Talk:Deus Ex: Invisible War

Technical
"As a consequence of console-oriented development, the game's levels are significantly smaller than those seen in the original Deus Ex. The development for Xbox also has had consequences for the game's graphics; the game's characters are slightly less detailed and have somewhat lower polygon counts than those seen in, for example, Unreal II."

The lower polygon counts were not a consequence of console development, they were because of the custom lighting system. Creating shadow volumes for shadows is very resource intensive, and essentially one shadow 'doubles' the polycount being rendered. Add two lights, and that's tripling the polycount - ergo the polycount for objects had to be kept low. The same thing can be seen in ID Tech 3 games of the time (i.e. Doom 3), although they made stronger use of Normal Mapping.80.42.237.211 (talk) 11:47, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Jacob's war
Parts of this book are found in game. Is it a real book? And if so where can I find more information about it at? 63.231.129.229 03:23, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * FWIW, I cannot find any "Jacob's war" in either Amazon or WorldCat. --Gwern (contribs) 05:39 13 April 2007 (GMT)


 * Neither Jacob's War nor Jacob's Shadow exist in reality. The same goes for their author. They're all in-universe entities. Leushenko (talk) 23:49, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

POV on dumbing down
Still a lot of debate as to whether the "dumbing down" of the game was a bad thing or in some parts a good design. Also the "designed for console and ported to PC" or vice-versa debate. Possibly lacking NPOV. --Hypernovean 12:50, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Recent changes have indeed slanted the article away from NPOV. I'd fix it, but the damn thing won't be released in Europe for weeks, so I'd be talking out of my hat.  I think the fair thing to say would be the game as designed for both platforms, and might be considered a compromise between the usual styles of each. It would be great if you were to take upon yourself to fix the undoubted (although fairly mild, I think) balance issues in the article. -- Finlay McWalter 13:05, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Done and done :) Hypernovean 14:27, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Super, that's much better. Is "requiring specific hardware technology to run" strictly true?  Wouldn't "running on only the most modern PC hardware" be more correct? --Finlay McWalter 14:33, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Well, it does require hardware pixel shading, but that would be 'most modern PC hardware' anyway, so they're both true. And another tidbit, I know you can choose Alex's gender, but can you also choose his/her race? I wasn't sure. --Hypernovean 14:37, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * I've only played the demo, but in it one can change the "portrait" of Alex at the beginning of the game. That seems to allow one to select Alex's race, although I think it's entirely superficial (i.e. I believe it has no effect on gameplay itself).  -- Finlay McWalter 14:43, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Great, well now all I have to do is wait for it to come out here in Australia... I'm one of those "I'll decide when I see the real deal" fans. --Hypernovean 14:49, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Indeed the choice of race is so entirely superficial that it does not actually change the race of JC and Paul Denton, despite the fact that they could quite easily be of those races in the previous game. Especially given that Alex is a clone, this is a somewhat interesting design choice. --Dystopian Rhetoric 12:41, 18 April 2004


 * I was sorely disappointed by the game. The final area (Ellis Island) is in total much smaller than in Deus Ex 1, and furthermore is chopped into two halves ... load times were harsh, and areas so very small. The number of scripted events were ridiculous in number (I think there were perhaps 15 side-quests to complete in the entire game), the game was very easy until the enemies were all wearing super armor that drained ALL my resources to get through, and the whole felt more like a tacked-on prologue than a sequel. If I knew what the game was going to be like, I would not have bought it. I tell anyone who cares when the subject comes up, to avoid buying it. I don't see how a company that has made such fine games could screw up so royally with this one. -Dan Smith 16 July 2004

I will continue the character/organizations list (anyone else is of course free to add to it or alter anything i missed. --BritBoy 00:41, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Gameplay changes
There should be a section (near the top) that lists the numerous gameplay changes between the two, for example, mentioning such things as "universal ammo", lack of different damage for different areas (till a patch was released that only included some extra head damage), etc.

If these points aren't raised, then the article isn't really being very informing as to why people are upset at the sequel to the original Deus Ex. 18:32, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Billie Adams

 * "Alex is forced to kill her when she confronts him in JC's sanctuary."

If I remember correctly, this isn't entirely accurate. You can knock her unconscious just like most other enemies in the game.

If it's alright, I'm going to add a section on weapons and maybe biomods...


 * I haven't played the game myself, but I remember reading that you can beat the game without having killed anyone. --Poiuyt Man (talk)  13:14, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * You don't even need to knock her out. you can just run away. --Joeyjojo 04:30, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Unreal Engine

 * "Invisible War uses a heavily modified version of the Unreal II engine. Like Unreal II, the game contains such graphical and technological features as real-time lighting, rag-doll physics, and collision detection"

Firstly, there's no Unreal II engine per se, it's the Unreal Engine 2 that's the basis for this game's engine. Unreal II also used an edited version of Unreal Engine 2. Secondly, Unreal II (and consequently Unreal Engine 2) doesn't have real-time lighting. And lastly, collision detection isn't really a feature; it's a critical subsystem in first-person shooter engines, and has been so since the first "2.5-D" raycasting engines or so (DOOM, System Shock, Rise of the Triad, and so forth). In fact, it hasn't really changed much since then. I would edit the article directly, but I'm not familiar enough with the wikipedia formatting language, I'm afraid. --User:213.226.117.241


 * It's true that the game used the second iteration of the Unreal engine (eg "unreal engine v2.0"), but the development team called it the "Unreal II" engine themselves. Bizarrely they also called it the "Warfare engine" even though that came later. U2 did have realtime lighting as did U1; both let you add a few dymamic colored lights to any scene. It wasn't a very complete technology, mostly it was vertex lighting and as any modder knows most of the lighting was still precooked. But U2 did have dynamic lighting. It's a moot point though as DX2's renderer was entirely different and only had normal-mapped dynamic lighting, a feature that compromised its performance.
 * Calling collision detection a "feature" is just plain silly though. You're right on that. --Collabi 19:05, 16 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, yes, Epic called the engine the Unreal II engine a few times, internally it was referred to as the (Unreal) Warfare engine yes. Mark Rein et. al. stubbornly maintained that "there's just one Unreal Engine" in public, although that was not quite factual. They later realized this because it's later, official, adopted name is actually Unreal Engine 2. Calling it the Unreal II engine in this article is not proper, since that makes people think they worked off Legend Entertainment's Unreal II engine codebase and not Epic's Warfare codebase. Unreal II, the game, has not much to do with Deus Ex: Invisible War, other than Epic of course integrating many of Legend's added features and fixes to the "Warfare" codebase available for licensees.
 * I strongly disagree with calling UE2's vertex lighting "dynamic lighting". This is not usually what's considered dynamic lighting in this day and age. If so, we should say that most engines since, hell, Quake, had dynamic lighting (since dynamic vertex lighting is old and not really much of a feature). True, UE2 uses the L part of the hardware T&L supported by post DX7 hardware to get hardware acceleration of it, but I don't see what that has to do with anything. It was just done in software before. There's a problem here by separating lighting and shadowing, yes. UE2 didn't have real-time shadows, just additive lighting, like most other, fully 3D, engines. So, in the end, UE2's and DX:IW's lighting systems are radically different (it's more like Doom 3 than Unreal 2), and if you won't remove the dynamic lighting claims of Unreal II (should be Unreal Engine 2 — see above) you should at least explain the VAST differences between the two.
 * It seems I actually changed this part of the article after starting this discussion bit (I forgot I did), and, well, you could check to see if you disagree with anything there.

Character Page
The large list of characters on this page is kind of messy...should there be a seperate "Characters of IW" article? --Chrismith 04:10, 22 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Having a Deus Ex: Invisible War characters page similar to Deus Ex characters is a good idea. Um... I guess I'll make it when I have the time.... --KaiSeun 06:44, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Article length
There is a warning message that comes up that the article is currently 38K long and should be checked for size. It also looks kind of long. --RJFJR 15:24, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Xbox cover
Where is that boxart from? As IW is not exclusive to Xbox, and I have the PC version. And the two versions were released at the same time. --Codenamecuckoo 18:40, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

It means it is exclusive to Xbox and not avalablie to PS2 and Gamecube. PC is a different kettle of fish. --Dynamo ace 18:46, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Rearrangement of Entry (June 2006)
I rearranged the entry. Originally, the entry began with a brief outline of the game, followed by a lengthy "Criticisms" section, and then a lengthy section on gameplay. Stylistically, this order didn't work: when explaining something, the convention is to provide a detailed description _before_ going into its faults, controversies, and criticisms. (For example, an entry on a controversial film would first describe the film's plot, and _then_ discuss controversies and debates about it.) So I rearranged the sections of the entry to reflect this convention. _No changes were made to the content of those sections_.

Someone called "hobbeslover" characterized this as "vandalism" and re-set the entry. Frankly, the vandalism may be his: a Google search reveals a "hobbeslover" as an organizer of a petition asking the company to delay its release to 'fix" the issues listed in the "Criticisms" section. Clearly, "hobbeslover" is not without bias on the matter.

Obviously, I don't regard my changes as vandalism, and unless hobbeslover can present a good explanation as to why they are "vandalism," I suggest we use the order as it exists. 151.201.155.91


 * Let's gives Hobbeslover the benefit of the doubt -- he probably just saw a large change by an anonymous IP that seemed to alter major portions of the article, and mistook it for a nuisance edit since many such are. Collabi 08:10, 1 June 2006 (UTC)


 * There is so much vandalism on wikipedia, that it is a reflex to revert when something substantial has changed by an anonymous IP user (as Collabi has stated). I did not know your intentions at the time; maybe you should have talked here first. It seemed weird that you placed criticisms after the See also section, as that is generally one of the last things on a page. Your Plot section was also above the spoiler tag. I reverted for those reasons. Please do not take offense, vandalism (at least for me) is a catch-all term when reverting something besides substantial text changes. Hobbeslover talk/contribs 13:51, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
 * May I also suggest that you register an account to facilitate keeping track of things and the advantages that a user account offers you, 151.201.155.91? Hobbeslover talk/contribs 13:52, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
 * By the way, I also take offense to the statement that I am committing "vandalism". I am an active vandal fighter, and I apologize for having mistaken you as a vandal, but if you truly want to contribute, please register an account. Hobbeslover talk/contribs 13:57, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm going to go ahead and agree with the anon that the section ordering is skewed, but his ordering isn't ideal either, so I am going to re-order again. Please discuss future changes here so we don't have a revert war. Hobbeslover talk/contribs 14:03, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Anon here. I just looked at the entry as Hobbeslover left it, and it seems perfectly reasonable to me. No revert wars in the offing.

Why is this box image being used?
I was wondering why this particular box image was being used as A: it says "Xbox exclusive" which isn't true and could be misleading to people, and B: it is the european version and isn't even in english - somewhat of an oddity in my opinion for the English language Wikipedia.-- Grandpafootsoldier

Addition to the Deus Ex topic box
Could someone add the page Weapons in Deus Ex: Invisible War to the Deus Ex topic box? And on a side note, how does one go about doing that (adding something to the box I mean)? The info would be appreciated. Here is the box now:

Thanks again -- Grandpafootsoldier

Merge of "Invisible War weapons" page into this one
First of all I don't see how it was a "consensus" that the two weapons articles be merged into their respective game pages as only about three people suggested it (admitedly myself included - with it meant only as a preference to deletion). I don't really see why it's necessary to merge either article as they will likely only clutter the article, and their current positioning in seperate pages seems to work just fine at this point. Discuss. -- Grandpafootsoldier 05:52, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
 * It was the AFD close, and those lists need to be converted to vastly shorter prose instead of simply blandly listing objects that appear in the series. Right now, it doesn't explain at all why the guns are at all interesting to anyone, and fails to justify its existence over "Chairs in Deus Ex". Clearly they're an important part of the game, but it's more important to explain why than simply list each and every gun. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 19:20, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I guess many people meant merging these two into one. CP/Mcomm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 20:04, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Exactly (reply to A Man In Black). Petros471 08:59, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Ah, sorry. My mistake. -- Grandpafootsoldier 06:36, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

The weapons page is now at Deus Ex: Invisible War/Weapons in Deus Ex: Invisible War. When it's merged, just redirect it to Deus Ex: Invisible War as usual. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 22:03, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Criticisms
"Unlike the original game, Invisible War was intended from the outset to run on both the PC and a console platform, and its design reflects this; many elements of the game appear to be a compromise between the abilities and environments of both platforms. Some players perceived this dual release as Ion Storm 'selling out' to the console crowd. Indeed, the initial (unpatched) default.ini file had many irrelevant configurations or misconfigurations; this ranged from Thief: Deadly Shadows references, (a game also developed by Ion Storm) to outright errors such as the Field of View being set to Xbox settings, and even a number of sections dealing specifically with Xbox hardware configurations."

"In fan communities, debate has raged over what effect various design changes have had on the experience of the game: some fans voiced concern that the game has been 'streamlined' (simplified) too much, with others agreeing that the changes were for the best. The game received generally positive reviews on its release, although there were some low-scoring ratings. The game was criticized for its inability to run on certain graphics cards, such as the GeForce 4 MX line of graphics cards from Nvidia due to its lack of pixel shaders, and for the relative shortness of the game compared to Deus Ex. The graphical performance of the game was also an issue many fans brought up; performance on the PC was reported to be dramatically worse on ATI Radeon video cards than comparable Nvidia GeForce products, and a number of reviews pointed out that frame rates on the Xbox seemed very low. Still other fans voiced concerns over the relative low quality of the in-game textures. A few even went so far as to create the DX2 HighRes Texture Pack, a community-made texture upgrade package which replaces existing in-game textures on the PC with high resolution fan-made versions."

"Ion Storm released two patches for the game to address some major concerns. However, some argue that these do not go far enough and that the game is still problematic. To illustrate the extent of problems, at the time of the game's release, a pinned thread on the official forums was available for configuration modifications, although the most offending problems -- such as the Xbox-oriented HUD position, slow mouse response time, and inability to disable shadows -- were corrected with the aforementioned patches."

"According to the publishers, Invisible War met sales expectations both on Xbox and PC."

This can probably be sourced and made useful, but right now it's terribly waffly, not least because not one single thing is attributed to anything but "fans" or "critics" or just stated passively "The game was criticized..." Additionally, there's a distinct lack of commentary on how the Xbox version was critically recieved, just a bunch of complaining about how the PC version was butchered. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 01:24, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Spelling & Grammar
The 'Overview' & 'Plot' sections of the article have lots of hyphens and just plain bad sentences. We should try to focus on fixing that crap up before adding new stuff. - ZFGokuSSJ1 23:40, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

List issues
I removed the weapons list from this page. From a presentation standpoint it doesn't work very well, and just overall looks crappy (that's one of the reasons why it was on a separate page to begin with). If anyone has a problem with this, I've left a copy here for easy reference. -- Grandpafootsoldier 17:56, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Melee

 * Combat Knife: Military-grade knife which can be used for slashing opponents.
 * Crowbar: A standard metal implement, useful for breaking objects, or as a cudgel.
 * Energy Blade: Visually similar to the "Dragon's Tooth Sword" of Deus Ex, the energy blade is a well-balanced, katana like sword, which is enhanced by plasma-electric charge to increase the blade's striking damage. As described by the game, the energy blade has its own internal power source, and does not require the use of UA or power cells.
 * Riot Control Baton: A non-lethal police baton, used to knock opponents unconscious.
 * Stun Prod: The direct descendant of the its sister weapon from the first game, the stun prod is a rechargeable electroshock gun which uses UA as an energy source, and as such, is the only melee weapon within the game which utilizes UA.
 * Toxin Blade (Secret Weapon): This weapon has an internal supply of poisons that are transmitted via nanotubes when the blade is in use. Thus when the blade makes a cut, it administers the poison at the same time.
 * Dragon Tooth Sword (Secret Weapon): Essentially the same as an Energy Blade. It uses the Energy Blade's model, but does more damage.

Grenades
All grenades in the game will explode in a short period of time after being thrown, with alt-fire making them explode immediately on contact.
 * Concussion Grenade: The game's basic anti-personnel grenade. It causes a high amount of damage within its radius and is extremely noisy. There is also a Proxy version much like the LAMs of the first game.
 * EMP Grenade: Emits a large Electromagnetic (EMP) blast when detonated. It is very effective against all electronic and mechanical enemies.
 * Gas Grenade: Discharges a large amount of a non-lethal incapacitating gas. It is relatively quiet when compared to other grenades.
 * Scrambler Grenade: As with the scramble grenade in Deus Ex, the scrambler grenade utilizes a viral electronic attack to temporarily cause enemy robots to regard the player as neutral, and to attack their allies (with no actual damage done to the target).
 * Flash Bomb: The equivalent to what is used by many real-life SWAT teams, the flash bomb emits an extremely bright flash which temporarily blinds organic units without doing any physical damage.
 * Spiderbomb: Instead of exploding upon being thrown, this device deploys a small robot that resembles a spider. The spiderbot will autonomously move and attack any nearby enemy with its small EMP and electrical attack.
 * Noisemaker: Though it does no physical damage, upon being thrown the noisemaker emits sound and can be used as a distraction by the stealth centered player.

Pistol

 * Ballistic Pistol: A standard semi-automatic pistol manufactured by MAKO Ballistics (as are most weapons within the game world). This is the first weapon acquired by the player upon starting the game. Alternative Fire turns on the gun's mounted flashlight.
 * Boltcaster: The Invisible War equivalent of Deus Ex's Mini-Crossbow. The boltcaster accelerates a bolt toward the target through electromagnetism in the vein of a rail gun. The bolt is filled with a powerful biotoxin which inflicts non-lethal poison damage to the target over time. Alt-fire toggles the weapon's "smart" scope.
 * Red Greasel Hunter (Secret Weapon): Like the Pistol, but fitted with a red (or "thermal") flashlight. A red light is typically better to use for low light situations, without washing out natural night vision, in addition to not alerting guards, even when shined directly on them.
 * Assassin Pistol (Secret Weapon): Like the standard pistol, but comes attached with a scope and is slightly more powerful.
 * Hellfire Boltcaster (Secret Weapon): Like the standard boltcaster, but fires incendiary bolts instead of toxin bolts. Also it is perhaps the hardest special weapon to find, and the most powerful. It enables one hit burning kills, where the character affected by the bolt runs around screaming, on fire until they expire.

Ranged

 * Shotgun: A powerful anti-personnel weapon, the shotgun fires a blast of pellets which can kill most unarmored opponents with one or two shots. Alternate fire launches a smoke canister.
 * SMG: Compact and fully automatic, the submachine gun, or SMG, is a moderately effective personnel weapon. The gun unfortunately also uses up UA at a prodigious rate, and produces a wandering shot group after extended auto-fire. Alternative fire launches a flash bang grenade, useful for temporarily incapacitating the enemy.
 * Sniper Rifle: An extremely powerful and accurate distance weapon, headshots from which almost always mean an instant kill for human enemies. Downsides include its slow refire rate and the high cost of each shot in UA. Alternative fire toggles the weapons "smart" scope.
 * Mag Rail: An experimental MAKO Ballistics weapon system, the mag rail fires a powerful energy beam which can silence most human targets with a few shots. The alternative fire is an EMP blast which can be fired through walls and other obstacles, and which does heavy damage to all non-shielded electronic components.
 * Widowmaker SMG (Secret Weapon): This contains all the features of the normal SMG, but instead fires a Spiderbomb instead of a Flash Grenade at the cost of more UA. This weapon is also more accurate than the normal SMG.

Heavy

 * Flamethrower: A very effective anti-personnel weapon which spews a stream of flaming napalm onto the target. The flame engulfed individual will often run around in panic, setting other objects and persons alight, increasing the effectiveness of the weapon, but also increasing its danger to the player when used in an enclosed environment. Alternative fire launches a glob of napalm that sticks to a surface and burns brightly for a period of time.
 * Rocket Launcher: The most powerful weapon in the game, the rocket launcher also uses the greatest amount of UA per shot. As with all heavy weapons within Invisible War, head shots do not do additional damage. Alternative fire allows the rocket to be manually guided to the target thanks to a camera mounted on each projectile.

Mines

 * Concussion Proximity Mine: A simple explosive device which can be attached to most surfaces and which detonates when approached, causing a substantial amount of damage.
 * EMP Proximity Mine: Works on the same principle as the Concussion Mine except that instead of exploding, it emits an EMP blast which damages all electronics-using enemies and devices.

Weapon Modifications
Can be added to the pistol, boltcaster, shotgun, SMG, sniper rifle, rocket launcher, and mag rail only. Also, each weapon can support at the most two modifications, and mods cannot be swapped out once installed.
 * Ammo Scavenger: Causes the weapon to use less UA for each shot.
 * EMP Converter: Adds EMP damage to the weapon's normal attack (if it does not already have it).
 * Fragmentary Round: Causes upgraded weapon's projectiles to explode on contact, causing extra damage.
 * Glass Destabilizer: Causes panes of glass to dissolve at the molecular level upon being shot. Useful for accessing glass enclosed areas without setting off alarms.
 * Increased Damage: Enables the affected weapon to deal more damage per shot.
 * Increased Range: Increases the effective range of the weapon.
 * Refire Rate: Enables the weapon to be fired more rapidly.
 * Silencer: Silences noise created by the weapon to enable a more stealthy attack.

Two CDS
I bought this game at EB and it only had two CD's despite having space for 3 should I take it back? Jamhaw 16:24, 21 March 2007 (UTC)jamhaw
 * First thing, this isn't a discussion board. Next time, go to a fansite, not Wikipedia. Second, no, the game only has two discs. -ZFGokuSSJ1 23:48, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Game designers don't issue the boxes, publishers do...Leushenko (talk) 23:53, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Then how come the box has space for three disks? Was the case originally for some other three disk game?Jamhaw 18:15, 11 October 2007 (UTC)jamhaw

Full soundtrack download
Does the link "Full soundtrack download" breach copyright? The readme in the link indicates that it's a rip, not a release. Vampus 17:20, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I was wondering that myself. The article says that the music was released from the game's official site, though. -Kris Schnee 01:06, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * At the official site for the game, the songs (or at least a very similar set; I haven't checked in detail) are freely available for download. So I figure that even if that readme doesn't make it clear that the songs were legitimately released, the company wouldn't mind you downloading from another site. -Kris Schnee 19:09, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Less Linear Plot
The first Deus Ex's plot was honestly very linear except for basic action elements in each level which didn't count for much other then gaining extra money or weapons. In Deus Ex Invisible War, this is different where dialog options are much better and player choice actually changes story elements around in the game. It's much more like an RPG as the first was more Action. Can this be reflected in the Plot section? -Jake 08:15, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't know what game you were playing, but your choices had very little consequences on the plot in the game - up until the very last couple of levels, nothing you did mattered (seriously - kill Nicolette DuClaire when you first see her - Chad doesn't care, still wants to work with you, and you just killed his WIFE!). The dialog was wooden and uninspired.  Further, in the first one, you had the skill system, which meant that you didn't start off as a bad-ass super-agent - you had to earn it.  Your weapons were terribly inaccurate to start with, and only after patient and careful aiming did you end up with some semblance of accuracy.  Later, as your skills progressed, you could run&gun with the best of the FPS action heroes - all this as opposed to IW, where your guns were as accurate as they would ever be the first time you picked them up.  Let us not forget the dumbed-down inventory system and the universal ammo fiasco, to say nothing of location-based damage on both yourself and NPC's (headshots, anyone?).  The first game was a masterful balance of RPG and FPS elements, while the IW was a FPS with a few RPG-like elements tacked on.  ApokalypseCow (talk) 15:49, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd go one step further and say that DX2 was actually a lot more linear than DX1. Not only was the plot almost completely unaffected by player choices, but the same goes for the action - yes the descriptions insist there are multiple approaches to problems but this is almost like the above discussion about whether collision detection can be considered a feature, insofar as the "multiple approaches" pretty much consisted of which weapon to pull out and what mods to turn on. This game was almost completely devoid of the multiple entrypoints and completely divergent methods available in DX1, and was really an all-out action game with a nod to imagination by adding the odd air vent here and there, often in rather ridiculous locations. I'd like to see a citable source that expresses this in an encyclopaedic fashion because I think it's a worthwhile point and an excellent example of the dumbing down of which this game is so frequently accused. Leushenko (talk) 00:03, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually just to add to that rant - why does the section on player choice refer to the commandeering of an airship when there is no airship in the game? Leushenko (talk) 00:05, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I think the airship mentioned might be the one Sid Black needs you to steal back from what's-her-face, although it's been a while since I've played and I wasn't enamored with the game when I did, so my memory could be sketchy. Rnb (talk) 14:55, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

ending
shouldnt the part about ending include what happends to alex?


 * What does happen to her? I just played all five endings and in none of them is her fate discussed.... Leushenko (talk) 23:55, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * yes that is what the 3rd game will be about then, thats why they have them --68.81.38.129 (talk) 00:53, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Biased article
I remember when DX:IW was released, and how disappointed most Deus Ex fans were. It received a lot of criticism and if you asked most people, they would say it was a bad sequel and a bad game and everyone talked of how it was dumbed down. From reading this article, you would get the impression that it was a brilliant game that everybody loved and have no idea of how it was actually received.

So I looked through the history, and sure enough, it used to be quite different. In fact, it used to have a lengthy "Criticisms" section and actually mention many of the problems with it and why it happened (designed/developed primarily for consoles). It even included a quote from the lead designer saying where they went wrong. It seems that over a number of years the criticisms got gradually removed and the article changed to be more positive, ultimately culminating in quite an extensive (but probably unwarranted) rewrite by ProtoDrake. Essentially, history has been rewritten, and anyone who reads this article who wasn't around when the game was released will get a false understanding of its reception and quality.

I think one of the reasons for this is perhaps because published reviewers did review the game favourably, and it's those that are easy to get citations for. It was fan response that was overwhelmingly negative. Some versions of the page from 2007 even mention this. Anyone wanting to know the truth about this game should read older versions of the article. The further back in time you go, the closer to the truth you will get. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lytel (talk • contribs) 01:08, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Asking users to seek out older versions of the article is not the best approach. If player response was as negative as you claim,(I admit, I wasn't watching when it was released) then there should be some evidence that you can cite. Once you have that evidence, you can bring back the balance that the article is currently missing. Larrythefunkyferret (talk) 06:06, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Reference material
Here's what I've found so far. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 18:14, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Non-review sources

 * Deus Ex 2 and Thief 3 Revealed
 * GamePro first look
 * Game Informer hands-on
 * Site goes live
 * PC Zone preview
 * PC Zone feature
 * CVG interview
 * CVG interview 2
 * GamePro preview
 * GamePro Game of the Week
 * GamePro hands-on
 * Release announcement
 * GameSpy E3 2002 preview
 * IGN E3 2002 preview
 * IGN E3 2002 award
 * Gaming Horizon interview
 * GameSpy most anticipated games of 2003
 * GameSpy E3 award nomination
 * GameSpy interview
 * GameSpy video interview
 * GameSpy video interview 2
 * GameSpy 2003 holiday gift guide
 * GameSpy character/faction preview
 * GameSpy emergent gameplay article
 * Deus Ex 2 announcement at GameSpy
 * GameSpy interview 2
 * GameSpy interview 3
 * GameSpy interview 4
 * Planet Deus Ex interview
 * Planet Deus Ex interview 2
 * GameSpy feature
 * GameSpy feature 2
 * Deus Ex 2 announcement information at GameSpy
 * GameSpy GDC 2003 preview
 * GameSpy GDC 2003 preview

Reviews

 * Game Informer (PC)
 * Game Informer (Xbox)
 * GamePro (Xbox)
 * GamePro (PC)
 * Electronic Gaming Monthly (Xbox)
 * GMR (Xbox)
 * PC Gamer US
 * PC Format
 * PC Zone
 * Computer and Video Games (Xbox)