<P>Or, in more prosaic terms, it's the apotheosis of the whole action-RPG thing that gets us critical types all excited. Actually that wasn't prosaic at all. Let's start again.
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<P>Deus Ex is a first-person action RPG. You play J.C. Denton, an special agent for UNATCO, an extended branch of the police force. The world is a day-after-tomorrow affair with the current trends (Globalisation, Corporate power increasing, Democratic power falling, Terrorist direct action on the rise, Fade to Socialist Worker opinion columns) extrapolated to extremes. A modern plague, named the Grey Death, haunts the streets, with the vaccine - Ambrosia - in fatally sort supply, with its access limited to those with power, wealth or both. The locations in the game are either based on real-world areas, or thematically authentic enough to make everything hit close on the emotional level.
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<P>And in these levels you go on missions. In these missions you... No. I'm lost again.
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<P>Right. Perhaps, before I descend into the inevitable verbiage-onslaught (Expect quotes from Voltaire and references to existentialism. Ladies, take a seat. Gentlemen, pour yourself a stiffening brandy), if I better take your hand and lead you through what's a pretty standard hypothetical mission we can side-step the vagaries of language.
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<P>You find yourself standing on a rooftop, overlooking a tower. You have to blow up a generator inside. Guards patrol outside, dogs yapping with their probably rabid mouths. You shrug, reloading the assault rifle. Noticing a ladder on the side of the building, you climb up to the roof. You hear the barking of the mutts, realising your cover has been blown. At this point you give up all pretence at subtlety, charging down a ramp into the building proper. Alarms go off as troopers start to locate you. Ducking between crates, you return fire. Realising you're outnumbered, you pull out a LAM grenade, attaching it to a wall, before retreating. As the pursuing pack approach the motion sensors activate the grenade. Taking advantage of the confusion you charge, bullets firing. Downstairs you locate the generator, lobbing another couple of LAMs through the door to turn reduce hi-tech to a wreck. A sprint to the roof, leaping into your escape helicopter, and out. Chaos. Death. You're an ultra-bad-ass motherfucker raining annihilation on the second summer of love.
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<P>Rewind.