I'm about to play Deus Ex. Again.

[DarkDragoonX]

TL;DR WARNING: PEOPLE WITH SHORT ATTENTION SPANS SHOULD PISS OFF, BECAUSE THIS POST IS GOING TO TAKE AWHILE.

It's been a while, so here I am, about to load up Deus Ex for roughly the 382nd time. I remember when I bought the thing. I loved Ultima Underworld and the System Shock games, so when I heard about Deus Ex, I knew that I had to play it. I can't prove anything, but I'm reasonably certain that I broke the sound barrier on my mad dash to the store and back. I may or may not have passed an astonished Kenyan.

This is one of the few times in history that my level of anticipation for the game was not only validated, but actually insufficient. It was so good, I felt slightly ashamed that I hadn't erected a shrine to the game to worship. Upon starting the game, you immediately get to distribute skill points to improve your character's skills, be it hacking, swimming, combat-related skills... so many ways to tweak your character's abilities to your liking.

The skill point system was a vast improvement over System Shock 2's "find the hidden cyber modules" system. Instead of searching every trash bin trying to find cyber modules like some kind of hobo, Deus Ex awards skill points based on solving problems (though you are also rewarded for finding secrets, so it still pays to explore thoroughly). Found a hidden cache of equipment? You just got some skill points! Did you make your way up the side of a building instead of blasting your way through the front? Skill points! The game always offers several solutions to any major problem, and depending on how you solve it, you may get more or less skill points, with more being awarded for clever thinking as opposed to just shooting your way through everything.

Augments were also a brilliant idea. Applying nanotech enhancements to various slots on your body to improve your abilities was a great idea, and the limited number of slots combined with the large variety of augments made customization even more robust. For example, there's a locked sliding gate with a wall about 12-15 feet high in an area swarming with enemies. It can't be lockpicked. Somebody with the Combat Strength enhancement will be forced to kill a guard and get the key, but if you instead opted for the Microfibral Muscle augmentation (allows you to lift heavier objects), you can stack the metal crates lying around the area and hop over the wall without dealing with the guards at all. A player with the augmentations that reduce ballistic damage and energy damage can activate both and charge into battle like an unstoppable tank. Players who instead chose the cloaking enhancement will simply walk right past everybody unseen. Even your weapons can be altered, adding laser sights, accuracy enhancements, sniper scopes... my first playthrough consisted of me using nothing but my Heavily Modded Pistol of Ultimate Destruction(tm) eqiopped with a silencer and a scope, headshotting people from blocks away. How cool is that?

The story and the characters are also bloody brilliant. The writing is just amazing.. it never talks down to the player and is just so damn perfect at conveying the feeling that you're in the midst of some kind of conspiracy. It's hard to describe. The voice acting is also fantastic (well, with the exception of China), something that is frequently difficult to say even about recent games. Many things are referenced subtly, instead of beating the player over the head with them... you can play through the game several times, and still find subtle hints at the plot and pieces of the conspiracy that you always overlooked before. Yet in spite of how subtle many things are, the plot is exposed enough that more... dimwitted players will still understand what's going on. But the best part is how cohesive everything is, particularly in regard to your character's actions.

At the beginning of the game, you'll explore UNATCO headquarters and get to know the layout of our new place of employment. While exploring (and taking any useful items I could find, of course), I entered the ladies' restroom (you never know where you might find some good loot) and the current occupant was quite upset with me. Shortly thereafter, as I was being briefed for my next mission, my boss took a moment to remind me that a male entering a female restroom is not professional conduct. Wow. No other game I had ever played took the player's action into account the way Deus Ex does as soon as you start playing. Some decisions you make have major repercussions later. Some only affect the things people have to say to you. But for almost everything you do, the game world will react to it in some way or another. To this day, I can't think of a single game as good as Deus Ex was about subtly reinforcing the fact that everything you do makes a difference.

Even the damn combat was just amazing. First of all, in Deus Ex you can't just run around like Rambo (at least not until you have maxed out your corresponding weapon skill and have your gun modded to hell and back), because you have an accuracy reticle. The reticle shows you you innacurate your aim is (it's hard to sprint and shoot at the same time, after all). As you hold still and/or crouch, the reticle shrinks until your aim is virtually flawless. It encourages you to fight smart instead of charging in like a moron. Deus Ex even had a revolutionary health system. Instead of just giving you 100 HP, like every other shooter ever, Deus Ex gave your legs, arms, head, and torso their own health meters. Get to 0 HP at your torso or your head, and you die (duh). Lose an arm, and watch your aim take a nosedive. Lose your legs, and your viewpoint drops low as you slowly drag yourself across the ground seeking medical attention.

Even stealth is handled well... you can distract enemies by making noise, hit them in the back of the head with with a police baton to drop them (but don't miss the head, or you'll just make them angry), lure them into an ambush... even more remarkable, with the exception of one (there may be two or three, I can't remember at the moment) enemy that absolutely must die for the game to progress, you can actually get through the entire game without killing anyone. And if you've found that guy's self-destruct code phrase (he's a cyborg), you don't even have to fire a shot.

The game has so much variety that it has almost infinite replayability. At this point I've played just about every specialty game you can think of. I've played through the game using nothing but melee weapons. I've played through using only the police baton. I've played through without killing (or knocking unconscious) anybody. I've played games using only explosives. I've played games with nothing bu noncombat skills. I've played games with nothing BUT combat skills... there are so many ways to do things that you can finish the game almost any way you please.

It's just astounding that there aren't more games like it. Deus Ex raised the bar for gameplay, storytelling... it raised the bar for everything a single-player game can be. Is it perfect? No, it has some issues. But it's about as close to perfect as you can get, and to this day, nothing has come close to matching it. Bioshock? Yeah, it's great and all, but so dumbed-down that it doesn't possess even half the depth Deus Ex does. It's a testimony to just how good Deus Ex is that even today it's one of the best single-player experiences you can have, and it also shames the gaming industry that would rather churn out Halo clones by the dozen than take the time to make more truly inventive, brilliant, sophisticated, and above all damn fun games like Deus Ex.

I'm going to play Deus Ex for the 382nd time. And I'm going to love it.

[Rijuhn]

Amen.




I read your whole post, and that's exactly what my brother has always told me Deus Ex was. I started playing his copy of the game, but saddly I don't have to time I once had for video games :(

[ShadowTiger]

There are far, far, far, FAR Too Few replies to this thread since I last checked it, without having been able to reply. Not for its greatness.

Pretty much everything I had wanted to say about Deus Ex has already been said. None of it is an exaggeration in the least. Anyone who tries the game for themselves and tells themselves that it's not for them is lying to themselves.

In fact, what do you guys think about Deus Ex II? I ran through it once, did all the endings, got the Dragon blade Sword, and got the alternative Disco Ending. I didn't think it was bad, really. I rather enjoyed it. It had a lot of personality and class, but the lack of music was disturbing. It felt ... weird. Not as efficiently done as Deus Ex.

[DarkDragoonX]

TL;DR Warning # 2: I'm about to take a long-ass time to explain why I think Deus Ex II sucks compared to the first game. Again, those without patience should stay away!

I found Deus Ex II to be extremely disappointing and a bit of a disaster, personally. It wasn't a bad game... it was actually fairly decent. As a shooter, anyway. Unfortunately, it wasn't nearly as good as it's predecessor.

First off, the intricate combat system in the first game has been done away with in favor of a generic combat system. Even more criminally, damage based on what part of the body you hit is completely removed, even for headshots. Mere days after the game's release, a patch for the PC version was available to increase headshot damage, but console owners were out of luck.

Inventory management is gone. In the original game, your character had a Diablo-style inventory screen that forced you to choose how to load out your character. Rifles and heavy weapons used a lot of space, naturally limiting how many weapons you could carry. Furthermore, the original game had all kinds of neat items you could save for later. Candy bars, soda, and beer all restored health. There were many one-use items such as PS20 plasma canisters and grenades that you could carry around and use at will, as well. In Deus Ex 2, you get a simplified system wherin you can carry X number of weapons, period. You immediately eat any food or soda you find, there aren't any fun one-use items. Instead, you basically just have the standard FPS system that limits how many weapons you can have at once. It seems like a small thing, but has a huge impact on the feel of the game.

Augments take a turn for the worse. Now, one of Deus Ex's flaws was that there were some augments that were amazingly overpowered, and some that were complete crap. Deus Ex 2 doesn't fix this problem... in fact, it makes it worse. The game has two types of augmentations, a couple normal varieties and black market. Black market augs are almost always better. There really isn't any reason not to use them. Yet there's no penalty for using them, despite being illegal. It basically boils down to "augments are nice, but these SUPER AUGMENTS are even better, so go scour the world for them!" It takes a lot away from customization when you have so many "choices" that are clearly superior.

Skill points are gone. Your character has no stats. Augmentations and weapons mods are the sole way to alter your character to your liking. GoodBYE, variety! In Deus Ex, you could be a sharpshooter with infiltration skills, a shotgun wielding rambo, a sneaky pacifist... and they all played completely different from one another. In the sequel, no matter what you do, you always have to play the game more or less the same way, with slight tweaks depending on what augments you use. Remember the clever crate-stacking method of getting past a gate I mentioned in my first post? YOu won't find anything like that in Deus Ex II. Your choices are never anything more than "shoot up the hallway or crawl through a vent." This a huge fucking deal. The fact that you could play Deus Ex a dozen times and have a meaningfully different experience each time is part of what makes it such a classic, and in the sequel, they took it all away in favor of a more straightforward FPS experience. This is the most blatant case of the developers choosing to cater to the console crowd.

Sidequests. There are many optional things you can do in Deus Ex that benefit you, You can help out a weapons smuggler (named Smuggler, appropriately enough) and get a discount on his goods. Of course to find him, you have to help the owner of the 'Ton hotel deal with his rebellious daughter. The first time I played the game, I didn't even know Smuggler existed. Only on my second playthrough did I discover him. Why, you ask? Because you never even know the sidequests are there. You never feel like you're engaging in a sidequest. You overhear a bit of information, check up on it, and then discover something. It's all seamlessly integrated into the overall flow of the game. There were no sidequests, there were optional activities you could engage in. However, with Deus Ex II, sidequests are ragingly obvious, and generally consist of an NPC opening a dialogue with you and saying "Do this for me and come back for a reward." They may as well have a fucking yellow exclamation point over their heads for how subtle it is. This is actually a smaller issue of the more important issue of...

DUES EX II DOES NOT HAVE A COHESIVE, REACTIVE WORLD LIKE THE FIRST GAME DOES. Remember what I mentioned a moment ago about how, in the original game, you could help the owner of the 'Ton hotel deal with his daughter? Well, you'll speak with her in New York a couple times. Depending on what you say, near the end of the game you might find her on a deserted highway, living the life of a runaway. It has no impact on the game itself. She has a small conversation with you that doesn't matter at all. There are no bonuses or penalties for this situation occuring. But it had an impact. Here is some random NPC you interacted with a few times at the beginning of the game. You haven't even given her a passing thought since then. After all, she was a bit part, not important at all. But because of YOU, here's this unimportant bit part living a hobo's life. Way to go, jerk. Things like that are the second big reason that the original game is so fucking awesome. Every little thing you do, even if it seems inconsequential, has an impact somehow. Oftentimes, the impact doesn't even have any effect on the game, but that's part of what makes it so great... not everything you do can have world-shifting implications. Sometimes, you just cause some teenage girl to run away from home. But boy does it make you feel like a jackass.

Deus Ex II, on the other hand, is not like this.

In Deus Ex II, the choices you make really don't matter. When the quest you got from Yellow Exclamation Mark Guy In A Bar #72 has two different ways to resolve it, it doesn't matter how you do it, just do whatever gives you the best reward. You'll make somebody happy, someone else will be upset, and it's on to the next sidequest! In Deus Ex, the things you do can take almost the entire game before they come back to haunt you. In the ramifications of every choice you make are resolved immediately, and after that they don't matter. The big, obvious sidequests are so compartmentalized away outside of the real game it's laughable. In Deus Ex, you never know when you're going to do something that could have serious effects later. In the sequel, there are a couple major decisions you make that all but have giant flashing warning lights on them to let you know what you're doing. Further, what decisions will have what effect is always immediately obvious. They may as well have had added big warning boxes with things like, "Do you want Bob to die and get something from Fred, or kill Fred and get something from Bob?" There is no emotional impact. In fact, there's no impact at all. Where the original game made you feel like you really were a part of a living, breathing world, the world of Deus Ex II feels like a cardboard cutout off the back of a box of Trix. It's just pathetic.

The world isn't nearly as good, either. The first game really felt like a conspiracy game. The world was a dark, dismal place. Everything was grimy and dirty. There were no good guys and bad guys, just numerous shades of gray. The entire game had this beautifully oppressive atmosphere, and the "Illuminati" ending was extremely strong... certainly the strongest ending in the game. After all, interact with a conspiracy long enough, even opposing it, and eventually you become a part of it. In the sequel, there are really obvious good guys and bad guys you have good people who live in the polluted world outside the massive arcologies struggling valiantly to survive! Then inside the arcologies, you have Shiny Clean Land with warm, fuzzy lights that make you feel like you're living in a Mitsubishi commercial, filled with corrupt, arrogant pricks! Everything is laid out so simplistically that it's just plain impossible to take it seriously.

In the end, Deus Ex II isn't really the sequel to Deus Ex at all. Deus Ex was a true FPS/RPG with a compelling world, intricate story, intelligent concepts and strikingly original gameplay. Deus Ex II is nothing but an FPS with quests that just happens to use the same IP. Everything about Deus Ex II was dumbed down dramatically, presumably to appease the console market it was created to target (the interface in particular is strong evidence that the game was designed with the console as it's primary focus). In doing so, it lost everything that made the first game so damn great. It's a decent FPS, but a miserable failure as a Deus Ex game. Bioshock suffers from the same problem, although at least they did a good job with it's thematics, which is more than can be said for Deus Ex II.

Oh, and honestly I'm not surprised that there aren't more replies to this... it's hard to get people to read such a huge post for an older game, particularly when they're distracted by GTA IV and Mario Kart Wii! And these are the "Cliff's Notes" versions! If I had the time and the character limit supported it, I could probably write a dozen pages or more about how important Deus Ex was, and how much of a step backwards Deus Ex II is. The original game was unprecedented in it's level of intelligence and depth, and remains unmatched to this day. The fact that the industry is moving away from that kind of genius and deliberately moving towards more dumbed-down, simplistic games, as evidenced by Deus Ex II and Bioshock, is something I find fairly disturbing and I could go on about it for ages.

[DarkDragon]

I agree with 100% of what's been said about Deus Ex. Anyone looking to play Bioshock, but done right, should play this game.

One point that should also be added is that the game is *long.* Had it been published today containing only the levels up through Hong Kong, roughly the half-way point, people probably wouldn't have balked. Instead, it feels like you're getting a game and full sequel in one.

[Darth Marsden]

DarkDragoonX. Thank you for an informed, well written piece of work. It's a read the likes of which I haven't seen in a good while, and I agree with it 100%. Deus Ex truly is a work of art, and it seems a shame that it never got the sequel it really deserved... although that may be about to change soon.

Sadly though, I could never get through the entire game - I always found myself tapering off after China. Or Japan. I always get those two mixed up. The furthest I ever got was going into the underwater base, but then I got attacked by... well, you know, and I would lose interest. It's still an awesome game though, and I encourage anyone who hasn't played it to at least try the demo (http://www.gamershell.com/download_4837.shtml). Still not totally convinced? Try the add-on (http://www.gamershell.com/download_4838.shtml), which whacks a whole extra mission onto the demo. Convinced? Go buy it on Steam then. It's $10.

If you are indeed playing through it again, Dragon, have you seen the High Definition Texture Project (http://offtopicproductions.com/hdtp/)? Some of the work they're doing looks amazing, considering Deus Ex uses the original Unreal engine. Also, on a related note, have you tried any of the add-ons that have been made for the game, such as Hotel Carone? I'd love to hear your thoughts on some of those.

[AlexMax]

If you're worried about people skipping over your post, then you need to start out with action to hold their interest long enough so they will want to read the rest of your post.

Say....something like this for example: Click Me! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgOKduU05t4)

[Darth Marsden]

Watching the other Deus Ex videos on YouTube is pretty interesting. This one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOGStWQqXGc), for example. I'm curious - is there a way to get this conversation with Lebedev without killing Anna? It seems to be one or the other, and I'd love to know if there's a way to keep both alive.