mead
• Vice-President Margaret Williams-Hamner (referred to as "Margaret Williams" in other parts of the design document)
• The VP's Husband, Michael Hamner

After the mission, Mt. Weather becomes the player's new base of operations.

Deus Ex Bible

The role of Mt. Weather was expanded to being a technology research site in addition to a presidential bunker. The Deus Ex Bible, which is a compilation of content from Deus Ex design documents, states that the Daedelus AI was created by Mt. Weather researchers under Majestic 12 control. Another part of the document states that Bob Page secretly and accidentally created Daedalus in the labs hidden deep underground at Mt. Weather while "building on Everett's pioneering work." This description of the origins of Daedalus is somewhat different from the description that "Daedelus was originally conceived by Morgan Everett," which also appears in the Deus Ex Bible.

Additional commentary from Warren Spector in the the Deus Ex Bible states that at one point, there was "a series of missions involving the White House and Mt. Weather." Ultimately, however, "plot changes made Mt. Weather unnecessary." The White House mission would also be cut later during the game's development.

Deus Ex design document version 13.12

Deus Ex design document version 13.12 indicates that both the Mt. Weather and the White House missions had been cut from the game by December 1999, as neither mission appears in the missions list of this document. Nonetheless, remnants of Mt. Weather still appear in the document, including the aforementioned lore content of Mt. Weather being Daedalus's place of origin (this content, or some version of it, was later incorporated into the Deus Ex Bible).

A few mentions of Mt. Weather remain in the document's mission descriptions, providing clues on the role of the Mt. Weather mission before it was cut. The description of Mission 09 (the 8th mission in the final game) mentions "hints...about preparations for the Mt. Weather scenario, in which the government moves to secure locations" (note that "scenario" here refers to the government evacuation scenario, rather than an in-game mission).

“

On computers and in emails and datacubes, you can find your first hints about a U.S. government plan to incarcerate “incorrigibles” like the NSF and about preparations for the Mt. Weather scenario, in which the government moves to secure locations and the Constitution is officially suspended.

— Design document v13.12, description for Mission 09, describing the Brooklyn Naval Shipyard

The description of Mission 11 (the 10th mission in the final game) states that while JC Denton was in Paris, Bob Page ordered the release of the nano-virus in Washington, D.C., resulting in a national state of emergency and the beginning of the evacuation of government officials to underground facilities (presumably Mt. Weather).

Mission 13 is noted in the design document as a cut mission that no longer exists. According to the recollection of a developer, Mt. Weather was originally Mission 13.

Mt. Weather is mentioned again in the description for Mission 14 (the 12th mission in the final game). This part of the design document mentions "information Daedalus provided in Mt. Weather" that is relevant to the cure for the Gray Death virus:

“

The Missile Silo
By this time, it’s apparent to Majestic 12 that (a) you’re in contact with the X51 researchers and (b) the X51 researchers are working with you to effect a cure for the nano-virus. It’ll take some time, but once Savage’s Universal Constructor is operational, the information Daedelus provided in Mt. Weather means the virus is as good as cured.

— Design document v13.12, description for Mission 14

This description appears to be a remnant of an earlier version of the design document, since the other parts of document v13.12 do not mention Mt. Weather as being relevant to the Gray Death cure. Instead, the design document states that Daedalus provided the data needed for the cure at Vandenberg, shortly before being merged with Icarus. Thus, Mt. Weather originally had a role in the Gray Death cure, but this role became unnecessary following changes to the plot of the Vandenberg mission. The plot concept of Daedalus providing the data needed for the cure was later removed from the game altogether.

The mention of Mt. Weather in the description for Mission 14 corroborates the notion that Mission 13 was originally the Mt. Weather mission.

Deus Ex: Insurrection

Mount Weather is mentioned again in one of the candidate plot concepts for Deus Ex: Insurrection, a cancelled, never-announced sequel to Deus Ex: Invisible War. In the plot concept, set directly after the events of the Deus Ex, the player takes the role of a black-ops operatives who escorts the president from the White House to Mount Weather via the underground passage when White House is under siege by NSF forces. The plot concept states: "In Mount Weather, the player is given a stable base analogous to UNATCO in the first game, where the drama of the U.S. leadership's inner circle can unfold over time."

Trivia

• The depiction of Mt. Weather was based on the real-world counterpart, the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center in Virginia. According to Spector, Mt. Weather came to the developers' attention when they were researching real-world conspiracies that could be used as a foundation for the Deus Ex fiction.