Deus Ex devs say they weren't trying to make a statement when they made one of the most political games of all time: 'What I think is the right future for humanity is irrelevant. It's all about what each player thinks'

JC Denton is surprised.

Deus Ex marks one of the first times I realised videogames could be about things, man. That conversation between the two NSF troopers on Liberty Island—where they discuss the reduction of people to version numbers and functionality—was a real eye-opener for a young Josh who had previously only played Rayman and Quake 2.

But as I've aged, I've come to realise that, while Deus Ex is indisputably still one of the greatest games of all time, its politics are more than a little incoherent. Your main allies in the game are the NSF, a ragtag assortment of right-wing militia types right out of the Idaho panhandle. Their comrades in arms? Silhouette, a faction that's pretty much the Situationist International—a French intellectual Marxist group—with the serial numbers filed off.