Deus Ex

aka: DX1, Deus Ex: The Conspiracy
Moby ID: 1749
Windows Specs
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Add-on (unofficial) Special Edition

Description official descriptions

Some time during the 2050's, the world is a dangerous place as terrorists, drug czars, and outlaw states rule, using violence and subterfuge as tools in their push for global conquest. A deadly virus dubbed "gray death" is running rampant throughout the world and the only known cure is a chemical known as "Ambrosia" manufactured by the VersaLife corporation. However Ambrosia supplies are scarce and world governments, particularly the United States, carefully monitor and control who receives this cure. As protest against these events, French terrorist organization "Silhouette" bombs the historic symbol of friendship between French and American people, The Statue of Liberty. In response to this attack, the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition (UNATCO) organization is formed. Building a headquarters underground at Liberty Island, its mission is to attack terrorism and maintain peace around the world. JC Denton is a nano-enhanced agent who has been primed for UNATCO service. While JC's brother Paul is already an active agent, JC is beginning his first day of service when the National Secessionist Forces (NSF) suddenly raid a supply of Ambrosia at UNATCO headquarters.

Deus Ex is a dark cyberpunk game that combines gameplay styles of first-person shooter and RPG, with elements of stealth and puzzle-solving. The player assumes the role of JC Denton, UNATCO anti-terrorist agent. Pitted against an elaborate global conspiracy, he must interact with characters, pick up weapons and complete objectives. While JC is essentially fixed within the mission-framework of the game, he can be customized in areas such as weapons, technical skills and physical prowess. Completing objectives rewards the player with skill points, which may be distributed to increase JC's proficiencies in eleven different disciplines. The player can choose to increase the damage JC inflicts with various types of weapons, improve his lock-picking or computer hacking abilities, etc. Each such discipline has four levels of proficiency.

Another way of customizing JC is applying nano-augmentations to his body. These cybernetic implants bestow the hero with super-human abilities, and can be installed on different body parts, up to nine at the same time. Along with combat-related benefits, nano-augmentations also grant JC abilities that can be used to overcome certain obstacles within the game world. Examples of those are jumping to extreme heights, swimming, lifting heavy objects, etc. Weapons can be customized as well: their range, accuracy, and magazine sizes can be increased, and they can be enhanced by attaching scopes, silencers, or laser sights to them.

The game leads JC to various places all around the globe. The cities he visits, as well as most mission areas, are expansive and fairly open to accommodate different approaches to solving the same problems, depending on the player's preferred style of play. Most of the missions can be tackled in various ways, e.g. with brute force, stealth, or extensive usage of lock-picking and computer hacking abilities. At certain points, the course of the storyline can also be influenced by the decisions made by the player. Similarly to System Shock games, the environment is largely interactive, the player being able to pick up, use, and discard various types of objects.

Spellings

  • 杀出重围 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

184 People (144 developers, 40 thanks) · View all

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In-Game Text and Intro/Endgame Cinematics
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[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 89% (based on 78 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 531 ratings with 34 reviews)

Despite few flaws, one incredible game.

The Good
Involving storyline. Excellent, challenging gameplay. A lot like SS2 in terms of gameplay, but the environment is much better. Offing corrupt bureaucrats hellbent on world domination (hopefully not too much of a spoiler) is much more gratifying than killing pseudo-zombies. You aren't some god character who can blast through areas Doom-style, a welcome change from the "realism" some games claim to have (Nam comes to mind). All the basic aspects of games are outstanding in Deus Ex.

The Bad
The game likes to hold your hand with periodic transmissions and datapads with top secret info left lying around in places that just make no sense. AI is pretty weak, better than a lot of games, but still enemies just do things that the game acts like they can handle but can't. Shooting an enemy and then taking cover causing them to not know where you are when they clearly should, for example.

The Bottom Line
Great meshing of FPS and RPG with an incredible and interesting storyline. Do not not play this game!

Windows · by mike huch (2) · 2001

Almost like Wasteland in 3D

The Good
The story of Deus Ex is what comes to mind when I think about this game. It is very well written and, like a good book, always makes you want to come back for more. It's full of hidden features and alternative routes to every problem presented. The mixture of action elements and the sheer character development of a roleplaying game is what got me hooked on this title.

The Bad
The graphics really didn't match the brilliant gameplay and storytelling. The levels were often quite small, uninspired and with a lot of flat surfaces.

The Bottom Line
Deus Ex is an (almost) perfect mix of a regular FPS and a 3D RPG. It's designed to please almost every type of player by letting you choose your own paths in almost every situation. The dark, high tech futuristic setting reminds me a lot of movies like the Terminator and Total Recall and suits the game perfectly.

Windows · by Mattias Kreku (413) · 2004

Good, very good, but could have been better

The Good
The Plot behind Deus Ex is solid. Stop the Evil COnspiracy from taking over the world, and it does work, the developers have obviously done their conspiracy story research, with a few literary License mistakes, but that cant be helped.

The Graphics are solid, and sound is good too.

The Bad
The Inventory system Sucks, majorly. If I ever encounter the person who thought that up, I will ensure he or she meets a fowl death.

There seems to be little use for money. Bribing guards is out of the question, which is what I would have liked to do, and some Augmentations just seem stupid (okay, why do I need Night vision when I have Torches in my eyes?).

I would have liked some more skills too, but that would require a bigger game.

The Bottom Line
Its very good, but could have been better. You run around NY, HK, Paris, and numerous other areas uncovering plots and counterplots, killing people, blowing stuff up, and its not senseless violence (unlike say, Doom or Quake) which is a major plus.

Seriously, Try this game out, you'll be caught up in it, while winging about the bugs.

Windows · by Chad Henshaw (27) · 2002

[ View all 34 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Genres Cantillon (75984) May 7, 2021
20th anniversary Patrick Bregger (298879) Jun 22, 2020
First original US box design? sndwv Aug 28, 2016
Did you know? Donatello (466) Jun 23, 2013
Happy birthday! Patrick Bregger (298879) Jun 24, 2010

Trivia

1001 Video Games

The PC version of Deus Ex appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Alex Denton

Somewhere in Area 51 (the last stage of the game) you can see a number of containers with clones in suspension. One of them is called Alex Denton. Alex Denton is the lead character to the successor Deus Ex: Invisible War.

Books

Ever wonder about the books found in Deus Ex? The Man Who was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton is a real book written in 1901, and takes place in a fantasy version of Victorian England, in which anarchists take names of days of the week it has some similarities to Deus Ex. G.K. Chesterton also wrote a book about St. Thomas Aquinas whom is referenced several time in Deus Ex.

One of the many books you can read in Deus Ex is the beginning of The Eye of Argon by Jim Theis. This is a real book, considered by many to be the worst fantasy book ever written. Information about the book and the full text can be found online.

Cancelled Linux version

The Linux version of Deus Ex was supposed to be ported by Loki Entertainment Software. Unfortunately, they went bankrupt back in 2001. Although their company website still exists, it (obviously) hasn't been updated. The status of Deus Ex in the website is "coming soon". Not likely.

Non-lethal

Due to the array of non-lethal weapon and the numerous stealth options, it is quite possible to finish the game having only killed three people. That's a pretty non-violent option for a first person shooter! With the explotation of glitches, the number can be dropped to one.

References

  • There's a register in the hotel at the Hell's Kitchen location... click on it and you will see that the last name is Hyppolita Hall... a character from the Sandman comic books.
  • One of the computer passwords used in the game, "reindeerflotilla", is actually a reference to the 1982 movie Tron, where it was used by Flynn to hack into the computer network and challenge the MCP (the time when he's actually inside the Encom building).
  • The helicopter pilot Jock with which J.C. Denton allies himself in the game is possibly a reference to the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. In the opening scenes of that movie, Indiana Jones makes a getaway in a biplane, flown by a pilot also named Jock.
  • Main voices of JC Denton and Agent Navarre are eerily similar to the protaganists of Nocture... as well as their general appearances.
  • A couple of tidbits. JC Denton was supposed to have a famous ancestor with the Initials J.C. If you look at the game logo, you see a very stylized J and C rotating around a tiny sphere.
  • Castle Clinton, as well as the Statue of Liberty, are real buildings represented in the game as playable maps.
  • In the hotel, in NYC, check the guest register. One entry is, Gabriel Syme, from London, England. Syme was the title character in the novel, The Man Who Was Thursday.

Special edition

Beware the "special edition" that's being sold for $9.99 in bargain bins at Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, etc. This is a one-level demo being passed off as a full retail version. Unlike other legitimate bargain bin software, the Deus Ex being sold in the bargain bin section is only a demo and not the full game.

Eidos has a nasty habit of releasing game demos disguised as full retail versions and pedalling them in bargain bin software racks (they've done this previously with Tomb Raider). Nowhere on the packaging is it mentioned the "special edition" is a demo and not the full retail version of the game.

Title

The title "Deus Ex" comes from the latin term deus ex machina. It means- 1. A god introduced by means of a crane in ancient Greek and Roman drama to decide the final outcome. 2. A person or thing (as in fiction or drama) that appears or is introduced suddenly and unexpectedly and provides a solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty.

Twin Towers

If you run around Liberty Island, you can see the New York skyline. The Twin Towers are missing because allegedly, they were destroyed by terrorists. This was a design decision for a game released before September 11, 2001.

Voice acting

Lots of Ion Storm employees were used as voice actors. Tom Hall plays the villain in the game; Jay Franke, a QA tester, played the protagonist. He used to be on the TV sitcom California Dreams.

Awards

  • GameSpy
    • 2000 – Game of the Year
    • 2001 – #18 Top Game of All Time
    • 2011 – #3 Top PC Game of the 2000s
  • PC Gamer
    • 2000 - Game of the Year
    • October 2001 - #10 in the "Top 50 Games of All Time" list
    • April 2005 - #27 in the "50 Best Games of All Time" list

Information also contributed by Adam Baratz, Alan Chan, Dr. M. "Schadenfreude" Von Katze, emanjonez, Entorphane, Jason Musgrave, jeremy strope, MasterMegid, PCGamer77, Ryan Prendiville, Scott Monster, Stephen Atkinz; Tomer Gabel and WildKard

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by rstevenson.

PlayStation 3 added by GTramp. Macintosh added by Kabushi. PlayStation 2 added by NeoMoose.

Additional contributors: MAT, Adam Baratz, Unicorn Lynx, Shoddyan, Zeppin, DreinIX, Zeikman, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack.

Game added June 25, 2000. Last modified March 16, 2024.