Revisiting Deus Ex: Invisible War

[Lagole Gon]

Awful sequel.
As a game, not nearly as bad as people claim it is.
Unironically gets some things better than Human Revolution.

Still, not sure if there's a point in replaying it today.

 

[Konjad]

I finished it today and what I think is that it's a decent game despite being a poor Deus Ex sequel.

UI is terrible, and the beginning of the game is not much better with a rather silly early dialogues. Ammunition is universal for all guns, despite it making no sense, and you can already get the best melee weapon in the first hub. Worst of all, however, are levels which are so tiny it sometimes takes just stepping a few meters over less than 5 seconds to move to another one. Wait, perhaps that's not the worst thing, but the fact that it is completely irrelevant if you blast everyone - including civillians - to pieces, or try to do a pacifist run. Opposite to Deus Ex which gameplay-wise did not care, but other NPCs made it clear you're a psycho for murdering kids on the street. Here you can shoot a school and one level later nobody cares. Additionally, the game is extremely easy on 'normal', I should've played on the hardest level probably.

Yet, deep inside it still feels like Deus Ex, just stupidified. You still get multiple ways to approach the goal, but instead of multiple meaning many, here it usually means two. The writing improves after the first hub, and despite the story overall being a bit of a mess due to creators trying to merge multiple Deus Ex endings, you still get that DE atmosphere and conspiracy theories. Quests are usually interesting and get better with time, vibe is there, sometimes quite Blade Runner-like - especially with the holo-AI dialogues. The music is pretty good as well, though it misses to be as memorable as the original's. Invisible War manages to be way better than many modern "sci-fi" games, but it was made at the time when sci-fi was in much better condition, combined with the original game being one of the best it let to huge disappointments and a lot of criticism, but the fact is that it's not a bad game, and compared to many modern ones it should earn even more respect.

Compared to other parts of the series it's obviously vastly inferior to Deus Ex, and Mankind Divinded is much better as it learned from the issues of its prequel. Nonetheless, I'd rate it even with Human Revolution although both games have completely different strengths and weaknesses.

In the end I have enjoyed Invisible War aplenty, but everybody prepared me to it being a garbage whereas I've got a decent action-RPG. It is just not on a Deus Ex level, but it is a pleasant game if you forget of what series it's a part of. Ultimately, I do recommend it as a fair and adequate game, especially if you otherwise played the series. It's far from being remarkable, but it's good enough to have fun and spend about 15h. I might not replay it multiple times like the original DE, but I appreciate I gave it an honest try despite so many negative opinions as it turned out to be pleasant.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

In the end I have enjoyed Invisible War aplenty, but everybody prepared me to it being a garbage whereas I've got a decent action-RPG. It is just not on a Deus Ex level, but it is a pleasant game if you forget of what series it's a part of. Ultimately, I do recommend it as a fair and adequate game, especially if you otherwise played the series. It's far from being remarkable, but it's good enough to have fun and spend about 15h. I might not replay it multiple times like the original DE, but I appreciate I gave it an honest try despite so many negative opinions as it turned out to be pleasant.

That's the gist of it. it ain't a terrible game, it's just a mediocre Deus Ex title. Human Revolution played it too safe in comparison.

 

[Jaesun]

Invisible War was that first game that I then discovered how fucking terrible the (back then) console limitations were, and the terrible game that was forced and designed around that (and it shows).

 

[Wesp5]

Invisible War was that first game that I then discovered how fucking terrible the (back then) console limitations were, and the terrible game that was forced and designed around that (and it shows).

So why isn't there a fan patch to merge the small levels together? It should be no problem on modern systems and AFAIK there are DX1 patches that do a lot of level editing.

 

[Gargaune]

Invisible War was that first game that I then discovered how fucking terrible the (back then) console limitations were, and the terrible game that was forced and designed around that (and it shows).

So why isn't there a fan patch to merge the small levels together? It should be no problem on modern systems and AFAIK there are DX1 patches that do a lot of level editing.

IW's faults go beyond target hardware limitations. There was severe, deliberate streamlining in gameplay design (e.g. inventory, skills/augs) driven by mass accessibility rationales and a significant departure in writing and art direction.

For a comparison, Thief: Deadly Shadows also suffered from having to cram its levels in the xBox's limited RAM, but its gameplay kept a better semblance of its precursors' and it's remembered more fondly than IW. The DX sequel, on the other hand, is decent only if you forget about what it's meant to follow up altogether. Perhaps that's the reason DS did, unless I'm misremembering, get a mod to merge levels together, whereas IW's received far less love over the years.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Invisible War was that first game that I then discovered how fucking terrible the (back then) console limitations were, and the terrible game that was forced and designed around that (and it shows).

So why isn't there a fan patch to merge the small levels together? It should be no problem on modern systems and AFAIK there are DX1 patches that do a lot of level editing.

Was it even made on the same engine?

 

[Gargaune]

Was it even made on the same engine?

DX - Unreal 1; DX:IW, T:DS - Unreal 2.

 

[Decado]

This game was a huge disappointment, starting with the terrible fucking UI, the consolidating of all ammo into into a single resource, and the uninspiring mods. The story was pretty terrible also, taking the worst parts of all three possible endings and making a shitty hybrid out of them.

The combat was improved; that's about it. It's not sublimely easily like the combat in DX1. But I even preferred the terrible and cheesy voice acting of the first one; at least it had some charm (the Hong Kong voices will always be fucking hilarious).

 

[NecroLord]

Invisible War was that first game that I then discovered how fucking terrible the (back then) console limitations were, and the terrible game that was forced and designed around that (and it shows).

So why isn't there a fan patch to merge the small levels together? It should be no problem on modern systems and AFAIK there are DX1 patches that do a lot of level editing.

IW's faults go beyond target hardware limitations. There was severe, deliberate streamlining in gameplay design (e.g. inventory, skills/augs) driven by mass accessibility rationales and a significant departure in writing and art direction.

For a comparison, Thief: Deadly Shadows also suffered from having to cram its levels in the xBox's limited RAM, but its gameplay kept a better semblance of its precursors' and it's remembered more fondly than IW. The DX sequel, on the other hand, is decent only if you forget about what it's meant to follow up altogether. Perhaps that's the reason DS did, unless I'm misremembering, get a mod to merge levels together, whereas IW's received far less love over the years.

Thief: Deadly Shadows still looks pretty decent. The lighting especially. As a stealth game, it has really proper lighting and shadows.
I played it with the John P Texture Pack for some added sharpness to the textures.

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

Invisible War was that first game that I then discovered how fucking terrible the (back then) console limitations were, and the terrible game that was forced and designed around that (and it shows).

So why isn't there a fan patch to merge the small levels together? It should be no problem on modern systems and AFAIK there are DX1 patches that do a lot of level editing.

As far as I understand, it's hard to do without the proper modkit/sources. And these were released for Thief 3, but not for DX:IW.

 

[J1M]

Invisible War was that first game that I then discovered how fucking terrible the (back then) console limitations were, and the terrible game that was forced and designed around that (and it shows).

So why isn't there a fan patch to merge the small levels together? It should be no problem on modern systems and AFAIK there are DX1 patches that do a lot of level editing.

As far as I understand, it's hard to do without the proper modkit/sources. And these were released for Thief 3, but not for DX:IW.

The reason the loading screens take so long is because the engine is being shut down and restarted each level transition. Was a sledgehammer approach to memory leaks or something.

 

[NecroLord]

Invisible War was that first game that I then discovered how fucking terrible the (back then) console limitations were, and the terrible game that was forced and designed around that (and it shows).

So why isn't there a fan patch to merge the small levels together? It should be no problem on modern systems and AFAIK there are DX1 patches that do a lot of level editing.

As far as I understand, it's hard to do without the proper modkit/sources. And these were released for Thief 3, but not for DX:IW.

The reason the loading screens take so long is because the engine is being shut down and restarted each level transition. Was a sledgehammer approach to memory leaks or something.

Loading times weren't so bad last time I played.

 

[J1M]

Invisible War was that first game that I then discovered how fucking terrible the (back then) console limitations were, and the terrible game that was forced and designed around that (and it shows).

So why isn't there a fan patch to merge the small levels together? It should be no problem on modern systems and AFAIK there are DX1 patches that do a lot of level editing.

As far as I understand, it's hard to do without the proper modkit/sources. And these were released for Thief 3, but not for DX:IW.

The reason the loading screens take so long is because the engine is being shut down and restarted each level transition. Was a sledgehammer approach to memory leaks or something.

Loading times weren't so bad last time I played.

You have a computer from 20 years in the future.

 

[Konjad]

Invisible War was that first game that I then discovered how fucking terrible the (back then) console limitations were, and the terrible game that was forced and designed around that (and it shows).

So why isn't there a fan patch to merge the small levels together? It should be no problem on modern systems and AFAIK there are DX1 patches that do a lot of level editing.

As far as I understand, it's hard to do without the proper modkit/sources. And these were released for Thief 3, but not for DX:IW.

The reason the loading screens take so long is because the engine is being shut down and restarted each level transition. Was a sledgehammer approach to memory leaks or something.

Loading times weren't so bad last time I played.

You have a computer from 20 years in the future.

Yeah, it's quick on an SSD obviously, but it does take the amount of time it takes to start the game, so the rumor that area change reboots the engine seems plausible to me.

 

[lightbane]

Alright. Patch works yay. Time to play this... And then switch to MD later on once done.

 

[Wesp5]

Invisible War was that first game that I then discovered how fucking terrible the (back then) console limitations were, and the terrible game that was forced and designed around that (and it shows).

So why isn't there a fan patch to merge the small levels together? It should be no problem on modern systems and AFAIK there are DX1 patches that do a lot of level editing.

As far as I understand, it's hard to do without the proper modkit/sources. And these were released for Thief 3, but not for DX:IW.

The reason the loading screens take so long is because the engine is being shut down and restarted each level transition. Was a sledgehammer approach to memory leaks or something.

Loading times weren't so bad last time I played.

You have a computer from 20 years in the future.

Yeah, it's quick on an SSD obviously, but it does take the amount of time it takes to start the game, so the rumor that area change reboots the engine seems plausible to me.

If that really is the case, it would also explain why merging the small maps wouldn't be easy...

 

[Beans00]

I thought IW was one of the worst games I've ever purchased. Got it new in 2003 and my pc could barely run it. Got it a few years later for the xbox and quit halfway through. Tried it again on pc maybe a year or two after that and I still thought it sucked so I quit it again.


I replayed it and beat it for the first time in 2021 or something. Knocked it out in 7.5 hours of pain.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

this game is the harbinger of dumbing down, maybe there've been other games before it which did it, but here EVERY aspect of the game is clear how it's been butchered in order to make it fit on limited hardware sold to limited people. insult to injury, it comes from the same people who did one of the best games ever. absolutely unforgivable.
iconic how one of its maps was a flight of stairs. a single, lone, just one flight of stairs got a separate loading screen. burn this shit.

 

[Zlaja]

The combat was improved; that's about it. It's not sublimely easily like the combat in DX1

How was it improved? I don't see it. Also, I don't remember combat being more challenging than in the first game.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned so far is just how goofy the main characters look like:

Staring at these faces for hours is intolerable. Make sure to find a mod that changes their looks if you intend to play this.

 

[SharkClub]

For a comparison, Thief: Deadly Shadows also suffered from having to cram its levels in the xBox's limited RAM, but its gameplay kept a better semblance of its precursors' and it's remembered more fondly than IW.

I had the complete opposite opinion of Deadly Shadows for ages ever since I first played it and Invisible War for the first time. It took Thi4f being as bad as it was for me to finally find some good in Deadly Shadows, before that I absolutely hated the game because it felt like a clunky piece of garbage with half of the movement options stripped out of it from the previous games. Deadly Shadows looks pretty, the lighting is nice and the way it wraps up the trilogy storywise isn't absolutely woeful, but it is not a good game, and the gameplay is not good compared to 1 or 2 by any stretch of the imagination. I'm of the firm belief that Deadly Shadows apologism stems from people who played it on Xbox as their first ever game that wasn't as straightforward as Halo or something, the same way everyone who now looks back on Fallout 3 fondly was 10 years old when they played it and thought it was super deep because it was babby's first RPG.

Anyway, back to the subject of Invisible War, when I first played it directly following Deadly Shadows and Deus Ex 1, I didn't hate it nearly as much as Deadly Shadows. It certainly isn't a good game, the character models are butt ugly, the animations and voice acting suck, the gameplay and writing is total ass compared to DX1 but it had the common decency to not control like an ARMA body simulator first/third person QWOP game like Deadly Shadows did. And for that I am thankful to Invisible War, for not being designed around being a third person game for console babies that put half the dev resources into making it control like a third person game even while in first person mode. Climbing gloves suck ass compared to rope arrows, the removal of forward leaning and reliance on third person is AIDS and Garrett instantly dies if he submerges in waist high water for some fucking reason - the levels are built to match, like the "Sunken Citadel" inhabited by a race of subterranean fish people only having puddles of water for you to trot through.

And yes, a fan patch may stitch some maps together here and there, but it doesn't address the underlying issue that the maps are almost entirely devoid of verticality and complexity compared to the previous games thanks to it being a RAM-cucked Xbox stillbirth on a fucked up mutant version of the unreal engine. The loading screens in vanilla are dogshit, just like in Invisible War, but they're not the biggest problem with the game by a long shot. The Sneaky Upgrade also does pretty much nothing to address how clunky and disgusting the movement is in Deadly Shadows, if I'm remembering right, probably because the movement of the game was designed wrong from the ground up. Alex Denton moves like an olympian in comparison to Xbox Garrett.

TL;DR Gameplay-wise, Deadly Shadows is an equal to Invisible War. Standing proud shoulder to shoulder with their 64MB of RAM to spend on their retarded level design and also I have a deep seething nerd hatred for Deadly Shadows' movement.

 

[Gargaune]

I'm of the firm belief that Deadly Shadows apologism stems from people who played it on Xbox as their first ever game that wasn't as straightforward as Halo or something, the same way everyone who now looks back on Fallout 3 fondly was 10 years old when they played it and thought it was super deep because it was babby's first RPG.

TL;DR Gameplay-wise, Deadly Shadows is an equal to Invisible War.

Conversely, I suspect some of the more acerbic negativity towards Deadly Shadows is amplified by youthful attachment to Thief 1 and 2, disillusions at that point are hard to live down. I hadn't played the originals before DS but I have since, and while I can absolutely recognise they are the superior titles, hands down, I still think DS just about manages to keep up and it's not like I had nothing better to compare it to even back then, not least of which because of Deus Ex itself.

You can point to a variety of downgrades as you have - simpler levels, TPP controls, climbing gloves and lack of swimming - but you can also highlight the odd improvement, such as the AI reacting to open doors and missing loot, the fantastic new lockpicking mechanic, or the semi-open hub and faction reputations. This is not the case for Invisible War, which is a major step down from its precursor across the board with no redeeming tradeoffs to memory. Additionally, Deadly Shadows did mostly stick to the aesthetics of the previous titles, whereas Invisible War took both its art and its writing into a different direction, from Deus Ex's gritty, near-future tech noir drawing on real-world conspiracy theories, to literally purple jumpsuit SciFi scheming its plots onto the original Deus Ex. Thief 3 also had a standalone highlight in the Shalebridge Cradle, which undoubtedly made an impression on plenty of gamers, whereas Invisible War's most memorable map was... an inclinator?

Deadly Shadows is a game with a lot of problems, some shared with Invisible War and others all of its own, but I think Thief fans got a better deal out of the former than Deus Ex ones did from the latter. And I don't even hate Invisible War, I eventually recognised it was a better game that plenty of slop at the time, but it still remains the biggest disappointment in my gaming career for how far it fell from the original Deus Ex.

 

[SharkClub]

The youthful nostalgia bit is a fallacy "gotcha!" directed at people who grew up with these games and then get gaslit into thinking they only disliked the later variant because they're not an impressionable little shit anymore.

I played Thief 1, 2, Deadly Shadows, Deus Ex and Invisible War back to back all in the space of about a year, several years after any of the games came out and LGS and Ion Storm were already defunct by then. I still play Thief 1, for it is superior to Thief 2 and both are far superior to Thief Deadly Shadows. If a couple months of nostalgia head start can achieve that today then it sure is powerful. Deadly Shadows and Invisible War were never good games and for very similar reasons but it was always a measure of injustice to see Deadly Shadows getting its dick sucked in the same paragraph that people shit on IW.

 

[Gargaune]

The youthful nostalgia bit is a fallacy "gotcha!" directed at people who grew up with these games and then get gaslit into thinking they only disliked the later variant because they're not an impressionable little shit anymore.

Not really, I just think Deadly Shadows gets more stick than it deserves in being labeled "as disappointing" as Invisible War and that, even as both games fell short as sequels, the former came closer than the latter and I've rattled off a few reasons why. I also don't think Deadly Shadows "getting its dick sucked" is accurate because the usual contention among series fans is in a range of "it wasn't that bad" and "fuck it and the horse it rode in on", not exactly the sentiment I associate with the receiving end of a blowjob.

 

[Wesp5]

I still play Thief 1, for it is superior to Thief 2 and both are far superior to Thief Deadly Shadows.

Can you explain why Thief 1 is superior to Thief 2 or are you talking about the base game here? And what do you think about The Dark Mod?