The GOAT was released 25 years ago

Buggy Loop

Buggy Loop

Member
June 23nd 2000 to be precise. Exactly 25 years ago.



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ION Storm John Romero's wise business decision to call Warren Spector and tell him to make the game of his dream, no creative interference, biggest budget and marketing budget he would ever have in his career, and we got Warren Spector's magnum opus



IMO, Deus Ex is the GOAT.

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It's simply the peak of immersive sims, while the recipe was kind of there since Warren Spector's System shock, and System shock 2 being also one of the best immersive sim of all time, Deus Ex really pushed the envelope. It was not just a cool horror game with some emergent gameplay, the RPG mechanics, augments, dialogue options were a league above anything that had been done in the genre before. As much as I love System Shock 2, it is more narrow in choices.

I don't have more facts than that for my preference :p

This video does a good job explaining everything I think about it




Those one liners

"What a shame. He was a good man *smacks lips* What a rotten way to die.":messenger_tears_of_joy:





Perfect soundboard material for prank calls



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Tim Robinson Reaction GIF by The Lonely Island


This classic Computer gaming world review :messenger_tears_of_joy:

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The greatest video game of all time. The GOAT soundtrack. The GOAT gameplay. The GOAT world and mythology.

Twenty five years later and it's still the most advanced game design in the medium. It saddens me the industry is happy to just drop players into ever more polished "kill boxes" that require nothing more than stabbing and shooting and relegate everything else to over-produced cut scenes. I doubt Deus Ex will ever be topped.
 
I was too stupid to play this when it came out. It didn't help that I played it on PS2.

Still haven't ever given it a fair shake, even though I respect the hell out of this game. It's on my "retirement games" list.

Someday…
 
ZehDon said:
The greatest video game of all time. The GOAT soundtrack. The GOAT gameplay. The GOAT world and mythology.

Twenty five years later and it's still the most advanced game design in the medium. It saddens me the industry is happy to just drop players into ever more polished "kill boxes" that require nothing more than stabbing and shooting and relegate everything else to over-produced cut scenes. I doubt Deus Ex will ever be topped.
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Carl Weathers Friendship GIF


Even all Deus Ex iterations after were not even on par with 2000's one. Something special was going on in that studio.
 
One of the greatest games ever made.
Ahead of its time by innovating in level design, emergent gameplay, immersive-sim textbook, great themes that remain relevant, a banger OST and iconic memes.

S tier game honestly.
 
Funny thing: I've discovered the game thanks to godawful PS2 port and it was so good that I've literally suffered through it. A year later it was almost a revelation of how different and better the OG PC game was.
 
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ShaiKhulud1989 said:
Funny thing: I've discovered the game thanks to godawful PS2 port and it was so good that I've literally suffered through it. A year later it was almost a revelation of how different and better the OG PC game was.
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Never played it but it seems like it was simplified?

I was playing it on a Voodoo Banshee in Glide if I recall correctly in 2000 and it was rough, barely approaching 30 fps for 800x600.
 
ZehDon said:
The greatest video game of all time. The GOAT soundtrack. The GOAT gameplay. The GOAT world and mythology.

Twenty five years later and it's still the most advanced game design in the medium. It saddens me the industry is happy to just drop players into ever more polished "kill boxes" that require nothing more than stabbing and shooting and relegate everything else to over-produced cut scenes. I doubt Deus Ex will ever be topped.
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Dude you make me wanting to play it
 
Buggy Loop said:
Never played it but it seems like it was simplified?

I was playing it on a Voodoo Banshee in Glide if I recall correctly in 2000 and it was rough, barely approaching 30 fps for 800x600.
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The game was scaled down, dumbed-down a bit and the controls were a special kind of torture.

Still, it was a game worthy of all the pain and suffering. And that made the PC original even more precious for me personally.
 
Hour long GDC presentation by Warren Spector with a shitload of information on how they approached this game.

Forget the thumbnail of Deus Ex human revolution, dumbass GDC plastered the wrong game on it :messenger_pensive: What a shame



Not expecting everyone to go through it but its very interesting material if game dev stories pick your curiosity.
 
Plies said:
Ok, I thought they were in the same genre and era. Nevermind.
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Alpha Protocol is a lot more a straight up WRPG, less of an immersive sim like this is.

Alpha Protocol is more comparable to the Mass Effect games than this, again IMO.
 
ShaiKhulud1989 said:
The game was scaled down, dumbed-down a bit and the controls were a special kind of torture.

Still, it was a game worthy of all the pain and suffering. And that made the PC original even more precious for me personally.
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Speaking of which, as you were mentionning the PS2 port, searching for it on Youtube I stumbled on this. Gonna check it out tonight

 
I'll take this as a sign to play it. It's been sitting there for a long time.. Like another poster said, I was messing around in the tutorial and had trouble with the controls.
Doesn't help that I usually turn my joystick into a mouse and keyboard, and steam's controller input thingy always messes with my own controller mapping program and good lord do I get tired of that.

But, I'll try again. I shall persevere.
 
This was the game that got me into immersive sims. I still remember PC gamers foaming over Invisible War being 'consolized' which was a common complaint back then. I still liked it a lot for all of its faults.

We need to bring that word back though.
 
One of my all time favorites. I used to play it every year. I tried some full conversion modded version not too long ago and they made the game worse, so I quit. It is a game I would love to see a remake of.
 
JayK47 said:
One of my all time favorites. I used to play it every year. I tried some full conversion modded version not too long ago and they made the game worse, so I quit. It is a game I would love to see a remake of.
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Was almost a yearly playthrough for me too, even though also initial years I played it a TON, I must have played that game at least 20 times by now. Only in recent years I didn't find the time with the family + exploding backlog.

I also don't like too much the mods existing for it, the GMDX is the more tolerable one of the mods.
 
The thread title said the GOAT was released 25 years ago, and I figured it'd be some bullshit, but I clicked on it and realized I was very wrong. This is the GOAT. Deus Ex is a classic.

It was amazing at the time, but I fired the game up again for the first time in years back in 2022, and honestly still really enjoy the hell out of it. The combat is the weakest part of it in that it's merely functional rather than something exceptional, but the other pieces of the game remain as satisfying and enjoyable as they ever were. This is one of the last games from an era where PC games were truly designed differently from what was coming out on the consoles.

I've never been able to convince myself that Invisible War was good, and that engine always felt like it was falling apart at the seams both in that and Thief. Human Revolution was fun, but it's basically a totally different franchise by that point - more inspired by Deus Ex than a real follow-up. I never played Mankind Divided, though I should. I think I skipped because of the microtransaction issues or some greedy publisher shit back when it came out.

Anyway... 25 years is a long-ass time, but yeah, I still love me some Deus Ex.
 
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I hate to feel this way but I wish this game would get some sort of graphics update like Tomb Raider did or System Shock 2 is about to get.

But yeah, one of the best games of all time without a doubt, always loved how genuinely intelligent and thought provoking it's written, with some amazing relevancy to this day.
 
Red Crayon Aristocrat said:
I hate to feel this way but I wish this game would get some sort of graphics update like Tomb Raider did or System Shock 2 is about to get.

But yeah, one of the best games of all time without a doubt, always loved how genuinely intelligent and thought provoking it's written, with some amazing relevancy to this day.
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A graphical overhaul plus some minor QoL tweaks would be GOTY territory. It's sad that gaming has actually moved away from what made Deus Ex so good. The immersive sim genre peaked in 2000.
 
TerribleAtThisGame said:
What's the best way to play this now? I've never played it, somehow missed it back in the day and then always said yea yea later.
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PC

Now a toaster could run it so hardware is not a problem. If you have a laptop of any form it should run it.

I would say without mods first. The "remasters" change the game quite a lot and to me its not a good first experience, the original was that good anyway.

There's a few add-ons to make it more stable with modern hardware so

Deus Exe - kentie.net

Marijn Kentie
kentie.net kentie.net

Unreal engine Direct3D 10 renderer - kentie.net

Marijn Kentie
kentie.net kentie.net


nkarafo said:
So it's an immersive sim like the System Shock games and PREY? How does it compare with those? PREY is one of my all time favorites.
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Yup, one of the most acclaimed immersive sim ever released.

Prey is excellent too. I would put it on A-tier while Deus Ex would be S-tier. Both must plays. If you like the genre its a a no brainer to play the OG Deus Ex.
 
nkarafo said:
So it's an immersive sim like the System Shock games and PREY? How does it compare with those? PREY is one of my all time favorites.
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Buggy Loop said:
PC

Now a toaster could run it so hardware is not a problem. If you have a laptop of any form it should run it.

I would say without mods first. The "remasters" change the game quite a lot and to me its not a good first experience, the original was that good anyway.

There's a few add-ons to make it more stable with modern hardware so

Deus Exe - kentie.net

Marijn Kentie
kentie.net kentie.net

Unreal engine Direct3D 10 renderer - kentie.net

Marijn Kentie
kentie.net kentie.net




Yup, one of the most acclaimed immersive sim ever released.

Prey is excellent too. I would put it on A-tier while Deus Ex would be S-tier. Both must plays. If you like the genre its a a no brainer to play the OG Deus Ex.
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Yea Prey is fucking excellent so I've always wanted to play this. Thanks for the tips.

Edit: Is the Steam GOTY edition the original??
 
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still waiting for that in-progress VR port to finish, then I'll finally replay this for the first time since release. I barely remember anything, other than some vague flashes of the Hong Kong level that I remember thinking was amazing.
 
ResurrectedContrarian said:
still waiting for that in-progress VR port to finish, then I'll finally replay this for the first time since release. I barely remember anything, other than some vague flashes of the Hong Kong level that I remember thinking was amazing.
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Me too, man. I'm waiting for quite some time now for the VR mod. But once it releases i'm gonna replay the game.
 
Never played it.

Hopefully it gets a remaster like System Shock 2 at least. Which also I have never played lol.

But I have couple of good games to look forward to I guess.
 
ResurrectedContrarian said:
according to their Patreon update a week ago, an alpha build is about to be in the hands of supporters. Hopefully the path from alpha to release isn't too long.
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Really? Nice i might support them (if its not to expensive) to get access to the alpha build. Do you have a link or something?
 
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TerribleAtThisGame said:
What's the best way to play this now? I've never played it, somehow missed it back in the day and then always said yea yea later.
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Deus Ex was built on the original Unreal engine, which is surprisingly easy to just run on modern operating systems. You can grab it from Steam or GOG and it should work out of the box. However, it's 25 years old, so there's some quirks - UI scaling wasn't a thing, for example, so running the game at modern resolutions leaves you with a tiny UI. There's mods to work around a lot of that stuff.
Give it a whirl out of the box and see how it fares. Start here if you wanna tinker, and grab the DX10 rendered if it's not playing nice.
If the game doesn't play nice on your system, Deus Ex: Revision is a good entry point, which is a pretty vanilla-like and user friendly experience that tries to round off some of the edges. Some of the changes are good, others are questionable, but it really tried to present a "remastered" experience without messing up the core Deus Ex experience.

nkarafo said:
So it's an immersive sim like the System Shock games and PREY? How does it compare with those? PREY is one of my all time favorites.
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Deus Ex is an Sci-Fi immersive Sim RPG. Imagine a world where every government conspiracy theory you've ever heard is real. Unlike System Shock, Bioshock, and Prey, where the player fights their way through a large singular environment using the tools and systems as a combat sandbox, Deus Ex is a full sandbox that encourages creative thinking. It's mission based (not open world) and it's a proper RPG with dialogue, skill points, an absolute focus on choice and consequence. You can talk, fight, shoot, stealth, or find other ways around virtually every problem in the game - and the game reacts to how you play. Some NPCs will like you for killing lots of enemies, while others will detest you for it. They'll remember what you do. What makes Deus Ex so incredible from a gameplay perspective is that you're free to do whatever. Ghost runs (no kills or stealth breaks), Rambo runs (kill everything), vegan runs (consume only vegetarian foods), dolphin runs (no skills except swimming) - Deus Ex gives you the tools, and its up to you to use them to make your way through the game. The presentation is pretty old - the game doesn't even have proper lip syncing - but it's vision of the future is scary accurate to the world of 2025, and some of its themes, ideas, and discussions were decades ahead of the medium. It's the thinking man's game, and it's my personal favourite game of all time.
 
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