Deus Ex

This has got to be by far the best game this year (2000), what more is there to say.  It's equally as good as Half-Life was for its time, and it is based upon the Unreal engine so that makes for stable and good-looking graphics too.

Story
You play the role of JC Denton, someone who begins his Deus Ex career as an undercover/augmented cop/soldier kinda blokey, who works for UNATCO working to keep peace in 20th century New York...against the NSF terrorists.  You change sides several times and get the choice of how much you do for each team of the triads, for example.

Likes
Everything about it, brilliant combination of genres and great game-playability alongside strong graphics and great A3D/EAX sound.

Dislikes
What?...well, the 30mb save-game files that occur sometimes alongside the time it took me to upload all the screenshots.

Weapons/Augmentations/Skills/Credits
You have an inventory, so you can only take a limited amount of weapons, which makes you think, rather than the usual "ooh, a new weapon, I'll 'ave that", but its more of a case of "how the bloody hell am I going to find room for that?".  Weapons range from the sublime 10mm pistol to the ridiculous 200shot napalm flame-thrower, 1 and 8 slots in the inventory respectively.

Augmentations, hard to explain, buy the game and you'll understand perfectly, but they are "upgrades2 which can be installed into your body by a medi-bot and aid you in the game, whether it be artificial regeneration of protection from radiation...all run from your Bio-electric energy, stored in cells of rechargeable via a 'bot.

Skills, the more points you get the more you can upgrade various aspects of your combat/technical/life skills, simple eh?

Credits...no, not the things at the end of the game, you earn these throughout the game and can be used to bribe people amongst other things...you can also hack ATM's and get other peoples credits from within "The World".

Below are some screenshots, grouped for easy accessibility, but are only a rough guide to the game as it is far too big-a-game to do anything like I have done for Opposing Force.

...What the experts have to say...

John Romero was right. Ion Storm was – let’s be honest – formed as a reaction to the programmer-led Id, crystallising around a single rule: design is law. Games should be more about the art than the artist; more about the painting than the paintbrush. Game design – that’s where it’s at; the rest is just distracting ephemera. At the only level that counts, the ancient ASCII-based Nethack is superior to the slickly vacuous Vampire. Repeat after me. Design. Is. Law.

Yes, Daikatana stank, it still stinks and will forever smell of decomposed half-ideas, but the best first-person game in the world was based on its ideas. Now, with the introduction of Deus Ex, it is no longer a given that Half-Life is the best. The two best first-person games were created using an engine licensed from an external source. With Half-Life, it was Id’s Quake. With Deus Ex, the basis is Epic’s Unreal technology.

The advantages of this method are pretty evident. Even with a lesser team – fresh-faced Raven creating Heretic II, for example – games move from conception to completion much quicker if a licensed engine is used. When an entire development cycle can be devoted to the central game mechanics, the extra time can enable a team to hone their art further. You want a random prediction? In ten years’ time, the amount of work a team will have to do on a game engine will be next to nothing. With Deus Ex as an example of the strengths of this methodology, it’d be a brave person to mumble sourly at the inevitable march of history.

But why is Deus Ex so important? Let’s examine its family tree. Pay close attention. Ultima Underworld begat System Shock, which begat Thief and Shock 2. Then Shock 2 met Half-Life in a bar, shared a few drinks and begat Deus Ex. They then let Thief and Floor 13 (ancient black-and-white you-are-a-Government-Black-Agency game) be God-parents. Then the child grew up and put pictures of Syndicate on its wall, fancied Diablo at school and hung out with Exile. And read Voltaire, Guy Debord, The Illuminatus, Grant Morrison, Machievelli and pretty much the whole content of a decently stocked bookshelf. And wore shades even at night. Or, in more prosaic terms, Deus Ex is a culmination of many action-RPG games. This sort of thing gets us critical types all excited.

Deus Ex is a first-person action RPG. You play J.C. Denton, a special agent for UNATCO, an extended branch of the police. The world is a day-after-tomorrow affair with the current trends globalisation, corporate power increasing, democratic power falling, terrorist direct action on the rise, fade to Socialist Worker opinion columns...) stretched to extremes. A modern plague, called the Grey Death, haunts the streets, and the vaccine – Ambrosia – is in fatally sort supply. Access is limited to those with power, wealth or both. The locations in the game are either based on real-world areas, or are authentic enough to make you believe they are.

You’re probably wanting to hear about how Deus Ex plays. So, imagine I’m telling you a story. Give me your hand and let me take you on a journey through some hypothetical Deus Ex scenarios. You find yourself looking at a tower. You have to blow up a generator inside. Guards patrol outside, dogs yapping with their probably rabid mouths. You shrug, reloading the assault rifle. Noticing a ladder on the side of the building, you climb up to the roof. You hear the barking of the mutts; this tells you your cover has been blown. At this point you give up all pretence of subtlety, charging down a ramp into the building proper. Alarms go off as troopers start to locate you. Ducking between crates, you return fire. Realising you’re outnumbered, you pull out a LAM grenade, attaching it to a wall before retreating. As the pursuing pack approaches, the motion sensors activate the grenade. Taking advantage of the confusion you charge, liberally spraying bullets. Downstairs, you locate the generator, lobbing another couple of LAMs through the door to reduce hi-tech to wreck. A sprint to the roof, leaping into your escape helicopter, and out. Chaos. Death. You’re an ultra-bad-ass mo-fo raining annihilation on the second summer of love.

Rewind.

You find yourself looking at a tower. You have to blow up a generator inside. Guards patrol outside, dogs yapping with their probably rabid mouths. You shrug. You’ve broken into more dangerous places than this before. Waiting for a gap in the patrol routes, you crawl silently to the ladder, ascending to the roof. Looking through the skylight you notice two guards chatting, spouting conspiracy theories about the government. You listen for a while, then lob a gas grenade which, of course, reduces them to choking heaps, clawing at their eyes. You leap down, applying knock-out blows to the backs of their heads. All’s silent. You head down, noticing a couple more guards walking long patrol routes. When one turns his back an electric prod to the back of the neck brings him crashing to the floor. His yelp attracts the attention of his partner, who turns the corner only to get a face full of pepper spray. A truncheon blow and he collapses. From then on, it’s easy. You go down to the floor below and crawl into the computer room. By hacking the computer system you’re able to program an auto-destruct of your target. You retreat back to the roof and escape. No-one will know you were ever there. Death count? Zero. That’s it, you’ve done, no more tears to be shed by the mother of the world, thanks to you.

Rewind.

You find yourself looking at a tower. You have to blow up a generator inside. Guards patrol outside, dogs yapping with their probably rabid mouths. You shrug, shoulder your sniper rifle and put high-calibre rounds through each of the guards’ (and the dogs’) heads. You hate patrolmen and you’ve never been too fond of dogs either.

Rewind.

You find yourself looking at a tower. You have to blow up a generator inside. But by doing a few favours to your street-friends and throwing around a little cash, you’ve managed to gain every single security code, key and password for the facility. The second you find a security console, those gun-turrets on the first floor are going to be turned against their makers. The rest will be a mop-up.

Rewind.

You find yourself looking at a tower. You have to blow up a generator inside. For you, that’s not enough. You shoulder your LAW missile launcher and fire a blast at the main doors, demolishing them in seconds. This blast in turn sets off the fuel-drums you dragged there earlier, wiping out anyone who had the misfortune of being on the ground floor.

Rewind.

You find yourself looking at a tower. You have to blow up a generator inside. You head back to the alleyways and entertain yourself by playing with a basketball you found lying around. You throw it at some stray cats. Perhaps you’ll go play pool in a bar later and have a few drinks. The mission can wait. Governmental Agents just wanna have fun, right?

Get the point?

By now, people will be describing Deus Ex as a hybrid of several genres. That would be a mistake. Deus Ex doesn’t merge the play-mechanics of singular genres, it just includes them. The primary characteristic of a hybrid game is that it demands you to perform tasks that would otherwise be separate. Deus Ex is about personal inclination and – this is the important one – it’s about freedom. Deus Ex destroys the traditional relationship between gamer and game. This relationship is one where the game dictates to the gamer what to do to have fun; it’s a dictatorial axis that, until now, has never been challenged, let alone be reversed. Look, everyone! Genuine interactive entertainment.

This theory also suggests some more great things. Lots of games we previously thought were impossible to create, are actually feasible. For example, since Deus Ex has shown how one level can be played in such opposing ways without losing any entertainment value, things like, say, superhero games where you can play as radically different characters become possible. Previously, received wisdom would have stated that no level would be as satisfying to play as a steroid-powered Hulk-clone or a shadow-clad Batman analogue; hence such a game could never exist. Deus Ex annihilates that defeatist thought in a burst of near-future cool. It has raised the stakes, and all that remains to be seen is if the industry is willing to follow. (Which may not happen. After two years, only a fraction of the ideas which ran wild through the heart of Half-Life have been assimilated in
its peers. Most FPSs are still pretending its maintained genius never happened, hoping everyone will forget how sublime the genre can be.)

Despite all the ultraviolence – or lack of it, depending on your inclination – Deus Ex is a role-playing game, featuring sophisticated character development. Firstly, you have the skill system: there are eleven skills, varying from the predictable weapon classes (pistol, rifle, heavy weapons and melee) and survival (swimming) to intrusion (lockpicking and computer hacking)… and you only have a bare minimum of points to spend on advancing them. While each only has four levels, the differences between classes are unbelievably large, with the highest, and oh-so desirable levels being incredibly unattainable.

This extreme system means that, unlike the superficially similar System Shock 2, by the end of the game your character won’t necessarily be competent in most things. You’re forced into making hard decisions regarding what to spend your hard-earned experience points on enhancing. To master one category – let alone multiple categories – will mean sorely neglecting others, leading to a truly unique character. And thus a truly unique whole experience.

However, unlike in Shock 2, being unskilled in an area doesn’t usually bar you from having a layperson’s crack – you’ll just be less talented. It’s like comparing an untrained swimmer’s doggy paddle to the swift front crawl of Duncan Goodhew: you’re likely to still get to the other side, it’s just that it’ll take you longer. This differential is most clearly seen in the use of weapons which uses a targeting reticule method similar to Rogue Spear’s. The longer you stay still, preparing your shot, the tighter the crosshairs get, and the more accurate your shot is. Unskilled? You start with a massive expanse between crosshairs, which narrows slowly. You’re a master? Almost instant unnerving accuracy is the reward for all your dedication.
The implications of this are of devastating importance. While there is some narrowing of your options depending on choices (for example, without any hacking training you’ll be unable to break into security systems without their codes) generally you can still have a go. This contrasts neatly with Planescape: Torment, a game which featured a similar amount of freedom. In the more traditional RPG, the thrill was seeing your choices being limited by how you’ve wandered its moral maze. Deus Ex brings a potentially fluid and interchangeable approach to gaming: nothing is written in stone. You can always try something else, re-making your own game-image as many times as you choose. In the intricate sprawl of a level, there’s always some other approach. Being condemned to freedom has never been so heavenly.

This formula is further complicated by the second way you can personalise your character. You’re a finely-tuned nano-tech human machine, capable of being upgraded when you find a suitable canister. When this is installed, with the help of a handy medical bot, you have the choice of one of two special abilities, depending on the particular canister. Do you want to hypercharge your muscle neurones for hand-to-hand bonus or strengthen myosin fibrils for lifting strength? A spy-drone or an ECM based missile-detonator? Speed boost or silent running? And, like skills, once they’ve been plugged in you can upgrade them over four increasing power levels.

Leaving aside the specialisation inherent in choosing what to carry in your limited inventory space, and the much-appreciated option to choose the racial group of your character (originally a gender option was planned, but re-recording the immense amount of vocal information proved impractical – forgive them), the most interesting way to define your character is through your moral choices.

With the exception of Planescape: Torment, I’ve never seen a game which judges and rates your moral performance then integrates it into the story so well, and without preaching. This isn’t the superior Daily Mail-readership judgments that the Ultima series occasionally enforced. This is simply giving your choices an effect. From major actions, such as whether to follow your orders or your conscience; to minor ones, such as whether to investigate the ladies’ toilets in your base – the results are clearly laid out before you.

The story? Oh yes. Its narrative is as deep as you choose it to be. For adventure fans, this is probably the only game since the gem of The Longest Journey to sate your conversational desires. Equally, the world drips with detail. There are innumerable books to read, e-mail logs to study and newspapers and data terminals to peek at. Of course, the important ones are noted in your log book, as are all the conversations, leaving only those who enjoy sinking up information to read them. You can savor Deus Ex like a fine wine. And like a fine wine it can be drank by anyone; but those who take their time and let it breathe will notice a fuller depth of flavour.

It also possesses true cutting-edge interactive storytelling. While the broad sweeps of the tale are pre-determined, the minutiae are determined by the player, leaving a distinct and beautiful lasting memory. Deus Ex joins Half-Life and System Shock 2 as the leading practitioners of this alchemy. We’re reaching an age when the traditional story-telling devices in games (pure cut-scenes such as Vampire’s) are beginning to look as shoddy as a flick-book in an age of widescreen plasma TVs. Several years ago it was held that, by definition, game and story were opposing forces. Bits of a game that are story are non-interactive, hence decorative. The bits where you actually do something are the game, with only a causal link to the flow of the narrative, and no genuine interaction. These strict boundaries are becoming less relevant as games improve.

But precisely how good is it? To take its two polar extremes of influence: while it’s not quite as good as Half-Life as a shooter or Thief as a sneaker, the (here comes that word again) freedom to try both makes it Half-Life’s only real peer. After two years we’ve finally got a genuine battle for the title of number one PC game of all time.

And hopefully it will sell millions. The bloke in the street might recall The X-Files and The Matrix and be satisfied. The pretentious poseurs will be rewarded with nods toward everything from the illuminati to the French situationalists. Clearly, Deus Ex has influences outside the world of games; it reaches higher and drags you with it.

Games – like most other forms of entertainment – have a terrible habit of making you less than you are normally, simplifying you into a stripped-down cartoon. There’s a difference between the near-autistic reduction of self required to succeed in the first arcade games (Robotron 2084, Defender) or the similarly emotionally grounded Diablo (get sword, kill baddie, get stronger sword). Deus Ex is one of the few games that succeeds in making you more than you are. Because Deus Ex’s universe is, obviously, reduced, you feel as if you have more freedom than you do in reality, which, like Fight Club for example, reminds you of your own freedom in reality. It’s a slap in the face, it reminds us of how good videoart can be. And this is art. It’s beautiful. And I’m going to stop now before I start to cry…

© PC Gamer, October 2000.