Deus Ex Review

 DEUS EX (PC)

Eidos Interactive, 2000

Immersive Sim, Rated M

Warren Spector is the considered by many to be the "father of the immersive sim," and is the creator of Deus Ex. Whenever he speaks of the development of Deus Ex, he refers to simply the concept of a door in a video game. When this game was being developed in the late 90's, if a door was locked, it typically required a key to open. They might be different keys for different doors, or there might even be a key to open multiple doors, but it always required a key. The idea behind the development of Deus Ex was to give the player the tools to make sure that the key is not the only way to open a door. Maybe you could lockpick your way through it, trick an NPC to open in for you, shoot it off its hinges, or straight up blow the door to smithereens. Spector made sure to apply this mindset to every single aspect of Deus Ex, and as somebody who has never really engaged with these genre in any significant way, I can say that from what I played, Warren succeeded in his desire to create an immersive experience.

Story Setup

(I only experienced around 3 hours of this game, so there are a lot of intriguing things about the story I am unaware of yet, so I will sum up the things I do know.)

The world is collapsing all due to the effects of the Gray Death, a virus that is seen to be killing citizens, throwing the world into unprecedented chaos (sounds sort of familiar...). You control JC Denton, a rookie agent for the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition (UNATCO). Denton alongside his brother are tasked with the interrogation of a member of the terrorist group known as the National Secessionist Forces (NSF) to learn about the whereabouts of a shipment of vaccines for the Gray Death, known as Ambrosia. He is located at the top of a recently bombed Statue of Liberty that Denton has to sneak through. Upon reaching him, he learns that the shipment is not on this island, which leads UNATCO to reconvene to figure out where the shipment has gone.

As a setup for a game that was mainly supposed to be about the innovative freeing gameplay, this is a more intriguing story than I was expecting, even after only 3ish hours of playing. The characters themselves I found to be a little bland, but the environment themselves are the most intriguing part, really selling the idea that this is a world torn about by a deadly virus. However, if I was tell somebody to play this game, the story would not be the first thing that I mention.

Presentation

Comparing this game to other games of its time in a graphical sense, for a game that came out in 2000, this game surprised me with how great it actually looked. Environments and textures are very detailed with the game even featuring accurate reflections on shiny floors and mirrors throughout the level. I had to check the options to make sure the GOTY release on Steam didn't add a ray traced reflections option. I was particularly impressed by the facial animations in cutscenes, which aren't lip-synced perfectly, but certainly are more expressive than I would've expected around this time. The most apt comparison for how this game looks is a game from 1998 called Half-Life. It featured comparable detail in its environments and textures, and it came out two years later. However, Half-Life game was developed by Valve, who is well adept at optimizing games to look fantastic on PCs. But for one of the flagship games to be developed on a new engine at the time, Unreal Engine, I think this game still looks very great.

Another thing about the presentation that is great is the music. This features a lot of 90's synth tracks that fit the games tone very well, and are very catchy. It matches lots of different styles such as techno and jazz to give off that distinctive spy/espionage vibe the game clearly wants to go for. The soundtrack also switches depending on the situation the player is in. If you are stealthing through a level, the music is low key, and laid back, to encourage you to stay calm, and do your best work. If you get caught, or are in a firefight, the music switches to a faster paced, more stressful track, while only adds to the immersion the developers wanted to create.

Even though its music if very good at creating immersion, I found audio design to be wildly inconsistent. The quality of the audio itself is par for the course for this point in time, but I found the balancing on certain sounds to be off-putting, even with going into the options and moving some sliders around. I also think that maybe some more immersive audio design could've been implemented in certain aspects. For example, it was hard to tell where some enemies were that I couldn't see. It would have been cool if I could tell that an enemy was around a corner walking towards or away from me based on the volume of their footsteps. The volume of the footsteps as is stays the same depending on where the player is located. Pretty nitpicky, but it still would've been cool to see, and I don't think it was out of the question for something like that to be implemented, in terms of technological limitations.

Gameplay

Deus Ex strives to create an immersive experience through every aspect of its being - story, presentation, and most important of all, gameplay. And from what I played, I feel this game sticks the landing. Going back to Spector's story about doors is very important when talking about this gameplay, since it seeks to allow the player as many options as possible for completing whatever task they have assigned to them. Even just in the first level, running around the wreckage of the bombed Statue of Liberty, I could tell that I wasn't even scratching the surface of how I can accomplish my mission.

Whenever possible in a game, I like to sneak my way around my enemies, possibly undetected, and preferably without killing a single person, but for playing this game, I wanted to try to mix and match my playstyle to test the mechanics of the game, and even with all my screwing around, the game still found new and fresh ways to challenge me on my mission. Whether it was with stingy ammo pickups, or dense enemy placements, it was constantly challenging me, and yet the game gave me at least three different ways to approach even the tiniest encounters. And you start to get the feeling that you can create your own strategies, not intended by the developers. All this in combination makes the progression of the game very satisfying, and very well paced, and means that no matter what play style you choose, you are bound to at least have a little fun.

Environmental pickups are another part of what makes this game so satisfying to play. Deus Ex at times gives you codes to doors, or passwords to computers that you need to not only remember, but that you need to type in manually to access. The game generously gives you a guide that keeps track of all important codes and passwords that you've found. However, whenever you approach a keypad or the like, the game does not pause around you when you type, which can lead to very stressful situations. But that stress makes it very rewarding to eventually complete your task unseen and unscathed. Its proof that you were able to memorize enemy patrol pathing and slip by undetected.

The tutorial of the game gets you used to the gameplay systems and controls before sending you out into the field. The progression of the tutorial is fine, but I feel that maybe the controls could've been a little less cluttered. It was very overwhelming to go into the key binding menu to switch around some controls, and see so many options for actions to do. I quickly found out however, that some of the controls will never really be used by modern PC players, as some of the bindings were implemented for people who possibly might not have had mice back in the early 2000s. But once I swapped around the controls to my liking, I was able to accomplish some pretty awesome things when the game inevitably threw me into the Statue of Liberty.

Conclusion

Deus Ex completely blew me away, even in 2024, when video games have evolved so much. Graphics have gotten better, stories have been more fleshed out and engaging, but even today, I feel the gameplay of Deus Ex props it above many of its contemporaries at the time in terms of immersion. The systems of its gameplay are flexible enough to guarantee that there is at least one play style that every individual will enjoy. Many modern games aren't able to implement systems like Deus Ex does, which makes this game a must-play if you are looking to engage with the immersive sim genre. And if you haven't played it, and enjoy immersive sims, you owe it to yourself to jump back into 2000 and see where it all started. I will not only finish this game after this assignment, but I will also explore more immersive sims, as this game has convinced me this is a genre I need to check out.