I played the original Deus Ex years ago shortly after it came out - I still have it in a drawer in fact - and as much as I hate to admit it I never finished it. I think perhaps at the time I was too young to appreciate the nuances of the game, the fact that you have a first-person perspective where you don't have to kill everything in sight, in deep storyline and the rest. Had I finished it I think I would have appreciated this new prequel more for all its references, but alas I did not.The new game sees you playing as Adam Jensen, an ex-SWAT security chief at Sarif Industries, a company which makes augmentations - robotic parts to replace/augment human limbs and neural/sensory functions - in the not too distant future. People who get augmented require constant doses of Neuropozyne, a drug that stops the human immune system from rejection of augmentations. However, a scientist at Sarif industries is on the verge of announcing to the world a means of eliminating this need for drugs when the lab gets attacked by a mysterious armed group, leaving Jensen nearly dead. Six months and many augmentations later, he returns to Sarif to try and figure out what happened and why, and ends up in a whole heap of trouble of course.
That's a brief introduction to the deep plot of Deus Ex, something that is pleasantly grown up and politically minded as well as full of cyberpunk trappings such as questions over the impact of technology on humanity and the supposed "singularity" where AI will overcome humanity. The environments are suitably complimentary to the cyberpunk idea - lots of lights, lots of adverts, lots of high-rise buildings and fancy tech everywhere and the gold filter on everything gives the game a unique feel. A little monotonous maybe, but unique. The universe is further built up by conversations with other characters, newspapers, emails and TV news reports. All of this adds up to a truly immersive atmosphere that's incredibly compelling and, like I say, adult.
Gameplay itself is rich and varied, combining RPG style character interaction with action/stealth missions that require care and attention, with added hacking and email-reading. As you progress through the game and upgrade your skills new pathways open up that you had not previously considered, resulting in added value to levels that you thought you had exhausted. Very quickly you find yourself taking great care in playing the game, walking through levels slowly, assessing the risk of taking various routes to your objective and making sure above all that you don't miss any ammo or health items (especially if you play on super-hard as I did, where the benefits of augmented reality are removed). Your decisions on how to progress your character directly effect how hard or easy it is to get past certain choke-points, and if you take the time to hack every single computer in sight it pays off considerably - the final boss battle could have been considerably more difficult had I not obtained a certain code that pretty much negated everything to do with the battle, and all I had to do was wait until it was over. A little disappointing perhaps.
The developers ask some serious questions about technology and the singularity over the course of the game, the morality of augmentations and so forth, though they neatly sidestep making a statement of their own views by offering the player their choice of ending. Supposedly this choice reflects the player's own views, but any player worth their salt will simply go reload and try the next ending selection, at the very least to get the achievement for doing so. Things like this dilute the impact of the final decision. On the other hand, if the develops asserted their own view it would be brave, but it would make the game a different creature, more of a tool of ideology.
The music is excellent - an absorbing deep synth soundtrack that embodies the feeling of the game tremendously - and the graphics and sound are spot-on. One gripe - the character animations are curiously disconnected from the dialogue of the various characters. Fair enough, there are many characters, but there are only so many times I can put up with the same mocap animations for different conversations. It's not unusual during the game to have a conversation with two people who are doing the exact same motions, or to initiate a conversation with someone to suddenly have it cut off as they make a phone call, merely because they were following that mocap animation at the time. Enemy AI is also a little disappointing - you can often walk very close to enemies and they won't react, they walk predictable patrol paths and use cover very inefficiently, leaving their heads exposed for easy headshots with the aforementioned 10mm pistol.
For fans of the original there are plenty of references, but it was too long ago for me to remember them and I had to do a little reading to get some of them. I hope they make a sequel, but who knows with the sales they made.
A fantastic game.
9.5/10
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