Deus Ex (2000)

Posting this with @Nelemania's comment from the other day in mind:

One of The Most Influential Games Ever Is Embracing A Bad Trend

Deus Ex Remastered, which is being handled by Aspyr, aims to bring the classic into the modern era with cleaner character models, lip-synced dialogue, upscaled textures, dynamic shadows, and new particle systems. It will also add native controller support and a more user-friendly interface. There’s no denying that the new version is a technical improvement, but in modernizing the game, it might also be committing the cardinal sin of losing the original’s texture.

As fans pointed out on Reddit, the new visual effects are messing with Deus Ex’s look, feel, and atmosphere. In a few of the trailer’s shots, locations that were once dripping in noir ambience are now overlit, while the improved texture work has left objects looking like plastic facsimiles of their original selves.

I am not sure that a 26 € price tag on this makes sense, for something that adds so little and when so much of it can already be achieved with mods. The game can be played just fine and we still don't get an ending to the series. Makes me sad.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/337000/view/530984728991367658

Deus Ex Remastered announced
A legend returns. Deus Ex Remastered is coming February 5, 2026!

// VISUAL ENHANCEMENTS Reimagined lighting, dynamic shadows, water physics, particle effects, and fully updated textures.

Brand-new character models with smoother lip-sync animations and ragdoll physics.

// IMMERSIVE SYSTEM UPGRADES Quality-of-Life Enhancements: Autosaves, faster loading, achievement tracking, and cloud saves across supported platforms.

Controller Support: Refined radial menus, fluid weapon management, and streamlined navigation, all adapted for modern controllers.

Multi-Screen Support: 4K-ready UI, ultrawide and multi-monitor display support.

Finally finished The Nameless Mod... and it was fantastic. (Installation of it and DX were a bit of a chore though) Far better than the other mods I had played for this game.

I was afraid I wouldn't get into it because the story/narrative seems like satire. The game actually has a serious tone but just draws from inspiration in unusual ways. I thought it was a very creative pursuit. The maps and levels are solid and feel native to the original game (most elements in fact do, and don't feel out of place at all)

My only qualms are in fact ones I have with the original game: some of the weapons seem inherently bad compared to others, and ladders suck as much as they ever did.

Great Music, great exploration, overall great quest solutions without handholding... This is the mod to play if you want a secondary DX-based experience.

Deus Ex is one of those games I start, play an hour of and stop. It's clearly up my alley, but for some reason it never sticks. The same was the case for Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale, two games I finally got around to in the past couple years and loved. Looks like the entire Deus Ex franchise bundle is $10 USD on Steam right now.

I think it's time.

Missed this game when it first came out, and am only now getting around to it. It gives me great nostalgia for Daggerfall and Perfect Dark. Played on Realistic difficulty (hardest) and put my starting points into: computers, rifles, melee and armor (all at trained). I ended up mastering rifles and melee, advanced in pistols and armor, and trained in lockpicking, electronics and swimming, with enough free points to put in something else.

For augments, I close ballistic protection (maxed first), then melee damage (maxed second), then energy shield (maxed third, vision for see through walls (maxed fourth), and speed/jumping (maxed fifth). The other augments I barely used and did not level up: toxic/radiation resist was used the most, cloak I used rarely, energy upkeep and explosive protection I never used.

Early on, I used the baton mostly and tried to sneak up behind enemies. Unfortunately, one hit knockouts were not reliable, so I got killed by point blank shot to the face fairly often. That is why I pumped up my melee skill, and protection and melee damage augments. I thoroughly explored every level, finding every secret, alternate path, loot and enemy to defeat that I could. The game was much better by the time I found the dragon sword; sneaking around and one shotting most enemies, or just putting on my protections and melee damage and wrecking the enemies. I also carried around the stealth pistol (which sucked because I did not rank up pistol to advanced until late game, and by then I had discarded the pistol to have a free slot), assault shotgun, assault rifle, sniper rifle, crossbow and rocket launcher. I made fairly extensive use of all of those weapons.

I did not care much about non lethality, though I was a little soft on police and UN troops; knocked out most of them. Only a small number were killed. However, all the rest of the bad guys were killed without mercy. Stealth for me is a means for killing enemies more safely and using fewer resources, rather than as a way to bypass combat. Did all of the endings, though I prefer the AI one.

Finished revision (biomod) went for the 'challenges' and resulted in my first pure stealth/no guns/non confrontational playthrough. playing the game this way with limited available options was really quite fun as it got me to look around and come up with creative solutions to problems in environment. Truly this is the way the game is meant to be played.

aside from challenges that encourage one to play the game 'the right way' there are some minor twists with some maps . an important key might be moved or a door that was important may suddenly not work. another clever way to provide a new experience.

also the music is quite good or at least impressive considering it is a fanmade rearrangement of every different part... that's a lot of parts.

as a fan of the original I found Revision was well worth playing... This game is old and has aged a bit and no mod augmentations can be expected to hide its rougher parts but it's still quite immersive and is always a fun stealther to revisit time to time. I hope to play the Nameless Mod the next time i revisit the game.

Overall, it seems the Revision so far is a really cool release of DX, tempted to say its 'definitive,' but having played this game time to time for like the umpteenth time I am a little underwhelmed by some of the bells and whistles of The Revision. i'm curious to see all of what else has been changed and added, a few new areas so far. Its very enjoyable finding anything new in a game i know really well! (I'm playing BioMod)

I'm really wanting to go for the challenges (super cool idea and VERY thief like) but they kind of aren't practical/possible and kind of bust the game a little IMO.... While I manged to get going after a while with no starting equipment for the second mission, i cant do BOTH that AND the non lethal/no guns challenge. I am in very much in doubt that the challenge system as presented really works in the game but will see, and will try to get at least ONE of these per mission/area. I also kinda HATE stealthers punishing player for kills cause it funnels gameplay down a bit, (but this could lend itself better to certain missions.)

In the end the new content is enough to be worthwhile, but at the same time this is the same game it was 20 years ago, and its not my first playthrough.