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Deus Ex: Invisible War
PC (Steam)
Why All the Hate?
4/5 stars
Three years after the release of “Deus Ex” on PC, which was later ported to PlayStation 2 as “Deus Ex: The Conspiracy,” a second title in the ‘Deus Ex’ franchise was released on the original Xbox, then back-ported to PC. This game, “Deus Ex: Invisible War” (“DXIW”), typically receives a lot of hate from the ‘Deus Ex’ fanboys who praise the first – highly flawed – game to Heaven and back. Yet “DXIW” is actually a much more polished game in nearly every regard. It’s funny how nostalgia works sometimes…
Presentation
For a game that was only released 3 years after its predecessor – AND released on a so-called ‘inferior’ console – “DXIW” looks significantly better than the original “Deus Ex.” Character models are nicely detailed and well-animated (though lip-synch still needs work), textures aren’t blurry in the slightest, environments feel like living, breathing spaces instead of sparsely-decorated polygonal voids: It’s just a night-and-day difference overall.
The audio is well done as well. The soundtrack is pleasant, matches the environments, and is of significantly higher quality than the MIDI soundtrack from 3 years prior. The voiceacting is overall more polished, with far fewer incidences of one-take wonders than the previous game, while still not stooping to employing Hollywood professionals whose presence would only cause the project to go over-budget. In general, the audio still has a compressed quality, only in “DXIW” the compression manifests as a hiss rather than a crackle.
Unfortunately, despite the drastically improved visuals and slightly improved audio, “DXIW” has some major technical hurdles that make playing it on a modern system a bit of a chore. For some reason, “DXIW” uses at least three separate .exe files in order to do its thing. Back in 2003, Windows XP didn’t bother to redraw the desktop when rapidly switching between executables, which resulted in the player seeing a black screen. Modern versions of Windows and much faster hardware instead cause “DXIW” to drop the player out of the game to the desktop – in what appears to be a crash-to-desktop error – during EVERY load screen. And there are a significant number of load screens, in “DXIW,” as the greatly improved polygon models and textures combined with the fact that the game was originally designed for an Xbox with 64MB of RAM forced every one of the game’s environments to be broken into chunks, and these chunks are separated by loading screens.
Thankfully, the fan community came to the rescue in the intervening years with a mod called “Deus Ex 2: Visible Upgrade,” which makes the loading screens behave as they should and slightly polishes up the graphics overall. It’s quite interesting that “Deus Ex 2: Visible Upgrade” is only a 150MB mod, while the “New Vision” high resolution mod for the original “Deus Ex” is over 1GB. Regardless, I consider “Deus Ex 2: Visible Upgrade” to be an essential part of the “DXIW” experience.
Story
“DXIW” takes place 20 years after the events of the first game, and somehow manages to honor all three of the first game’s endings in its world-building. In the world of “DXIW,” humanity has slowly recovered from a massive worldwide financial crash, known as The Collapse, and a rise in anti-biomod prejudice, which saw the entirety of Chicago consumed by a nanotech bomb. While UNATCO and most world governments have been removed by the Illuminati and replaced by the WTO (World Trade Organization), a unified world church, dubbed the Order, as well as the purity-obsessed Knights Templar, still exist to throw a wrench into the idea of human unity.
The story of “DXIW” begins by placing the player in the shoes of one Alex D., (who can be of either gender, with a neutral name like Alex), a student at one of the WTO’s Tarsus academies, learning what it takes to be an augmented security professional. On a day like any other day, Alex’s training is interrupted by a terrorist attack from the Order, who claim to be liberating the Tarsus students from secret and unethical human testing.
Like the original “Deus Ex,” “DXIW” gives the player the illusion that their choices matter, but it is still nothing more than an illusion. While many side missions can be completed in different ways and a number of different characters might live or die, once again, the determining choices that affect which of the game’s now FOUR different endings the player sees occur entirely within the confines of the final mission.
Alex and three of his classmates from Tarsus manage to escape the Order attack, and each of them ends up going a different route, aligning with different factions. The player is free to play the factions, working with them or against them, as Alex follows the trail of clues about biomod technology, the purpose of the Tarsus academies, and the nature of the titular invisible war being waged between the factions.
In general, the writing in “DXIW” is just as good as that in the first game, however the locations and quest design do a much better job of showing the world as it is, rather than just telling the player about world lore and expecting them to extrapolate from there. There is still plenty of lore scattered around in books for those who seek it out, and each of the endings, while still short and somewhat underwhelming, provides a satisfying resolution for the game’s events. It’s also noteworthy that “DXIW” clocks in at roughly 12 hours, making it roughly 1/3 the length of the first game.
Gameplay
The biggest universal improvements in “DXIW” over the original “Deus Ex” are in the gameplay department. Nearly everything in “DXIW” is more polished and user-friendly than in the first game. “DXIW” is still a non-RPG FPS/Action/Adventure/Stealth hybrid, and the complete removal of skill points not only solidifies the non-RPG status of the game, but allows for better implementation of every other gameplay aspect.
Instead of relying on skill in a number of different weapon types to determine accuracy, “DXIW” just allows the player to shoot as accurately as they want with every weapon from the outset. Weapon sway and target reticule bloom are all gone, making the shooting in “DXIW” much more enjoyable and polished. Likewise, the limited quantities of dozens of different ammo types from the original game have been replaced with universal magazines that use nano-tech to form weapon-appropriate bullets as required. Because Alex can only carry a limited number of magazines, “DXIW” still isn’t a frag-a-thon free-for-all, as the player needs to choose targets judiciously or find Alex with an empty clip. The need to conserve ammo bolsters the game’s Stealth mechanics and encourages the player to use the environments to circumvent or otherwise neutralize enemies in more creative ways than just running in and shooting everyone (though that works too, in certain areas where ammo is plentiful).
Biomods pull double-duty in “DXIW,” as some of their functionality takes over for the loss of skills from the first game. Each biomod slot now offers a choice of three mods, and mods can be overwritten if the player doesn’t like the first one they picked for a slot. Biomod canisters are far more plentiful than the first game, and act as both install and upgrade media, removing redundancy. I wasn’t entirely thrilled with the fact that too many desirable biomods share the same body slot, forcing the player to make difficult choices, while other biomod slots have nothing but semi-useless mod choices. It would be preferable to just install any mod in any slot. It is nice, though, that a number of Alex’s biomods don’t consume bionetic energy, but instead offer passive bonuses. Weapon mods have also been improved, now actually providing the player with feedback for what they do and providing the player with an easy-to-understand cap of two mods per weapon.
In general, the UI in “DXIW” is a world of difference from the one in the first game. “DXIW’s” UI is streamlined, user-friendly, and doesn’t involve any annoying drag-and-drop functionality or inventory Tetris; nor does it obnoxiously assign a different hotkey to every mod and item in Alex’s arsenal. “DXIW” also takes a step further regarding the large number of keycodes and passwords the player might encounter. The original “Deus Ex” was revolutionary (according to its development team) in that it kept track of tidbits of useful information in a journal (RPGs had been doing that since at least 1998 with “Baldur’s Gate,” but whatever…) so the player didn’t have to keep notes themselves… however they still had to type these keycodes into security consoles and computers within the game. In “DXIW,” the codes and passwords are still recorded automatically, but now are also entered automatically when the player interacts with a device for which they have the code.
There is still no ‘real’ map in “DXIW,” but it still isn’t necessary. In fact, it might even be less necessary, as the environments in “DXIW” feel a bit more cramped than in the original game. Numerous ‘Deus Ex’ fanboys love to harp on how ‘consolized’ “DXIW” is, but it ultimately isn’t terribly different in its mission design mentality than the original game was. The player still has plenty of different angles of attack by which to approach every mission. There are also a significant number of side missions within every main mission. The main difference between this game and its overhyped, overpraised predecessor is a lack of large, empty, open areas, which have been replaced with mazes of corridors and tunnels, which I think are more representative of what one would find in an overpopulated near-future cyberpunk Earth anyway.
Overall
Despite the moaning of fanboys, “Deus Ex: Invisible War” provides a much more polished, enjoyable experience than the original “Deus Ex.” Annoying technical issues, however, mean that playing a completely unmodded game is not recommended, and put “DXIW” near the top of the list of games that could use a modern-day remaster.
Presentation: 3/5
Story: 4/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Overall (not an average): 4/5
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