Despite all their accomplishments, they nevertheless don't offer the same exquisite balance of action and role-playing seen in the original Deus Ex. Even as the legacy of the original PC classic has largely been overshadowed by the success of modern blockbusters Mass Effect and Fallout 3, it still stands out amidst these recent giants. The notion of a shooter/RPG hybrid no longer seems quite as unusual as it did a decade ago, but the specific form in which the two genres mingled in Ion Storm's classic has never been duplicated precisely. In many ways, Deus Ex remains unique to this day. Its intricate and generally well-written story provided context for the action, but it was the player who guided both the direction the story took and the means by which they arrived at one of the tale's many possible conclusions - means that need not involve firing a single bullet, despite the game wearing the trappings of a shooter.
While ostensibly a first-person shooter, Deus Ex offered a sense of freedom and variety one would normally associate with an RPG, not a run-and-gun action game. When Deus Ex arrived in June 2000, it was unlike any game that had come before it.
