Twenty-plus years after Deus Ex: Invisible War shipped, its audio director is finally talking candidly about what went right, what didn't, and why the soundtrack still holds up better than the game's reputation suggests.
Alexander Brandon came into Invisible War with serious credentials. He had composed for the original Deus Ex and contributed some voice work, so stepping up to audio director on the sequel felt like a natural progression. Speaking to PC Gamer's Wes Fenlon, Brandon was refreshingly direct about the experience: “There was room for improvement, I will just put it that way.”
What Brandon actually stands behind
Here's the thing, though. Brandon's self-criticism is measured, not a full takedown. He's quick to separate his satisfaction with the content from whatever execution issues he now recognizes.
"As far as the content goes, I think we did really, really well," he said. "I'm proud of the main theme. My now ex-wife did the vocals on it, and did an amazing job on that."
He also pushed back on the idea that Invisible War was chasing the same cyberpunk aesthetic as its predecessor. "It wasn't this '90s cyberpunk Johnny Mnemonic cheese fest that everybody reveled in at that time." The goal was something more grounded, darker in tone even if the art direction went lighter in places. "It was supposed to have a more serious tone and a more immersive tone. I really like the soundtrack for what it is."
That's a meaningful distinction. The original Deus Ex leaned hard into a specific era of sci-fi maximalism. Invisible War, as you can read more about on the Deus Ex website, was trying to do something different with its factions and moral ambiguity, and the audio was built to match that shift.
The faction system and why the music had to work harder
One of Invisible War's genuine strengths is its faction structure. Players could join, betray, and manipulate multiple competing groups throughout the campaign, and each needed its own sonic identity.
Brandon described the team's ambition clearly: "We have more fidelity, and the story is gonna be a lot more intricate, but it's going to be a bit darker."
The soundtrack responds to location and allegiance in ways that hold up. Cairo and Trier sound genuinely different from each other. The music shifts as you move between environments, which was no small technical feat given the engine constraints the team was working under.
And then there's Kidneythieves. The band contributed several tracks to the game, with lead singer Free Dominguez portraying in-game hologram pop star NG Resonance. Those songs remain some of the most memorable audio in the entire series.
Faction decisions shape the story
The honest verdict, two decades on
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Brandon's comments came as part of a broader PC Gamer interview reflecting on his career, during which he also noted the current difficulty of finding work in the games industry after submitting 50 resumes and receiving just one interview.
Brandon doesn't pretend the game is without fault. "There's a lot I would change if I could," he admitted. "If we could all go back and do it again, that would be great. But no, I'm proud of it overall."
The honesty is worth appreciating. Invisible War has been a punching bag for a long time, partly for legitimate reasons around its simplified systems and console-friendly design compromises, and partly because it followed one of the most beloved PC games ever made. For someone who worked on it in a leadership role for the first time to say "room for improvement" rather than get defensive is exactly the kind of retrospective candor that actually tells you something.
The key here is that Brandon separates the craft from the outcome. The audio team delivered serious, location-aware, faction-responsive music that matched the game's intended tone. Whether the rest of Invisible War lived up to that ambition is a separate conversation entirely, and one that the full breakdown of the game's development covers in detail.
For anyone who dismissed the soundtrack along with the rest of the game, Brandon's comments make a decent case for going back and listening more carefully. The Kidneythieves tracks alone are worth the revisit. Make sure to check out more:
