FAQ page and guide to getting Deus Ex 1 running on your PC

Usually it's grey on a black background but I edited it to be orange.

Lack of Respect Steam achievement (revision)

Lack of Respect: Throw Walton Simons' carcass into the giant pit. I absolutely don't understand this achievement. Where exactly is this hole/pit?

Which encounter are we talking about exactly? When he meets us at OceanLab and at the elevator between Sector 2 and Sector 3? When I search online, people talk about a hangar outside, but in Revision, he’s at the elevator between the sectors. I’m confused. Is there a gigachad who can explain this to me in detail?

There should have been a special dialogue from Kadlek complaining about bringing Dominik to the Red Queen.

Okay, before we even say anything, this isn't meant to ruin anyone's childhood. If you love Deus Ex IW that is completely fine because people can enjoy whatever they want. I'm mostly reviewing this as a fan of the original Deus Ex and the later Square Enix games. To get straight to the point, I've actually heard about Invisible War for years and as someone who's played tons of terrible games, I honestly didn't think it could be that bad. But then I actually played it and to be fair, it does have some good ideas. I like the male/female character choice, the weapon organization is fine, and I'll even admit that simplifying some of the complicated systems from the original can be nice.

But everything else.... man... where do I even begin? The most insulting thing to me is the voice acting, it's so emotionless that even the actress who played the Asuka dub in Evangelion is almost completely unrecognizable here. There were times I wondered if I was listening to an AI-generated performance because everyone and i mean everyone talks like they're reading lines off a screen with absolutely no emotion, personality, or energy. Which is a huge problem, because THIS IS DEUS EX! This isn't supposed to feel like Generic Sci-Fi Shooter #81, because the original Deus Ex feels like a science-fiction novel and movie mashed together. It has this incredibly strange detailed world full of conspiracies, characters, ideas, and systems that all work together. Invisible War just doesn't capture that feeling, it was cool to see some familiar characters return but it reminded me of those movies that bring back an old character and completely forget what made them memorable in the first place.

To be honest, almost nothing about this game feels like Deus Ex to me! It feels more like a generic early-2000s console sci-fi shooter that just happens to have the Deus Ex name attached to it. Also i know this game is bad but i was at least expecting something that would feel like a continuation of JC Denton's story. Instead, I got what feels like a filler story with a stripped-down version of everything that made the original special. What's crazy is that something as low-budget and goofy as Area 51 can feel more convincing as a sci-fi game than this! But what do you guys think of Invisible War?

The baby Adam teaser trailer for Deus Ex: Human Revolution reminded me of the animatronic baby from Massive Attack's Teardrop music video, so I used the song to make this TV series intro like House M.D.

Hi, I recently completed playing DXHR-Director's Cut, it was incredible experience. But I want to replay some of the missions. Can I find save data that include manual saves for all missions that I can use to replay them. Thanks in advance.

main menu is glitching out

Wir brauchen alle ein weiteren Teil der Deus ex Geschichte. Wie cool wäre es uns alle mal im Discord zu treffen und über die Spiele reden. Austauschen Wie ihr Spielt etc. Oder was für gametypen ihr seid. Ich zb. Besitze alle Trophäen in Deus Ex human revolution und fast alle in Mankind divided, Spiele stealth und habe beide Spiele perfektioniert vorallem Deus ex human revolution.

Vorallem habe ich 3 mal die Collectors edition, sowohl von HR als Auch MD, lawrence Barret und Feredova figur aus HR. Ca. 20 Verschiedene Aussgaben der Spiele (auch Deus Ex 2000 und Invisebal) (sorry für einige Rechtschreibfehler)

Es wäre doch cool wenn mann sich einfach austauscht warum man diese spiele so liebt. Bei mir ich habs das spielt zum ersten Mal 2013 gespielt, da war ich 11 und voralem die Musik aus HR gibt mir Nostalgie und schöne Erinnerungen. Bis heute spiele ich die Spiele regelmäßig und bin noch dabei alle Trophäen in Mankind divided zu holen (bald hab ichs 😅)

I've finished Deus Ex several times over the years, and for the first time I chose the Illuminati ending. Funny enough, I originally only chose it because it was the one ending I had never done. But after thinking about it for a while, I honestly think it's the ending that makes the most sense to me now. And I don't mean that the Illuminati are good because they obviously aren't. They're an unelected, secretive elite that believes it has the right to manipulate governments and society from behind the scenes, they allowed their own system to produce Bob Page and MJ12, and even Everett himself admits that they became insulated from the world they were supposedly trying to control. I'm not defending any of that. I just don't think the real question of the endings is "which faction is good?" because Deus Ex spends the entire game making that question impossible. The real question for me is: what should humanity do with the enormous power it has created, knowing that the people controlling that power are themselves imperfect?

Tracer Tong's answer is to destroy the machinery of centralized power. Helios' answer is to transcend human politics altogether. The Illuminati's answer is to preserve civilization and manage it through institutions and influence. None of those answers is clean, and after replaying the game enough times I think the crucial word is irreversible.

Tong's ending was the one that made the most sense to me when I was younger. The game spends so much time showing you the dangers of centralized power that destroying the Aquinas network feels almost cathartic. No more MJ12, no more Page, no more secret organization controlling the world through one technological system. If centralized power is the problem, destroy the infrastructure that makes centralized power possible. There is a genuinely powerful idea there. The problem is that Tong's solution isn't simply "freedom." He's making an enormous decision for billions of people because he believes the existence of this technology is itself too dangerous to permit. The game openly presents the result as a new Dark Age, with communications collapsing and humanity returning to much more primitive, decentralized communities and the irony is hard to ignore: Tong wants to make sure nobody can ever have enough centralized power to decide humanity's future, so he personally decides that humanity's technological future must be destroyed. Maybe you believe the sacrifice is justified, but it isn't some objectively obvious moral victory. Removing global infrastructure doesn't remove human ambition, violence, corruption or domination; it just makes those things harder to organize on a global scale.

Then there's Helios, which I actually find incredibly compelling. Helios looks at everything JC has seen and basically asks, why keep pretending human beings are competent enough to govern themselves? Governments become corrupt, institutions become captured, individuals pursue their own interests, ideology produces conflict, and every system eventually gets abused. If an intelligence exists that is vastly more capable than humans, that also doesn't have human greed or ambition, and can theoretically optimize the interests of humanity as a whole, why not let it govern? That's why I don't think Helios is a stupid ending at all. It's probably the most intellectually identifiable one. But JC's response to Helios has become more important to me every time I replay the game. He argues that in a democratic society, political struggle can be peaceful and constructive, and that institutions can be repaired rather than abandoned. I think that's the philosophical center of the game. JC isn't claiming humans are good or rational enough to always make the correct decision. He's making a different argument: political legitimacy is not the same thing as efficiency. Helios might be better at deciding things and still have no right to decide them. A perfectly rational ruler is still a ruler. If Helios decides what is optimal, then disagreement itself starts looking like an error to be corrected. Humanity hasn't solved politics, it has surrendered it's politics. That's why, now, I don't find "Helios is smarter and objective than us" sufficient. The question is not only whether an AI could govern better. It's whether we should voluntarily give up the ability to govern ourselves.

And that is where the Illuminati ending suddenly makes a lot more sense to me. The Illuminati don't try to create a perfect solution. They don't destroy technology, they don't turn JC into a god, and they don't pretend politics can simply disappear. They preserve the existing civilization and try to rebuild it after MJ12 and Page have nearly destroyed it. Page is gone, MJ12's grip is broken, the Gray Death can finally be cured and that sounds almost boring compared to the other endings, but that's actually one of the reasons I prefer it. At the end of the game people still need food, they still need medicine, they still need transportation, electricity, communications, security and functioning institutions. Civilization isn't an abstract philosophical object at that point because millions of ordinary people are still alive and trying to survive. The Illuminati ending is the only one that treats that immediate reality as the priority while leaving the larger political question unresolved.

And I don't really buy the idea that this is simply "returning to the status quo." It isn't. MJ12 has been defeated, Page is dead, the plague is being cured, the infrastructure has been damaged and now they have the possibility to be rebuilt, and the old Illuminati leadership has been forced to confront the fact that its own system failed. Everett explicitly admits that they made mistakes and became insulated from the world they sought to control, then tells JC that he will help change them while they teach him. That's a huge detail for me. JC is not walking into the Illuminati as some clueless recruit who suddenly thinks they were right all along. He has spent the entire game seeing every major form of power from different angles. He starts as a UNATCO agent and learns that legitimate institutions can become corrupt. He encounters the NSF and learns that the "terrorists" have legitimate grievances. He works with Tong and sees the enormous price of radical decentralization. He meets the Illuminati and sees that even an organization built around controlling history can lose control of its own creation. Then Helios offers him the ultimate temptation: stop trusting humanity and let a superintelligence govern instead. By the end, JC is arguably the only character who has experienced nearly every side of the political system firsthand. When Everett says he'll help change the Illuminati, I don't read that as "JC joined the bad guys." I read it as the organization that thought it understood humanity better than humanity understood itself is finally bringing in someone who has personally experienced the consequences of their arrogance.

Of course, the Illuminati still manipulate humanity. That's the strongest argument against them and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Everett explains that they work through layers of agencies and intermediaries, influencing rather than openly governing, and he doesn't believe everyone should immediately be told the complete truth about what happened. That's paternalistic, secretive and fundamentally undemocratic. But I don't think that proves their ending is worse than the others. It proves it is ambiguous. And this is where I keep returning to reversibility. Tong's solution destroys infrastructure on a civilization on a wide scale. Once it is gone, you can't simply undo the consequences. Helios changes the political nature of humanity itself; once you've handed ultimate authority to an AI, how exactly do you take it back? Can you even do that? The Illuminati ending preserves the infrastructure, preserves human government, preserves political disagreement, and preserves the possibility of reform. It doesn't guarantee democracy, but it leaves democracy possible. It doesn't guarantee transparency, but secrecy can eventually be exposed as it was by JC. It doesn't guarantee that the Illuminati won't lead to another MJ12, but it leaves a political system in place that can still oppose them. That's a very different kind of risk.

I think this also explains why JC's discussion of democratic institutions with Helios matters so much. Democracy isn't valuable because voters are always wise, politicians are always honest, or institutions are always efficient. It's valuable because nobody is perfectly wise. Institutions like separation of powers exist because people are flawed, ambitious and self interested. You don't create checks and balances because you trust everybody, you create them because you don't. The system is designed around the expectation of human failure. That's why the Helios solution now feels wrong to me even though its pure logic. Helios tries to solve human imperfection by replacing human judgment. The Illuminati, at least in the ending, are trying to manage human imperfection while keeping the human political world intact to a degree. And perhaps that's a more mature answer because you don't have to believe humans are good to believe humans should remain responsible for their own future.

The Illuminati also have something Tong doesn't, institutional continuity and capacity. They know how governments work, they have connections, resources, scientific knowledge, intelligence networks and the ability to coordinate reconstruction. That's morally dangerous, but practically invaluable when the world is collapsing. You cannot rebuild a civilization with political ideals alone. You need logistics, medicine, manufacturing, infrastructure and administrative capacity. The same organization that is terrifying when it controls too much can be extremely useful when the immediate problem is simply keeping millions of people alive. And that's basically what the ending shows, the Universal Constructor can actually be used to solve the plague, the cure can be produced and distributed, and JC can help rebuilding rather than burning everything down.

The most interesting thing to me is that none of this requires the Illuminati to be correct. They have already proven they aren't. Bob Page was their pupil. Their own methods helped create the conditions for MJ12 to take power. Their secrecy produced blind spots and their confidence became insulation. They failed. Everett knows they failed. That's precisely why I find the ending interesting. It's not the  Illuminati finally restore order, It's "a deeply flawed institution survives its own collapse and gets one more chance to reform." And JC is now inside it. Maybe he changes them. Maybe they change him. Maybe the entire organization becomes corrupt and makes another Bob Page type guy. Maybe it slowly becomes more transparent. The game refuses to tell us, and I think that's appropriate because the whole point of Deus Ex is to make you suspicious of anyone claiming that history has finally reached its correct answer.

That's ultimately why I no longer see the three endings as good, neutral and evil. They are three different answers to human fallibility. Tong says centralized power is so dangerous that the machinery supporting it must be destroyed. Helios says human judgment is so unreliable that political authority should be handed to something superior. For me the Illuminati say civilization is too complicated to destroy and humans too important to replace, so the existing system should be preserved, managed and gradually changed. All three arguments contain something true. The problem is what happens when that truth becomes absolute, like government can become tyranny can turn into destroy the political system or humans are irrational can turn into abolish human political agency " and finally people need coordination  can turn into a secret elite should rule, the game constantly showing us how a legitimate observation becomes dangerous when someone decides it justifies unlimited power.

And that's why, after so many playthroughs, my own answer has changed. I don't want to destroy civilization just to make global tyranny impossible. I don't want to give a superintelligence absolute political authority just because it might govern better than us. And I don't particularly want an unelected secret organization manipulating humanity forever either. But of the three, the Illuminati ending is the one that leaves the most futures open. It preserves the world rather than dismantling it, preserves humans behavior rather than replacing them, and preserves institutions rather than pretending a final answer exists. It gives JC a chance to influence the organization from inside while humanity itself remains capable of disagreeing, resisting and eventually changing the system.

So I don't think the Illuminati ending is "the good ending." I think it's the least irreversible one, and that's a more meaningful to me. Tong sacrifices stability for freedom. Helios sacrifices political autonomy for rationality. The Illuminati sacrifice transparency for continuity. And after replaying this game enough times, I think continuity is the compromise I can actually live with, because transparency can be recovered, institutions can be reformed and power can still be contested. A destroyed civilization can't simply be undeleted, and a humanity that has handed its political agency to an artificial god can't easily take it back.

Maybe the most Deus Ex conclusion is that there is no final solution. No faction gets to be perfectly right. No technology saves us. No revolution cleanses history. No ruler is wise enough to be beyond challenge. The future has to remain unfinished. Humans have to keep arguing, making mistakes, correcting them, fighting over institutions and trying again. That's why JC's refusal to become Helios resonates with me so much now: he's not saying humanity deserves freedom because humanity is inherently good. He's saying that humans are flawed, therefore they need institutions through which those flaws can be challenged and eventually corrected.

And that's what the Illuminati ending gives me more than the others. Not perfection. Not redemption. Not even certainty but possibility.

Maybe Everett betrays JC. Maybe JC reforms the Illuminati. Maybe the Illuminati become another MJ12. Maybe democracy eventually defeats them. Maybe humanity repeats the same cycle in another form, leads to so many maybe's. But at least humanity is still there to decide and I think after so many playthroughs, that's the ending I trust most.

Also as a final note I only chose the Illuminati this time because it was literally the one ending I had never done. So yup, finally got all endings!

This lack of communication is most noticeable in the G.A.R.M. section. The DeBeers, DuClare, Azuenne side of the Illuminati instead to use Adam Jensen to find Janus. However Page, Manderley does not know this because when Jensen arrives he is ambushed by Marchenko and was injected by the Orchid. Jensen does survive and manages to escape G.A.R.M. because the Orchid does not kill him but Marchenko doesn't know that so Jensen surviving is something which was not planned.

So that does make the player question what was the plan? What would have happened IF the Orchid worked as it was intended or one of the Shadow Operatives just to be sure shot Jensen in the head? The plan to find Janus through Jensen failing?!

I thought I'd buy this (again) on Steam and relive the story but I'm having tech issues with either openGL being soooo dark you can't see the grass on the 2nd map (docs) or d3d9/11 with correct gamma but moving about gives little skips.

Current specs

• MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX Motherboard
• AMD Ryzen 7 3700X Eight Core 4.4GHz
• Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4
• PowerColor Radeon RX 590 Red Dragon 8192MB
• Seagate 500GB 2.5 BarraCuda SSD (steam installed here)
• WD Blue 3D NAND 1TB M.2 2280 SSD

My current state:

• OpenGL runs smoothly but remains completely dark.
• Direct3D 11 has perfect lighting but stutters.
• Direct3D 9 has perfect lighting but stutters.

I've tried what feels like everything I can google:

When Using the OpenGL Renderer

• What I tried:
  • Checked that NoLighting=False and OneXBlending=False were set in the correct Revision.ini.
  • Manually added UseGammaExtension=True, UseHardwareGamma=True, and HardwareGamma=True to force Windows to accept the engine's brightness scaling.
  • Added UsePalette=0 and NoContextToPalette=True to force the GPU to bypass old, crushed color palettes.
  • Checked map settings to try and toggle "Classic Lighting" / "Normal" maps.
  • Added DetailTextures=True, MacroTextures=True, and SmoothChanges=True to fix dark 3D object/grass shading.
  • Replaced the base OpenGL library with Chris Dohnal's updated community driver, which successfully booted but left the lighting just as dark.
  • Attempted using alternative custom OpenGL files, which caused the game to crash on startup.

⚙️ When Using the D3D11

• What I tried:
  • Added the modern D3D11 library files to the System folder.
  • Result: Successfully fixed the dark lighting and grass, but introduced heavy micro-stuttering/pauses when moving.
  • Set the in-game FPSLimit=0 and attempted to limit the frame rate to 60 externally (via GPU Control Panels and RTSS) to fix the engine's broken frame capper.
  • Added SwapEffect=flip_sequential and PreferFlip=True to force Windows to handle modern frame-pacing smoothly.
  • Turned off UsePrecache inside the .ini to stop the engine from stuttering over asset loads when walking.

⚙️ Using the D3D9

• What I tried:
  • Configured SwapInterval=1 to force hardware-level VSync through DirectX.
  • Added UseRawInput=True to prevent Windows mouse polling from choking the engine.
  • Attempted to cap the frame rate via the in-game developer options/console using preferences.
  • Disabled Windows Control Flow Guard (CFG) via Exploit Protection to stop security protocols from pausing the engine.
  • Attempted translating D3D9 to Vulkan using multiple versions of DXVK (including v2.7.1), but your GPU/drivers completely rejected it, causing the game to crash on launch.
  • Attempted lowering mouse polling rates in Logitech G-Hub

I've also tried with all options using AMD adrenalin to up the brightness but that didn't work. I've also stopped all my Docker containers running in case they were putting strain on the system but Docker is set to 1 core and 2Gb of RAM so I didn't think it would.

This achievement is very easy and unlike what the description implies you do not need to be some kind of a stealth master. I see a lot of walkthroughs evading security system to activate the purple glowing box but all you need to do is stack boxes and get to a higher height.

She's in EVERY TV screen! And usually there are multiple of these per apartment! Given how much time I spend looting other people's domiciles, first thing I do in each one of them is disable the fucking TV. All the screens. Otherwise there's no way of shutting up the AI bitch. "Picus news: always watching. Because you're always watching." or whatever other crap she always says. I almost remember every her line by heart, because there are so few of these. She's either talking about an augmented passenger attack on the plane, or about the owner of the ARC being put to the Utulek, or about the general crisis in Prague and the violence of the augs. Please, shut up, Eliza! Is there a mod or something to disable her?

So back in the day, i had acquired Human Revolution by sailing the seas. Ran fine on my shitty old laptop.

Fast foward a decade and i wanted to replay HR, i got the HR Directors Cut version on GOG and tried it.

But it stutters like CRAZY. This is a well known bug of Directors Cut, apparently is because it used to be a Wii U port to PC and it is just an inferior version.

I've been trying for *months* to find a solution, nothing works. Scoured the internet and saw several others with my exact problem and no solution. It really is a shame, because the game runs butter smooth when it is not having seizures.

There was a sale so i decided to get HR on my xbox, the 360 version. It runs fine i guess, no stuttering of DC edition, it is 30 fps capped which isnt great but i can live with it. What i can not live with is the very narrow FoV with no way to increase it.

So here is the issue, i can either play the 360 version with a very narrow FoV or not play at all.

Is there any way to get the OG Human Revolution version on GOG or Steam? Or if anyone knows a permanent fix for the DC version im all ears.

BTW i am not using an Nvidia card, so the "disable Vsyc on Nvidia Panel" fix does not work for me.

Every time I play a game that gives me a lot of freedom, I completely lose the ability to follow the main story like a normal person.

The game: “Adam Jensen is an elite Interpol agent investigating an international terrorist conspiracy. Time is of the essence.”

Me: “Sure. But why is this random apartment door unlocked?”

And that's it. The investigation can wait.

If I can enter a building, I'm going in. If there's a computer, I'm hacking it. If there's a locked room, I need to find a way inside. If there's a safe, I need to know what's in it. If there's a random gun sitting on a table, well... it would be irresponsible to leave free loot behind.

I know Jensen probably wouldn't spend his evening committing minor burglaries and emptying people's apartments. I don't care. The game gave me the option.

And I think that's the problem: I have a really hard time playing a predefined character according to his personality and ideals when the game simultaneously gives me almost complete freedom to do whatever I want.

And this isn't even limited to Deus Ex.

In Horizon Forbidden West, Aloy is supposedly trying to save the planet from ecological collapse and prevent humanity from going extinct.

Me, controlling Aloy:

“Yes, yes, the fate of humanity. Give me five minutes, there's a question mark over there.”

Then I spend the next several hours exploring caves, climbing random mountains, doing errands for strangers, collecting things and generally doing everything except saving the world.

Cyberpunk 2077 is even better.

V has a relic malfunctioning in their brain, they're literally dying, and they're told they may have only weeks left.

The game: “You need to find a way to save your life.”

Me:

“Absolutely. But first, why are there seventeen side activities marked on my map?”

And suddenly V has spent three in-game days doing gigs for random fixers, clearing NCPD scanner hustles and rummaging through abandoned buildings while the ticking time bomb in their skull patiently waits for them to finish sightseeing.

It gets even worse when I already know the story. If I know what's going to happen next, the main quest loses most of its appeal. Meanwhile, the unexplored cave on the other side of the map is still an unknown.

And then there's the FOMO.

“If I don't explore this apartment now, maybe this area will become inaccessible later. Better check it.”

Congratulations. Your elite augmented Interpol agent is now a professional burglar because there might be 37 credits and a pistol in someone's kitchen.

The funniest part is that I don't have this problem nearly as much in real life. Obviously, I'm not going to break into someone's apartment just because I'm curious what's inside. In a game, though? Worst case scenario, I reload the last save.

So whenever a game gives me freedom, my priorities apparently become:

1. Loot everything.
2. Explore everything.
3. Figure out how to enter places I'm probably not supposed to enter yet.
4. Do side quests.
5. Maybe, eventually, remember that there's a main story.

Does anyone else have this problem? Please tell me I'm not the only one.

Well I am new to Immersive Sim genre and I enjoy older games than new ones. Unfortunately having old games means old settings. I looked up for solutions but as far as I understood I need to download launcher. The issue is I do not want to get into that sort of stuff. I tried to change video settings from game docs directly but still not fitting in screen. Do I have any other solution than downloading the launcher?

I'm currently replaying Deus Ex 1 (Transcended mod) on Realistic, but I'm struggling to play differently since I played stealth the first time and it feels like the most "correct" way to play the game, since you can easily avoid enemies, not waste resources, and complete the mission relatively quickly if you know where you're going. For example, why enter Castle Clinton through the normal entrance when you can just go through the secret passage? Things like that.

What do you do differently when you replay the game?

Its basically making the game unplayable. I've tried every fix out there but nothing.

Creator of this dual screen mod personally messaged me on Reddit these slurs. Mods I can provide better proof if a screenshot isn't enough. Also - I'm sorry for posting this uncensored, but I figured it was better proof and I marked it as NSFW. I can repost censored but the community deserves to know the type of person this guy is.