This is very interesting. Deus Ex is one of those awesome games that a lot of people don’t know exists. The original was PC only and won all kinds of awards the year it was released, and for good reason: it successfully melded role-playing elements like skills, inventory management, and a complex multi-faceted story with a first-person shooter. It’s one of the few PC games I would say everyone owes it to themselves to play at least once. Deus Ex is what so many other first-person shooters of its time failed to be: deep and involving. Even today, most first-person shooters rely on the tried and true method of “shoot first, ask questions later”.
Deus Ex, on the other hand, is probably the only FPS ever made that you could finish without outright killing anyone (assuming you had the skill and patience). In fact, the game discourages shooting everything in sight, ’cause doing so almost always gets you killed. Enemies are tough and usually out number you by a significant margin, requiring stealth and quiet, non-lethal methods to disable many adversaries. Taking the focus off of blowing up everything on screen lets you focus on other things, like the involving story and various RPG elements.
Deus Ex: Invisible War—sequel to the original—is decent enough game, but disappointing by comparison. Simultaneously developed for both the PC and the XBox, almost all of the things that differentiated Deus Ex from other first-person shooters was stripped out, including the inventory system, the skill system, and any sense of morality. Contrary to the original, killing people is significantly easier in Deus Ex: Invisible War, and you suffer no negative consequences from wasting everyone in sight. One example has you breaking into a WTO air platform to free a pilot. You could sneak past the guards and try to avoid killing them using shock prods. It’s much easier to just shoot them, even though you’re technically working for the WTO.
Luckily for you, the WTO won’t mind. In fact, there are three or four different factions vying for your loyalty throughout the game, and no matter how many times you double cross them they’re always willing to forgive and forget. This, even more than stripping out most of the RPG elements, is what makes Deus Ex: Invisible War a failure compared to the original: you have a lot of options, but none of them really mean anything. You can literally play everyone against each other, completing contradictory mission goals and killing everyone in sight and it just doesn’t matter.
The only advantage this provides over the original Deus Ex is that at any time you can choose to stick with one group, or switch sides, or play everyone against each other. Unfortunately, your actions in Invisible War lose that sense of meaning they had in the original Deus Ex. You were stuck on a somewhat rigid story path in the original, but you could still make choices that changed how things played out and how people treated you. In Invisible War anything goes, but nothing means quite as much.
The team that developed the first two games was disbanded after the completion of Invisible War, and I honestly thought there wouldn’t be anymore. I’m all for options, but I really hope they bring back some of the game that made the original such a great game. Among other things, I’d like to see:
- Improved inventory system. The original inventory system worked extremely well. In Invisible War, the inventory system practically requires you to take the Enhanced Strength bio-mod just so you can carry more than a handful of items.
- More meaningful biomod options. The biomod system is a great idea, but I don’t think either game has totally got it right. The original is a little too complex; there are far too many bio-mods, and it’s nearly impossible to upgrade even half of them up to their maximum level. Biomods were streamlined in Invisible War, but the new game mechanics practically force you to take certain biomods (Enhanced Strength and Neural Interface, I’m looking at you) just to play the game effectively.
- Better performance. Invisible War was released in 2003, and it still has some issues on the PC I built just a few months ago.
- More meaningful options. It’s great that Invisible War let’s you do anything you want, but I liked that there were actual consequences to your actions in the original game.
Here’s hoping Eidos doesn’t seriously screw this one up. It sounds like they’re looking for it to be one of their blockbuster titles, so hopefully it gets the kind of treatment a Deus Ex game deserves.
Update: About performance… I’ve owned Invisible War since it was released, but only recently (like the last week or so) got around to seriously playing the game. Why? Because it burnt up the video card in my old computer and I never could justify purchasing another high-end video card. The system requirements for that game are ridiculous.