Mine's from this game itself, when speaking with Morpheus:
"The individual desires judgment. Without that desire, the cohesion of groups is impossible, and so is civilization. The human being created civilization not because of a willingness but because of a need to be assimilated into higher orders of structure and meaning. God was a dream of good government. You will soon have your God, and you will make it with your own hands."
I was thinking "that's really good writing", so I search lead writer for Deus Ex, points to [1]. Makes me want to read a book from her, but seems like she mostly writes for games, afaict.
EDIT: I had the wrong writer. Sheldon Pacotti was the lead writer of the original Deus Ex (2000). He wrote the AI dialogue, so the Morpheus quote is almost certainly his. Chris Todd and Austin Grossman also wrote for the game. Mary DeMarle wrote the later prequels (Human Revolution, Mankind Divided).
Pacotti has more books on his site [2]. Anyone familiar?
EDIT 2: Someone recommended Demiurge in this very post!
The linked article calls Deus Ex "pulp, not prophecy." I think "pulp" is a method, not a statement about quality (not sure if the author of the article has the same thing in mind).
I also love the pulpy/noir dialogue in Max Payne first games (1, 2). What are other games with good writing like this? (not necesary pulp)
Replace "judgment" with "validation" and consider social media in that light. Validation of identity. Validation of worldview. And if you signal right, a ladder you can climb.
As a professional game developer who has worked on multiple games affected by this, it's definitely something which bothers me a lot.
I've seen a lot of discussions among fans about why one specific publicly visible person made this or that decision when he was never part of any discussion related to it.
I see it as a facet of a larger thing where humans are instinctively driven to create stories--even oversimplified ones--about the world to capture and explain it.
It also happens in stories about how X was invented/discovered in history (ignoring a thousand required incremental steps and simultaneous discoveries) or how we can't help but intuit patterns in data we abstractly know is random ("hot streaks", "the coin is overdue for landing the other way".)
For most of these, invention wasn't even the right word. An invention is usually a new technology that solves a pre-existing problem. Most of Steve Jobs' "inventions" were just product development.
I'm sort of OK with calling the iPhone an invention because it was a big improvement in several areas at the same time, but apart from that?
I've never understood why people give Jobs so much credit. He didn't make anything. He was a salesman. Now, as a salesman, he was phenomenal, one of the best in history. But without the engineers who actually made things, he would've been nothing.
The myth of the solo creator who heroically makes something amazing has a romantic appeal to a lot of people, especially those who dream of doing such a thing themselves someday. In truth, all great things in history have many collaborators and what we think of as the “creator” is often just a person who played the role of bringing together the collaborators, with perhaps a few other direct contributions.
But in the AI era, this solo-creator myth can now become reality, or if you are more cynical, just an even deeper delusion that exploits the non-consensual labor of millions for one’s personal benefit.
There's a lot to cover with the game, so I'm not surprised he doesn't cover the music. But the soundtrack is great! I still listen to it regularly. I like the UNATCO music best. Each track has a regular theme, and switches to variations on the theme for combat and other situations. Pretty unusual in 2000 and even today.
Michiel von den Bos was involved in the production of the original music, I understand he published a modern remix [1] in 2020, I believe to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the game [2].
Unatco and HK, of course, but much later while giving each track another more complete hearing, I discovered one of the NYC streets tracks has a long time building up, like >1min, and then gets really great too.
And I love how in later Deus Ex parts random radios throughout the levels will start playing familiar tunes. Makes it all more epic and nostalgic.
Not only is the music legendary, but being the same fractal of amazing as the rest of the game, even the fan remixes it inspired stand apart from the those of other games, IMHO.
Goodness, the introduction to Hong Kong and the music cast a new vibe on the game at a perfectly timed moment, when you've just about had enough of NYC. And it was seeded with all these little scripted moments you could happen upon. Talks in tea shops, gang fights in tunnels, overhearing convos in bars, the little newspaper boy who relayed threats to a newsstand vendor and leads you to a gang HQ if you follow him (and he even turns around and tells you not to follow him. In a 90s game!).
And the discoverability of all kinds of stuff in the canals. The cityscape building hopping and secret back entrances to the duplicitous Maggie Chow's apartment. It just had everything. You truly felt like you were discovering every inch of it and like it wasn't just on rails or procedurally generated.
That’s what Unreal engine had built in from start, these transitions were amazing even in first OG Unreal (leaving the ship for the first time into the planets jungle and waterfalls, oooh!)
oh yes the soundtracks! I remember even my mom saying back then "I don't really like you playing all the time, but I have to agree, the music is really good".
Genuinely curious if this ever ships. It was meant to release in January this year, but the devs pulled the launch after it got a terrible reception from fans.
What has been shown so far looks worse than many of the free modded versions out there, and with AI lowering the bar for modifying games every week… As an experiment I asked Claude to take the source code from the browser port of the game that appeared on GitHub recently, add coop multiplayer, 32:9 ultra wide support and as much of the graphical enhancements from the remaster video.
It took about 4 prompts, and I have builds playable on Linux, MacOS and Windows, with coop. Gets well over 300fps on my Mac Mini as uses metal on an a Mac.
It really makes you think how long the business models of companies like Nightdive Studios (specialists in remastering old games for modern systems) can last, when you can “remaster” entire games in very few prompts.
One I'd mention as someone who probably played through too many times, there's a randomizer mode which shuffles a lot to make need to explore/discover the maps again, and avoid just following a well trodden path to proceed.
If you love Deus Ex, I think the Dishonored games carried the flag for this kind of game too. Harvey Smith, lead designer on Deus Ex, was heavily involved in making them and while the setting is completely different (magic, steampunk-ish), the “feel” of the games owes a huge amount to Deus Ex.
Dishonored 2’s fictional city of “Karnaca” gave me similar joy to explore and unpack as when I first encountered Hong Kong in Deus Ex.
The Mooncrash DLC specifically is one of the best pieces of gaming available. It turns the base game mechanics into a Rogue-like where the world resets but some things in the world still stay persistent.
I picked it up a few months ago for the first time but I've not found the enthusiasm to keep going. Think I was around half way maybe. Does it get better? It's the sort of game I really like on paper but it just feels a bit shallow tbh. Plus I don't find jump scares relaxing after a long day at work. Feels like I'm missing something
Absolutely agree. Prey is stunning puzzle sandbox and I love so much the atmosphere of the game, from both the artistic and environment design perspective, but also from the outstanding ambiance soundtrack by Mick Gordon.
Unfortunately I have the impression that the final part was rushed, as the story feels incomplete at best. I wish Arkane could dedicate 6 more months to this game.
Prey is extremely good, but boy did I hate the ending. It's not just a disappointing ending, it's one that retroactively cheapens the rest of the game, IMO. Still a great game and worth playing, but that ending will always leave a bitter taste in my mouth.
I would suggest anyone playing it for the first time to give the original with only basic engine fixes (e.g. Deus EXE) a go before playing some random modders take on what the game should be like.
Revision sucked as it had crappy textures on Hong Kong. GMDX it's far ahead, less tacky/broken and with hugely enhanced areas. As early as at Hell's Kitchen you are looking a much more realistic area (city planning, buildings, park benches/objects and whatnot) than before.
One thing that bugs me is the article explains the twin towers missing from the skyline as "rendering engine couldn’t handle any more polygons", but it turns out... it's way more complicated than that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpi5xUXPqok .
To save others a few minutes, the more complicated explanation is that (according to Warren Spector) the guy who made the skybox left them out by mistake. :)
While most of the country was all Glass Em! post-9/11, a few of us were sort of amazed that it took so long.
It wasn't just misanthropy on our part.
Zooming out, macrohistorically[1], the amount of destruction that can be controlled by the individual soldier has increased, steadily at first, then exponentially in the modern era. Obviously the extreme example would be something like SADM[2], but this increase also includes the multiplying complex systems of the modern world - bulk ammunition, heavy vehicles, commercial aircraft. As the numbers needed for X level of destruction decreases, the span of viable ideologies increases; it's easier to convince 12 guys of nutty ideas than it is to convince 12,000. So, in the big view, the idea of big cultural icons getting flattened, this is something scifi has been kicking around for a while now. One could argue it's a significant pillar of "cyberpunk" worldbuilding: the persistent presence of the "crazies" wielding the modern tools of fuel, bullets, and nuclear bombs.
[1] Which is definitely the perspective of the Deus Ex creative team.
It doesn't make a ton of sense on its face... even if you're bumping up against a polygon budget surely you'd drop some less iconic part of the skyline first. They're hardly complex shapes that are going to be more costly than anything else.
I have the logo tattooed on myself (along with Babylon 5). First played it around 16 pre-spoiler-filled internet and was blown away by my friend and I having completely different outcomes to pivotal moments of the game related to Paul Denton (no spoilers: if you know, you know).
Never worked in games (bar a bit of voice acting in The Nameless Mod for Deus Ex) but I think were it not for that era of gaming I’d never have ended up working on Homebrew or at GitHub.
Sadly the graphics have not aged well but if you can handle them: the writing and non-linear/branching plot and dialogue is still probably second to none.
My favorite game too.
I'm fine with the old graphics. Anything new would probably butcher it. There is a remake that replaces the engine but keeps the models, it was posted here a while ago.
If I am remembering correctly, I felt terrible after completing the first mission but that may have been the point - make you think about what you are doing. It was presented to the player as authentic threat, then when you get to end you are told it was a test but in my playthrough I killed all the “bad guys” on the way, and could have spared their virtual lives by sneaking around and knocking them out.
Postal 2 can be played through without ever hitting anyone, which I've done for fun. Although it's the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do there, which is the joke.
Haven't been able to repeat that in Deus Ex, you can't play through the campaign as a total pacifist, and Carter explains as much right at the beginning.
I vaguely remember doing a self-challenge pacifist run... I think I had to move all the unconscious bodies on the PCRS Wall Cloud up to the dock, because otherwise, I would be indirectly responsible if it sank while they were unable to evacuate.
One of Deus Ex's main flaws in my book is that they didn't really keep up with this after that first mission - you still have the choice to be lethal or non-lethal, but I don't recall the game really reacting to the choice later on.
The name mignt be misleading, but for the best vanilla plus experience, I highly recommend Deus Ex Randomizer with Zero Plus mode.
It has zero randomization, great setup experience on Windows and Linux, and what I consider to be the ideal set of changes for making the game better while adhering strictly to the vanilla experience. Not to mention all the bug fixes! The only thing I'd check for a vanilla experience is that password assistance is turned off.
I had a couple of friends play Deus Ex that way for the first time and it was a joy.
Unrelated, the randomizer speedrun mini-scene was the only time I did speedrunning and the most fun I've ever had replaying a game. The randomization aspect assuaged all my concerns about speedrunning having the wrong kind of repetitiveness for my preferences. I never saw myself doing speedruns, then I somehow ended up doing a world record. All because I saw a randomizer speedrun race and thought it was the coolest thing ever. If you're _that_ kind of Deus Ex fan, you owe it to yourself to check it out!
Deus Ex: Human Revolution is one of my favorite games of all time (and the game that got me into games). I enjoyed mankind divided a lot as well, though it felt different. I've started the original Deus Ex a few times but never really got into it; maybe I need to give it another shot.
I'd argue the Human Revolution and Mankind Divided stories are more personal, engaging, and far less campy than the original two. They're all great IMO.
I really really really really missed seeing blogs like this! These blogs always felt like home, like a traveler's notebook, like a cozy warm personal place. And all we are left with is these boring corporate flat garbage.
For those who have never played Deus Ex, I'm actually going to do the heretical thing and propose that you start with Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Director's Cut).
It's an amazing game in its own right and holds up really well today. The problem with hopping directly into Deus Ex is that it's really showing its age these days, even with mods.
DX:HR is a prequel, so from a timeline perspective it makes sense to play it first :)
The story/dialogue in HR can’t hold a candle to the original though. Gameplay wise they did otherwise keep getting better with time and technology. MD is a masterpiece as far as open world immersive sims go - but the story is shallow and designed to be as uncontroversial as possible.
I remember playing it again and again as a teenager, each time finding something new, some shaft I hadn't explored or a character in some side street I hadn't talked to. I must have played through 15+ times.
One thing to remember is how quick it would be to build out maps in that era, big blocks to carve out the space and align/scale a single diffuse texture on each face.
I recall some anecdote from Harvey Smith that he liked to start the day earlier than the rest of the studio, and he could do a 'first draft' of a level before anyone arrived. I believe the example was the 'Ton hotel, which is a small map.
Finally sat down and played this a few years ago. I didn’t think I’d be able to get into such an old game but it was one of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had.
I spent hundreds of hours in the game, if not thousands, over the decades. Your best pick would probably be gmdx as it fixes many bugs and annoyances of the original, improves graphics a lot, while staying very close to it.
Revision is popular and cute, but changes too much. Level design on some levels is so different that you can't recognize them, I still get lost despite playing though it at least ten times, as original levels are burned in my memory.
Although this can be changed in settings, I'd still avoid Revision unless you want to have another go at it after finishing the original.
If I am not mistaken Deus Ex was one of the first game with non-linear gameplay having different story entries and exits. That feature itself was very interesting and unique. Apart from that cyberpunk rpg design was attractive. All in all it was an epic game and It is a game which is memorable for lifetime. Thanks to Ion Storm one more time.
Like many games, I think people's ratings of importance and quality are highly colored by their own experiences. For example, Goldeneye is beloved, but I've always found it weird, and I think anyone who played multiplayer Quake, Descent, Doom, etc., before it came out will just never see it as the revelation that console gamers do. Similarly, if you played Marathon games, Halo never seems nearly as special as many gamers find it.
With Deus Ex, I think one factor that really boosts it is that very few games previous to it focused nearly as much on experiencing a story while giving a first person player agency of any degree, and this is probably doubly true for the kind of audience that would find a first person real-time experience appealing, or at least I imagine the audiences for Fallout and Planescape: Torment and such, while overlapping some, weren't really quite the same audience as for Deus Ex, and stuff like Lucas Film's Maniac Mansion style games (puzzle narrative games?) are even further removed. While other games that are obviously similar in some ways, like Half Life, are much much more on rails in terms of both player experience and narrative compared to Deus Ex. And of course it's also very topical in ways that only seem more prescient.
I think it's a great game, just like the X-Files was a great show, but also just like X-Files was not a perfect show. (Though I'm not sure there's a strict analog to the degree of unnecessary continuation X-Files has had.) By the standard of its time, just being first person and having varied endings, varied routes, and a lot of narrative support are all big winners for its time.
> I think people's ratings of importance and quality are highly colored by their own experiences. For example, Goldeneye is beloved, but I've always found it weird, and I think anyone who played multiplayer Quake, Descent, Doom, etc., before it came out will just never see it as the revelation that console gamers do.
Having played all those games before GoldenEye, I still thought GE was groundbreaking and raised the bar for both PCs and consoles. My guess is it's harder for those who came after to go appreciate it. Or really anyone who needs stable, high frame rates. Because GE's low frame rate is probably its biggest flaw.
Nah, dragon sword is the best once you push manual combat to the maximum level. Takes out pretty much everyone in one hit. I played through the game dozens of times and it's my standard pick for 99% of playthrough. Just need a little extra for the bots.
I had a subscription to PC Gamer and saw it was named Game of the Year. I got it from Wal Mart, a beautiful shiny box, and inside was a fake newsletter about events in the game world, I think the paper that Joe Greene, an in-game character, wrote for.
I had no idea what I was in for, and as a 15 year old, I felt twists and surprises, and organic game reactions to things I did that blow my mind even today, and imo still haven't been matched. And leveling and skills truly mattered and were tied into the game. Inventory management and ammo was interesting, the interface was perfect. It also had a kind of intellectual curiosity (characters talking competently about surveillance state and capitalism!) in the dialog that I only ever felt in, say, Alpha Centauri and later, Disco Elysium. It's still the best PC game ever imo.
Edit: I think the most important thing about its legacy now, is that it engaged with conspiracies in a fundamentally different way, more like 90s X-Files style fascination and curiosity than anti-intellectualism of Alex Jones-style rabid misinformation. A critical nuance that gets lost when conspiracy cranks try to claim Deus Ex as theirs.
Edit 2: Respectfully, contra the article, if anything I think there's not enough hagiography surrounding Deus Ex. It's either beloved or not known, and the latter is the crime that needs rebalancing as it represents an example of what's possible in passion project game design that I think is just as important as it ever was. That matters infinitely more to me than sidecar questions of how more or less "living" it's game world was relative to its predecessor System Shock. I also think the analysis is a little bit off to criticize DX's three-choice ending as being too on-rails relative to System Shock, which is a one-stop boss battle that lasts like 15 seconds.
It probably kicked off a minor G.K. Chesterton revival as well. 90s Cyberpunk viewed through post-graduate Philosophy amidst the transition of cyberpunk to eCapitalism, all tied together with cinematic sensibilities and a phenomenally realised OST.
Now if only someone could make a game aping 'The Difference Engine' in the style of Dishonoured... the time is right for a steampunk equivalent!
I've got it for ~5 eur (~$5) back in the day with a gaming magazine in Spain in 2003/2004, I can't remember. Dirt cheap and amazing game running really well on my Athlon with a Geforce2 MX.
On my last replay the game's politics read to me as hyper libertarian. Very anti-UN, anti globalism. Right up Alex Jones' territory
When the game came out though the politics around conspiracy theories was very different. Deus Ex tried to cram in every conspiracy theory circulating at the time. MJ-12, the trilateral commission, Roswell...
The article, (not that anyone ever seems to read it before commenting) does dive into the game's politics and comes to the conclusion you mention, right down to the Alex Jones comparison. It also has this to say:
> Lurking in the accusations against “wealthy bankers” is the oldest, ugliest conspiratorial trope of all, the idea — stemming from the 1903 forgery “The Protocol of the Elders of Zion” — that a cabal of Jews secretly run the world. “Famous conspiracy theories always turn out to be just antisemitism,” this website’s regular commenter Ross theorized after reading a piece I wrote about the thoroughly unpleasant Pierre Plantard, the man behind some of the most outlandish tales surrounding the French village of Rennes-le-Château. The more conspiracy theories I examine in depth, the more true this proposition seems.
While true, in 2026 if you're still conflating antisemitism with anti-Zionism, you're part of the problem. Something something Epstein.
I wouldn't say it was anti-UN per se. The UN just happened to be the vehicle that bad guys used. It was ramping up an extrajudicial military force, coordinating with rich elites in the shadows and spreading a plague for political leverage that was the bad stuff (Paul was clearly against, but other characters not so much).
The good guys were trying to coordinate and make sure vaccine was widely distributed, and IIRC the original friends of the main character continue to believe in the value of UNATCO (the agency you work for in the game) and treat it like a good cause that was poisoned rather than a philosophical error.
I can see the libertarian bent, but with the very heavy qualifier that it's like Noam Chomsky 90s anarcho libertarianism than the joke that is today's fascist-friendly memeified online libertarianism. I doubt Tracer Tong and Alex Jones would have much in common if they tried to have a conversation. And it does give you three choices at the end of the day, and seems to mean it, though if you squint I suspect it's most sympathetic to Tracer Tong's preferred outcome.
> Still, I do understand why it was done this way, and don’t really blame anyone for it: because truly interactive storytelling, especially on a scale like this one, is hard, as decades of experience have taught us all too well.
The Stanley Parable is an exploration of the fact that this sort of "interactive storytelling" is largely impossible. It's not a coincidence that it was made as a mod for Half-Life 2 (and then as a Source game). The different paths represent different attempts by the game designer or the player to either fix or cope with the failure of the game as the Narrator originally envisioned it.
loved this game so much back in the day despite its ckunkyness at times. 2 felt cool still and later the whole atmosphere for me was lost. Still recognise and recall fondly a lot of the game many years later. ion storm, the intro music, dialogues.
great example in my mind of that games dont need to be perfect to be released or very memorable.
good writing is essential in my mind, dialogues and music / atmosphere. maybe its personal taste.
thanks for the lovely blog and memories :) totally makes me wanna go and replay them!
Such a great game. Afterwards I needed more and ended up finding this other game called Neocron which kinda ran the same vein but was no where near as good.
> The most infamous and chilling “proof” of Deus Ex’s alleged facility for predicting the future is a view of the New York City skyline that you can see in the very first mission. This game that was released fifteen months before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, nonetheless shows only empty sky where the twin towers of the World Trade Center ought to be. As the people who made the game have always been quick to explain, this was not intended as a conscious statement of any sort, much less a prophecy. The towers were left out simply because the rendering engine couldn’t handle any more polygons. But still… what a coincidence! It’s almost enough to make you believe that the ghost of the Oracle of Delphi really does haunt Deus Ex.
I always wondered how this was supposed to make any sense at all given that the skyline (a screenshot of which is shown right there in the article!!) is clearly a 2D image rather than being polygonal…? Couldn't they either make said 2D image larger to accommodate the towers, or budget a mere two additional tris for a second 2D image of the towers…?
(I posted this in the comments section of the article but apparently it did not pass moderation! Strange!)
Looked it up, and apparently Harvey Smith, the lead designer, said, in an interview with IGN [0]:
> When we made the skyline in the background we had pieces with the Twin Towers and pieces for the other parts of the city and for New Jersey. The texture memory was so high that I couldn’t use it all. I took one of the pieces and put it on one side, flipped it and put it on the other. So I made New York out of one half of the city so the Twin Towers were out.
> When people complained, we just explained that it had been destroyed by terrorist attacks. We start the game with the Liberty Island statue having been destroyed by terrorists a few years before. We just said that the towers had been destroyed too. And this was way before 9-11. Years.
Then, in 2012, Warren Spector said, in an interview with Game Informer [1]:
> Did you notice in the skyline on the City of New York, there’s no Twin Towers? […] It’s entirely coincidental, but this game about terrorism… and the Twin Towers are not part of the New York City skyline. […] We got rid of the Twin Towers, and I wish I could say we did it on purpose and we were, you know, sort of seeing the future, but it was actually just a mistake. The guy, the artist who did the skybox just, uh, left em out. And it sort of worked out in an unfortunate sort of way.
There's more about this that one can find online, including how apparently an image of the towers exists in the game's files, but hey, I'm not the one researching and writing the article and making claims that are plainly false on their face, which anyone can visually verify by looking at the screenshot right there in the article that is supposed to illustrate this supposed technical constraint!
Jimmy should probably fix the article to mention any or all of this, rather than repeating the often-retold urban legend, given how much he seems to care about factual accuracy in his writing! (Or at least he used to? It kind of seems like this article is just an excuse to bloviate about Conspiracy Theory Culture Being Harmful These Days, more than it is to dive into the history of the creation of the game or a substantial analysis of its mechanics?) But, alas, he did not approve my comment, so maybe someone else can point this out to him instead.
Deus Ex was an amazing game. My only regret is that the more we see the real world impacts of late stage capitalism and technology enthusiasm, I've spent more time wondering if the Tracer Tong ending was the better choice for the world
My favorite game when I was a kid. It was the first shooter I’d played where it really felt like you could do anything from pure stealth through IDGAF tanking, and the game would respect your choices.
>The excitable lads at Australia’s PC Powerplay, on the other hand, placed no such qualifiers on their declaration of love for Deus Ex. In a special feature published when the game was not yet three months old, they declared it to be quite simply The Best Game Ever: “Every action within Deus Ex’s expansive environments has far-reaching consequences, making it seem like the player is ensconced within a living, breathing world.”
I really miss PC Powerplay. It was great in its time.
That and Atomic were a cool combination of car-style modding culture with PCs. Super common now but innovative (and dangerous - "you're going to tell people to break their warranties by overclocking?!?!") at the time.
I worked with Ashton Mills for a little bit in the early 2000s and he was a standup guy, I included him in the Acknowledgements to a book I recently wrote as an inspiration.
True story: two college friends of mine having a conversation on Friday evening, Friend A (single) asked Friend B (in a relationship) what he was doing on Saturday. B's excited reply was "Deus Ex!"
I always wondered why the game was called "Deus Ex". "Deus ex machina" is the "God from the machine", in a play someone who is magically lowered down from the sky via a theater contraption to save the day. "Deus ex" alone just means "God from". What does that mean? I guess I have to play the game to find out...
I always interpreted it as "From god", as a jab at those who think they are godly, or perhaps can play god themselves, which is a common theme throughout the game.
Still my favorite game of all time. The difficulty scaling was absolutely ridiculous though. In the first level, you're supposed to be a cyber augmented super soldier, but in the first level, they give you like 2 magazines for your pistol, and if you don't max our your small weapon skill, you have worse aim than a toddler with a nerf gun.
The gameplay and graphics don't hold up but the story was absolutely prescient around AI, billionaire oligarchs, and mass surveillance.
I was also completely blown away by something I only discovered years after playing the game when the sequel landed.
There's a portion in the game when your brother Paul is sick and he tells you to leave him to fight off enemy goons alone. Apparently you can fight your way through the hotel and he survives all the way to the end of the game!
When the sequel came out, I was like "why the fuck is Paul still alive"
The game implements this in a funny, low-tech way: you enter through Paul's window, and if you exit back through his window, the game treats it as though you've chosen to abandon him, so he dies. In order for him to survive, all you have to do is exit through the front door of the hotel before he is killed by any enemies, which you can do by running as fast as you can past all the enemies.
Indeed he does. There are many of these hidden things.
You can kill Anna on the plane where you're supposed to kill Lebedev; the game accounts for this with voice dialogue and everything. Crazy. At that point in the game there is no reason for you to even try (and she's a tough match) unlike later on --- but you can!
Haha, nice. Which reminds me of my first playthrough as well, and I was very much on-rails brained (just do what the game tells you to do, because most games give you barely any agency). In the plane where Anna goes to kill Lebedev, for whatever reason I tried killing her, it took a few tries but I ended up LAM'ing her and I was confused that the game continued afterward.
Deus Ex and Alice were both games I wanted to play when I was in high school, but they didn't have Mac ports.
I tried playing Alice a couple times when I got Steam in 2023, and I couldn't get into it. Tried another game from that era: Made it about halfway through Half Life 1 on a long flight and couldn't get into it either, even after I'd played Alyx.
It's wild how games that were considered state-of-the-art when we were kids can feel unplayably unpolished today.
Deus Ex absolutely had an official Mac port at the time! It worked on OS 9 as well as Classic mode in early OS X. Came out a month or so after the PC version in 2000.
I've still got an old G4 tower with a working install.
Edit: Quick google suggests Alice also got ported by Aspyr (same people who did the Deus ex official mac port), released 6 months after PC version in 2001.
Remains one of my favorite games ever, even as current events make it difficult to return to at present (it used to be a yearly replay over my winter holidays).
One thing strikes me however, as perhaps revealing my own naïveté:
> Lurking in the accusations against “wealthy bankers” is the oldest, ugliest conspiratorial trope of all, the idea — stemming from the 1903 forgery “The Protocol of the Elders of Zion” — that a cabal of Jews secretly run the world.
I never made that connection until literally reading this piece. Bankers weren’t all Jews, and not all Jews were Bankers. I had heard the stereotype, sure, but I never read said stereotype into such conspiracies or narratives. It just made logical sense that a newly-emerged global society formed around currency and trade would be manipulated by those people who specialize in said sectors, i.e. bankers and financiers. The fact said individuals continue having outsized import on daily news and current events almost cements the plot point as real prophecy instead of antisemitic nonsense, but I can also see how bad actors would tie hate speech to current events to boost their own platforms.
> One thing strikes me however, as perhaps revealing my own naïveté...
On the contrary: whenever I see someone accuse a work of antisemitism because it has greedy bankers, I think that says a lot more about the accuser than it does the work in question. It is not normal to look at a fictional banker sect and assume that they are meant to be Jews, or a reflection on Jews.
Old boogeymen in bankers became faang owners in real life some 10-15 years ago and almost nobody complained. Now its ai companies owners.
Compared to those, all bankers of the world even combined are still a minor insignificant player. I wonder if we will ever see 'occupy sillicon valley' movement?
My favourite ever games journalism quote:
"There's a tendency among the press to attribute the creation of a game to a single person," says Warren Spector, creator of Thief and Deus Ex.
Mine's from this game itself, when speaking with Morpheus:
"The individual desires judgment. Without that desire, the cohesion of groups is impossible, and so is civilization. The human being created civilization not because of a willingness but because of a need to be assimilated into higher orders of structure and meaning. God was a dream of good government. You will soon have your God, and you will make it with your own hands."
I was thinking "that's really good writing", so I search lead writer for Deus Ex, points to [1]. Makes me want to read a book from her, but seems like she mostly writes for games, afaict.
EDIT: I had the wrong writer. Sheldon Pacotti was the lead writer of the original Deus Ex (2000). He wrote the AI dialogue, so the Morpheus quote is almost certainly his. Chris Todd and Austin Grossman also wrote for the game. Mary DeMarle wrote the later prequels (Human Revolution, Mankind Divided).
Pacotti has more books on his site [2]. Anyone familiar?
EDIT 2: Someone recommended Demiurge in this very post!
The linked article calls Deus Ex "pulp, not prophecy." I think "pulp" is a method, not a statement about quality (not sure if the author of the article has the same thing in mind).
I also love the pulpy/noir dialogue in Max Payne first games (1, 2). What are other games with good writing like this? (not necesary pulp)
--
1: https://www.mobygames.com/person/39957/mary-c-demarle/
2: https://sheldonpacotti.com
This was all a prototype for a much larger LLM.
Bourbaki was a dream of correct math precisely written up, free of errors, ambiguities, and poor terminology.
Replace "judgment" with "validation" and consider social media in that light. Validation of identity. Validation of worldview. And if you signal right, a ladder you can climb.
It's so mammalian.
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I haven't had an LLM spout out such wisdom yet.
Perhaps we need a better prototype for a much larger system...
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As a professional game developer who has worked on multiple games affected by this, it's definitely something which bothers me a lot.
I've seen a lot of discussions among fans about why one specific publicly visible person made this or that decision when he was never part of any discussion related to it.
I see it as a facet of a larger thing where humans are instinctively driven to create stories--even oversimplified ones--about the world to capture and explain it.
It also happens in stories about how X was invented/discovered in history (ignoring a thousand required incremental steps and simultaneous discoveries) or how we can't help but intuit patterns in data we abstractly know is random ("hot streaks", "the coin is overdue for landing the other way".)
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Is that more true these days with large development teams compared to the late 90s early 00s?
The journalist understood the assignment!
Indeed, the narrative here, which is the commonly recited version, does exactly this, and so fails to explain why Deus Ex 2 didn’t hit nearly as hard.
Similarly, "Steve Jobs invented the ____"
For most of these, invention wasn't even the right word. An invention is usually a new technology that solves a pre-existing problem. Most of Steve Jobs' "inventions" were just product development.
I'm sort of OK with calling the iPhone an invention because it was a big improvement in several areas at the same time, but apart from that?
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I've never understood why people give Jobs so much credit. He didn't make anything. He was a salesman. Now, as a salesman, he was phenomenal, one of the best in history. But without the engineers who actually made things, he would've been nothing.
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This goes beyond just the press really.
The myth of the solo creator who heroically makes something amazing has a romantic appeal to a lot of people, especially those who dream of doing such a thing themselves someday. In truth, all great things in history have many collaborators and what we think of as the “creator” is often just a person who played the role of bringing together the collaborators, with perhaps a few other direct contributions.
But in the AI era, this solo-creator myth can now become reality, or if you are more cynical, just an even deeper delusion that exploits the non-consensual labor of millions for one’s personal benefit.
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There's a lot to cover with the game, so I'm not surprised he doesn't cover the music. But the soundtrack is great! I still listen to it regularly. I like the UNATCO music best. Each track has a regular theme, and switches to variations on the theme for combat and other situations. Pretty unusual in 2000 and even today.
Michiel von den Bos was involved in the production of the original music, I understand he published a modern remix [1] in 2020, I believe to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the game [2].
[1] https://open.spotify.com/album/2gC3Ecmd6SuSSvdtpa30zP
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20221225103900/https://www.pcgam...
UNATCO theme is absolutely legendary, and so are many other tracks in the original.
I actually got chills during the surprise post-credits scene in Deus Ex: Human Revolution when the og Deus Ex theme started playing.
One of my favorite pieces of music for programming: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OSpsAauvEXU
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Same for the DX:HR game that weaves the song in! Before the shine wore off as you play through the whole game.
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Unatco and HK, of course, but much later while giving each track another more complete hearing, I discovered one of the NYC streets tracks has a long time building up, like >1min, and then gets really great too. And I love how in later Deus Ex parts random radios throughout the levels will start playing familiar tunes. Makes it all more epic and nostalgic.
Best game soundtrack ever made IMHO. I still listen to it all the time. Well, the modern version anyway[0]
[0]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5YdnLKkg2U&list=PLczA8pMWxl...
Not only is the music legendary, but being the same fractal of amazing as the rest of the game, even the fan remixes it inspired stand apart from the those of other games, IMHO.
Cases in point:
https://youtu.be/odfCTFPyZCo
https://youtu.be/Aq8vFqY6XDo
https://youtu.be/yq9xJB9_lpU
https://youtu.be/DZU6XyFxCA0
Hong Kong Streets FTW! I remember having it on a playlist with my kids in the car.
I loved the theme changes on them -- I remember HK Streets had explore, combat and death scene; transitions felt seamless in the game.
Goodness, the introduction to Hong Kong and the music cast a new vibe on the game at a perfectly timed moment, when you've just about had enough of NYC. And it was seeded with all these little scripted moments you could happen upon. Talks in tea shops, gang fights in tunnels, overhearing convos in bars, the little newspaper boy who relayed threats to a newsstand vendor and leads you to a gang HQ if you follow him (and he even turns around and tells you not to follow him. In a 90s game!).
And the discoverability of all kinds of stuff in the canals. The cityscape building hopping and secret back entrances to the duplicitous Maggie Chow's apartment. It just had everything. You truly felt like you were discovering every inch of it and like it wasn't just on rails or procedurally generated.
That’s what Unreal engine had built in from start, these transitions were amazing even in first OG Unreal (leaving the ship for the first time into the planets jungle and waterfalls, oooh!)
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The Synapse. Marvelous one.
I’m on a metal discord server where the soundtrack regularly shows up in people’s weekly/monthly charts. Amazing music.
I can recommend the HD remix.
Is this what you mean by "HD remix"? https://open.spotify.com/album/2gC3Ecmd6SuSSvdtpa30zP
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oh yes the soundtracks! I remember even my mom saying back then "I don't really like you playing all the time, but I have to agree, the music is really good".
Of course Unreal Tournament did this too. Same legends. I love the Necto Ulin remixes.
The music came unbidden into my brain as I looked at the images in the article.
If anyone wants to play it again, dont forget the amazing mods available: https://www.moddb.com/games/deus-ex/mods
New renderers, new engines, The Purist Mod, GMDX, The Nameless Mod...
A remaster is apparently in the works.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3131640/Deus_Ex_Remastere...
Genuinely curious if this ever ships. It was meant to release in January this year, but the devs pulled the launch after it got a terrible reception from fans.
What has been shown so far looks worse than many of the free modded versions out there, and with AI lowering the bar for modifying games every week… As an experiment I asked Claude to take the source code from the browser port of the game that appeared on GitHub recently, add coop multiplayer, 32:9 ultra wide support and as much of the graphical enhancements from the remaster video.
It took about 4 prompts, and I have builds playable on Linux, MacOS and Windows, with coop. Gets well over 300fps on my Mac Mini as uses metal on an a Mac.
It really makes you think how long the business models of companies like Nightdive Studios (specialists in remastering old games for modern systems) can last, when you can “remaster” entire games in very few prompts.
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One I'd mention as someone who probably played through too many times, there's a randomizer mode which shuffles a lot to make need to explore/discover the maps again, and avoid just following a well trodden path to proceed.
Also, if you haven't, Prey (2017) is the final song of that genre and probably the best of them.
If you love Deus Ex, I think the Dishonored games carried the flag for this kind of game too. Harvey Smith, lead designer on Deus Ex, was heavily involved in making them and while the setting is completely different (magic, steampunk-ish), the “feel” of the games owes a huge amount to Deus Ex.
Dishonored 2’s fictional city of “Karnaca” gave me similar joy to explore and unpack as when I first encountered Hong Kong in Deus Ex.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Smith_(game_designer)
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dishonored_(series)
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The Mooncrash DLC specifically is one of the best pieces of gaming available. It turns the base game mechanics into a Rogue-like where the world resets but some things in the world still stay persistent.
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I picked it up a few months ago for the first time but I've not found the enthusiasm to keep going. Think I was around half way maybe. Does it get better? It's the sort of game I really like on paper but it just feels a bit shallow tbh. Plus I don't find jump scares relaxing after a long day at work. Feels like I'm missing something
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Absolutely agree. Prey is stunning puzzle sandbox and I love so much the atmosphere of the game, from both the artistic and environment design perspective, but also from the outstanding ambiance soundtrack by Mick Gordon.
Unfortunately I have the impression that the final part was rushed, as the story feels incomplete at best. I wish Arkane could dedicate 6 more months to this game.
Only thing that bugged me about Prey is it felt like it was "on rails" and I couldn't just explore. The game is huge and gorgeous...
One of the few modern games that actually got me tense and scared. It is a really good game.
I've been out of the gaming scene for a while; will the iGPU on my Ryzen 7 9700X be able to handle a 9 year old game?
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Prey is extremely good, but boy did I hate the ending. It's not just a disappointing ending, it's one that retroactively cheapens the rest of the game, IMO. Still a great game and worth playing, but that ending will always leave a bitter taste in my mouth.
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I just checked, and it's available now for $8 with mooncrash or $5 without at gog.com
It's impossible to speak highly enough of this game.
I played it for the first time using Deus Ex: Revision. It's very good.
I would suggest anyone playing it for the first time to give the original with only basic engine fixes (e.g. Deus EXE) a go before playing some random modders take on what the game should be like.
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Revision sucked as it had crappy textures on Hong Kong. GMDX it's far ahead, less tacky/broken and with hugely enhanced areas. As early as at Hell's Kitchen you are looking a much more realistic area (city planning, buildings, park benches/objects and whatnot) than before.
One thing that bugs me is the article explains the twin towers missing from the skyline as "rendering engine couldn’t handle any more polygons", but it turns out... it's way more complicated than that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpi5xUXPqok .
To save others a few minutes, the more complicated explanation is that (according to Warren Spector) the guy who made the skybox left them out by mistake. :)
While most of the country was all Glass Em! post-9/11, a few of us were sort of amazed that it took so long.
It wasn't just misanthropy on our part.
Zooming out, macrohistorically[1], the amount of destruction that can be controlled by the individual soldier has increased, steadily at first, then exponentially in the modern era. Obviously the extreme example would be something like SADM[2], but this increase also includes the multiplying complex systems of the modern world - bulk ammunition, heavy vehicles, commercial aircraft. As the numbers needed for X level of destruction decreases, the span of viable ideologies increases; it's easier to convince 12 guys of nutty ideas than it is to convince 12,000. So, in the big view, the idea of big cultural icons getting flattened, this is something scifi has been kicking around for a while now. One could argue it's a significant pillar of "cyberpunk" worldbuilding: the persistent presence of the "crazies" wielding the modern tools of fuel, bullets, and nuclear bombs.
[1] Which is definitely the perspective of the Deus Ex creative team.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Muni...
It doesn't make a ton of sense on its face... even if you're bumping up against a polygon budget surely you'd drop some less iconic part of the skyline first. They're hardly complex shapes that are going to be more costly than anything else.
I guess they got too much heat for all the conspiracy theories in the game...
Best game of all time.
I have the logo tattooed on myself (along with Babylon 5). First played it around 16 pre-spoiler-filled internet and was blown away by my friend and I having completely different outcomes to pivotal moments of the game related to Paul Denton (no spoilers: if you know, you know).
Never worked in games (bar a bit of voice acting in The Nameless Mod for Deus Ex) but I think were it not for that era of gaming I’d never have ended up working on Homebrew or at GitHub.
Sadly the graphics have not aged well but if you can handle them: the writing and non-linear/branching plot and dialogue is still probably second to none.
My favorite game too. I'm fine with the old graphics. Anything new would probably butcher it. There is a remake that replaces the engine but keeps the models, it was posted here a while ago.
If I am remembering correctly, I felt terrible after completing the first mission but that may have been the point - make you think about what you are doing. It was presented to the player as authentic threat, then when you get to end you are told it was a test but in my playthrough I killed all the “bad guys” on the way, and could have spared their virtual lives by sneaking around and knocking them out.
It’s been years since I played, but I believe they were a real terrorist attack? It was a test of your capabilities, but not a false flag.
It was a real attack, but the troops were told to pull back so JC could be tested.
Postal 2 can be played through without ever hitting anyone, which I've done for fun. Although it's the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do there, which is the joke.
Haven't been able to repeat that in Deus Ex, you can't play through the campaign as a total pacifist, and Carter explains as much right at the beginning.
I vaguely remember doing a self-challenge pacifist run... I think I had to move all the unconscious bodies on the PCRS Wall Cloud up to the dock, because otherwise, I would be indirectly responsible if it sank while they were unable to evacuate.
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One of Deus Ex's main flaws in my book is that they didn't really keep up with this after that first mission - you still have the choice to be lethal or non-lethal, but I don't recall the game really reacting to the choice later on.
Wow, so same. I spent the whole rest of the game (and generally ever since) trying to max stealth and nonlethal gameplay
The name mignt be misleading, but for the best vanilla plus experience, I highly recommend Deus Ex Randomizer with Zero Plus mode.
It has zero randomization, great setup experience on Windows and Linux, and what I consider to be the ideal set of changes for making the game better while adhering strictly to the vanilla experience. Not to mention all the bug fixes! The only thing I'd check for a vanilla experience is that password assistance is turned off.
I had a couple of friends play Deus Ex that way for the first time and it was a joy.
Unrelated, the randomizer speedrun mini-scene was the only time I did speedrunning and the most fun I've ever had replaying a game. The randomization aspect assuaged all my concerns about speedrunning having the wrong kind of repetitiveness for my preferences. I never saw myself doing speedruns, then I somehow ended up doing a world record. All because I saw a randomizer speedrun race and thought it was the coolest thing ever. If you're _that_ kind of Deus Ex fan, you owe it to yourself to check it out!
Deus Ex: Human Revolution is one of my favorite games of all time (and the game that got me into games). I enjoyed mankind divided a lot as well, though it felt different. I've started the original Deus Ex a few times but never really got into it; maybe I need to give it another shot.
It took me longer to get into it as well, but it’s the best in the series imo
My advice is to put a few more points in your primary combat skill, and don’t forget that you can level up during the game (like I did!)
The newer sequels have a substantially dumbed down story. It’s unfortunate
I'd argue the Human Revolution and Mankind Divided stories are more personal, engaging, and far less campy than the original two. They're all great IMO.
As always, Ross's Game Dungeon on this game is a must watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxOKEsBx4NU
I really really really really missed seeing blogs like this! These blogs always felt like home, like a traveler's notebook, like a cozy warm personal place. And all we are left with is these boring corporate flat garbage.
For those who have never played Deus Ex, I'm actually going to do the heretical thing and propose that you start with Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Director's Cut).
It's an amazing game in its own right and holds up really well today. The problem with hopping directly into Deus Ex is that it's really showing its age these days, even with mods.
DX:HR is a prequel, so from a timeline perspective it makes sense to play it first :)
The story/dialogue in HR can’t hold a candle to the original though. Gameplay wise they did otherwise keep getting better with time and technology. MD is a masterpiece as far as open world immersive sims go - but the story is shallow and designed to be as uncontroversial as possible.
Deus Ex was a ridiculously elaborate game.
I remember playing it again and again as a teenager, each time finding something new, some shaft I hadn't explored or a character in some side street I hadn't talked to. I must have played through 15+ times.
My favorite quote: "A bomb!" -Joch
One thing to remember is how quick it would be to build out maps in that era, big blocks to carve out the space and align/scale a single diffuse texture on each face.
I recall some anecdote from Harvey Smith that he liked to start the day earlier than the rest of the studio, and he could do a 'first draft' of a level before anyone arrived. I believe the example was the 'Ton hotel, which is a small map.
Finally sat down and played this a few years ago. I didn’t think I’d be able to get into such an old game but it was one of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had.
With mods or vanilla? And if with mods, which?
Wann to try it again since i played it back then to its release, and back then i liked it but was too young to really get what it wants from me.
I spent hundreds of hours in the game, if not thousands, over the decades. Your best pick would probably be gmdx as it fixes many bugs and annoyances of the original, improves graphics a lot, while staying very close to it.
Revision is popular and cute, but changes too much. Level design on some levels is so different that you can't recognize them, I still get lost despite playing though it at least ten times, as original levels are burned in my memory.
Although this can be changed in settings, I'd still avoid Revision unless you want to have another go at it after finishing the original.
Age helps when revisiting old games. I bounced off several that now I enjoy much more as an older person.
My last replay was with GMDX and it felt faithful to the vision of the original, with fewer rough edges.
Hoping the remaster can deliver some further refinement and optional enhancements.
I'm working to make open-source the webgl port in a few days! I love this game.
JC: Blackmail of the U.S. government could not possibly escape the notice of the United Nations
Paul Denton: Don't be so quick to trust the UN.
JC: Are you kidding?
JC: The UN's about the only chance we've got these days. If the U.S. spirals into another Civil War...
Paul Denton: A pretext, nothing more.
Paul Denton: The whole project of world government going back to the League of Nations has been funded and manipulated mainly by wealthy bankers.
JC (Jesus Christ): Is that so?
Paul Denton: Remember that the UN itself was built on land donated by John D. Rockefeller
Paul Denton: The wealthy have always been the ones to profit from one-world government
Paul Denton: The United Nations' secret goal... well, this is David Rockefeller's description, from half a century ago:
Paul Denton: "the supernational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers."
Paul Denton: The UN was founded not to end war but to gradually dissolve national governments and replace them with a Globalist meritocracy.
Paul Denton: Average people never benefit from government and business on a scale they can't even understand
This must seem so profound when you’re a 14 year old teenager.
If I am not mistaken Deus Ex was one of the first game with non-linear gameplay having different story entries and exits. That feature itself was very interesting and unique. Apart from that cyberpunk rpg design was attractive. All in all it was an epic game and It is a game which is memorable for lifetime. Thanks to Ion Storm one more time.
Like many games, I think people's ratings of importance and quality are highly colored by their own experiences. For example, Goldeneye is beloved, but I've always found it weird, and I think anyone who played multiplayer Quake, Descent, Doom, etc., before it came out will just never see it as the revelation that console gamers do. Similarly, if you played Marathon games, Halo never seems nearly as special as many gamers find it.
With Deus Ex, I think one factor that really boosts it is that very few games previous to it focused nearly as much on experiencing a story while giving a first person player agency of any degree, and this is probably doubly true for the kind of audience that would find a first person real-time experience appealing, or at least I imagine the audiences for Fallout and Planescape: Torment and such, while overlapping some, weren't really quite the same audience as for Deus Ex, and stuff like Lucas Film's Maniac Mansion style games (puzzle narrative games?) are even further removed. While other games that are obviously similar in some ways, like Half Life, are much much more on rails in terms of both player experience and narrative compared to Deus Ex. And of course it's also very topical in ways that only seem more prescient.
I think it's a great game, just like the X-Files was a great show, but also just like X-Files was not a perfect show. (Though I'm not sure there's a strict analog to the degree of unnecessary continuation X-Files has had.) By the standard of its time, just being first person and having varied endings, varied routes, and a lot of narrative support are all big winners for its time.
> I think people's ratings of importance and quality are highly colored by their own experiences. For example, Goldeneye is beloved, but I've always found it weird, and I think anyone who played multiplayer Quake, Descent, Doom, etc., before it came out will just never see it as the revelation that console gamers do.
Having played all those games before GoldenEye, I still thought GE was groundbreaking and raised the bar for both PCs and consoles. My guess is it's harder for those who came after to go appreciate it. Or really anyone who needs stable, high frame rates. Because GE's low frame rate is probably its biggest flaw.
Deus Ex has so much to enjoy, but in particular I’m glad to see continued love for the music.
I can’t recommend highly enough the remasters and remixes by Mothership Loudspeakerz.
The one I liked most is the Mairiba cover of nyc streets, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGSuenLGJfM. fittingly used in the trailer for the excellent Lay D Denton mod.
Changed my life. Still the best game. Lapautin machine, etched into my mind.
Flatlander Woman
I just specced up basic pistol to the max and enjoyed a lot of sneak & headshot fun. So many options, all good, very replayable. Kind memories.
Nah, dragon sword is the best once you push manual combat to the maximum level. Takes out pretty much everyone in one hit. I played through the game dozens of times and it's my standard pick for 99% of playthrough. Just need a little extra for the bots.
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“Sticks and stones”
I had a subscription to PC Gamer and saw it was named Game of the Year. I got it from Wal Mart, a beautiful shiny box, and inside was a fake newsletter about events in the game world, I think the paper that Joe Greene, an in-game character, wrote for.
I had no idea what I was in for, and as a 15 year old, I felt twists and surprises, and organic game reactions to things I did that blow my mind even today, and imo still haven't been matched. And leveling and skills truly mattered and were tied into the game. Inventory management and ammo was interesting, the interface was perfect. It also had a kind of intellectual curiosity (characters talking competently about surveillance state and capitalism!) in the dialog that I only ever felt in, say, Alpha Centauri and later, Disco Elysium. It's still the best PC game ever imo.
Edit: I think the most important thing about its legacy now, is that it engaged with conspiracies in a fundamentally different way, more like 90s X-Files style fascination and curiosity than anti-intellectualism of Alex Jones-style rabid misinformation. A critical nuance that gets lost when conspiracy cranks try to claim Deus Ex as theirs.
Edit 2: Respectfully, contra the article, if anything I think there's not enough hagiography surrounding Deus Ex. It's either beloved or not known, and the latter is the crime that needs rebalancing as it represents an example of what's possible in passion project game design that I think is just as important as it ever was. That matters infinitely more to me than sidecar questions of how more or less "living" it's game world was relative to its predecessor System Shock. I also think the analysis is a little bit off to criticize DX's three-choice ending as being too on-rails relative to System Shock, which is a one-stop boss battle that lasts like 15 seconds.
It probably kicked off a minor G.K. Chesterton revival as well. 90s Cyberpunk viewed through post-graduate Philosophy amidst the transition of cyberpunk to eCapitalism, all tied together with cinematic sensibilities and a phenomenally realised OST.
Now if only someone could make a game aping 'The Difference Engine' in the style of Dishonoured... the time is right for a steampunk equivalent!
I've got it for ~5 eur (~$5) back in the day with a gaming magazine in Spain in 2003/2004, I can't remember. Dirt cheap and amazing game running really well on my Athlon with a Geforce2 MX.
Now with GMDX it's a must play.
On my last replay the game's politics read to me as hyper libertarian. Very anti-UN, anti globalism. Right up Alex Jones' territory
When the game came out though the politics around conspiracy theories was very different. Deus Ex tried to cram in every conspiracy theory circulating at the time. MJ-12, the trilateral commission, Roswell...
The article, (not that anyone ever seems to read it before commenting) does dive into the game's politics and comes to the conclusion you mention, right down to the Alex Jones comparison. It also has this to say:
> Lurking in the accusations against “wealthy bankers” is the oldest, ugliest conspiratorial trope of all, the idea — stemming from the 1903 forgery “The Protocol of the Elders of Zion” — that a cabal of Jews secretly run the world. “Famous conspiracy theories always turn out to be just antisemitism,” this website’s regular commenter Ross theorized after reading a piece I wrote about the thoroughly unpleasant Pierre Plantard, the man behind some of the most outlandish tales surrounding the French village of Rennes-le-Château. The more conspiracy theories I examine in depth, the more true this proposition seems.
While true, in 2026 if you're still conflating antisemitism with anti-Zionism, you're part of the problem. Something something Epstein.
I wouldn't say it was anti-UN per se. The UN just happened to be the vehicle that bad guys used. It was ramping up an extrajudicial military force, coordinating with rich elites in the shadows and spreading a plague for political leverage that was the bad stuff (Paul was clearly against, but other characters not so much).
The good guys were trying to coordinate and make sure vaccine was widely distributed, and IIRC the original friends of the main character continue to believe in the value of UNATCO (the agency you work for in the game) and treat it like a good cause that was poisoned rather than a philosophical error.
I can see the libertarian bent, but with the very heavy qualifier that it's like Noam Chomsky 90s anarcho libertarianism than the joke that is today's fascist-friendly memeified online libertarianism. I doubt Tracer Tong and Alex Jones would have much in common if they tried to have a conversation. And it does give you three choices at the end of the day, and seems to mean it, though if you squint I suspect it's most sympathetic to Tracer Tong's preferred outcome.
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Any mention of the original Deus Ex requires mention of this old "walkthrough" by DOUG the Eagle called Sunglasses at Night:
https://www.it-he.org/deus.php
Thanks for sharing this. I had forgotten about 'Boom'
> Still, I do understand why it was done this way, and don’t really blame anyone for it: because truly interactive storytelling, especially on a scale like this one, is hard, as decades of experience have taught us all too well.
The Stanley Parable is an exploration of the fact that this sort of "interactive storytelling" is largely impossible. It's not a coincidence that it was made as a mod for Half-Life 2 (and then as a Source game). The different paths represent different attempts by the game designer or the player to either fix or cope with the failure of the game as the Narrator originally envisioned it.
loved this game so much back in the day despite its ckunkyness at times. 2 felt cool still and later the whole atmosphere for me was lost. Still recognise and recall fondly a lot of the game many years later. ion storm, the intro music, dialogues.
great example in my mind of that games dont need to be perfect to be released or very memorable.
good writing is essential in my mind, dialogues and music / atmosphere. maybe its personal taste.
thanks for the lovely blog and memories :) totally makes me wanna go and replay them!
Quotaposting!
[https://www.moddb.com/mods/terminus-machina/images/the-human...]
This game is so good that when I first played I couldn’t speak english and thought it was just a fun first person shooter.
Some years later I learned some english and found out the game is deep with layers, and the more I play the more I learn something new.
As always, someone has built a browser playable version:
> https://jarmitage99.itch.io/opende
Do you have a single fact to back that up?
What a shame.
How bout some soy food?
Paul... I... I... I thought you were a GEP gun.
— Malkavian Mod
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-faAQIjbJZE
I'm gonna reinstall it.
As the saying goes, there’s always one to reinstall when the game is mentioned
Such a great game. Afterwards I needed more and ended up finding this other game called Neocron which kinda ran the same vein but was no where near as good.
The background behind the text makes it hard to read. Getting a bunch of horizontal lines that intersect whole lines of text
Warren Spector? Why do I always mistake that name with the name Walter Simons?
Metal Gear Solid 2 should get a mention if we're talking about prophetic games
> The most infamous and chilling “proof” of Deus Ex’s alleged facility for predicting the future is a view of the New York City skyline that you can see in the very first mission. This game that was released fifteen months before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, nonetheless shows only empty sky where the twin towers of the World Trade Center ought to be. As the people who made the game have always been quick to explain, this was not intended as a conscious statement of any sort, much less a prophecy. The towers were left out simply because the rendering engine couldn’t handle any more polygons. But still… what a coincidence! It’s almost enough to make you believe that the ghost of the Oracle of Delphi really does haunt Deus Ex.
I always wondered how this was supposed to make any sense at all given that the skyline (a screenshot of which is shown right there in the article!!) is clearly a 2D image rather than being polygonal…? Couldn't they either make said 2D image larger to accommodate the towers, or budget a mere two additional tris for a second 2D image of the towers…?
(I posted this in the comments section of the article but apparently it did not pass moderation! Strange!)
Looked it up, and apparently Harvey Smith, the lead designer, said, in an interview with IGN [0]:
> When we made the skyline in the background we had pieces with the Twin Towers and pieces for the other parts of the city and for New Jersey. The texture memory was so high that I couldn’t use it all. I took one of the pieces and put it on one side, flipped it and put it on the other. So I made New York out of one half of the city so the Twin Towers were out.
> When people complained, we just explained that it had been destroyed by terrorist attacks. We start the game with the Liberty Island statue having been destroyed by terrorists a few years before. We just said that the towers had been destroyed too. And this was way before 9-11. Years.
Then, in 2012, Warren Spector said, in an interview with Game Informer [1]:
> Did you notice in the skyline on the City of New York, there’s no Twin Towers? […] It’s entirely coincidental, but this game about terrorism… and the Twin Towers are not part of the New York City skyline. […] We got rid of the Twin Towers, and I wish I could say we did it on purpose and we were, you know, sort of seeing the future, but it was actually just a mistake. The guy, the artist who did the skybox just, uh, left em out. And it sort of worked out in an unfortunate sort of way.
There's more about this that one can find online, including how apparently an image of the towers exists in the game's files, but hey, I'm not the one researching and writing the article and making claims that are plainly false on their face, which anyone can visually verify by looking at the screenshot right there in the article that is supposed to illustrate this supposed technical constraint!
Jimmy should probably fix the article to mention any or all of this, rather than repeating the often-retold urban legend, given how much he seems to care about factual accuracy in his writing! (Or at least he used to? It kind of seems like this article is just an excuse to bloviate about Conspiracy Theory Culture Being Harmful These Days, more than it is to dive into the history of the creation of the game or a substantial analysis of its mechanics?) But, alas, he did not approve my comment, so maybe someone else can point this out to him instead.
[0] https://www.ign.com/articles/2003/02/18/dx-visible-interview
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOPHmbulMp4
I looked up Sheldon Pacotti's books after playing Deus Ex.
Was not disappointed. Demiurge is still one of my favourite books.
thx! asked exactly this in a another thread right here :-)
Black helicopters. I always knew they exist!
Justice for Adam Jensen!!
Deus Ex was an amazing game. My only regret is that the more we see the real world impacts of late stage capitalism and technology enthusiasm, I've spent more time wondering if the Tracer Tong ending was the better choice for the world
JC! The net's going black!
My favorite game when I was a kid. It was the first shooter I’d played where it really felt like you could do anything from pure stealth through IDGAF tanking, and the game would respect your choices.
>The excitable lads at Australia’s PC Powerplay, on the other hand, placed no such qualifiers on their declaration of love for Deus Ex. In a special feature published when the game was not yet three months old, they declared it to be quite simply The Best Game Ever: “Every action within Deus Ex’s expansive environments has far-reaching consequences, making it seem like the player is ensconced within a living, breathing world.”
I really miss PC Powerplay. It was great in its time.
That and Atomic were a cool combination of car-style modding culture with PCs. Super common now but innovative (and dangerous - "you're going to tell people to break their warranties by overclocking?!?!") at the time.
I worked with Ashton Mills for a little bit in the early 2000s and he was a standup guy, I included him in the Acknowledgements to a book I recently wrote as an inspiration.
what a great game! *nostalgic tears dropped*
True story: two college friends of mine having a conversation on Friday evening, Friend A (single) asked Friend B (in a relationship) what he was doing on Saturday. B's excited reply was "Deus Ex!"
"Oh fuck off" said A.
I always wondered why the game was called "Deus Ex". "Deus ex machina" is the "God from the machine", in a play someone who is magically lowered down from the sky via a theater contraption to save the day. "Deus ex" alone just means "God from". What does that mean? I guess I have to play the game to find out...
I always interpreted it as "From god", as a jab at those who think they are godly, or perhaps can play god themselves, which is a common theme throughout the game.
But it means "god from", not "from god"...
Still my favorite game of all time. The difficulty scaling was absolutely ridiculous though. In the first level, you're supposed to be a cyber augmented super soldier, but in the first level, they give you like 2 magazines for your pistol, and if you don't max our your small weapon skill, you have worse aim than a toddler with a nerf gun.
The gameplay and graphics don't hold up but the story was absolutely prescient around AI, billionaire oligarchs, and mass surveillance.
I was also completely blown away by something I only discovered years after playing the game when the sequel landed.
There's a portion in the game when your brother Paul is sick and he tells you to leave him to fight off enemy goons alone. Apparently you can fight your way through the hotel and he survives all the way to the end of the game!
When the sequel came out, I was like "why the fuck is Paul still alive"
The game implements this in a funny, low-tech way: you enter through Paul's window, and if you exit back through his window, the game treats it as though you've chosen to abandon him, so he dies. In order for him to survive, all you have to do is exit through the front door of the hotel before he is killed by any enemies, which you can do by running as fast as you can past all the enemies.
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Indeed he does. There are many of these hidden things.
You can kill Anna on the plane where you're supposed to kill Lebedev; the game accounts for this with voice dialogue and everything. Crazy. At that point in the game there is no reason for you to even try (and she's a tough match) unlike later on --- but you can!
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Haha, nice. Which reminds me of my first playthrough as well, and I was very much on-rails brained (just do what the game tells you to do, because most games give you barely any agency). In the plane where Anna goes to kill Lebedev, for whatever reason I tried killing her, it took a few tries but I ended up LAM'ing her and I was confused that the game continued afterward.
Deus Ex and Alice were both games I wanted to play when I was in high school, but they didn't have Mac ports.
I tried playing Alice a couple times when I got Steam in 2023, and I couldn't get into it. Tried another game from that era: Made it about halfway through Half Life 1 on a long flight and couldn't get into it either, even after I'd played Alyx.
It's wild how games that were considered state-of-the-art when we were kids can feel unplayably unpolished today.
Deus Ex absolutely had an official Mac port at the time! It worked on OS 9 as well as Classic mode in early OS X. Came out a month or so after the PC version in 2000.
I've still got an old G4 tower with a working install.
> https://www.macintoshrepository.org/3777-deus-ex
> https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/mac/562944-deus-ex/reviews/108...
Edit: Quick google suggests Alice also got ported by Aspyr (same people who did the Deus ex official mac port), released 6 months after PC version in 2001.
It is funny to go back and play some classics like that.
IIRC Quake used “a” and “d” to… turn, instead of strafe, by default. Absolute madness. Can be played without a mouse I think(?).
On the other hand, it is still very cool that you can get the bad guys to fight each other sometimes. That should be a feature in every game really.
Amazing game. I was so disappointed when the sequels didn't live up to it.
I never played the newer ones, but I still like Deus Ex: Invisible War, especially for its Arcology (Cairo) setting.
What a load of drivel. No, Deus Ex is not an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
Something has gone very wrong if you're taking a silly story about the illuminati so seriously.
I found this author's take barely more coherent than the YouTube commentators he laments.
> No, Deus Ex is not an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
No, the author didn't say it was.
Remains one of my favorite games ever, even as current events make it difficult to return to at present (it used to be a yearly replay over my winter holidays).
One thing strikes me however, as perhaps revealing my own naïveté:
> Lurking in the accusations against “wealthy bankers” is the oldest, ugliest conspiratorial trope of all, the idea — stemming from the 1903 forgery “The Protocol of the Elders of Zion” — that a cabal of Jews secretly run the world.
I never made that connection until literally reading this piece. Bankers weren’t all Jews, and not all Jews were Bankers. I had heard the stereotype, sure, but I never read said stereotype into such conspiracies or narratives. It just made logical sense that a newly-emerged global society formed around currency and trade would be manipulated by those people who specialize in said sectors, i.e. bankers and financiers. The fact said individuals continue having outsized import on daily news and current events almost cements the plot point as real prophecy instead of antisemitic nonsense, but I can also see how bad actors would tie hate speech to current events to boost their own platforms.
Just an odd bit of reflecting, is all.
> One thing strikes me however, as perhaps revealing my own naïveté...
On the contrary: whenever I see someone accuse a work of antisemitism because it has greedy bankers, I think that says a lot more about the accuser than it does the work in question. It is not normal to look at a fictional banker sect and assume that they are meant to be Jews, or a reflection on Jews.
Yeah, most of the "antisemetic" crap people claim I don't associate with jewish people at all.
Old boogeymen in bankers became faang owners in real life some 10-15 years ago and almost nobody complained. Now its ai companies owners.
Compared to those, all bankers of the world even combined are still a minor insignificant player. I wonder if we will ever see 'occupy sillicon valley' movement?
First, GMDX it's amazing.
Second, there's Open Deus EX (I think not GMDX compatible yet) and DX-Rust, which it is.
I still play to that game, and it's my favourite among Slashem and some few interactive fiction ones.
OpenDE: Fast, vanilla https://github.com/jarmitage99/OpenDE
DX-Rust: Slow, AI slop, but it can be improved. It supports GMDX https://github.com/Grissyelda/dx-rust
If you use Recomp Launcher you can install these with ease, even on Steam Decks.