Deus Ex. Like with The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, now that its name has been mentioned, a person is bound to reinstall and play through it again. This is kind of the inside joke of both fanbases, but the similarities don’t stop there. Like Bethesda’s rough gem of an RPG, this is a masterpiece and at the same time a somewhat problematic piece of software that’s hard for just anyone to enjoy, with its age being partly to blame. Having said that, despite its many issues and while it has kind of fallen into obscurity and been overshadowed by the franchise’s modern, more mainstream, and more approachable entries, there’s a reason why Deus Ex is still regarded by many as “The Best Game Ever.” 25 years after its release, here’s an in-depth look at what might very well be one of the most important titles in the history of the medium.
Developed by Ion Storm (yes, that Ion Storm of Daikatana fame), Deus Ex is an FPS/RPG hybrid with a story that takes place in 2052, a time of extreme economic disparity, with the epidemic known as the ‘Grey Death’ slowly killing the populace, and the scarcity of the Ambrosia vaccine triggering social unrest, as the elite has a much higher chance of getting access to it.
In this dystopian future the technological advancements have led to mechs; people with mechanical enhancements that make them far stronger and durable – but JC Denton is different. One of the two prototype nano-augmented agents of the antiterrorist coalition UNATCO, the hero of this tale isn’t as tough as a tank and looks more like a normal human being instead of a hybrid of flesh and metal, but inside him millions of nanites work to give him quite the skillset.
JCD begins his journey with what can be described as detective-level gear. His augmented vision (*wink* to fellow fans) is equipped with a crosshair that indicates his accuracy as well as whether an NPC is hostile or not, plus his eyes can turn into a flashlight. He can also discover additional nano-augmentations that can make him stronger, faster, more stealthy, able to withstand damage from bullets or harm from toxins, turn him invisible, spawn a spy drone that can detonate and create an electromagnetic pulse, and more.
You’ll get what it feels like to be JCD in the first mission, where he is thrown at Liberty Island and must stop a group of terrorists from doing their thing. As the progenitor of today’s genre fusions, right from the beginning Deus Ex offers an unparalleled level of freedom when it comes to how one can finish this simple task.
Hide in the shadows, silently kill or leave enemies unconscious, avoid cameras or disable them through hacking, destroy electronics with EMPs, unlock doors with lockpicks or freaking grenades. Bored? Okay, just shoot people, then. Nowadays like-minded experiences that offer that kind of freedom are aplenty. They are missing one key ingredient, however, and that’s what its creator calls ‘Emergent Gameplay.’
Instead of offering a problem and a selection of solutions, Deus Ex lets one experiment and even do things that the developer didn’t even consider, like setting up an explosive device right next to an alarm panel or creating a trashcan staircase to reach places you weren’t meant to yet. Don’t have a rebreather? No biggie. Dive in, and when lungs start bleeding eat ten bars of chocolate and chug a dozen cans of soda to gain some additional health points! The game never tells you to do these things. It’s all up to you.
Being discovered in Alien: Isolation can lead to death, sounding the alarm in [pick a stealth game] will fail the mission, not aiming correctly when facing a group of mercenaries in The Last of Us means game over. Here none of the available options are forced upon the player, whereas games like the fantastic Dishonored, or even Deus Ex: Human Revolution (undoubtedly one of the best instalments), restrict your choices and are designed in a way that they almost scold you for killing enemies or not playing as stealthily as possible.
Not here. The whole thing can be completed with just one necessary kill or by not leaving anyone alive. Deus Ex won’t punish you for playing the way you want to. In fact, it expects you to. What The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild came close to perfecting, Deus Ex initiated – and Link still can’t murder innocents. Take that, Nintendo!
The unparalleled level of freedom goes beyond the shootin’ and the hidin’. Above all this is a journey that enables following wildly different paths, and occasionally the whole thing responds as few do. As an example, there are a couple of crossroads where it’s possible to kill main characters. When that happens the story adapts, which in turn makes the world feel real.
In fact, one of the worst things with Deus Ex is when it breaks its own rule of having no rules, with one notable example being those two or three characters who are invincible but have no reason to be. Many have criticised the three endings, which can practically be accessed in the end no matter what has been done before, yet this was a genius move by the developer as to not trap the narrative towards a specific outcome based on earlier decisions.
Now, whether one wants to approach a situation stealthily or go in guns blazing, this is mostly about observation and tactical planning as defeat can come relatively easy. Aside from Denton not being the typical super-agile FPS hero, each body part has its own health bar, with arm injuries affecting aim, damaged legs impairing movement, and a few well-placed shots in the torso, or if even luckier, at the head, will bring death. Additionally, as an old-school PC RPG, you are frequently left to wander vast, underpopulated maps looking for where to go next. All these are actually good things that contribute to the fun.
After all this talk about how great Deus Ex is (and before explaining what makes it even greater), it’s time to take a good look at its many, many problems. While playing you’ll notice that this is a demanding, but also unrefined experience. Not just a test of skill, but a test of one’s patience and willingness to deal with occasionally clunky or unreliable systems. Take enemy AI. It’s hard to tell whether they can see the hero or not; when they see JC Denton they run towards him like idiots, and when they are hurt, they run like lunatics in the opposite direction. They also don’t bat an eye when their friend dies right next to them from a sniper shot.
Things aren’t better for our hero, who jumps a bit higher than a toddler, must wait for a few seconds to steady his aim, and uses a very archaic inventory and HUD. There’s a general stiffness to most moves, making it hard to feel like an enhanced action hero. You’ve devised a perfect plan to infiltrate a heavily guarded base? Good, now enjoy getting stuck or slipping off a simple ladder!
The many rough-around-the-edge mechanics, the bugs, and the fact that failure can become a frequent visitor, will quickly lead to the traditional immersion-breaking tactic of save scumming. The weird thing? Deus Ex shines brightest not when you treat it as a typical video game, but when you approach it as an RPG in the truest sense of the word.
The moment players stop thinking in terms of “optimal builds” or “right choices” and instead put aside the save button, embrace their choices and their consequences, and let themselves become JC Denton, the experience transforms entirely. Yeah, sure, aiming requires waiting for a cursor to focus. It’s okay, though, because this isn’t Doom. Shooting isn’t a test of reflexes but a reflection of the character’s development. In other words: do you want to become a sharpshooter? Then put aside those Hacking 101: 2052 Edition and Lockpicking for Morons books and focus on improving the necessary skill.
Each decision, from upgrading the swimming ability over rifles to installing a stealth augmentation instead of a defensive one, reshapes how one inhabits this world. Deus Ex quietly nudges you to think and act like JC. Infiltrating a building through an overlooked vent, bypassing guards via a flooded tunnel, or uncovering hidden routes most players will never find. The augmentations, powered by bioenergy (the game’s equivalent of mana) further personalise a playthrough, as each implant permanently alters the way one engages with the world.
Part of Deus Ex’s true genius lies in its replayability. One run might see the main character as a pacifist hacker, ghosting through every encounter; the next, a cold-blooded assassin who settles every argument with a silenced pistol. This isn’t merely something you beat – it’s a place you inhabit.
Something that always plays a big part in engrossing one into a virtual world are the audio-visuals, and like with the gameplay portion, the things that are great here walk hand in hand with the things that aren’t. This is a time capsule of the early 2000s. Character models are a little bit blocky, the animations are almost laughably stiff, and every single place is inhabited by the same five or so NPCs, with some new ones sprinkled around every now and then – and yet the urban environments still carry a certain charm and have a very strong dystopian aura despite this essentially being “cyberpunk on a very strict budget.”
Audio follows that same pattern of rough edges wrapped around genuinely impressive work. Many characters sound flat, non-Americans have ridiculous accents, and weapons lack punch. Thankfully the great modular OST elevates every location, doing the heavy lifting in creating each locale’s atmosphere.
It’s JC Denton’s voice acting, however, where this achieves both accidental comedy and unexpected brilliance. His often-mocked monotone voice has the emotional range of a fridge, but somehow it works. He is stark and stoic, but also hilariously sarcastic and bluntly honest – fitting for a government agent who is half-man, half-machine, and entirely done with everyone’s nonsense. Couple his memorable delivery with some memorable lines and the result is iconic.
Adam Jensen is the cool, sexy, action movie hero type of protagonist. JC Denton is his weird cousin who lives in the crazy part of the town and plays it completely straight no matter what. The man could find out his toaster was plotting to overthrow humanity and he’d still say, in that beautiful unemotional drawl, “What a shame.” The ladies don’t like him that much, but the dudes love him.
Now it’s time to go deeper and explain where the magic of Deus Ex truly lies. Above all its systems and freedoms is its story – more specifically the way it exists on three distinct layers. On the surface there’s the simplest, most accessible layer: you’re a trench coat-wearing, shades-at-midnight cyber-cop who does cool futuristic spy stuff. A globe-trotting action thriller with lots of X-Files cheese to eat, where you shoot down robotic men in black, sneak through an enemy compound to recover a made-in-China nano-lightsaber, and save busty maidens.
Yeah, one of these is a lie. If that’s all you want it lets you enjoy exactly that. Nothing in the narrative demands anyone to dig further. The moment they choose to, the world opens up.
Next comes the dense but still optional world building and socio-political commentary that permeates every inch of the road from beginning to end. Newspapers mentioning crime and all sorts of bad events, while blaming the rich and powerful; citizens gossiping about failed oppressive governments; hacked email accounts hinting at corporate and systemic corruption.
This layer is where Deus Ex feels prophetic, presenting a society built on fear and lies, privatised police and healthcare that isn’t there to help the people, extreme technological dependence and quickly widening class divides. Even when the dialogue leaves something to be desired and the characters are thinly sketched, the world feels startlingly real.
Then comes the final and most fascinating layer: the philosophical and conspiratorial heart of Deus Ex. Yes, it never attempts subtlety. The opening literally has the villain monologuing about his designer virus being used to reshape society. Deus Ex offers a world where every shadowy organisation is true. The Illuminati, Majestic 12, Area 51 scientists, and the mess that is the USA government are all mashed together. The resulting pulp manages to be a serious meditation on power, freedom, and the very nature of humanity.
What happens when advanced AI gains self-awareness? When a system seeks to enslave people “for their own good?” When the choice isn’t between good and evil, but between different flavours of control? Deus Ex doesn’t want to surprise you with twists. It wants you to wrestle with the implications. Sure, blowing up an ED-209 wannabe with a rocket launcher is cool. Talking with a prototype AGI about how humanity always strived to be controlled by a godlike entity is chilling.
As JC Denton (aka you) starts questioning UNATCO’s motives, the narrative shifts from cliché action-movie simplicity to a political thriller that asks uncomfortable questions about authority and autonomy…and that’s where the story truly becomes yours. The world-changing multiple-choice ending offers no clean answers because there are none – it’s one more moment where you are left to make a choice on your own, with only you knowing whether you did the right thing or not.
Yes, its approach to storytelling is unashamedly blunt, often absurd, and sometimes darkly humorous in a way the newer way-too-serious entries never quite recaptured, yet through some bizarre witchcraft this turns its tangled, ridiculous web of tinfoil-hat conspiracies into a coherent, grim and even plausible vision of a world on the brink of collapse. Maybe because it doesn’t hide its themes and commits to them with absolute conviction.
This critic, usually laconic and far from verbose, wants to ask from the reader to forgive him for this gargantuan – and hopefully just a tiny bit enjoyable – wall of text. It’s his own feeble attempt at paying tribute to one of those rare pieces of software where no review can ever hope to do it justice. The crazy thing is that this is something that shouldn’t work and yet it does despite its numerous problems.
To conclude, this is an adventure that respects one’s intelligence and rewards curiosity. It gives you tools, but doesn’t tell you how to use them. It has a plot, but doesn’t force you to follow it. It is a cyberpunk epic that feels both absurd and eerily realistic, with a story that remains relevant precisely because it trusts the player to confront its ideas instead of being guided through them. Whether you’re sneaking through air ducts, hacking computers, or debating the ethics of transhumanism, Deus Ex always feels yours. In a world of linear hand-holding, it offers freedom – and consequences.
By the way, you can try out this diamond in the rough for the price of a few coins nowadays…
