I kind of...hate this game (Warning: Long Essay)

[Not So Serious]

Now if you only read the title and don't feel like reading the rest, you are free to tell me all the ways in which I'm a spoiled millennial who doesn't get it, and should just go back to playing CoD and stop inflicting their dumb opinions upon the world with the assumption that anybody would care.

Alternatively, you could read the rest so that your insults can be a bit more accurate.

Deus Ex has been repeatedly praised as the best game of all time by a lot of people. But as I've been playing, I've reached the Ocean Lab (which I understand to be the level before the last) and all I feel is relief at nearly being done with it.

Now I didn't grow up with it. My first console was the Game Cube, of which I have fond memories. But it was about 1 generation after this. So I don't really consider myself as one of the "kids these days" that just want their games to be easy and laid out perfectly.

But I have had absolutely no fun with this game.

2024 Edit: Funnily enough, despite my opinion becoming a little more nuanced after some time and a couple additional playthroughs, folks still kind of just reply to this initial post. And I honestly can't really blame them.

So I figured I'd add a few edits where my opinion on a topic changed.

Complaint 1: The Gameplay
The exploration isn't nearly as fun as it's talked up to be. Every review I've heard has praised how there's always cool stuff to find, but typically when I go off the beaten path, I end up getting damaged by environmentals or wasting my unlocking devices, only to discover that the reward for that effort was ammo (of which I have in abundance), an augment (that I've likely already unlocked and is thus useless to me), or unlocking tools to replace the ones I just used to get in. Half the time I reload to the quick save I dropped before I went off to explore because I will usually be in a worse spot than when I started.

The stealth is frustrating. It feels like the "sneak up from behind and KO" move only works when it wants to. Making me Quick Save prior to every attack and re-loading until it works. Even with maxed out sneak and a cloaking device, I can still be spotted, which makes sneaking seem like a complete waste of time.

So if the sneaking is bad, the next thing you try is shooting; but the gunplay isn't satisfying at all. It's an awful FPS. The guns have no kick, the enemies don't react to damage and don't display interesting tactics, the augments are awkward to activate. It's not fun.

So if the stealth is frustrating, the combat is bland, and the exploration is unsatisfying, how are you supposed to play? Apparently with gritted teeth and a finger over the quicksave/quickload buttons, at least in my case.

2024 Edit: It turns out a lot of my frustrations came from me playing the GMDX mod, since everyone and their mums told me it was the definitive version.

Turns out, everyone and their mums meant it's the definitive version for repeat playthroughs, because it cranks the difficult way up, introducing the stealth skill and making it so the AI will spot you if they so much as glimpse the foot of your shoe sticking out from a crate from the other side of the map.

Having played a few more times without the mod, I've actually grown to enjoy the gameplay. It is a legitimately fun shooter on Realistic difficulty. Though it only really started becoming a fun shooter on a second playthrough for me. Because I knew the tricks.

I knew the best approach.
I knew to ignore Smuggler since all he offered was overpriced weapon upgrades.
I knew what skills needed to be leveled asap, and what level they started having diminishing returns
I knew where the augmentation canisters were.
I knew to rebind the augmentation keys to the number pad and not leave them on the F row.
I knew what exploration routes were worth looking into, and which held nothing but junk and pain.
I knew to not waste unlocking tools on containers and doors when I can smash them with a crowbar.
I knew to not stress so much about being detected, since there's no consequence to killing everyone (more on that particular problem later).
I knew to play on Realistic and aim for the head.
I knew that a pistol to the back of the head was more effective than a baton.
I knew that the stealth pistol and tranq gun were worthless, and that the GEP gun was the only real choice for starting weapon even though you won't use it much.
I knew what NPCs were important to talk to and which to ignore because they were boring.

Complaint 2: JC Denton and Friends
The characters aren't all that deep, or at least their deepness isn't well represented. JC seems like a dumb actor just blindly going along with whatever the most recent person he's talked to has said. He seems mostly bored with everything and not invested in anything. I know it's a meme that JC is terrible at emoting and comes off as a psychopath, and it's funny. But not very compelling as a character.

I have no investment in any of these people, partly because I don't see JC being invested in any of them. When JC's only reaction to his brother dying is "he was a good man," how am I supposed to see it as a tragedy?

Every single character with a name could drop dead, and it would not cause a single blip on my emotional radar. These aren't people, they're poorly voiced robots that do what they do because that's the role they have to fill in the story.
Navarra and Gunther are psychopathic soldiers because we need Disk 1 Bosses.
Bob Page is an evil scientist because we needed an primary antagonist.
Paul is a kind-hearted "thall shalt not kill" spokesperson because we need someone to tell you "CHOICES HAVE CONSEQUENCES!!!"

Tong, Hugh, Savage, Daedalus; all of these people only exist because somebody needs to tell you what your next objective is.
And you will complete that next objective because you are the main character. We don't need to come up with a motivation for you, that's for you to come up with! After all, you're supposed to be stepping into the shoes of JC Denton! It's alright if he's an emotionless robot and dumb actor that agrees with every plan he hears and doesn't have any motivations of his own, so long as it's in the name of letting players see themselves in his role.

Well I don't really want to see myself in him, I'm not particularly interesting. I would much rather JC be an actual person.

Complaint 3: The Themes
The hottakes it has about society are a bit dated. Some people have talked about how it tackles a lot about corporate control over society, but I don't see it being represented besides lipservice and the occasional comment.

The only really deep conversation I've had in this game was with Daedalus' explanation of why humanity needs to worship, and I'll probably save a spot in my mind for the "God is humanity's dream of good governance" line. It's an interesting statement, but it doesn't really say anything that I haven't heard elsewhere. Maybe it was a hottake in the 90s, I dunno.

The deepest theme I see is about how governments use terrorism and tragedy to justify their overinflated budget and expanding powers. It's a game that definitely feels topical for the era that was defined by the War on Terror and worries over increasing government control over its population.
That is pretty legitimately well-done, but it seems to get dropped in favor of Illuminati vs MJ12 bullcrap about halfway through, once UNATCO gets completely sidelined and drops from plot relevance.

2024 Edit: Looking back, the first few hours kind of does live up to the hype. It's the last 2-thirds of the game that let it down

Any other hottakes it has, it only really talks about without displaying. The most visual class inequality you see is that slums exist, that's hardly a top-down examination of the economics behind the tragedies. And the NSF leader at Liberty Island goes on a tirade about how the government is actually the bad guy. Hardly the bastion of visual storytelling.

Funnily enough, I remember the prequels having more themes than this. The corporate control was a lot more visible, what with the augmentations that people are installing literally having corporate logos on them.

And Mankind Divided had a pretty nuanced look about the cycle of violence. With prejudice -> persecution -> retaliation -> more prejudice. Victims becoming victimizers in a class war spurred on by a media entity who is literally a construct designed to turn people against each other.
World leaders stifling innovation out of fear of it eroding their power base.
Scapegoats being propped up as enemies of the public in order to control the population.

These are themes that are enormously relevant, and have become more relevant than they were when the games came out.
As opposed to the original Deus Ex that, while the problems it talked about exists, they aren't quite the main issues that we have to deal with nowadays.

Complaint 4: Double Standards
There's a bit of a double-standard regarding the "thall shalt not kill...NSF, screw everyone else." The opening missions have Paul and the quartermaster talk a lot about how "these are real people, not targets." Encouraging the player to be a pacifist and treat their enemies humanely (which never held much water for me anyway, considering enemies never really act in a way that portrays them as humans. They're as robotic and kill-happy as the actual killer-robots and turrets).

But it seems this only applies to NSF. Once your enemies are government agents, you can murder-stabby-fun time all day and all night and nobody will bat an eyelid. They worked for the government after all, they made their choice. They definitely didn't have families that loved them. If they did, they wouldn't be working for the bad guy

2024 Edit: Having played a few more times, I almost always stop playing around the point it's time to betray UNATCO, because the story takes a dramatic downturn for pretty much this reason.

Prior to the betrayal, the game builds up like choices actually matter, because the way you accomplish your missions is acknowledged by your comrades who reward and condemn you for it.

But afterwards, JC can do no wrong, your allies will accept you no matter what you do. Barge through the place killing everyone and their dogs, nobody cares.

There's no consequences. And without consequences, choices are meaningless.

Complaint 5: Player Agency and Lack Thereof
This is probably going to get the spiciest reaction, but I think the player agency has been overstated.

To be clear, in levels it's definitely there. Hack the keypad, find the password, go through a window, charge in with the Dragon's Tooth and Regen Augment like a maniac; all are valid and that's pretty good.

But that's where the agency ends. At the end of the day, you and all your friends will have the exact same story.
You'll all have done a few UNATCO missions, betray them after Paul defects, go to Hong Kong to help Tong and the Illuminati take down MJ12, then save some nerds at a science lab and do something at Area 51.
A lot of the big choices that I see talked up don't really matter all that much.

Big Choices:
1: Kill or spare NSF Leader on Liberty Island. If you kill him, you never see him again. If you spare him, you never see him again.
2: Kill or spare Lebedev. If you kill him, you never see him again. If you spare him, you never see him again.
3: Kill or spare Manderly. If you kill him, you never see him again. If you spare him, you never see him again.
4: Save or leave Paul. If you leave, he dies. If you save, you do see him again...and he does nothing of importance.
5: If you kill Navarra early, you get to...not have to kill her later.
6: If you kill Chao early, you get to...not have to kill her later.
7: If you tell all your friends at UNATCO to defect cause it's what the cool kids are doing, you'll later see them at the Illuminati headquarters. where they will gush about how awesome it is to be working for the Illuminati and proceed to not do anything.
8: There's 3 buttons to push at the end (I haven't reached this yet, on the mission just before it. So maybe those 3 buttons will really blow me away, we'll see).
9: If you go into the women's restroom, Manderly will comment on it exactly once and then never again.

Not saying modern games are much better, but this doesn't seem like the kind of variety of storytelling and player freedom I was expecting from the "best game ever" and "most player agency to ever be found in gaming."

2024 Edit: After having finished the game, those 3 buttons really did kind of blow me away. I enjoyed the last mission, and the split between the three endings.

Though it still has the exact same problem that Deus Ex: Human Revolution gets lambasted for: the ending is completely unaffected by every choice that preceded it.
In terms of what ending you get, the only thing that matters is the last 30 minutes.

The ending is not the bastion of player agency. It's just 3 buttons with extra steps.

Funnily enough, I have to give massive props to a hated creature within the Deus Ex community. Invisible War.
Out of the entire series, I think Invisible War does player agency the best.

Not in terms of gameplay, heck no, its gameplay is absolute garbage. But its story is very interesting and in my opinion worth slogging through. For reasons I think a personal anecdote would serve best:

Not long after breaking my leash and being able to explore the first area, I found a night club. In it, the owner asked me to commit some crimes, in exchange I'd be allowed into the VIP lounge. Elsewhere in the club, there's also a police informant who will pay you money to report what goes on in the VIP lounge. So I do the crime, get the VIP access, and in there meet another criminal called the Omar that says "hey, we'll give you a discount for our illegal augmentations if you steal something from the club owner."
So I did crime for the club owner for cash, then betrayed the club to the Omar for augmentations, and then betrayed the Omar to the police for more cash.
And you know who told me to do all that? Nobody, that was just something I came up with and the game let me do.

THAT is player agency done right!

It was especially cathartic after playing OG Deus Ex, where JC gets led around the nose by everybody with his phone number and dumbly going along with whatever the latest voice in his head told him to do.

As JC, you're constantly getting tricked.
As Alex, you can be the trickster.
This is my call to action for folks to stop hating Invisible War on reputation alone without having played it themselves. Give it a chance! (Assuming you can get the garbage PC Port to run)

Conclusion:
I don't like this game.
It's not fun. It doesn't have nearly as much to say as it thinks it does.
Every part of playing is frustrating and I don't walk away from each play session feeling at all enriched by the process.
More often than not, I end a session not because of time or because a feeling of satisfaction, but because I need a break from its janky nonsense.

And all the fans are now free to tell me all the ways in which I'm a spoiled millennial who doesn't get it, and should just go back to playing CoD and stop inflicting their dumb opinions upon the world with the assumption that anybody would care.

2024 Edit: Not at all going to act like the opinion was "wrong" at the time. That was the impression I had near the end of my first playthrough, and it was the opinion that the game gave me after clogging through it to the near end of it.

But now, I don't really hate the game anymore. It's more like I consider Deus Ex to be the imperfect prototype of games that would later on surpass it in all categories. Gameplay, story, themes, symbolism - all these are done better elsewhere. And those games have Deus Ex to thank for being what they built off of.
And I probably wouldn’t be so harsh on it if it weren’t for so many fans saying things like “pinnacle of the genre, never been topped, best game ever”

[AC Denton]

didn't read.
bad take.
game good.

[Not So Serious]

Originally posted by AC Denton:

didn't read.
bad take.
game good.

Well that’s a logical and well-reasonable argument if I’ve ever seen one :p

[Thermal Lance]

Stealth works perfectly fine minus the ackward butt whipping with a nightstick kind of deal it has.

Keep in mind this game is not built to be entirely ghosted. This is not a stealth game. You can get away with it on the early levels but that's it.

Stealth is more of a tool to give you an advantage in the upcoming fight than an alternative

If you came in with the expectations that the game was built with stealth as a top legitimate option to complete the game then you came in with the wrong expectations.

[Zelligaryan]

Filtered

[Your Neighbour]

Originally posted by AC Denton:

didn't read.
bad take.
game good.

+5
gaem good
ooga stop no read

[Not So Serious]

Originally posted by quaker2:

Filtered

Odd, I don't feel like I've been moved slowly or in small quanitities through a device in order to remoeve unwanted material.

Originally posted by Thermal Lance:

Stealth works perfectly fine minus the ackward butt whipping with a nightstick kind of deal it has.

Keep in mind this game is not built to be entirely ghosted. This is not a stealth game. You can get away with it on the early levels but that's it.

Stealth is more of a tool to give you an advantage in the upcoming fight than an alternative

If you came in with the expectations that the game was built with stealth as a top legitimate option to complete the game then you came in with the wrong expectations.

If I went in with the expectation that I could stealth through the game, then it's expectations that the game itself implaced. Because from the first mission and through the first few levels, it tries to emphasize player choice of approach and the value of stealth and non-lethal methods (through the mouthpieces of Paul and SGT. Carter).

However, even if it were true that stealth isn't an intended way to play the game, it doesn't fix the flaw of combat being slow, clunky, and overly reliant on the player's ability to quicksave/quickload.

In any case, once I got the Dragon's Tooth I pretty much barely use stealth except as a means to reduce enemy numbers before inevitably getting spotted. At which point turning on the Regen+Armor and running around hacking off heads like a maniac (or rather batting them in the head with a glowing blue stick until their character model falls over, because 90s game).
And if that's the intended experience than the early game is entirely misrepresentative of the director's vision.

[Your Neighbour]

Originally posted by AC Denton:

didn't read.
bad take.
game good.

[Parejus Maximus]

Well, for someone who grew up with a NES as a kid, this game blew my mind. Even Time Commando was a great game back then. I just believe younger people have unrealistic expectations for older games. There were plenty of limitations at that time. It is not like today, that a game can be as big as 200GB and it does not affect your 2TB HDD. Back then, diskettes were still being used.
I know some things could be better but I like this one over the modern Deus Exes. This one is the OG conspiracy theorist game, that got many things right.

Older does not necessarily mean better but we can be damn sure that developers poured their heart and souls into their creations (In my opinion Super Mario Bros. 3 is the definitive Mario game). These days games get released in their bare minimum releasable state and get tweaked and sharpened throughout their lifetime. In the good ol´days we payed for a game and got a full game.

My opinion is don´t finish it. Stop if it makes you feel uncomfortable.

Ooga booga, game good. Music is too OP for its era.
Chinamen warning tourist about canals.

[Not So Serious]

Originally posted by Parejus Maximus:

Well, for someone who grew up with a NES as a kid, this game blew my mind. Even Time Commando was a great game back then. I just believe younger people have unrealistic expectations for older games. There were plenty of limitations at that time. It is not like today, that a game can be as big as 200GB and it does not affect your 2TB HDD. Back then, diskettes were still being used.
I know some things could be better but I like this one over the modern Deus Exes. This one is the OG conspiracy theorist game, that got many things right.

Older does not necessarily mean better but we can be damn sure that developers poured their heart and souls into their creations (In my opinion Super Mario Bros. 3 is the definitive Mario game). These days games get released in their bare minimum releasable state and get tweaked and sharpened throughout their lifetime. In the good ol´days we payed for a game and got a full game.

My opinion is don´t finish it. Stop if it makes you feel uncomfortable.

Ooga booga, game good. Music is too OP for its era.
Chinamen warning tourist about canals.

I do agree with it clearly being a labor of love.
And to be clear, a bad game made with love is still preferable to a lot of modern games that are adequately made but absolutely soulless.

The love and effort is on the screen. It just doesn't necessarily result in high quality.

And I did end up finishing it, mainly cause I wouldn't want it to be said that I didn't give the game it's fair try.

To be fair, I did end up really enjoying Area 51. Maybe cause it felt like I was finally able to just go Nova and stop holding back my resources, and there were an abundance of places to recharge the augment powers, which made the combat a little bit more fun.

And it seemed to backload its meaningful choices to the last mission with the three endings.
So I guess in a way...

Originally posted by Not So Serious:

8: There's 3 buttons to push at the end (I haven't reached this yet, on the mission just before it. So maybe those 3 buttons will really blow me away, we'll see).

I guess those 3 buttons really did end up blowing me away :p
A bit literally considering I chose the Dark Age, which is a pretty interesting solution to the problem of global conspiracies.
I know Helios might be the canon ending that IW goes off of. But I've actually seen Terminator and know better than to trust a computer to rule the world.

It doesn't change my opinion of the game overall. Though looking back, I did enjoy the first and last missions. Decently crafted environments with a variety of approaches, but not so complex and janky that it becomes a headache to work through (which was a problem with nearly every mission in between).
And there weren't so many bullcrap lockers begging you to waste your unlocking items to discover worthless ammo and cigarettes.
And JC actually came close to emoting and having a motivation at the end there. A little hint of one.
And Tong, Everrette, and Page each have half of a personality, and actually seem invested in what's happening. I don't fully understand how they came to the conclusions they did or why they want to do what they're doing, but I can at least tell what they want.
And...well, basically, the first and last missions come close to being to exceptions to every one of those 5 complaints I had.
Doesn't save the the rest of the game, but I walked away from the last mission feeling satisfied.

I can fully believe that Deus Ex was one of the best games to come out of its era. And it deserves respect for being one of the pioneers of First-Person RPGs and Immersive Sims.
I still stand by every one of those complaints I listed, and greatly prefer its sequels and prequels. But I can still see why it had the impact and has so much love from those who played it when it first came out.

[Not So Serious]

Originally posted by Al Abaster:

So go play something else. A lot of people don't care for Niagra Falls, either.

Why do I get the feeling you only read the title, and maybe the intro?

[>:(]

you really typed all that for no one to read

[Not So Serious]

Originally posted by Al Abaster:

Welcome to block.

Whyyyyyyyyy!!! 😭

Originally posted by >:(:

you really typed all that for no one to read :tyronetoy:

You know how it goes
Once you start typing your thoughts down, you kind of get into a groove and everything in your head just starts flowing onto the screen, and the next you know you’ve written 1,700 words 🤷‍♂️

It was kind of therapeutic though. Kind of like venting

[Your Neighbour]

Originally posted by >:(:

you really typed all that for no one to read :tyronetoy:

f

[Cat with the Gat]

I feel I gotta weigh in here, at least on the criticisms regarding the themes.

You came in fully expecting a stereotypical "Cyberpunk is criticism of Corporations" game/story, something which the prequels tried and (while fun games) became a lesser Deus Ex entry because of it.

Deus Ex - both as a game and as a series -despite being 'cyberpunk', is about the bigger fish: conspiracies. Not corporate conspiracies, but of government, politics, and those who seek to shape the fate of humanity from the shadows. Even augmentations as a plot point was dwarfed by this.

While corporate overreach is a major problem IRL, what's the point of focusing on it when the most powerful people on earth are trying to steer the course of not just history, but humanity as a whole to a future in their image?

As the years go by and the predictions and conspiracies within the original Deus Ex turn out to be eerily accurate, we must ask ourselves: When "Conspiracy theorist" has become a slur, despite the revelations of MKULTRA and Epsteins island... who does it benefit?

[Seatbelt]

I just think it's neat!