In my enthusiasm I've compared Deus Ex to a great novel. I want to amend that to say Deus Ex is like a great graphic novel. Like the Watchmen, a wildly reflective comic book, Deus Ex offers deep character development in a media type known for shallow characters. But the best that Deus Ex has to offer is personal character development for the player, and not for the supporting cast.
For example, while I haven't played Thief, I've played enough games to know that few bother to give you the choice between acting agressively and acting with compassion, and then go on to make you feel the impact of those choices on the world within the game. Deus Ex excells at making the player realize that they are an actor within a world that responds to choices, conscious and subconscious. It really affects the way I see myself as a computer gamer, and it makes me want to play the game further, because I have an impact. Amazing!
(One frivolous example - I was thoroughly exploring the game world, as I am want to do, and I looked in the women's bathroom. A woman was in there, and she's been chewing me out about it ever since. Later my boss caught wind of it, and he mentioned it during one of the in-game speeches about my performance on a mission "your visit to the women's restroom really reflects poorly on this division" - that's a pretty cheeky game! I love it.)
What's lacking is the depth of the rest of the game. Deus Ex doesn't bother to challenge the conventions of comic book cyberpunk. Men are men, fighters and strugglers, and women are women, mostly objects. People with dark skin are criminals and probably your enemy. Arguably everyone in the game is a criminal and most people end up as your enemy as some point, but still the relationships of power and the social structure of the game is firmly recycled from traditional colonial media.
There's a pimp, and there's a drug dealer. Both are black. You meet a street gang. They are hispanic. There's a deceitful seductress, she's Asian. There's a emotionless human killing machine, he speaks with an Eastern European accent.
These are characters we've seen before - I wish this game challenged stereotypes as readily as it challenges single player adventure.
There are political questions built into the plot, but the choice is between the Illuminati and the Socialistas - not very nuanced.
So the game is fantastically deep in the way that you can make choices that affect the game world, but you might find that world is a little silly at times.
I haven't finished the game yet though, so maybe there's some more depth ahead. I'm interested in other people's experiences here.
July 2000: