Deus Ex is one of my favorite games. From its open-ended gameplay, to its intricate narrative, and its transcendent soundtrack, any flaws it has are, to me, superseded by its many qualities. Naturally, any prospect of a direct sequel excited me. The reception for Deus Ex: Invisible War went from rather positive at launch to increasingly negative the past two decades and after giving it an honest chance, it's plain to see why. Despite most of the original staff returning, key creative roles are different (director, lead designer) and it's fairly obvious as Invisible War launched the franchise in an entirely new direction that thankfully future games wouldn't repeat.
The gameplay is the biggest problem here. What made Deus Ex so engrossing on a design level was the unprecedented amount of player choice it offered, even putting a lot of modern games to shame. Invisible War purports to have a similar degree of choice, but it cuts down on it to such an insane degree that it might as well not have any. Levels are much smaller, which vastly limits your approach to completion. You never have anything like the original game's Liberty Island where there are numerous different approaches to completing an area (even though Liberty Island does return) - you'd be lucky to get two choices. Sure, there's a vent or a laser grid that can be disabled, but it's a far, far cry from the original. It also doesn't help that gameplay styles are so severely constricted in this game. Stealth or nonlethal options are so heavily disincentivized by the game's own systems that playing it like a standard first-person shooter is not only more fun but much more effective. In Deus Ex, if you snuck up on an enemy and hit them on the square of their backs, it would be an instant takedown. In Invisible War, this mechanic is gone, so attempting the same will just alert the enemy instead, meaning that headshotting them with the pistol is just easier and more efficient. The stun prod also takes much longer to take down an enemy than in the original, which means, once again, any tactical advantage it once had is practically sapped from it. Another remarkably stupid change is the universal ammo system, which means every gun whether pistol or rocket launcher pulls from the same ammo pool. Not only is this a needless oversimplification that even Xbox players would likely find baffling, but it makes the game more difficult since if you run out of ammo for one gun you run out for all of your guns. The removal of skill points also means that player customization is much simpler and different playstyles are once again discouraged. To Invisible War's credit, though, the biomod system is actually sort of interesting, being entirely modular. This means you can swap augmentations at will provided you have enough biomod canisters, and you're given plenty throughout the entire game to make experimenting viable. It's the only source of playstyle customization the game actually gives you and it's a nice breath of fresh air in a game that otherwise feels like a straightjacket. I also like how the game fixes the only gameplay complaint I had with the original - NPC reactions to player actions. Guards will aggro when you hack ATMs in front of them, and they'll react appropriately to seeing dead bodies on the floor. This is the only real improvement Invisible War has over the original, but it is notable, for what that's worth.
Few games can claim to be as thoroughly researched and well-written as Deus Ex, and Invisible War certainly doesn't fit into that category. Despite one of the writers returning, Invisible War entirely lacks the nuance, believable characters, deeper sociopolitical themes, or effective worldbuilding of the original, throwing in a dash of character assassination into the mix. For starters, one of the best parts of the original was the memos you could read throughout the game, which fleshed out the world to insane degrees while also feeling entirely convincing. Invisible War does technically still have these, but not only do they show up in lesser frequency but they're much less detailed too. It feels like they're there simply for the sake of it. This leads to a level of detachment from Invisible War's world setting and the progress that's been made since the first game. The most infamous decision was making all of the original game's endings simultaneously canonical, which is hacked and pasted together with glue and construction paper, feeling unconvincing and clumsy. None of the original characters are very interesting or memorable, they don't have the charming personalities of Deus Ex's cast nor is there much that sets them apart from one another. For example, Billie Adams is supposed to be your best friend from the academy, but there's no chemistry at all to make this believable. It doesn't help that protagonist Alex D is a bumbling idiot with seemingly zero idea of the world around him. While JC Denton was meant to be a player insert without a defined personality, he still had knowledge of the world around him and his interactions felt more genuine as a result. Alex on the other hand has to ask questions he would already reasonably know, and it feels like it only exists to serve the player, ignoring the ways Deus Ex did it far more intelligently. The most unbelievable part is how Invisible War treats its returning characters. Chad Dumier and Nicolette DuClare were terrorists with good intentions, desiring to overthrow the tyranny of Majestic 12. Like most of Deus Ex's characters, they were highly characterized by ideology. In Invisible War, these two characters now run the modern incarnation of the Illuminati, presumably having changed drastically after the Collapse. Not only does the game seemingly not actually go into any detail as to why these characters developed so drastically, but they might as well be entirely different characters. While peoples' perceptions of the world can definitely change due to major world events, I can't imagine Chad and Nicolette not only doing a 180-degree ideological turn but also rebuilding the entire thing that they lost so many lives fighting against. It's a ridiculous concept and easily my least favorite part of the plot. The game has a faction system that allows Alex to side with a myriad of different groups by doing their specific faction quests, but none of this amounts to anything narratively because the faction you align with (if any) can just be arbitrarily decided by the player at the end of the game, so there's little consequence to your choices.
Deus Ex was a respectable game visually speaking. Its enjoyably low-key cyberpunk aesthetic and solid (if unremarkable for their time) graphics created a visually satisfying game and one that I had no complaints about within that department. Invisible War ups the ante to Unreal Engine 2, but relative to the advancements in technology in the past three years, I find its visual presentation underwhelming. It's not a bad-looking game by any means, there are appealing aspects both in terms of art direction and technology, but I find it mediocre overall. Aesthetically, Invisible War is set far into the future, forgoing the grounded look for a future more in line with Star Trek. While not inherently a problem, the game's aesthetic is this weirdly washed-out, teal, steel corridor look which blends with so many other different sci-fi games. Ion Storm's conception of the future is generic, standard, and uninteresting. It extends to the hardly creative locations (neither are DX1's, but that game isn't going for the same degree of science-fiction) and the uninspired character designs. Hooded religious figures, goggled military men, and tight spandex suits don't inspire much in me. I'm all for developers playing with extreme color palettes, but the game is so washed out without it fitting any thematic purpose, such as a game set in the apocalypse having a similar palette to emphasize desolation. Graphically speaking, Invisible War does feature higher-quality assets and improved tech such as bumpmaps, but they somehow look worse. Characters have wide-eyed stares and mouths which have visible seams when animating. Textures, despite bumpmaps, are far lower quality than the original game and even have visible compression artifacts (almost certainly because of the Xbox's RAM constraints), lacking the detail texture option many Unreal Engine 1 games had. There's practically only one stock character face for each gender/race, and while the original game often had repeat NPCs they at least all looked distinct from one another. Despite the more advanced technology, the game's environments don't feel more detailed than the original's more often than not. Outdoor areas certainly look commendable enough, but all inside areas are bland and sparse. The lighting system looks great, however, and it's clearly something Ion Storm wanted to show off for better or worse. Every light source projects dynamic shadows across the entire area and it's honestly kind of stellar if somewhat over-the-top, reminding me a lot of Doom 3. It's probably why, among other reasons, maps had to be so much smaller to accommodate the Xbox, but I do enjoy looking at it for what that's worth.
It would be nice if the PC port was any good, though. Invisible War is a notoriously unstable game and even with the practically required Visible Upgrade mod, the game still frequently locked up on me during loading screens. It got to the point where I was quicksaving before exiting even small areas, holding my breath to see if the game would crash "the right way" or not. Seeing as the game handles level loading by deliberately crashing itself and relaunching in the new area every single time (which has the consequence of often running multiple game windows), this leads to moments where the game just crashes and freezes entirely, without loading the new areas. It also has the consequence of making loading screens way longer than they need to be, which feels especially sluggish in a game where areas are so small. There's a lot of veritable technical jank in this game, such as the framerate being uncapped by default yet physics objects speeding up above 100 FPS. The game will run at any framerate your PC can handle, but it never actually feels smooth to play, with a seemingly persistent judder to the experience. The port also lacks basic features, such as anisotropic filtering or key remapping for core gameplay functions. Certain things such as lack of widescreen support are somewhat excusable due to age, but others are just behind what other PC games were offering at the time. That in and of itself wouldn't be horrible had the game not been so unstable.
Deus Ex has, in my opinion, one of the best soundtracks ever featured in a video game. Invisible War takes an entirely new direction, forgoing the original game's focus on melody for an entirely ambient score inspired by Looking Glass Studios' Thief games. It's a major step down, but I can't say it's entirely ineffective either. Alexander Brandon is an incredibly talented composer and even if his work isn't memorable or even particularly creative here, it still capably supports the game's atmospheric needs. The theme for Heron's Loft in Seattle was a highlight, conveying a certain depressive yet comforting tone, reflecting the squalor the tenants lived in. Each area's dedicated themes fit them perfectly fine, and I never once had any complaints tonally. Some of the tracks are even rather relaxing. The direction that Ion Storm went musically wasn't strictly a bad thing, but it lacks memorability and doesn't properly build connections between the player and the environments, despite still being suitably immersive. Games like Resident Evil 7 have largely ambient, unassuming scores that still manage to create a soundscape that blends seamlessly with the environment. Invisible War certainly takes a shot but it doesn't become so immersive that it feels real nor is it melodic enough to cause earworms. A big missed opportunity was to have a dynamic soundtrack like the original game, with dedicated themes for general ambiance, combat, and conversations. The game suffers from a lack of combat music, which makes enemy encounters feel flat and lifeless comparatively. Variety was the spice of life in the original and it's just not here. I did like the inclusion of real-life industrial band Kidneythieves in the game's soundtrack as it did inject some life into what is an otherwise sort of anemic score even if it's kind of embarrassingly emblematic of the game's release year. Brandon at his worst is still Alexander Brandon, it's very competent and works well enough, but I understand his comments about it "not being right for Deus Ex".
Deus Ex: Invisible War is not a downright painful experience. It's hardly awful and on a surface level appears simply, unmemorably mediocre. Peel back the layers and you'll find a game whose systems hardly work, whose mechanics feel as constrained as a straightjacket, whose narrative feels cynical at best and often ridiculous, whose visuals have aged worse than the original, and whose stability is frequently an issue. Although I started the experience thinking that it "wasn't that bad", by the end I was entirely confident in branding Invisible War a downright bad game. While I understand publisher mandates and time constraints ended up hampering development rather significantly, it doesn't change that many strange decisions on Ion Storm's part were entirely unnecessary if not often detrimental. I'm surprised Deus Ex as a franchise even made it past this dud of a game and I'm glad that the next two games would, for their faults, at least return to the spirit of the original that got me invested in the first place.
The gameplay is the biggest problem here. What made Deus Ex so engrossing on a design level was the unprecedented amount of player choice it offered, even putting a lot of modern games to shame. Invisible War purports to have a similar degree of choice, but it cuts down on it to such an insane degree that it might as well not have any. Levels are much smaller, which vastly limits your approach to completion. You never have anything like the original game's Liberty Island where there are numerous different approaches to completing an area (even though Liberty Island does return) - you'd be lucky to get two choices. Sure, there's a vent or a laser grid that can be disabled, but it's a far, far cry from the original. It also doesn't help that gameplay styles are so severely constricted in this game. Stealth or nonlethal options are so heavily disincentivized by the game's own systems that playing it like a standard first-person shooter is not only more fun but much more effective. In Deus Ex, if you snuck up on an enemy and hit them on the square of their backs, it would be an instant takedown. In Invisible War, this mechanic is gone, so attempting the same will just alert the enemy instead, meaning that headshotting them with the pistol is just easier and more efficient. The stun prod also takes much longer to take down an enemy than in the original, which means, once again, any tactical advantage it once had is practically sapped from it. Another remarkably stupid change is the universal ammo system, which means every gun whether pistol or rocket launcher pulls from the same ammo pool. Not only is this a needless oversimplification that even Xbox players would likely find baffling, but it makes the game more difficult since if you run out of ammo for one gun you run out for all of your guns. The removal of skill points also means that player customization is much simpler and different playstyles are once again discouraged. To Invisible War's credit, though, the biomod system is actually sort of interesting, being entirely modular. This means you can swap augmentations at will provided you have enough biomod canisters, and you're given plenty throughout the entire game to make experimenting viable. It's the only source of playstyle customization the game actually gives you and it's a nice breath of fresh air in a game that otherwise feels like a straightjacket. I also like how the game fixes the only gameplay complaint I had with the original - NPC reactions to player actions. Guards will aggro when you hack ATMs in front of them, and they'll react appropriately to seeing dead bodies on the floor. This is the only real improvement Invisible War has over the original, but it is notable, for what that's worth.
Few games can claim to be as thoroughly researched and well-written as Deus Ex, and Invisible War certainly doesn't fit into that category. Despite one of the writers returning, Invisible War entirely lacks the nuance, believable characters, deeper sociopolitical themes, or effective worldbuilding of the original, throwing in a dash of character assassination into the mix. For starters, one of the best parts of the original was the memos you could read throughout the game, which fleshed out the world to insane degrees while also feeling entirely convincing. Invisible War does technically still have these, but not only do they show up in lesser frequency but they're much less detailed too. It feels like they're there simply for the sake of it. This leads to a level of detachment from Invisible War's world setting and the progress that's been made since the first game. The most infamous decision was making all of the original game's endings simultaneously canonical, which is hacked and pasted together with glue and construction paper, feeling unconvincing and clumsy. None of the original characters are very interesting or memorable, they don't have the charming personalities of Deus Ex's cast nor is there much that sets them apart from one another. For example, Billie Adams is supposed to be your best friend from the academy, but there's no chemistry at all to make this believable. It doesn't help that protagonist Alex D is a bumbling idiot with seemingly zero idea of the world around him. While JC Denton was meant to be a player insert without a defined personality, he still had knowledge of the world around him and his interactions felt more genuine as a result. Alex on the other hand has to ask questions he would already reasonably know, and it feels like it only exists to serve the player, ignoring the ways Deus Ex did it far more intelligently. The most unbelievable part is how Invisible War treats its returning characters. Chad Dumier and Nicolette DuClare were terrorists with good intentions, desiring to overthrow the tyranny of Majestic 12. Like most of Deus Ex's characters, they were highly characterized by ideology. In Invisible War, these two characters now run the modern incarnation of the Illuminati, presumably having changed drastically after the Collapse. Not only does the game seemingly not actually go into any detail as to why these characters developed so drastically, but they might as well be entirely different characters. While peoples' perceptions of the world can definitely change due to major world events, I can't imagine Chad and Nicolette not only doing a 180-degree ideological turn but also rebuilding the entire thing that they lost so many lives fighting against. It's a ridiculous concept and easily my least favorite part of the plot. The game has a faction system that allows Alex to side with a myriad of different groups by doing their specific faction quests, but none of this amounts to anything narratively because the faction you align with (if any) can just be arbitrarily decided by the player at the end of the game, so there's little consequence to your choices.
Deus Ex was a respectable game visually speaking. Its enjoyably low-key cyberpunk aesthetic and solid (if unremarkable for their time) graphics created a visually satisfying game and one that I had no complaints about within that department. Invisible War ups the ante to Unreal Engine 2, but relative to the advancements in technology in the past three years, I find its visual presentation underwhelming. It's not a bad-looking game by any means, there are appealing aspects both in terms of art direction and technology, but I find it mediocre overall. Aesthetically, Invisible War is set far into the future, forgoing the grounded look for a future more in line with Star Trek. While not inherently a problem, the game's aesthetic is this weirdly washed-out, teal, steel corridor look which blends with so many other different sci-fi games. Ion Storm's conception of the future is generic, standard, and uninteresting. It extends to the hardly creative locations (neither are DX1's, but that game isn't going for the same degree of science-fiction) and the uninspired character designs. Hooded religious figures, goggled military men, and tight spandex suits don't inspire much in me. I'm all for developers playing with extreme color palettes, but the game is so washed out without it fitting any thematic purpose, such as a game set in the apocalypse having a similar palette to emphasize desolation. Graphically speaking, Invisible War does feature higher-quality assets and improved tech such as bumpmaps, but they somehow look worse. Characters have wide-eyed stares and mouths which have visible seams when animating. Textures, despite bumpmaps, are far lower quality than the original game and even have visible compression artifacts (almost certainly because of the Xbox's RAM constraints), lacking the detail texture option many Unreal Engine 1 games had. There's practically only one stock character face for each gender/race, and while the original game often had repeat NPCs they at least all looked distinct from one another. Despite the more advanced technology, the game's environments don't feel more detailed than the original's more often than not. Outdoor areas certainly look commendable enough, but all inside areas are bland and sparse. The lighting system looks great, however, and it's clearly something Ion Storm wanted to show off for better or worse. Every light source projects dynamic shadows across the entire area and it's honestly kind of stellar if somewhat over-the-top, reminding me a lot of Doom 3. It's probably why, among other reasons, maps had to be so much smaller to accommodate the Xbox, but I do enjoy looking at it for what that's worth.
It would be nice if the PC port was any good, though. Invisible War is a notoriously unstable game and even with the practically required Visible Upgrade mod, the game still frequently locked up on me during loading screens. It got to the point where I was quicksaving before exiting even small areas, holding my breath to see if the game would crash "the right way" or not. Seeing as the game handles level loading by deliberately crashing itself and relaunching in the new area every single time (which has the consequence of often running multiple game windows), this leads to moments where the game just crashes and freezes entirely, without loading the new areas. It also has the consequence of making loading screens way longer than they need to be, which feels especially sluggish in a game where areas are so small. There's a lot of veritable technical jank in this game, such as the framerate being uncapped by default yet physics objects speeding up above 100 FPS. The game will run at any framerate your PC can handle, but it never actually feels smooth to play, with a seemingly persistent judder to the experience. The port also lacks basic features, such as anisotropic filtering or key remapping for core gameplay functions. Certain things such as lack of widescreen support are somewhat excusable due to age, but others are just behind what other PC games were offering at the time. That in and of itself wouldn't be horrible had the game not been so unstable.
Deus Ex has, in my opinion, one of the best soundtracks ever featured in a video game. Invisible War takes an entirely new direction, forgoing the original game's focus on melody for an entirely ambient score inspired by Looking Glass Studios' Thief games. It's a major step down, but I can't say it's entirely ineffective either. Alexander Brandon is an incredibly talented composer and even if his work isn't memorable or even particularly creative here, it still capably supports the game's atmospheric needs. The theme for Heron's Loft in Seattle was a highlight, conveying a certain depressive yet comforting tone, reflecting the squalor the tenants lived in. Each area's dedicated themes fit them perfectly fine, and I never once had any complaints tonally. Some of the tracks are even rather relaxing. The direction that Ion Storm went musically wasn't strictly a bad thing, but it lacks memorability and doesn't properly build connections between the player and the environments, despite still being suitably immersive. Games like Resident Evil 7 have largely ambient, unassuming scores that still manage to create a soundscape that blends seamlessly with the environment. Invisible War certainly takes a shot but it doesn't become so immersive that it feels real nor is it melodic enough to cause earworms. A big missed opportunity was to have a dynamic soundtrack like the original game, with dedicated themes for general ambiance, combat, and conversations. The game suffers from a lack of combat music, which makes enemy encounters feel flat and lifeless comparatively. Variety was the spice of life in the original and it's just not here. I did like the inclusion of real-life industrial band Kidneythieves in the game's soundtrack as it did inject some life into what is an otherwise sort of anemic score even if it's kind of embarrassingly emblematic of the game's release year. Brandon at his worst is still Alexander Brandon, it's very competent and works well enough, but I understand his comments about it "not being right for Deus Ex".
Deus Ex: Invisible War is not a downright painful experience. It's hardly awful and on a surface level appears simply, unmemorably mediocre. Peel back the layers and you'll find a game whose systems hardly work, whose mechanics feel as constrained as a straightjacket, whose narrative feels cynical at best and often ridiculous, whose visuals have aged worse than the original, and whose stability is frequently an issue. Although I started the experience thinking that it "wasn't that bad", by the end I was entirely confident in branding Invisible War a downright bad game. While I understand publisher mandates and time constraints ended up hampering development rather significantly, it doesn't change that many strange decisions on Ion Storm's part were entirely unnecessary if not often detrimental. I'm surprised Deus Ex as a franchise even made it past this dud of a game and I'm glad that the next two games would, for their faults, at least return to the spirit of the original that got me invested in the first place.