Monumental, uncomfortable and humane, Deus Ex used to be the biggest omission from my gaming experience and I finally sat down to play it in 2020, the year when game's prodigious far sight reached terrifying heights.
It is still to this day a model example of fantastic game design aided by visual coherence. Early 3D look leads to no visual clutter, making all important details and interactables pop and catch the eye, guiding you through complex environments with invisible hand. Aspects like limited inventory space or aim reticle shrinking when you stand still seem constraining at first, but they teach you punctuality and preciseness, leading to better understanding of environment, power and available resources. From the bumpy beginning Deus Ex nurtures you to do measured choices when dealing with problems which carries from gameplay to story, and you'd be pressed to find a game that does it so seamlessly.
There was a certain moment though when it's all clicked. The note about partitioning New York into segregated blocks to counter the terrorist threat hit way too close to home. It reminded about my own country's safety theatre. How with an excuse to prevent attacks the government tightened up the security in public places in a way that probably won't be too helpful against terrorism, but is very handy to keep surveillance and inspection of people while also implanting the idea of constant danger in minds of populace. And that's... exactly what was going on in Deus Ex. And they predicted this development back in 2000. Kind of an impressive prognosis, isn't it?
That's the power of Deus Ex you see everyone talking about. In bold strokes it makes assumptions about the future which land eerily close to reality, and this state of artful hyperrealism creates an incredible sense of investment. It's quite rare for a game to make me look in every note, read every e-mail and diary. Even rarer when a game manages to have me seek exposition, not dread it. I just couldn't get enough of this world and wicked reflections of us it manages to create.
Of course it's still a game, an entertainment. It's dumb, self-aware, it's full of silly video game things and it doesn't want to be taken seriously. Down to the core Deus Ex is still just a incredibly fun and campy adventure of a lovable secret agent untangling the conspiracy of goofy villains whom you love to hate. But it also wishes to enrich and challenge your worldviews like some of the best written media does. And that's undoubtedly very special.
It is still to this day a model example of fantastic game design aided by visual coherence. Early 3D look leads to no visual clutter, making all important details and interactables pop and catch the eye, guiding you through complex environments with invisible hand. Aspects like limited inventory space or aim reticle shrinking when you stand still seem constraining at first, but they teach you punctuality and preciseness, leading to better understanding of environment, power and available resources. From the bumpy beginning Deus Ex nurtures you to do measured choices when dealing with problems which carries from gameplay to story, and you'd be pressed to find a game that does it so seamlessly.
There was a certain moment though when it's all clicked. The note about partitioning New York into segregated blocks to counter the terrorist threat hit way too close to home. It reminded about my own country's safety theatre. How with an excuse to prevent attacks the government tightened up the security in public places in a way that probably won't be too helpful against terrorism, but is very handy to keep surveillance and inspection of people while also implanting the idea of constant danger in minds of populace. And that's... exactly what was going on in Deus Ex. And they predicted this development back in 2000. Kind of an impressive prognosis, isn't it?
That's the power of Deus Ex you see everyone talking about. In bold strokes it makes assumptions about the future which land eerily close to reality, and this state of artful hyperrealism creates an incredible sense of investment. It's quite rare for a game to make me look in every note, read every e-mail and diary. Even rarer when a game manages to have me seek exposition, not dread it. I just couldn't get enough of this world and wicked reflections of us it manages to create.
Of course it's still a game, an entertainment. It's dumb, self-aware, it's full of silly video game things and it doesn't want to be taken seriously. Down to the core Deus Ex is still just a incredibly fun and campy adventure of a lovable secret agent untangling the conspiracy of goofy villains whom you love to hate. But it also wishes to enrich and challenge your worldviews like some of the best written media does. And that's undoubtedly very special.