"[Deadelus, the self aware AI] learned how grim a place the world was for most people -- what with war, disease, famine, poverty, crime -- and it seemed these problems were getting worse, not better, despite the existence of the secret societies theoretically in charge of the whole mess. In fact, the ruthlessness of world leaders -- their willingness to sacrifice millions of people, if that's what it took to achieve their goals -- seemed less than human to the inhuman Daedelus."

Extract from the Deus Ex bible

Deus Ex is an action role playing game crossed with a first person shooter, originally published on PC in June 2000 by Eidos Interactive and developed by Ion Storm. I remember my older brother playing it at that time and us all finding the intricate systems and heavy amount of writing inscrutable but mysteriously appealing. Only last year did I pick up the game myself - on the far lesser PS2 version (via PSN) - and I couldn't stop playing it until the point it ranked in my top 5 games of all time.

It's deliriously ambitious and not without its flaws, but for every too-long military base section, there are handfuls of wonderful throwaway ideas. Neatly designed systems dovetail with thought-provoking writing and there's a cold glassiness to the tone and look of it that keep your disbelief locked away. And it does something so well that so many games still do so badly - the implementation of consequence to player choice, both narratively and mechanically, that give you this feeling of (appropriately) agency. You have to make tough choices that lock off parts of the game but you're never punished for doing so, instead you start to see the world a bit differently. A bit like how magic mushrooms are easier to spot and pick when your massively high on them. A bit.

What I really mean is the developer thought of everything. If you take the route of becoming a hacker, there will always be a not-too-obvious way of using that skill to resolve a given situation. You can't min max it, which is good because fuck that. Instead you make your choices that have a meaningful impact on how you play.

I'm running out of time now but I wanted to see if there are any other big fans out there? I hope the original influences the next game more than it seemed to the first reboot. And if someone in London can bring their laptop round with the best version, patched up to the nines for me, that'd be grand. Cheers.

Edited: PS2 not 1