Deus Ex

Deus Ex is a game that offers several paths instead of one correct route, and punishes none of them. The player takes on nanotech-augmented agent JC Denton in a near future plagued by pandemic, terrorism, and secret societies, and gradually discovers that the people commissioning his missions are no more trustworthy than his targets. Every task can be solved with brute force, by sneaking past cameras, hacking terminals, talking the right character into cooperating, or finding a vent shaft nobody thought of. Skills increase with points earned by completing objectives, augmentations are installed into the body, and the player soon has to decide whether to be a quiet specialist or a walking weapon.

At its core it's a shooter, but shooting is deliberately uncomfortable until the player raises the relevant skill, which annoyed part of the audience at the time and convinced the rest that this was really a first-person role-playing game. The environments are full of readable detail, emails on computers, datapads, and notes, which build the world far more than the main dialogue does. Technically the game ran on the Unreal Engine of the era, which allowed for large missions spanning the New York docks, Hong Kong, and Paris, at the cost of heavier demands on contemporary computers. The music works with electronic loops that shift with the situation, and together with the dim lighting it maintains the conspiratorial mood.

At release Deus Ex was received as an exceptional achievement, and many polls still rank it among the most influential games ever made. Its legacy shows up anywhere a game offers more than one solution to a problem, combines stealth with shooting, and lets the player carry the consequences of their choices all the way to several different endings. Today it has aged in its animations, character faces, and voice acting, but the openness of its level design feels more modern than many newer games. Anyone willing to accept a slower start gains one of the most free-form action games ever released on PC.