I consider this game to be (unironically) the greatest game of all time. Sure the graphics look dated, but its like comparing with a painting from the 17th century with their colour palette.

The greatest design choice this game does well ontop of its excellent music, is its freedom of choice of what you can do. They give you a specific task, and little sidequest YOU COULD do if you want and will just let you be free to solve it your way. Its that nonlinearity that this game is all about. You could choose to do the quest normally, or you can use the ingame mechanics to get where you need to go. YOU COULD learn about information if you want to. You could not do as the task is told and the game would respond accordingly with consequences 9x of out 10.

The side quests in this game also help with how a player would choose to roleplay in their rpg game. You could learn about the lore, but you dont have to, if you want to just do the side quest you can. The way you can go about it the quests is multilayered too as well the writing. Furthermore, if you dont like the person, you can just kill them which you can do with most in this game, but its very hard to do.

Another good thing about this game is its skill system (not augmentations, still great tho). With the skill system, it forces the player to be creative with what they choose they spent points on, don't spend points on weapons training, then haha good luck charlie. Aside from swimming (still has use, but very little imo), all skills have their uses and can enforce your play style, as a result don't min max but just immerse yourself in your character traits and succeed where your weakest at with your strengths.

The story is just current day. Literally, it was made 23 years ago (when i made this review) look at the news and see its fairly accurate.

The writing is top notch too, as your given context about what your doing and why your doing it. There is conflict resolution, 3 act structure, etc. By having a framework to write from with limitations of it being a game in which the player dictates how something is going to be done forces the writers and game designers to be creative in how they handle the delivering of information which it successes so well.

Why this old game from 2000 I consider to be the greatest of all time where games like rdr2, witcher 3, etc exist? This is because while smaller than those other games, what it does with that size (shhh) is quite astonishing. Bigger don't always mean better as you are more prone to making mistakes like rdr2 and witcher 3 do. Witcher 3 middle half is so slow, but still really good, and rdr2 while paced perfectly, has some bare bones mechanics that fill tagged on like the bare knuckle fights and animal tracking which gets nullified with track markers. Additionally, both those games suffer from linearity despite being open world, as most main missions you solve in one way even if you remove stuff like way points and mini maps, apart from the excellent gun play/ sword fighting, most level design isn't that good as they are more designed around markers that tell you where to go and thus cant make inferences on your own and add environmental storytelling.

You may think what, cant you just turn these off? Yes you can, but the way the designers made them integral so that its better do it with them on. Therefore, they didn't really have limitations to be forced to be creative with their world design. For example of a good one, refer to fallout new vegas. Deus ex solves this by highlighting areas of the game with colours and looking different across its run time seamless integrating them into the narrative if the player chooses to do so, while in other games the building would be highlighted rather than being unique with its style to pique user interest.

Overall 10/10, dated in graphics (but overcomes them), ai (not really good), tranq gun not really good. If you get passed those tho, you have what is a truly Deus game if you well hehehe.