You
might recognise this game. Similar to how every moviegoer has probably heard of
The Seventh Seal, yet never seen it –
every gamer has probably spied Deus Ex
on a list of ‘Greatest Games Of All Time’ yet has either never played it or has
attempted to play it before giving up forever. And I weep for those people.
Those
people will never experience the true meaning of Christmas. They will never
know the joy of laying a mine-trap and exploiting the buggy-AI to wipe-out an
entire room of people. They will never know the sweet satisfaction of leaving a
building full of unconscious guards like Terminator
2, then reloading and painting the walls in blood like Terminator 1…then reloading and leaving them all untouched because
you found a ventilation shaft that lead right to the objective.
I
should explain: Deus Ex is a first
person shooter/role-playing game released in 2000 back when cyberpunk was all
the rage. You get to choose your own name, but like Mass Effect (where everyone just calls you ‘Shepherd’) everyone
just calls you ‘JC Denton’ anyway. More importantly, when you start the game
you get to choose your skills. DON’T pick medicine, DON’T pick swimming, but DO
pick computers since if you don’t level up by at least one tier then you can’t
hack.
 |
| Hacking: The best and most useful skill in the game. |
Its
2050, in a dystopian future where America rules the world. You’ve just been
outfitted with the latest in nano-technology that perfectly fuses your body
with computers. Side-effects of this include a grizzly macho voice, and glowing
blue eyes that require you to wear sunglasses. Like Agent 47’s barcode, this
make you stick out because the game is eternally set at night – meaning JC
Denton must also be fused with a Coffee-machine because this is a very long game and presumably takes
place all in one evening.
After
an optional training mission, you’re recruited by an anti-terrorism division and
sent to investigate an attack on the statue of liberty. It’s clear that the
military could step in and clear the place out, but it’s also clear that
everyone’s pulled back so they can watch your skills. Once the mission is
complete, you head into the office to notice that all is not what it seems. The
plot is completely mad and completely awesome. I really don’t want to spoil it,
but there are dozens of twists and turns as you discover more about the world
you inhabit. Whilst you follow a linear path, there are several choices you
have to make that can change how NPC’s interact with you, and even which NPC’s
survive.
The
gameplay itself is heavily inspired by System
Shock 2 in both its cyberpunk aesthetic and its role-playing elements.
Whilst the game is steeped in the clunky System
Shock 2-model (many upgrades are pointless, but you’ll only realise they’re
pointless too late) you can actually pick up and use any weapon you find. This
means that you’ll be making the game much harder for yourself if you chose
wrong – but it’s possible to finish the game regardless. It’s not like in System Shock 2 where if you don’t have
level 3 hacking by a certain point then you can’t progress.
Yet,
the game still keeps a balance. Sure, a quarter of the way through the game
you’re given a lightsaber (OK, it’s
not called that for obvious reasons, but it basically is a lightsaber) that
kills any human in one hit – so unless you’re going non-lethal then you’ve just
wasted all those points put into melee weapons. But compared to the deeply
flawed Deus Ex: Human Revolution where
right from the start you’re a god because games have forgotten how to balance
everything, this is forgivable.
Whilst
other Golden Age PC games either created or defined genres – I have not seen
another game like Deus Ex. I mentioned
the similarities to System Shock 2,
but the game is also focused on a stealth-system similar to the Thief games. Enemies respond to sound,
and can be knocked unconscious with a whack on the back of the head. There’s
one level set in a cathedral, and this level actually manages to out-Thief Thief as you traverse a gothic
setting, knocking-out guards, hiding the bodies, and stealing ancient
artefacts.
But
the game also has a solid shooting system. You start with a pistol which, fully
upgraded, can still be an effective weapon in later levels. There’s a sniper
rifle, and aside from Far Cry 3, this
is perhaps the only game where I’ve genuinely felt like a sniper. Every level
has some sort of vantage point where you can camp out and pick off guards
one-by-one. But if you don’t want to murder anyone, there’s a tranquiliser
crossbow, a baton, gas-grenades, pepper-spray, and a Taser.
There’s
also a flamethrower, an experimental plasma-rifle, and one of the best rocket launchers
in gaming history. Whilst this is common in games such as Quake and Painkiller, here
it’s unbelievably satisfying to save up your rockets and use it all at once in
one battle. And that perhaps is the fun of Deus
Ex in a nutshell. It seamlessly integrates sandbox fun with linear
storytelling. The section in Hong Kong is possibly the highlight of the game
since you’re given free rein to wander the exotic streets and mess with
civilians. This alerts the police, who you can freely slaughter if you wish.
 |
| "MAGGOTS!" |
Like
Thief, the levels are also
ridiculously large and open. Unlike Thief,
you’re armed with high-tech hardware – so if you’re caught trying to sneak
around a level you can always just whip out an assault rifle or a
rocket-launcher or a lightsaber. Or you can just forget stealth altogether and
run around killing all you meet…though I recommend lowering the
difficulty-setting. There’s this walkthrough from one of my favourite
websites that shows you how to become death incarnate if you desire. No other
game would let you do this in such an uncontrived way. Even games like Half Life say "yeah, we're just gonna leave this rocket-lancher lying around for no reason. Oh look! A helicopter! I wonder what you could use to destroy it..." whilst Deus Ex gives you the rocket-launcher right at the start of the game and lets you use it on anything from civilians to robots to opening doors.
Of
course, being a game from the Golden Age, it’s clunky. The tranquiliser
crossbow is incredibly useful if you intend to go non-lethal, but it takes a
dart to the head to knock someone out instantly. Miss and your foe will run
around screaming for several seconds before keeling over dramatically. JC isn’t
exactly a phantom of the night.
The
A.I can easily be tricked. For some reason if you hide in a shower then enemies
will leave you to it out of decency. They can only see a few feet ahead of them, and they
frequently bug-out. This being said, I like how there are some enemies who just
drop their weapons and run to get help – which is precisely how I would react
if an augmented secret-agent armed to the teeth ran up to me brandishing a
lightsaber. I really wish more games would do this.
I
also wish more games would do boss fights the same way Deus Ex does. Quite simply: you don’t have to fight the bosses.
There’s one incident where you can just run straight past the boss and shut the
door behind you. Every boss has an exploit which you can choose to utilise if
you’re going non-lethal, or if you’re a Klingon and want a fair-fight then you
can ignore this and go crazy.
The voice acting ranges from passable to awful. In many ways it adds a charm to the game. At first I laughed at JC Denton’s grizzly voice, but I eventually found it endearing listening to him discussing Plato with a Hong Kong barman. There are some laughable accents in Hong Kong, Paris, and New York – to the point where I want to go back and record a voice-pack myself. There’s this snotty Englishman in a suit roaming a Hong Kong nightclub that I could easily do a much better voice for. But everyone who communicates with you via your headset sounds fine.
This
is a game that will constantly reward you. I’ve replayed this game at least ten
times over the years and I still have yet to do everything possible. The story
remains the same, but you only fail a mission if you die – meaning it’s
possible to murder hostages and botch assassinations. It’s actually worth it
just to see everyone bollock you when you return to base, and hear JC attempt
to justify his actions. There’s one mission where the life of a characters
daughter is on the line. Fail and the daughter dies, but the father doesn’t
chastise you. His understated despair is even worse than a bollocking.
The
graphics are obviously not up to scratch. Character-models are blocky, environments
are blocky - it's all blocky. The levels have aged worse than other Golden
Age games because the level-designers had never heard of circles. Every
environment seems to be a constellation of squares and rectangles. It’s
uninspired, which is a shame given how the cyberpunk setting should present the opportunity for some
creative environments. The best-designed level is the first at the statue of
liberty…and that’s because the level is based off-of the blueprints to the
actual statue of liberty. But every level is filled with goodies. Every room
contains some sort of secret-passage, hackable computer, or at least some loot.
These
are all technical problems, and technical problems can be fixed. The
screenshots you see use two visual mods that improve the picture quality
greatly, and I run my copy through a custom-launcher that allows the game to
run through DirectX 10 – greatly stabilising the engine. A mod is in the works
to fix the level-design…although the mod also replaces the absolutely sublime music
with amateurish tracks that cannot hope to match the original sound so I’ll probably give it a miss.
I’ve
never played anything like Deus Ex,
and I never will again. It’s a roleplaying game, but you’re clearly playing a
character that’s not you. It’s a shooter, yet you never have to fire a bullet
if you don’t want to. It’s a game defined by choice, yet it’s only in the final
mission you get to choose the fate of humanity. It’s a sandbox game that
follows a linear pathway.
Play
it. Yes, it will punish you. Chances are you will botch up your character and
will need to start again after the first hour. But once you get through the
third mission, you will be hooked. Stick with it.
All images captured by me.
