Deus Ex is a cyberpunk immersive sim developed by Ion Storm, formed by DOOM developers John Romero and Tom Hall after leaving id Software, with an initial plan to push out a bunch of games under Eidos Interactive and as such had developed two separate studios: one of which was in Dallas, Texas and one of which was in Austin, Texas. In comes Warren Spector, who had previously been involved in the creation of games like Ultima Underworld, the original System Shock as well as being involved in Thief: The Dark Project, before leaving just as it had shipped out. He had apparently almost signed on with EA to do a project before John Romero jingled a bunch of keys in front of him, promising him a huge budget and marketing potential if he were to join up with Ion Storm and having just closed out Looking Glass Austin due to “ongoing financial issues”, which I’m sure the reassurance of lots of money and with a then-respectable figure like John Romero coming in helped A LOT in bringing the guy on board. However, Warren wanted to make what he considered his “dream game”, and to him this was the opportunity to do it, and so came Deus Ex. Creating this game however was a bit of a struggle, as the developers at Ion Storm really wanted to hammer down on the open-ended nature of gameplay and story, where you could do anything and it would be accounted for down the line. Originally based on plot elements developed in a D&D campaign that was run in 1978, this had been in the arsenal for a while and had been rejected by several different publishers due to the lack of interest or technology to realize the vision. Eventually the developers would focus on conspiracy theories; ya know back when they were interesting like Masonic Underground Temples, alien infiltration and the like and had set out to design what’s now called the “Immersive Sim”: multiple pathways in and out of areas, no fail states, everything being accounted for and more which he would write up in a manifesto (link below).

Actual production however turned into a battle for control, vying for resources which complicated development further due to in-house workplace leadership issues. Eventually even Warren felt that the project fell into a trap with all of the promises of unlimited time and creative freedom and there were further blowbacks after Romero’s infamous Daikatana “Suck it Down” ad, the failures of the previous game as well as Anachranox along with leaked emails which had alienated a lot of talent who wanted to work on the project. The scope of the game was also cut down significantly with leaked documents in 2020 providing an insight into what could’ve been including a whole different plot, the ability to recruit characters, missions set in London and Siberia and even a plotline to stay loyal to UNATCO amongst a whole bunch of other things that sound frankly amazing and hope they put back in to some degree or fashion. Other things that could’ve been made included a SEGA Dreamcast port (along with a Playstation 2 port) or the ability to play as a woman. Eventually though after A LOT of struggling and almost having the game canceled, it was released in our holy year 2000 to critical acclaim on both the PC and the Playstation 2 port (which I have yet to play) and had kickstarted a franchise which has had its ups and downs ever since.

My experience with Deus Ex is a very limited one, having only heard of Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Mankind Divided around a decade or so ago due to my infatuation with Hitman at the time, all of the developers for Tomb Raider, Hitman and Deus Ex as well as Sleeping Dogs being under the Square Enix banner for a short time. I hadn’t played any Deus Ex game until much later, around 2020 or so when a buddy of mine whom I call the “Big G” bought me all of the Deus Ex games on sale for extremely cheap and I had gone out of my way to play them in timeline order. I loved the prequel games pretty much though I had a problem with the optimization of Mankind Divided though I hadn’t really touched the original Deus Ex by any means until recently. It was a game that I had heard so many positive things about, though admittedly due to the “less streamlined” gameplay I was intimidated and wasn’t sure I wanted to play it. However, with a lot of games I tend to overcome those things by streaming them for friends and as such I had recently streamed the original Deus Ex for a friend of mine starting all the way back in January, having only JUST completed the game now in June. This was one of the “intimidating” games I wanted to complete this year as a goal along with Baldur’s Gate 3 and as such, here are my thoughts around it.


The world of Deus Ex is as follows: you play as Nano-Augmented rookie agent JC Denton, who recently just joined up with the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition (aka UNATCO) in the year of 2052. Compared to the brighter world of Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, the world here is a Cyberpunk hellscape on the grasp of dealing with a deadly plague known as the “Gray Death”, of which there is no cure. A vaccine named Ambrosia has been developed though realistically due to scarcity and inequality (being only available for the likes of government leaders and rich people), barely anyone is getting a taste of it. Behind UNATCO is FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), a government group with emergency powers in times of crisis. As a result, chaos has erupted in the streets and the National Secessionist Forces (or the NSF) have taken action against UNATCO and as such were deemed terrorists. This world is a world ridden by conspiracies like the Knights Templar, terrorism (with a strange prediction of terrorists taking down the World Trade Center only a year before 9/11 came out) and government oppression. I’m going to go into this plot with a bit of a warning here, as this game is pretty massive with the plot synopsis. Going through every choice would be insane, so my plot recap is going to be me remembering what I specifically did and how I did it.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R0s2Evq1kgbj6iFDmhSIlhNGLYfd2EWK1UkDHA-yTsE/edit (Plot Synopsis is too big)

Deus Ex as a plot was an interesting one, bringing me in with the different characters and secret conspiracies and such. However, just like most conspiracies in general, with the amount of characters and different moving pieces it sometimes felt like it was a lot for me to process? It’s a very expansive world, one with so many moving players that even by the end of the game I didn’t really understand what was going on until I started looking stuff up on the Deus Ex wiki and rewatching some playthroughs to really understand the full gist and I ended up loving it a lot. There were also a couple of times where I felt that the game kinda dragged on a bit however, specifically during areas like the ship or Vandenberg Air Base due to not only it’s confusing layouts but also because some of the latter half of the story (specifically after France) just kind of felt uninteresting. I’m more than willing to admit that I could just be a scrub, having missed out on a whole bunch of excellent lore building and not playing again to take the multiple different paths that I could’ve taken to learn something new. Another thing that I’ll say is that obviously, the game is VERY political and has a lot of rhetoric, most of it I don’t understand because I’m a simpleton but it does have a message there. I would say that overall, if I had a take on the game’s plot that it would be I liked it, I’ll definitely remember certain set pieces (mainly Liberty Island, Hong Kong, France, the Underwater Base and Area 51) but overall it didn’t really stick with me as I had hoped (until re-visiting the wiki/youtube) as I felt there was a lot to keep track of story and character wise, though I definitely liked the multiple different endings and the implications behind them. I could just be dumb of course, as this was a big RPG game intended for multiple playthroughs but also unless I had looked it up, I don’t think I ever would’ve understood say that Majestic 12 was originally an arm of the Illuminati or who Lucius DeBeers or Stanton Dowd even were. It’s a multilayered game world with a lot of in depth lore that might be too complicated for my goofy ass. The characters and their personalities are what helped make this game the most memorable to me, or perhaps in JC’s case the lack of personality really helped make this game special for me. JC is definitely the big takeaway from the game, not even because he’s the blank slate player character but honestly because of who he is in relation and how he views the world. JC being a clone bred in Area 51 was a twist that I already knew but it was one that I really sat down and felt a bit blown away by. The idea that Bob Page’s genetically bred superweapon is now throwing himself back in Bob Page’s face was one of utter irony and I had quite enjoyed that, along with JC’s deadpan expression on every little topic. Whenever the dude talks it’s either he’s just parroting what everyone else says or thinks or he’s delivering comical one-liners that catch me off guard, my favorite being “Make it last. I killed homeboy out by the tracks” which was so eloquently delivered that it couldn’t help but make me spew out a huge laugh. Of course I remember others too, mainly Gunther Hermann for his goofy personality yet tough guy demeanor, Anne Navarre for her bloodthirsty tendencies, MA BOY Tracer Tong for just being this anarchist tech expert and Bob Page because he’s a megalomaniac asshole but every other character while good kind of faded into the background for me; though I suppose with the whole theme of conspiracies from the shadows then I guess it would make sense.

However, while I think that the game’s plot is pretty solid and actually interesting, I find the “what could’ve beens” to be even more interesting in a sense. Originally the game was supposed to be much, MUCH bigger when it comes to content and the early prototypes said a lot. The original pitch for Deux Ex was “Troubleshooter”, a game whose concept revolved around being a security specialist who would be able to solve different problems by using a variety of different methods though that was rejected due to the scope and lack of tech. Then it became Shooter: Majestic Revelations which had a whole bunch of different plot points like JC working for a group called the TLC (Terrorist Limitation Coalition) and being charged with taking down a drug kingpin before major corruption revealed a plan by Majestic 12 to take down the higher levels of U.S. government with an A.I. named ADAM having been learned to have been the major bad guy the entire time. Other interesting ideas included a plot line where one could stay loyal to UNATCO and Majestic 12, an ending where you side with Bob Page (which makes sense because there’s a line where he attempts to bribe you with control of Europe if you let him complete his merge), a White House level where you could meet the president, a level on the Moon confronting an AI and another level where JC is dropped off at the border between Texas and Mexico during a war and I’m sure if that level was implemented then the context this game has to the modern day political spectrum would be interesting to say the least. I’ve put the links for some of these things down below but honestly the entire development history had a lot of interesting stuff and truth be told, I kind of wish some of this stuff was implemented back into the game just due to the fact that personally the game would’ve had even more of a kick then it already did for me (like the Moon Base, or the Texas Border) but truth be told it is what it is.

The atmosphere for Deus Ex could be described in many different ways: dystopian, yet beautiful; perhaps oppressive yet intriguing. All of these would be true in a whole bunch of different ways. Going through the many different locations had a variety of mixed emotions for me. Going through Liberty Island intrigued me while sleuthing through the Warehouse District for example made me loathe being there due to its bland nature. I loved trudging through Hong Kong encountering gang wars and sneaking through corporate sewers and penthouses in stereotypical Cyberpunk affair but the Naval Yards and anything past Vandenberg Air Force Base made me wish that these locations would be over faster so I could move onto the next location which I hoped would be more beautiful. When the game’s atmosphere really works, It REALLY works. I think two of my favorite areas were Hong Kong due to the neon sign nightlife contrasting the shadows of which the corporate police force were patrolling made for an enthralling time. It was the same with the streets of France in a way, while it wasn’t exactly nightlife Hong Kong, there was something beautiful about the smooth and old architecture mixed in with the futuristic mechs and guards patrolling the streets, under martial law due to separating the ghettos from the upper class districts. It’s such a strange dichotomy because honestly the game doesn’t always feel like it could be a cyberpunk game other than in certain areas. Hell’s Kitchen itself literally feels like a slummy hell that could be mistaken for an area in any game and maybe that just goes hand in hand with the Class conflict between rich and poor or something.

How about the thematic atmosphere? The conspiracies and such? Does it represent all of the old conspiracies that I would personally want? It’s a strange question to ask here but for a game whose major themes discuss corporate takeovers, shadow governments and false flag operations and takes place in a dystopian cyberpunk world, does it hit all of the things that I want personally? As someone who is hyper interested in connecting the dots, I would say the game does a pretty decent job with it in ways that were unforetold at the time. Even though it was mostly an issue with rendering the Twin Towers, the main cause for their absence in game was “terrorism”. They have old ancient civilizations like the Knights Templar and the Illuminati in the game along with connecting them to FEMA, Men in Black, Black Helicopters, Area 51 and more. There’s a lot here that they work with that breaks out the good ol’ tin foil hat mid-2000s X-File theme conspiracy theory Youtube video vibe that I love so much but in some ways I’ll admit I wish it would’ve worked a tad bit differently. The generic “gray alien” looks are actually genetically engineered creatures along with the in-game Karkians and Greasels which while decent explanations are admittedly kind of disappointing for my imagination. However, I think what is really pronounced, like the prediction of the Twin Towers and such, is how sort of accurate (minus a few things) I feel the game comes close in sort of representing the future of our world. In game you have billionaires who attempt to involve themselves in real world politics to poor results like Elon Musk or Donald Trump as an example and while a lot of the game is clearly a satire on a lot of these theories, in truth it feels like you kind of have to take it like The Simpsons with how they’re able to predict certain aspects. There’s an article I found from Michigan Daily that I read that honestly explains some stuff better than I could even if I felt most of the same so the link is down below.

Graphically the game is old, having been created using the original Unreal Engine due to the fact that it was economical and came with the technology that was needed. What is there exactly to say about the game graphically that couldn’t already be said with the one sentence: “The game is old” so it’s going to look old. The clothing textures look like pieces of clothing glued on to a human character model with a mouth that’s out of lip sync. You’ll see augments like blue veins fading into people’s necks or on top of their face and it feels painted on. JC himself is a monotone, emotionless character aside from some unintentional comedy and that reflects well in his face which is stiff as hell minus a couple of wisecracks. The animations are very simple, only really hitting two different states: collapsed to the floor with one animation and dead or exploding into blood confetti. Keep in mind, I’m not expecting anything else other than this, if anything it really brings out a certain old school charm to it. For example, when a group of people go against each other (the Hong Kong Triads) or if a group of people go against one person (Hermann on Liberty Island) it produces a bit of unintentional comedy for me when they fall down one by one with each of their screams layered over each other like it’s an assembly line of dudes waiting to get murked (Triad video down below) and it produces some of the funniest results I’ve ever seen in a game. That’s not to say however that the game is all unintentional laughs of course, as the graphics don’t make the game any less valuable or good. If anything I feel like it adds to the satirical nature of the game, as if the entire game while having a great story feels like a sort of black comedy of the state of our world. Also I love old graphics so I’m not going to complain about that, though if I have any final thoughts on it then it would be that the giant mechs look the best out of all of the models, though that’s mainly due to the fact that it looks fucking scary.

Before I talk about anything gameplay wise, I want to mention specifically fixing the game up. Starting up the game raw can be done probably, but for me was a huge pain in the ass to figure out, both with fixing control schemes as well as being able to play the game at a decent resolution and obtain screenshots. In order to do this, I downloaded something off of Kentie.net on the recommendation of the Big G and was able to put certain files in the directory and fix some stuff up. I don’t remember how or in which order, my apologies but I also was able to figure out certain keyboard schemes (for example by toggling the crouch button permanently instead of just holding the button). The game is definitely one of those games that you need to tinker with (unless you’re playing Revision) but otherwise plays decently for the most part. As for the actual gameplay concept behind it, here’s how I felt playing the game.

Warren Spector’s mission when designing Deus Ex revolved around one particular concept: player agency, specifically being able to wing it in however which way you wish and the game would accommodate it, immersing themselves in the game hence “Immersive Sim”. I will say that the gameplay for this works really well as I’ve seen and personally experienced multiple ways that I’ve been able to bypass certain quests, or perhaps create more problems for myself as I bumbled my way through the game stabbing and shooting people. The interactivity is amazing and there were a lot of times where I felt pretty smart playing Deus Ex. An example would be killing Maggie Chow in Hong Kong, who apparently had the objective I needed all along. Stealing the sword from her wasn’t something that the game had planned on persay, but the fact that I could murder her before running through and dealing with government agents and run back to the Triads as an optional thing is pretty cool. Dealing with bosses like Navarre early doesn't break the game as much, have the game circle back later and have dialogue acknowledging it instead of having to fight her during the UNATCO breakout. Another choice you can make regarding one of the boss battles in the game is by having your friend Jaime Reyes stay at UNATCO in order to feed you intel, and if you do he’ll be able to give you the killswitch for Gunther in France, and I was thankful as fuck for that because I saw that dude kill like seven guys in a row like the monster the dude is. The game doesn’t punish you for things like this and instead opens up other opportunities down the line to face certain choices. While you have multiple dialogue choices as well that can lead to certain outcomes or just flavor text, you won’t be railroaded into certain endings and are only required to choose the final ending during the last mission at Area 51. It's genuinely fascinating that I haven’t once broken the game, unlike anything recently created by Bethesda where I break all the plates and the kitchen table. The design choices I feel can be pretty much summed up like this because going into the complexity almost feels like too much. I KNOW I missed out on a bunch of stuff, so I don’t think there’s much I can explain except that there’s simplicity in how complex the game is. I appreciate the game’s ability for open ended solutions, and there were only a couple of times playing the game where I got stuck and frustrated.

The combat to me however is a very strange beast of a system because on one hand, there’s a lot of ways that you can maneuver yourself in the game. Like I said with the complexity you might decide you don’t want to do lethal at all, instead going for the taser/stun crossbow and it would probably feel decent. It also helps out because there are later enemies (specifically the Men in Black) who basically explode if you kill them, so hitting them with the taser and knocking them out prevents unnecessary damage. You’ll also get a lot more positive feedback in the beginning (along with some negative from Navarre) by going stealthy and zapping people. I however couldn’t be bothered, and instead went out like a fucking commando with the shotgun/burst assault rifle build before eventually sidlining those in exchange for the Dragon Tooth sword that my buddy recommended. Let me tell you something, if you want to become this game’s equivalent to a slasher villain then pick this shit up because it’s overpowered and will one hit kill a lot of enemies. However shooting enemies feels strangely sponge-like and iffy, and as such I tend to avoid shooting enemies (after Hong Kong) unless I feel the need to switch it up or need to reach someone out of the way. This however could have something to do with skill points which you acquire as you complete missions/bonus objectives, explore your environment and more (though killing/subduing enemies doesn’t get you anything) which adds up overtime. You get a set amount of skill points during the beginning and can choose to add or take away some of the default skills in order to boost others, and can upgrade anything from weapons skills to lockpicking and hacking to even swimming skills. The higher you upgrade these skills, the more perks you can unlock when associated with it, though keep in mind that you don’t have enough skill points to master every skill unless you use cheat codes. Keep in mind though, with all of the skills you have that the Swimming skill will generally be the most useless one, as there isn’t much in the way of water except in certain areas. Also, you can pick up certain modifications out in the world and attach them to your guns to increase stats like accuracy or putting a silencer on the tip of certain guns.


Speaking of certain guns, before I got into the Augmentations for JC Denton, you won’t be able to carry twenty of them like other games due to the fact that the inventory system plays a lot more like Resident Evil 4 then say something like Fallout 4. You will need to organize and manage your inventory, and as such you won’t be able to carry fifty guns and a rocket launcher into battle to pull out at any time. It very much made me think strategically about what I needed, what I didn’t need and overtime I had to stop picking up random stuff though if you want some advice then pick these up: Biocanisters, any Augmentation upgrade canisters, lockpicks, Tools, health kits and ammo. The augmentations are specific upgrades that you’ll find in your environment like the ability to use a cloaking device, regenerating your health or being able to run quietly which all runs up a certain amount of bioelectric energy. In order to get these upgrades you have to find the augmentation canisters and upgrade yourself at a Medbot, and as such are only limited to a certain amount of upgrades per limb and once you use them up it’s permanent end of story. You can upgrade your augments to certain levels by finding and using augment upgrade canisters, which you can level them up to Level 4 from your inventory which provides extra bonuses and stats. The canisters of both kinds are hidden around the map however, and you kind of have to go out of your way to find them except if you get them as rewards for doing certain tasks.

For the Audio Design section, I just want to get the voice acting out of the way and say that it varies between borderline parody and pretty good. This isn’t a bad thing by the way, as the strangeness of it all honestly adds to the charm of Deus Ex, specifically Jay Anthony Franke as JC Denton. By god, this dude’s performance here is legendary levels of camp (and not in a bad way) because he says everything in such a monotone and semi quickly paced way that it makes everything the umpteenth more hilarious. That’s not to say that there aren’t serious moments and he pulls them off fine, but one of my favorite lines in this game is “Make it Last. I killed homeboy out by the tracks” and it was said in such a fantastic way that I couldn’t help but keep laughing for a good while, and now it’s something that I kind of say referentially as a meme every now and then. I wasn’t surprised in the slightest at this, as I knew of the meme status for JC’s character when Youtube reviewer Grimbeard started using chopped up JC audio bits for his cutaway gags and I always found it to be enjoyable. I can’t give enough praise to this performance enough, and honestly just adds to the strange satirical nature of it all. I also really enjoyed Jeff Groteboer’s performance as the German hulk Gunther Hermann who sounds eloquent yet freaks the fuck out and thinks that the maintenance men are trying to screw with him. Cliff Stevens also plays Bob Page, the main antagonist and inglorious megalomaniac who seeks to take over the world whose performance reminds me of this strange combination between the G-Man from Half Life and the Cigarette Smoking Man from X-Files and honestly it genuinely just kind of works for me. These are my top three performances, but everyone does a great job and apparently pulls triple or quadruple duty with multiple characters as Jay Franke plays Paul Denton as well as “Sailor”, while Cliff also plays Ford Schick as an example and contributes to this satirical yet serious nature of the world. Keep in mind while you’re playing this that this isn’t an emotional game as it is a “serious monotone bordering on parody” tone that the world is playing in and the cast basically pulled this off perfectly.

The actual audio design of the world, while it is constantly playing musical tracks, is pretty pronounced and sounds good for the most part. One of my favorite ASMR sounds, footsteps, relay the usual pattering that I enjoy especially if it’s on metallic surfaces so that’s pretty good. The screams of people as they die, or better yet whimpers (not to sound like a sociopath) relay this “AHHHH” sound that just sounds hilarious and has to be heard to be believed. Explosions sound pretty neat though if I were to give any criticism to weapon sounds then it would be guns: pistols, shotguns, machine guns and all of the above. I understand that as an immersive sim, you’re not always going to hit the mark as certain bits of game design will be pushed over others but at the same time I really wish that using a shotgun would feel like actually using a shotgun instead of a pea shooter and the truth of the matter is that sounds matter a lot in regards to how it feels. However other weapons like rocket launchers and crossbows sound a lot better, mainly because one knocks people out and the other ones blows them up of course. Overall, the sound design for Deus Ex in the world is pretty solid even if it doesn’t perfectly hit all the spots for me that I really wanted for it to hit.

The soundtrack for Deus Ex composed by Alexander Brandon, Michiel van den Bos, and Dan Gardopee is this mixture of bombastic strings, techno and cultural ambient tracks that fill the world of Deus Ex with a sense of near-futurism. I say near-futurism because the more bombastic string tracks sound more modern than anything else but the futuristic part has to do with the techno ambient tracks which make the world feel immersive. A lot of the vibes that I get from this score is the combination of mystery, whimsy and futuristic which is perfectly encapsulated by tracks like UNATCO by Michiel van den Bos, which also runs as the main menu theme. NYC Streets by Alexander Brandon gives off the “sneaking through back alleys” sort of feel that Hell’s Kitchen under lockdown really has fitting it perfectly. Airfield Action brings about this ominous jazzy drum & bass beat with techno influence that’s actually a fucking bop and I won’t hear otherwise. When you get to Hong Kong you’ll hear more chinese instrumentals that blend in perfectly with the techno elements with The Synapse (Hong Kong Streets) being the go-to vibe for this area. These are only a couple that are lifted off of the tracklist in the youtube video I found (link below) but for the most part, each track fits neatly with the world and location that it’s based in and just feels seamless to me. I don’t have much to complain about or mention other than yeah the shit’s good other than Human Revolution’s soundtrack had more of an emotional impact but that game is both older and also they’re two different musical interpretations of similar styles.

So what happened after Deus Ex was released? The usual for a game of its magnitude: a lot of sales, the announcement of a movie that didn’t get past the scripting stage along with a sequel named Deus Ex: Invisible War. The movie of course didn’t get past that stage, though there were rumblings here and there about creating a “Square Enix Cinematic Universe” with the likes of Hitman, Tomb Raider and Deus Ex which would’ve been so stupid to see that it would’ve failed probably immediately. Deus Ex: Invisible War would be worked on over a period of three years under Ion Storm Austin while Warren Spector would try to catch the licensing rights for the Thief series which would eventually result in the creation of Thief: Deadly Shadows, along with the overarching theme of his career that he can’t seem to get decent studio employment though that’s reserved for after Invisible War and Thief: Deadly Shadows. Mods for the game were created like the Nameless Mod, taking place in a meta version of online GameSpot forums or the Lay D Project which added in the addition to use a female JC Denton. Another mod to look into would be Deus Ex: Revision, a graphically updated and re-arranged mod with added achievement support for free (though you must have the Game of the Year installed for this to work). Truth be told, it would be hard to truly go into what specifically happened after this because of the legendary status of the game and its impact on the game industry as a whole. However, I can personally tell you how I felt about the game and what it means to me now that I’ve finally beaten it.

Deus Ex was a game that I had enjoyed, from its cyberpunk X-Files plot and story interactivity to the open-ended gameplay in which you could tackle the objectives in any way that you pleased. Even though I had played it like a spree shooter, I recognize that if I had wanted to that I probably could have done a stealth, non lethal run if I had wanted too or more. However while I LIKE this game and I definitely respect it, I don’t exactly LOVE it or to be more precise, there are certain aspects of the gameplay I like more (the flexibility of the world and how you go about it) than others (combat). The combat felt kind of stiff at times besides my OP use of the Dragon Tooth sword, sometimes the overarching plot and who belonged to what and why confused the hell out of me. That being said, I also recognize that this specific game might just not be my type of game perhaps, that I had adapted to the newer game styles a lot more with the in-game compasses and the more streamlined feel than I had the old ones and that’s okay. The game is a recognizable classic, it’s popular and it certainly has its influence and right of stay in gaming history, though I’m not really sure I would say that I would 100 percent play this game again unless it’s due to mods, specifically Deus Ex: Revision or a total conversion mod. But I respect the hell out of this game and what Ion Storm tried to do, and even though it’s not my favorite game I had a blast playing it regardless and I appreciate it now for what it is. Once again, shoutout to the Big G for both buying me the game as well as watching me play it as I flubbed around, got stuck a lot and murdered a whole battalions of dudes with my “screw this, it’s the easy way” mentality and the overpowered one hit Dragon Tooth laser sword. But also shoutout to the entirety of the team that made Deus Ex, because while I did mention Warren Spector a lot and I’m sure everyone else has too, the product that was delivered was a combined effort of multiple people that can’t be understated and that’s important as well.

Links:
https://kentie.net/article/dxguide/#downloads

https://ubm-twvideo01.s3.amazonaws.com/o1/vault/GD_Mag_Archives/GDM_November_2000.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20071018115146/http://gameslice.com/features/spector/index.shtml

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChG35KSRlks&ab_channel=GrimBeard

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_Ex_(video_game)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Storm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Spector

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/DeusEx

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Deus_Ex

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WhatCouldHaveBeen/DeusEx

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPVeXBXCVFo&t=61s&ab_channel=gamemast15r

https://deusex.fandom.com/wiki/Deus_Ex_walkthrough

https://deusex.fandom.com/wiki/Deus_Ex_missions

https://deusex.fandom.com/wiki/Deus_Ex

https://www.michigandaily.com/arts/b-side/what-deus-exs-conspiracies-tell-us-about-reality/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286585/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm


https://deusex.fandom.com/wiki/Passwords,Logins,_and_Codes(DX)

https://deusex.fandom.com/wiki/Deus_Ex_console_commands#Augmentations

https://deusex.fandom.com/wiki/Shooter:_Majestic_Revelations

https://deusex.fandom.com/wiki/Troubleshooter

https://deusex.fandom.com/wiki/Deus_Ex_Bible

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=46oDDnE1Z6o

https://deusex.fandom.com/wiki/Echelon#Echelon_IV

https://web.archive.org/web/20160304063706/http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-11-16-ion-storms-lost-deus-ex-sequels

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09vVF-Hvykg&ab_channel=TheGameTree

https://www.dxm.be/navigator.php5?lang=en&content=202 (optional game patch that restores content, I did not use)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL61FH1Fo4C7FEb8q-pScm7trAzMVfot2U (Video Guide)

From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/