Follow TV Tropes

Following

Video Game / Deus Ex: Invisible War

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/deus_ex_iw_4130.jpg

Deus Ex: Invisible War is a First-Person Shooter/Immersive Sim with RPG Elements developed by Ion Storm and published by Eidos. Released simultaneously for Microsoft Windows and Xbox in December 2003 in the United States, Invisible War is a sequel to the critically acclaimed Deus Ex.

Invisible War takes place in 2072, twenty years after the original, in a world being rebuilt after the destruction of global infrastructure at the hands of the first game's protagonist, JC Denton. The World Trade Organization somehow forms a global government, creating modern city-states, known as enclaves, in which the majority of the game takes place. All the world's major religions are united into a monolithic fanatical cult strongly opposing the WTO's policies. Following a terrorist attack by an unknown group which destroys most of Chicago, the player assumes the role of Alex D (who can, in the first and only time in the series, be female), a trainee at the prestigious Tarsus Academy whose support as a mercenary is sought by several factions during the course of the game.

The game combines First-Person Shooter, Stealth-Based Game and a few RPG Elements. The gameplay is significantly simplified compared to the original, exemplified in the "Universal Ammo" concept, which gives the player character one (nanotechnological) ammunition store that's used by every single weapon in the game. Other examples include no skill system and plenty of handholding.

If you're having trouble playing it on modern PCs, closing all other running programs may help; despite being over a decade old, the game is something of a resource hog. Also look into setting CPU affinity if you're running multi-core. This is one of those games that gets picky about its hardware.


This game provides examples of:

  • Ace Pilot: Sid Black. He will get you into a more advantageous starting spot in levels than Ava, but he also costs money, whereas Ava will fly you for free.
  • Actionized Sequel: Unlike the first game, there is no weapon skill progression, so your combat skills are at max from the very beginning of the game. At the same time, the Universal Ammo system makes a full Rambo run less viable than the first game, as you will run out of ammo unless you use at least some stealth.
  • After the End: The game takes place after the Collapse, that is, a complete breakdown of social, political and economic order that occurred as a result of the events of the first game.
  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: To this day, players debate whether or not Helios has completely gone off the rails of its and JC's promise of the "first true democracy" in the Helios Ending in favor of total control. Invoked in-game by Chad, who is convinced, and tries to convince Alex, that Helios has long since erased JC and merely uses his brain as a processor now. He's wrong, though it doesn't shed light on the first point at all, and you can't get the dialog that proves it while going for the Helios Ending.
  • American Kirby Is Hardcore: Both the American and European covers show male Alex D aiming his pistol Gangsta Style at the viewer while making a DreamWorks Face. The Japanese cover on the other hand has as its centerpiece the silhouette of a person curled up in fetal position with his shins hanging down, resembling the shape of the human brain.
  • Ancient Conspiracy: The Illuminati from the first game, although they are really more of a revival since they were mostly destroyed by the time of the first game. Also, The Knights Templar.
  • Ascended Extra: Chad Dumier. In Deus Ex, he appears for a total of one brief and optional scene. In Invisible War, he becomes one of the major players in the story and setting as the leader of the Illuminati.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: The Dragon's Tooth Sword is easily the most powerful melee weapon...but is only obtained once you start primarily fighting the durable and explosive Templar armoured soldiers and the Illuminati elite troopers that release gas on death.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: All but explicitly quoted by Alex to Leo Jankowski, who spent half the game going on and on about how powerful Omar augmentations could make him and what a great deal he's gotten by working for them - only to find out the hard way that, unlike the normal biomods he's used to, Omar augmentation hurts, and that without individual emotions or being restrained by human morality, his new "friends" aren't all that friendly at all (when he gets cold feet and starts expressing doubt about the whole brain augmentation part, they calmly tell him that he's already made his choice and they will simply wait for him to fall asleep before performing the brain modification, and that their augmented senses mean it would be futile for him to try to escape. Suddenly, being a badass posthuman doesn't sound like all that great a package...
  • Big Bad Ensemble: Saman, Nicolette DuClare and Chad Dumier, or JC and Paul Denton. It all depends on who you side with, but at the end of the game you can have multiple factions and their leaders coming after you. However, Saman is truly THE Big Bad, since his organization has been pretty much pulling the strings from within all the others throughout the game. You can still side with him, of course, but this would be the equivalent to siding with Bob Page from the original.
  • Bio-Augmentation: They're called Biomods now.
  • Black-and-Gray Morality: The Knights Templar are evil with everyone else being ambiguous.
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Omar, to some extent. They are a Hive Mind playing all sides against each other with the intent of being the sole survivors.
  • Boring Yet Practical:
    • The baton strikes quickly, easily takes down enemies with the increased strength biomod, and can disable cameras and turrets without exploding them with the EMP Discharge biomod.
    • As par for a Deus Ex game, the humble pistol. Accurate, easy on ammo, and the unique variants have good firepower.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The regular and black-market biomods are blue and red respectively.
  • Cool Sword: The Dragon's Tooth Sword and its mass-produced version.
  • Conspiracy Thriller: It's a Deus Ex game, so it's really this by nature. However, there are multiple conspiracy factions within the game, but it is later revealed that there is one main antagonist Ancient Conspiracy faction that has been pulling everyone else's strings all along, and their leader serves as the true Big Bad, so even though you can still choose different factions, there still is a group out to get you that is manipulating events (even though you can side with them anyway). Fittingly, this group is later revealed to be none other than the Knight's Templar.
  • Crapsack World: JC Denton caused a collapse of the economy, genetic experiments have infested cities as wild greasels and karkians have killed most urban wildlife and make walking at night dangerous. In contrast to his description of Deus Ex, Warren Spector described Invisible War as set "five minutes before humanity's rebirth."
  • Cross Player: Unlike the first game, you have a choice of whether you want Alex(ander/andria) to be male or female (though at the end of the first game, you find a male Alex D. floating in a tank). Certain characters will treat you differently based on your gender, and it opens and closes a few extra mission options for the player.
  • Cutting Off the Branches: Beside the case of Merging the Branches, there is also a straight example. Paul Denton lives in Invisible War, where he could have died in the first game depending on player actions.
  • Cyberpunk: Quasi-Zaibatsu Corporate-State dominance by the World Trade Organization, Cybernetic enhancement of the human body, and both of the "not evil" factions seem to be attempting to use technology of some sort as cornerstone of their schemes for world domination. Plus, the main character has the ability to reject all of them at the end of the game. That fits all of the requirements of Cyberpunk.
  • Dance Party Ending: The secret 5th ending, with every single major character (who you haven't killed off yet) enjoying themselves together in Club Vox.
  • Death of a Child: You can kill little schoolgirls in this (compared to the first game, where you could only kill boys).
  • Dawn of an Era: Whereas the original Deus Ex which was set "5 minutes before a new dark age", this time you are 5 minutes away from Humanity's rebirth.
  • Developer's Room: The secret ending. When you flush the UN flag in Manderley's toilet, you find yourself in Club Vox with all living characters in there and datacubes with developer's comments floating midair.
  • Developer's Foresight: As maligned as the design is, the game will notice everything you do, especially if you do clever things or do things out of expected order.
  • Distant Finale: The Illuminati, JC & Helios and Omar endings all take place in the distant future in the years 2172, 2197 and 2272 respectively.
  • The Dragon: Billie Adams is the dragon for Saman.
  • Doomed Hometown: Chicago is destroyed in the beginning of the game by a nanite bomb.
  • Downer Ending: The Purist ending is without question a downer: Lead a pogrom against science itself?
  • Easily Forgiven: Right after the initial level of the game, you've given two choices for who to seek out in the name of pursuing your objectives. The local friendly law enforcement, or the church that just spent the opening level trying to murder you. While you do discover that those responsible for the attack aren't part of the main group anymore, you don't really have a lot of reasons to immediately trust them.
  • "End of the World" Special: Transhumanist Assimilation Plot, benevolent dictatorship, extremist theocracy, or 200 years of war leading to a ruined planet and the remainder of humanity becoming a Hive Mind.
  • Flanderization: The Knights Templar of this game share the same name as those from Deus Ex, but they are an extreme exaggeration of one detail about the previous Knights. Where the Templars of Deus Ex were religious bankers related to the Illuminati, the Templars of Invisible War are extremist Luddite Church Militants. It's not fully clear if the Knights Templar of Invisible War are a continuation of the few surviving members from Deus Ex, or if they organized independently.
  • Foreshadowing: The Order sends you to Hangar 24 to investigate possible WTO complicity in withholding a cure for the nanite swarm plague. But barely a few steps away from the Church, the Omar trader will also send you to the same Hangar 24 to steal a Templar schematic for Powered Armor. This tips you off to the fact that it isn’t the WTO withholding the plague cure, it’s the Templars. Further foreshadowed by the WTO tax auditor complaining about the Templars denying her access to Hangar 24 - further proving the Templars complicity in the plague.
  • Full-Circle Revolution: Nicolette DuClare and Chad Dumier, rabble rousers fighting against the establishment in the first game, FIGHTIN' THE POWER!.... And then they become the power, as the heads of the reformed Illuminati. It's In the Blood for Nico, since her mom was partners in crime with Everett preceding the first game.
  • Gaia's Lament: The Earth hasn't recovered since the events of the first game, and in some cases things are worse. VersaLife's transgenic creatures are now full-blown invasive species, and Nanite Swells—massive clouds of nanites from labs destroyed during the Collapse—infect people with Gray Death-like ailments.
  • Gameplay Ally Immortality: The game has several immortal NPCs as well, but it also de-emphasized the issue by segregating the player from them. A lot of conversations with plot-relevant characters took place over video screens and across unbreakable walls. There was also areas where all your weapons are deactivated, thereby preventing you from attacking plot important characters prematurely. However, even if you glitch your way through and have your weapons still active, everybody in the area is still invincible anyway.
  • Gangsta Style: Alex (male) holds his gun sideways on the cover art, but is thankfully professional enough to never do that in the actual game.
  • Gender Is No Object: The gender ratio for the various armed forces in this game is pretty much dead even, shockingly.
  • Golden Snitch: Even if you've killed the Illuminati co-leader, or have been killing The Knights Templar the entire game, you can still side with these factions in the end.
  • Grey Goo: The game begins with a Grey Goo bomb being detonated, sweeping over a city and reducing most of it to ash.
  • The Greys: They now speak English and serve as JC Denton's minions.
  • Guns in Church: Bars and other establishments have "weapons-free zones" that require patrons to submit to having their weapons deactivated—ostensibly this just keeps guns, heavy weapons, and combat-based augmentations from being used, but it also prevents the use of melee weapons. Fire extinguishers make a handy replacement.
  • He Knows Too Much: After completing the quest that the manager of QueeQueg's Coffee Shop in Trier gives you, you can suggest to him that he goes public with the information that you discovered. A news kiosk later in the game reports that he was found dead outside his coffee shop.
  • Hive Mind:
    • The Omar, a global black-market transhuman syndicate.
    • The JC and Paul Denton ending.
  • Holographic Terminal: Played completely straight with the various news kiosks found throughout the game (even in "low tech" areas).
  • I Lied: Inverted, Chairman Dumier at one point holds Klara Sparks hostage to your good behaviour. Should you abandon the mission to free her, he'll insist that he was bluffing and you didn't need to be so extreme.
  • Incendiary Exponent: Oh yeah, penguins on fire in the secret ending.
  • Informed Ability: The other Tarsus Cadets (and Paul and J.C. as well) actually don't have any nano-aug powers when you fight them in combat, just somewhat more health than a normal human enemy.
  • Insecurity Camera: The cameras now emit a field of light showing their field of view, which could be Hand Waved as visible to you only due to augmentations.
  • Interchangeable Asian Cultures: The Dragon's Tooth sword was originally based off of a Chinese jian sword, which makes sense as it was canonically developed in China. Yet it becomes a samurai sword in IW ― a Japanese weapon.
  • Interfaith Smoothie: The Order combines aspects of every major religion in the world. You can hear some of its followers express concern that as a result their ideology is too convoluted to easily attract new members.
  • Katanas Are Just Better: Not exactly katanas, but the jians from the original game are now curved.
  • Kleptomaniac Hero: There's still opportunities to indulge in a little Sticky Fingers.
  • Laser Hallway: Red beams trigger alarms, green trigger gas bombs, and yellow ones set you on fire.
  • Limited Wardrobe: For completely unexplained reasons, Paul and JC are wearing the same clothes that they did in the first. The first, which took place twenty years ago. The same clothes from twenty years ago, bet they smell lovely.
  • Loads and Loads of Loading: The console version gets bogged down with this.
  • Mass Super-Empowering Event: In the "good"(ish) ending, all of humanity is augmented with Nanomachines that provide perfect health, universal education, and a link to a central AI as part of program of "perfect democracy" - not just universal suffrage, but universal intelligence, ensuring that everyone's vote is based on educated opinions. This results in The Singularity — world peace, universal prosperity, rapidly advancing technology, easy space development and nanotech superpowers... for everyone. In comparison, the alternatives are dictatorships by Mega Corps, Church Militants, or Social Darwinists.
  • Men Are the Expendable Gender: One of the few FPSes that completely averts this trope, RPG hybrid or not, given all the female enemies that appear in this game are roughly of equal footing with the male enemies.
  • Mental Fusion: JC Denton, who fused with Helios in the first game.
  • Merging the Branches: The game uses a combination of the three possible but mutually exclusive endings of Deus Ex. JC Denton merged with Helios, but this caused global communication to suffer a breakdown and the world descend into a period of war and economic depression known as "the Collapse", the Illuminati then used the resulting chaos during this time to consolidate their power.
  • Multi-Platform: Invisible War was an early example of a big-budget game being developed simultaneously for both the PC and XBox, rather than ported after the fact.
  • Multiple Endings: Four of them plus a secret ending. As in the original game, you decide the ending at the last minute. In the "good"(ish) ending, all of humanity is Augmented with Nanomachines that provide Perfect Health, Universal Education, and a link to a central AI as part of program of "perfect democracy" - not just universal suffrage, but universal intelligence, ensuring that everyone's vote is based on educated opinions. This results in The Singularity - world peace, universal prosperity, rapidly advancing technology, easy space development and nanotech superpowers... for everyone. The alternatives are dictatorships by Mega Corps, Church Militants, or Social Darwinists. In the secret one (where you take the flag from Manderly's office into the men's bathroom and flush the toilet), everyone stops fighting, turns Liberty Island into a nightclub and starts partying.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • Gunther was right. The maintenance man was plotting against him!
    • You also find a file that mentions a "skull gun" being received at UNATCO, which is something Gunther requested in the first game. However, the same file mentions Gunther was no longer available at the time, and it was sent back.
  • Named Weapons: Red Greasel Hunter, Hellfire Boltcaster, Dragon's Tooth Sword, and the Widowmaker SMG. They all look like regular weapons, but have different properties. Toxin Blade and Assassin Pistol are fairly generic names.
  • Nerfed:
    • Nano-augmentations are significantly less god-like in Invisible War compared to the original game. In Deus Ex once you max out your augmentations, you're essentially a Physical God as long as you have bio-energy (and the augmentations really don't drain bio-energy particularly fast). In Invisible War the enhancements provided by augmentations are noticeably less powerful, and they drain energy much more quickly.
    • The pistol is less effective too due to headshots giving much less of a damage increase than in the first game.
  • Nice Character, Mean Actor: NG Resonance in-game. The AI constructs of her are vaguely Orwellian, but otherwise charming. Once you meet the real NG, she turns out to be a spoiled, self-centered brat.
  • No Transhumanism Allowed: The Purist faction.
  • Oh, My Gods!: The Knights Templar shout things like "By the Skull of Sidon!" or "Baphomet preserve me!".
  • Omnicidal Neutral: Requirement for the Omar ending.
  • Opposite-Sex Clone: In the case that you choose female Alex (as Alex is the clone of JC).
  • Pacifist Run: It's possible (with difficulty) to play the entire game without causing the death of anyone, boss or otherwise.
  • Pamphlet Shelf: Jacob's War, which is apparently a sequel to Jacob's Shadow of the original Deus Ex.
  • Plot Parallel: The rivalry between two coffee chains, Queequeg's and Pequod's, mirrors the rivalry between The Order and the WTO. They both turn out to be artificial rivals run by the same organization. And come on, both coffee chains should have clued you in by both being references to Moby-Dick (and Starbuck's).
  • Powered Armor: Used by the Purist in order to have soldiers who can match their augmented counterparts from the other factions.
  • Power Nullifier: The bars in the game have a security system that scans weapons and make them inoperable until you leave (even melee weapons such as the baton). Combat-based augmentations are also disabled. The usage allows interacting with certain plot-critical NPCs without allowing the player to attempt killing them early.
  • Punny Name: The unique Widowmaker submachinegun. It's not a "widowmaker" in the usual meaning that it kills men and makes widows out of their wives. The secondary fire is a grenade launcher which launches spiderbot grenades. A black widow is a type of spider. It's a "widowmaker" in that is literally creates spiders.
  • Purely Aesthetic Gender: In terms of game mechanics but not necessarily of character interaction.
  • Rank Scales with Asskicking: All of the faction leaders are tougher than a normal human enemy, even though none of them (other than the Dentons) are explicitly augmented. The Dumiers and Tracer Tong are all as tough as an Elite Mook, while Saman can withstand as much damage as a nano-augmented Tarsus Cadet or Paul Denton despite being explicitly a non-augmented Muggle. J.C. Denton himself has the (second) most health of any character in the game, being about on par with a Heavy Combat Bot in terms of durability.
  • Red and Black and Evil All Over: Played straight with the Knights Templar who wear red and black uniforms, but subverted for the Order who, while they also wear red and black, are more morally gray.
  • Religion Is Wrong: One of the most glaring changes in tone and theme from the previous game is that the world's religions are not only subsumed into The Order, but that The Order is just a method of control for the Illuminati. One of the truly "black" factions in the game, an offshoot of The Order, plunges the world into an extremist theocratic dark age if they win. In the previous game, spirituality and religion were themes which ran parallel to the setting, but never outright depicted to be "right" or "wrong."
  • Re-Power: Changing augmentations falls short of a Skill Point Reset, instead replacing one augmentation with another. It still consumes an augmentation, and the new biomod is at level 1.
  • Sapient Steed: Ava Johnson, the "pilot" of the helicopter, is actually an AI construct.
  • School for Scheming: The Tarsus Academy you are a student of is a cover for the biomod development corporation ApostleCorp.
  • Secret War: Somewhat between The Order and the WTO, though they don't do a great job of keeping it a secret, and Alex can make it more obvious. That both organizations are run by The Illuminati and not really at war is the real secret.
  • Shoplift and Die: Guards will react if you break into store display cases.
  • Skippable Boss:
    • It's possible to shoot (or utilize a bug involving a shower in the character's apartment) to kill Billie Adams in the first stage proper, which removes the character from the plot altogether.
    • Silas Archer, the Templars aligned principal of the Cairo Tarsus Academy normally needs to be killed when confronted about his treachery, after which you have to shoot up the school to get out. However, this can be skipped if instead, you take the evidence of his duplicity to the SSC Security Chief one floor above. Silas is hauled into custody offscreen. In fact, a datacube found in Archer’s secret lair pretty much states that this security chief can be a powerful opposition to Archer.
  • Smug Snake: Luminon Saman is one of the oiliest guys in the Deus Ex series.
  • Social Darwinist: The Omar. They constantly try to improve their functionality to prepare for the harshest of environments.
    The Omar are an application of anagenetic evolution to rapid environmental change. In solving the problem of survival on a planet disrupted by wars and self-replicating hazards, we have solved other problems.
  • Soul Jar: Sort of. The Universal Constructor rebuilds JC's body every time you kill him.
  • Special Guest: Free Dominguez of Kidneythieves voiced NG Resonance, and their tracks play in the clubs in the game.
  • Story-Driven Invulnerability: In contrast to the original Deus Ex, where plot-critical characters were simply invincible, in Invisible War anyone can be killed—however, to prevent this with major characters too soon, they're in places where Alex Denton can't attack them save for players thinking outside the box—this usually reveals that the game is playing it straight at those points.
    • One example is Chad Dumier. When first met the character is behind bulletproof glass, which only the EMP blasts (which are harmless to humans) or the Magrail can penetrate. However, a nearby bodyguard is a character type vulnerable to EMP blasts, and they create a toxic gas cloud upon death. Use the Magrail to take out the bodyguard and nearly everyone behind the glass drops dead while Chad doesn't even flinch despite being in the middle of the cloud.
    • Due to a bug, it's possible to kill Billie Adams in the first level, before she runs into a locked, bulletproof room. Surprisingly, the rest of the game proceeds mostly as normal; in areas where Billie was supposed to appear, she's simply missing, and intercom messages she was supposed to send you are instead blank. Sometimes characters will talk as though she's there even though she's not (due to being dead), but otherwise the game remains entirely unbroken.
    • The scientist at Mako Ballistics that shows you the Mag Rail closes the door behind him, if you take the weapon. However, you can block it with a crate and kill him afterwards. He has the highest HP in the game (even JC Denton looks like a weakling in comparison). Probably so you don't use your shiny new "shoots-through-walls" weapon on him. If you hack away for a few minutes with a sword, he eventually dies.
    • It's possible to get the code from the security chief in the arcology for the nanobots and after activating the nanobots, you can kill him for the Harvester's reward, as presumably due to a glitch(at least on the PC version, not sure if it happens on the console as well) he dosen't disappear from his office like he's normally supposed to.
  • Strong Flesh, Weak Steel: The un-augmented Saman can take as much damage as his mooks in powered armor.
  • Sunglasses at Night: Averted with JC Denton, compared to his iconic first appearance. Alex doesn't wear them either, even with modified eyes.
  • The Singularity: This is definitely what's implied to happen if you take the Helios ending. However it's not just the technology that rapidly becomes more advanced, but humanity itself as well since they are actually part of said technology. With the economy now fully automated, it's implied that humanity will now completely focus on "new frontiers" and will become infinitely advanced. That actually sounds a little creepy for any aliens we might encounter.
  • Take Your Time: Zigzagged with the impending Templar attack on the Omar in Cairo. The Templar recruitment booth will stay mum about any plans to attack the Omar until you get into the Air-Vent Passageway near Tarsus Academy so you can eavesdrop on them. After that, you have one hour by which to warn Leo, or the attack succeeds.
  • Title Drop:
    Leila Nassif: We aren't equipped to fight a war.
    Project Director: We're going to change the terms of engagement. It's our war, not theirs. We don't need cities or armies. We have the cells of human bodies. An invisible weapon, for an invisible war.
  • Tomboyish Name:
    • Alex, since you can be either male or female.
    • Billie Adams too, though she is always female.
  • Too Dumb to Live: It was totally a good idea for Illuminati leaders and Saman to come to Liberty Island, what could possibly go wrong?
  • Ungrateful Bastard: In Antarctica, you can encounter a Templar agent trapped in a holding cell calling for help. If you save him, he'll notice that you have augmentations and open fire right after giving a speech about how not all Templars are extremists.
  • Universal Ammunition: Likely to be the most extreme example ever implemented. Every single weapon that uses ammo draws from the exact same ammo pool: the same kind of ammo for pistols, shotguns, RPGs, flamethrowers... This is very problematic because you still have a rather low limit of times you can fire just one weapon from full ammo, now with the added bonus that when you run out of bullets for that one gun, you've run yourself out of bullets for every single one of your guns. The in-game explanation justifies this by stating that ammunition is reduced to a slurry of nanomachines that form into the proper ammunition for the weapon. Also, all the weapons in the game are manufactured by a single company, Mako Ballistics, who has customized them all to be cross-compatible with one another.
  • Unwinnable by Design: Because of the limited amount of medkits, energy cells, universal ammo, and biomods, if you are not careful with all those things (and don't create multiple saves), you can by endgame be stuck at the bottom of UNATCO's headquarters with no health, energy, ammo, and no way to sneak past the guards that will spawn nearby when you make the final decision and reach the ending cinematic. The only way to win without cheating is to activate the "Disco" ending.
  • Urban Segregation: The Seattle and Cairo levels play this straight.
    • Seattle is separated into two distinct areas, Upper (New) Seattle and Lower (old) Seattle, with Upper Seattle being built on top of massive spires that tower above the older, more impoverished neighborhoods of old Seattle.
    • Cairo, likewise, is separated into the Arcology (a pyramid-like structure where the rich people are located) and the Medina ("Old Cairo", where the lower class citizens are forced to live in a polluted atmosphere).
    • The two main sects are, interestingly, aligned to these areas too. The WTO headquarters are always in the upper class areas, and the Order churches are always in the lower-class neighborhoods. The various locations of the two coffee chains run along similar lines.
  • Useless Useful Stealth: Playing stealthily is only viable if you're trying to avoid the enemies completely, as going for a sneak attack will result in the enemies exploding, releasing gas, or shrugging it off and attacking you.
  • Video Game Caring Potential:
    • You can spare Lin May Chen a lot of pain and confusion by telling her the Order and WTO are not the same entity. Her relieved expression and renewed optimism and desire to do good makes the little white lie worth it.
    • You can have a promising young girl accepted to a prestigious academy, which moves her safely out of her polluted environment and poverty into her best chance for a better life. The reward for doing so would buy you a cup of coffee.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: The Hellfire Boltcaster will set any non-mechanical entity on fire with 2 shots. You can do this to the children in a school. For an added dose of cruelty, the only way to get that weapon is to destroy the Nassif hydroponics facility that grows food for Cairo’s slum dwellers.
  • Voice with an Internet Connection: Even your active efforts to bring down their organization won't stop the faction leaders from pestering you through the Infolink.
  • What the Hell, Hero?:
    • Killing children at the Tarsus Academy in Cairo will earn you this from WTO Chief Morgan. And others. Note though, that acts like this won't carry any long-term penalty or change of attitude towards the player.
    • Klara Sparks will first warn you and then eventually attack you if you make a habit of executing unconscious enemies in your one mission together. Assuming she sees you, it is a game with stealth elements after all.
  • Where It All Began: The final level of Invisible War returns to the same location seen in the first level of the original Deus Ex, Liberty Island.
  • Would Hurt a Child: The Templars would murder a child simply because they're a prime candidate for augmentation. Alex (read:you) can also kill children if you are so inclined to do so.

Top