I think the craziest thing about it is that you aren't just fighting some random Illuminati conspiracy-tard stuff, you're fighting the Illuminati conspiracy from the book series The Illuminatus! Trilogy. There are too many references to that book in Deus Ex for it to be a coincidence (there are repeated numerology references and specific references to the number 23, law of fives, vague references to discordianism, etc). The fact that you are going up against the Illuminati in a similar way as the book series really made the game for me. That being said, it told a completely different story of fighting the same Illuminati and it was in a dystopian future setting, so it was completely different story yet still had the same feel. It mixed elements of Ray Kurzweil's thought patterns, tons and tons of books mixed together, yet still remained an original story and had an original feel at the same time, so the book nerd in me gets pleased when playing this game.