Overview

Developer: Ion Storm
Publisher: Eidos
Deus Ex official page: http://www.deusex.com/
More Deus Ex resources

Ion Storm? No Way!

After the debacles of Dominion (it's better than Starcraft…really, it is!) and Daikatana, it's hard to believe that anything worthwhile could come out of Ion Storm. For those who weren't blessed with the opportunity to visit trade shows and see the promise of Deus Ex in development, there was every reason to believe that it would be just another bad Ion Storm game. Three strikes, and you're out. Well, now that Deus Ex is on store shelves, John Romero should thank his lucky stars. Warren Spector has saved the day with his masterful first-person, RPG/adventure. Spector was the driving force behind some of the Ultima series, and the original System Shock. The same genius that made those games critical successes manifests itself clearly in Deus Ex.

JC's workstation

Big brother's watching

What's it about?

Deus Ex is set in the near future. It's a grim time to live, with a widening chasm between rich and poor, and a mysterious plague called the Gray Death sweeping across the world. There is a manufactured cure, called Ambrosia, but the tiny supply is controlled by government agencies (namely FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency) and carefully doled out to the most important people, including government officials, celebrities, and the social elite. The average joe who contracts Gray Death is often left to wither away and die in the gutter because of the supply problems.

An underground group called the NSF is convinced that the Gray Death is part of a huge conspiracy to eliminate the underclass. They work against the government to hijack Ambrosia shipments and distribute them to the proletariat. In response, the government dispatches their anti terrorist agency, UNATCO, against the NSF and other groups who have banded together against the government.

Grunt

Time to catch CNN

Not that kind of implant!

The player takes the role of JC Denton, a highly trained special agent of UNATCO. One of the key characteristics of UNATCO agents is that they get cybernetic implants to enhance their physical abilities. Some agents choose massive muscle replacements for heavy lifting - others get abilities like hardened skin that can stop bullets. The drawback is that these implants turn the agents into half human, half machine cyborgs. JC Denton is a very special case - he's the second agent to undergo enhancement with a new type of implant technology - nanotech. The new type enhancements are much less invasive and deforming to the agent's appearance. They also have the potential to give even greater powers and abilities than the old type. It's also worth noting that the first agent to get the nanotech implants was Paul Denton - JC's older brother.

You start off the game fresh out of training and thrust into action against the NSF. Your job is to assist your older brother Paul in locating and retrieving some barrels of Ambrosia that the NSF has stolen. Sounds straightforward enough, but as you delve deeper into the operations, you learn that not everything is what it seems on the surface. Everything, including your sense of right/wrong, justice and injustice, is challenged as you uncover layer after layer of conspiracies and double crosses. What exactly are the NSF and UNATCO fighting for? Why is a federal bureau (FEMA) that was founded to give flood and earthquake relief put in charge of paramilitary operations? Deus Ex's plot is as complex and engaging as any techno-thriller novel you might find on a best seller list.