Developed by Eidos Montréal, a studio that hadn’t shipped a single game and didn’t have Ion Storm’s Looking Glass Studios heritage, it nonetheless released to widespread community and critical acclaim, aggregating the same Metacritic score as the original.Īnd yet a decade later, while Human Revolution often features in digital sales and tracks well in recent Steam reviews, it rarely comes up in critics’ recommendations, features, or best-of lists. As if to prove the point, several Deus Ex projects were canceled, Ion Storm Austin folded, and the game’s leads moved on.įast forward to 2011 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution defied expectations. It may have been because both games were developed by Ion Storm Austin, or because Invisible War was still passable when judged purely on its own merits, but the fan base became convinced that a worthy sequel to Deus Ex was impossible. Its 2003 successor, Invisible War, was just as quickly reviled as one of the worst sequels ever made (though it was critically well received).
The original Deus Ex, released in 2000, quickly cemented a lasting reputation for its level design, plot, and complex systems that encouraged player choice.
