- The creators of the original Deus Ex, Warren Spector, Sheldon Pacotti and Chris Norden, take a trip down memory lane while playing their game fifteen years after its release.
This is probably one of the greatest games ever created, and no game will ever be able to replicate its experience. It was in the right place at the right time. Graphics advanced enough to look pretty good, but not so advanced that it would make it impossible to create the multiple (like, 30+) paths possible in the game. A Blade Runner-like aesthetic that meshed perfectly with the time it was released. A bomb as hell soundtrack. Dialogue trees. Dialogue trees. It was just so incredibly ambitious for its time, even with all of its frustrations. It's by no means the perfect game, but it's damn important, and its influence on everything that came out after it is impossible to measure. kleinbl00 have you played this?
I think the craziest thing about it is that you aren't just fighting some random Illuminati conspiracy-tard stuff, you're fighting the Illuminati conspiracy from the book series The Illuminatus! Trilogy. There are too many references to that book in Deus Ex for it to be a coincidence (there are repeated numerology references and specific references to the number 23, law of fives, vague references to discordianism, etc). The fact that you are going up against the Illuminati in a similar way as the book series really made the game for me. That being said, it told a completely different story of fighting the same Illuminati and it was in a dystopian future setting, so it was completely different story yet still had the same feel. It mixed elements of Ray Kurzweil's thought patterns, tons and tons of books mixed together, yet still remained an original story and had an original feel at the same time, so the book nerd in me gets pleased when playing this game.
Let me know what you think, I could be blinded by nostalgia goggles of a sort, but part of the wonder was going back every time and finding another new tidbit or plot point that I missed before. There's an instance in the game where you "leave me behind, I'll hold them off!" You can leave, which is what I did the first time...but my second playthrough, I stayed, just to see what would happen. And the game actually accounted for this, letting you help fight with your partner and unlocking an entirely different plot thread.
I can't describe how walking out into the market in Hong Kong made me feel. The drab and claustrophobic helicopter base opening up into this sprawling market in an alien land... So, I'm exaggerating a bit, but still. They hit this tone just right, and the graphics were good enough that you could let your imagination fill in the blanks. You really felt like you were part of this complicated living, breathing world, and you were the only one who could save it. Fantastic.