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Imho deus Ex as a whole isn't as good and as serious as Bloodlines thematically and storywise. Especially considering the acting performance.
I've played through a lot of the greats of the Nineties and Noughties lately.
The ones which I hold to highest regard are Deus Ex, System Shock 2 and the original System Shock. All three of them excel at different things and when compared to Bloodlines i'd say that the story is much more layered in Deus Ex than bloodlines (so far, i'm just leaving Hollywood atm) but Bloodlines is easily the most immersive game out of the four of these which speaks volumes to be honest, because the other three are incredibly immersive, engaging titles.
Deus Ex is blank conspiracy theories.
Depends on your taste. I just thought that the conspiracy was always too far fetched to be true. Plutocracy et cetera et cetera.
Looks often more like conjecture than anything else. No offense.
Among older ones there's Daggerfall which had 6 endings. 80% is dungeon crawling yet the main story does not disappoint through that great writing. Also atmosphere that future TES games never really matched.
Witcher 1 gets awesome from about chapter 3.
But it also may be a matter of taste.
Also if you're interested there's Pathologic among non standard RPG'S with many other elements from other genres. The Void is there too.
But these two may not be for you if you don't care much about narrative, story or something totally new in games (maybe barely games but something more).
I bought it before the directors cut (which changed boss fights and a myriad of other things and added the DLC into the main game rather than the activating it seperately). Get it on sale.
As for a recommendation I will recommend a love/hate style game called Alpha Protocol. Dialogue choices have an impact on the game as well as how you decide to go through the stages has an impact on the game. At one point in the game the world opens up so you can travel to different locations...even the order you go into these locations matter.
An example, in one location you have a boss who snorts coke during your shootout. He then becomes tougher to beat...but if you did another location first, and did it in a certain way you can have the coke he receives spiked. Once you go to do that location and face that same boss instead of being dangerous and gaining buffs he gets hindered by it.
The game promotes a non-lethal or lethal approach (or you could do a mixture of both). Unarmed or heavily armed. It's a spy/espionage style game with romancable options depending not only what dialogue options you give but also who you decide to have assist you in levels and how you go about handling it (i.e. guns ablazing with death and destruction or even guns a blazing but going a non-lethal way).
It has multiple endings and further playthroughs and different choices alters the game in a noticable way.
In my many playthroughs (PS3 and PC) I have run into bugs but nothing game shattering. It's not for everyone. Heck I took a leap of faith with it awhile back when I picked it up on sale and was surprised by it. It is a bit dated obviously but still a game I would recommend is given a look (youtube videos and what not).
SS2 is one of my favorite games of all time, and Deus Ex was also great.
Yes, Human Revolution is very good. The creators obviously had a lot of love and respect for the original game and did their best to both recapture the magic of DX as well as adding new touches. Some of what they did was a genuine improvement - the combat and shooting in HR is infinitely more satisfying, for instance - and sometimes it isn't (the levels lack the huge scale of the original game) but I think it is the definition of a worthy successor.
Anyway, I'd like to expand from this to speak more broadly to the topic of the thread. People often compare Bloodlines to Deus Ex, and I think DX was absolutely an influence on the game, but I think Bloodlines, because of its troubled development, doesn't entirely hit the Deus Ex-like mark it's shooting for.
The Bloodlines level most like Deus Ex is the drug dealer's house in Santa Monica in the very early part of the game. Remember that part? You were supposed to get inside and get Mercurio's explosives back. You could do this by charming/seducing/threatening the guard outside, and then negotiating with the drug dealer once you were inside (where you could bribe him, seduce him, offer him blood - or just murder him). You could carefully stealth your way past the guard and the other gang members inside and take the explosives with nobody the wiser. You could go in guns blazing and just murder everyone. Or you could mix and match approaches, using whatever combination of skills and powers you had on hand.
The end is always the same (you get the explosives) but there's a ton of paths to get there.
That's what Deus Ex games are like. Every mission presents you with a tactical puzzle (get into the enemy base, rescue the hostages, disarm the bomb, etc) and then how you solve that puzzle is completely up to you. You can be a sneaky ninja, avoiding everyone, or a hacker, turning the enemies' guns and drones against them, or a gun-toting angel of death. You could also get through the game without killing almost any other character. The game also has a very simulator-y approach to the environment: every object has weight, and can be picked up and moved around, and a lot of common-sense interactions are possible (you can shoot fire extinguishers to make them explode, or use them to spray enemies with and put out fires; you can stack boxes to reach high places, etc) and that layer of simulation allows for some surprising emergent tactics (aggro an enemy and lead him to a cop!).
I think Bloodlines wanted to be that, but because of time and money issues, a lot of possible alternative/nonviolent solutions got left on the cutting room floor. Skills like persuasion and seduction, or even hacking, become basically useless past a certain point as the game starts just throwing waves and waves of enemies at you. The environments are mostly static, with stuff nailed to the walls and floor.
What Bloodlines has going for it over Deus Ex is the high quality of its NPC models, animations, and voice acting and that it gives you a few more significant, RPG-like choices to make. Deus Ex, as I said, gives you a hundred different ways to get to the same point, but you don't get to make as many choices about who lives and dies or who you decide to side with - you'll always fight the same enemies in the same order.
Both games have excellent writing and which story you prefer is entirely a function of taste. Both games also have a moody, paranoid atmosphere; Bloodlines just does it with horror, while Deus Ex does it with cyberpunk science fiction.
While I basically agree with you this also introduced a problem for me with the DX games, most notable in the first one: many missions seemed to be designed around this gameplay approach, like the environment is too obvioulsy made to offer multiple approaches. Or to put it simpler: in DX there is always a vent where you need one and several buildings are unrealistic because of it!
I believe because Bloodlines is presenting a more real world some solutions just were not feasible, as real world buildings don't always have multiple entrance routes!
Yes, the endgame has a lot of fighting and this might be due to time restrictions or maybe just due to the same approach as the boss fights in DXHR. Nobody knows...
In my opinion the writing and story in Bloodlines are much better. It had some really great surprises and was still easy enough to follow. The original DX on the other hand tried to more or less mix every single conspiracy theory into one plot, so I didn't really cared in the end whether anything was true or not ;)!
Edit didn't notice someone else recommended AP.
Witchers yes
System and Bio Shocks yes
Deus Ex's even Invisible War especially if like games in Seattle or if you want to bet on mutated animal fights or hang out with AI pop stars or many other random side quest things.
There's the Blood Omen, Legacy of Kain, and Blood Rayne games but maybe not as much RPG immersive options like some games change to and get linear and no options.
There's also Mass Effect and Skyrim?
*flex,wink,purr*
Deus Ex is an inspiration (there are a few Deus Ex references in the game) with the hubs and stealth and interactive environment, something that applies to every Deus Ex game. But they are not full fledged RPGs like Bloodlines is, so they are again very, very different.
All of these games/franchises are unique, and all must be played. Well... you won't be missing much if you skip the first two Witcher games. The first one is more like a traditional cRPG except not very good at all, the second one is fairly well written for a game but is utterly unremarkable in every other aspect beyond its story (extremely linear, generic action hack and slash gameplay with an overly shallow stat system which applies to the third game as well).
Bloodlines has by far the most role-playing of them all, since it is the only one based on a pen and paper RPG and it tries to do them justice (about as much as any video game can attempt). Deus Ex has the most in-depth and fun action gameplay of them all, and Human Revolution and Mankind Divided have by far the best stealth.
I'm not even sure why The Witcher games were brought up to be honest as both games/franchises utilize totally different world building and narrative techniques and gameplay principles.
Alpha Protocol is probably somewhat similar for the reasons described + some of the same developers, but I have yet to play it.