Deus Ex: Invisible War Retrospective

Twenty Sides takes a horrified look back at the experience that was playing Deus Ex: Invisible War.

About the only thing they did keep from the original was the one thing they should have remade fresh. The story in the original Deus Ex was a complete, self-contained entity. It wove together a lot of popular conspiracy theories to make a world of mysteries and revelations. Each time you uncovered a secret it led to a bigger, deeper secret. It culminated in the ultimate paranoid fantasy: A madman set on using technology to make himself a god. It was satisfying, but it was also concluded, and appending another story onto the end of it was a terrible idea. Like grafting an extra leg onto Selma Hayek, adding onto something great does not necessarily constitute improvement.

Invisible War tacks a new story onto the end of the original, and in the simplest and most uninteresting way: The secrets are all re-buried and you get to dig them all up again. All the old characters pop up and are trotted around as you work to re-unravel the conspiracy. Again. They’re all up to their old tricks, which is a shame because we’ve seen these tricks before. Everyone you meet goes out of their way to explain how they are related to characters and events in the original game, as if they were bypassing the character and trying to address the player directly. Look! Remember me? We met in the last game. We’re together again! Isn’t this fun?