Before Deus Ex: Human Revolution graced our consoles and reignited our admiration for the FPS/RPG hybrid, there was its predecessor (technically, the second iteration of the series) Deus Ex on the PC that basically created it.  Gamers at the time were delighted to discover a game similar–mechanically and atmospherically–to System Shock, but  intrigued by a storyline complex enough to challenge contemporary literature.  It confronted the social implications of human augmentation as well as the overarching status of the fictional political stage in America–a future rife with corruption and conspiracies but also feuding organizations bent on national hegemony.

You play as J.C. Denton, a government agent of the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition (UNATCO).  Denton is your typical anti-hero equipped with a raspy voice and a general curiosity that gets him into many sticky situations.  But what makes Deus Ex so great is how it allows the player to approach these scenarios.  For example, if the game shoves you into a seedy section of Hong Kong and requires you to bypass a dozen or so criminal types, you can go gung-ho and blast your way through, hack a door that leads to a side entrance, silently take down your foes or even dive into a pool of water and avoid the gunfire all together–all of which lead to the goal of that particular level.  The game is about choice.

What should change:

New V.O. – Deus Ex purists will be divided on this, but the game’s voice-over work has not aged well.  Some of the lines delivered by voice actors and actresses are passable, but a good portion of them could use a little work.  We’re not saying hire an entire team to redo all of the lines, but applying some digital mastery to them couldn’t hurt.  If not, at least give us the option to mute them so we can just read the dialogue and create our own imaginary voices to accompany them.  Who doesn’t want to pretend that a British diplomat was behind the voice of J.C. Denton?

Updated visuals – It goes without saying that a game released in 2000 could use some updated visual flair.  The character models are jaggy and the animations are stilted.  Nothing is worse than approaching an NPC for some small talk and witnessing their cold, lifeless stare as you struggle to initiate conversation.  Can’t they just swat at some flies or something like the NPCs do in the 2011 prequel?  If Halo: Anniversary can wow us with impressive upgrades to its visuals than so can an XBLA remake of Deus Ex.  In fact, to please purists even more, allow us to choose between the old graphics and the new on the fly.

Faithful port – A PlayStation 2 port of the PC original arrived shortly after its release receiving criticism for its chuggy framerate and sloppy controls.  The XBLA port needs to adapt to the console’s controller in a way that feels intuitive and close enough to its PC counterpart.  This has been done by plenty of other developers so a model to follow is certainly available.

Improve stealth – Since 2000, games like Splinter Cell redefined the action/stealth genre by incorporating some modern elements that are now standard in games, like being aware of how well hidden you are in the game world while lurking the shadows.  In Deus Ex, there is no way to gauge how well hidden you are while attempting to be stealthy.  Enemies are either clueless to your whereabouts or super alert with no way of determining either.  It punishes players who want to silently assassinate enemies by making it unnecessarily difficult to do so.


What should stay the same:

Overall depth – If a developer is looking to cash-in on the inevitable success of Human Revolution by butchering the original, don’t bother.  Keep all of the RPG elements intact.  We want to augment our virtual J.C. Denton in numerous ways.  We want to upgrade our weaponry by placing silencers on our pistols.  We want to learn the intricacies of hacking and improve our success rates.  We want to strengthen the durability of our lungs so we can withstand long durations under water.  All we want is for the meat of the game to stay the same.

Consequences – Deus Ex presented the player with moral dilemmas, some of which had reactions on NPCs later in the game.  If you start slaughtering innocent civilians without justification you may find yourself pissing off a group of individuals that would otherwise ideologically side with you.  Actions within the universe have reactions and this helps solidify the believability of the fictional world.

Why it would succeed:

Deus Ex is one of those titles that hardcore gamers are begging for an XBLA release.  You know the type of gamer: he or she enjoys games with plenty of character customization and enough enjoyable in-game labor to substantiate a second or third playthrough.  It was one of the earliest games to present moral choices and beefy RPG elements in a shooter.  Nothing, except future iterations in the series (debatable), has come close to the grandiosity of the original.  We would welcome a release on XBLA.