Still largely unmatched in terms of receptive feedback to player action. It's genuinely a novel sensation to play a game where I set out before hand to play in a specific way, and actually be accommodated accordingly for that play style, even among other Immersive Sims I've played thus far, none have really successfully integrated that level of freedom. I think this is largely due to the game prioritizing being a good RPG first and being an action game second.
Warren Spector's game design roots go back primarily to table top RPGs. He's said on multiple occasions his whole career has been him attempting to capture the feeling he had when playing Dungeons and Dragons for the first time in the 70s, and you can tell, especially on Deus Ex. There exists a specific relation between player, to DM, to systemic gameplay that is, as of now, still entirely unique to table top games. It is currently literally physically impossible to create this relationship in a video game directly, and any attempts at actually creating it are very much in their infancy, look at AI Dungeon for the most direct attempt, a great game/tool to use if you wanna have a laugh and partake in a dreamlike nonsense space, and completely useless if you want to play an actual coherent narrative gaming experience. That being said, people have been trying to approximate this relationship in video games for decades. You could argue that Immersive Sims, as a genre, are an attempt to synthesize the player freedom allotted by this kind of system, with the goal oriented mission based structure of action games. This is a game seeking to combine the role of DM and game system into one entity, and let you the player interface with it, and it feels so fucking good, I'm not sure literally anyone has done it better. The sensation of in real time working out how you want to go about solving problems, being forced to carefully consider your approach and being rewarded for that forethought, every combat encounter feeling like a puzzle where you need to consider the unique enemy placement, environmental shape, abilities and equipment on hand in order to solve, it's just such a good texture of interactivity. The game is balanced around making your character slow and bad at everything by default, until you put skill puts or use augmentations to become Not Terrible at those things, gradually. This makes even simple things, like shooting one enemy, into things you need to carefully consider and plan ahead at first, and put a lot of time and skill points into if you want to be able to do them effectively and more intuitively later on. This makes both the early game, where you need to be very careful and intentional about every move you make, and the late game, where you've built a character entirely unique to your play-style and can efficiently utilize your unique set of abilities, extremely interesting in distinctive ways. It makes progress and exploration much more rewarding than it would be otherwise, it makes solving problems that can't be solved by your specific skill-sets more challenging and interesting, while making problems that can all the more satisfying. It's a dynamic feedback loop of carefully crafted systems that are more effective the more you put time and thought into them.
It's hard to overstate how immaculately crafted this game is, even though its such an over discussed game already. But it's so easy to keep talking about I think cause Deus Ex is literally a different video game for everyone who plays it. Hell, it's gonna be a different video game every time You play it. It's a game that feels almost, collaborative with the player in its construction, in a way open-world or sandbox games are kinda incapable of being. So until I get to fulfill my newfound dream of playing a D&D campaign led by Warren Spector as DM, it is probably the best RPG ever made.
Warren Spector's game design roots go back primarily to table top RPGs. He's said on multiple occasions his whole career has been him attempting to capture the feeling he had when playing Dungeons and Dragons for the first time in the 70s, and you can tell, especially on Deus Ex. There exists a specific relation between player, to DM, to systemic gameplay that is, as of now, still entirely unique to table top games. It is currently literally physically impossible to create this relationship in a video game directly, and any attempts at actually creating it are very much in their infancy, look at AI Dungeon for the most direct attempt, a great game/tool to use if you wanna have a laugh and partake in a dreamlike nonsense space, and completely useless if you want to play an actual coherent narrative gaming experience. That being said, people have been trying to approximate this relationship in video games for decades. You could argue that Immersive Sims, as a genre, are an attempt to synthesize the player freedom allotted by this kind of system, with the goal oriented mission based structure of action games. This is a game seeking to combine the role of DM and game system into one entity, and let you the player interface with it, and it feels so fucking good, I'm not sure literally anyone has done it better. The sensation of in real time working out how you want to go about solving problems, being forced to carefully consider your approach and being rewarded for that forethought, every combat encounter feeling like a puzzle where you need to consider the unique enemy placement, environmental shape, abilities and equipment on hand in order to solve, it's just such a good texture of interactivity. The game is balanced around making your character slow and bad at everything by default, until you put skill puts or use augmentations to become Not Terrible at those things, gradually. This makes even simple things, like shooting one enemy, into things you need to carefully consider and plan ahead at first, and put a lot of time and skill points into if you want to be able to do them effectively and more intuitively later on. This makes both the early game, where you need to be very careful and intentional about every move you make, and the late game, where you've built a character entirely unique to your play-style and can efficiently utilize your unique set of abilities, extremely interesting in distinctive ways. It makes progress and exploration much more rewarding than it would be otherwise, it makes solving problems that can't be solved by your specific skill-sets more challenging and interesting, while making problems that can all the more satisfying. It's a dynamic feedback loop of carefully crafted systems that are more effective the more you put time and thought into them.
It's hard to overstate how immaculately crafted this game is, even though its such an over discussed game already. But it's so easy to keep talking about I think cause Deus Ex is literally a different video game for everyone who plays it. Hell, it's gonna be a different video game every time You play it. It's a game that feels almost, collaborative with the player in its construction, in a way open-world or sandbox games are kinda incapable of being. So until I get to fulfill my newfound dream of playing a D&D campaign led by Warren Spector as DM, it is probably the best RPG ever made.