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Polygon video footage Mankind Divided

Videogamer gameplay/preview talk of Deus Ex Mankind Divided

Gamereactor has an interview with Jonathan Jacques-Belletête

VentureBeat Interview

Gameinformer 7 Big takeaways from Deus Ex Mankind Divided

PC Gamer Hands on

IGN hands on with Deus Ex GO

IGN hands on with Deus Ex Breach

Videogamer Deus Ex Go Preview

Destructoid Deus Ex Go Preview

Engadget Deus Ex GO Preview

Miller Report Parody interview with members of the team

Gamespot Hands on with Deus Ex Breach

Gamespot Deus Ex Interview: What the extra months of development time were used for

Eurogamer Deus Ex Breach Hands On

Xbox On Interview

If this thread is unsuitable, please lock mods.

 

[Icyflamez96]

Nice. Time to marathon.

Spoiler

Or skim.

 

[Icyflamez96]

Mainly interested in the Breach Impressions right now.

Eurogamer didn't seem to like it much. They found it boring.

Unlike Eurogamer, IGN seems to like it. http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/06...deds-new-mode-turns-it-into-an-arcade-shooter

Really interested to try this out myself though and see what I think of it. I wouldn't imagine this would be a failure of a side mode. It seems like such a solid idea. Not having to worry about the practicality of a semi realistic world, and instead, focusing purely on level design and challenges to go through, accompanied with a great abstract artstyle. I hope it pans out well.

Thankfully, it’s very easy to ignore the set-up when the game itself is such fun. Breach is, above all other things, smart. It takes the building blocks of Deus Ex’s action gameplay, that fluid mix of combat and stealth, and gives them a new context based around efficiency, style and, most of all, speed. Deus Ex now has an officially sanctioned speedrunning mode. What a world.

.....

For the player’s part they are, essentially, a shiny, digitised Adam Jensen, equipped with firearms, activated augmentations and a massive, varied upgrade tree. The difference here is that you’ll be asked not to specialise your approach, but adapt to a variety of situations. Some levels will prioritise stealth given the huge defences laid against you, while others will abandon the data point structure entirely and simply tell you clear out every enemy AI inside before you can leave again. Most interestingly, you don’t simply get stronger over time - a “Memory” limit puts a stopper on how many augmentations you can slap on before entering a server, so researching what’s coming is key in more difficult situations.

Even after a short time with the mode, it feels like a brilliant recycling of the game’s existing strengths, using what’s already available to make something new and truly distinct. Leaderboards, achievement medals and difficulty modifiers (making elements of the level harder for a points boost upon success, for example) shake up how you play, putting you in direct competition with friends and strangers and forcing you to analyse how you’re playing each time you head into a level.

Some point of concern.

The only potential stumbling block here comes in the form of the mode’s reward method. Booster packs of items - which can include firearms, special ammo types, augmentation upgrade points and more - signal a move into microtransaction territory (although they can be bought with credits earned as you play). That leaves the potential for a bottleneck, as you reach a server that’s simply too tough with the equipment you have, forcing you to grind or pay until you pop something useful enough.

Whether that turns out to become the case will only become clear after some serious time with the game, but Eidos Montreal’s commitment to making this a “live” game mode - updating it regularly with new features and levels - inspires at least some hope that any initial problems will be addressed.

As it is, Breach is a perfect quick-fix next to Campaign’s expected long haul and, certainly for myself, going back to the main game afterwards felt like having to adjust to far more sedate experience - Breach has the outlook of a good mobile game, immediate and satisfying, but the trappings of a console game in the sheer breadth of toys you’re given to play with. Turning Deus Ex into a speedrun-obsessed, bitesize, online-connected sounds like an April Fools joke - I’m serious when I say it’s great

Moving on to Gamespot's impression...

 

[terencecah]

getting more and more excited for this

 

[Icyflamez96]

Interestingly enough, Gamespot seemed to have some issues with the main game and found Breach to be more appealing.

That degree of choice is welcome when plotting your next steps, but it comes at a price. Mankind Divided stacks together gameplay ideas that, quite often, don’t sit well with one another. Hug a filing cabinet for makeshift cover, for example, and a cluster of vectors will open up, each offering a different action to ponder: You can slide around the cabinet's corner, or leap to another nearby cover point, or plot the path for a stealth roadie-run, or shoot from cover, or indeed search the cabinet. It's as though you just stepped on a UI landmine.

Which is why the never-before-seen Breach mode caught my interest and, ultimately, resonated better with me. This standalone mode offers a significant departure from the main campaign, to the extent that I wouldn't have been shocked if publisher Square Enix released it as its own game under a different name. Here you are thrown into what best resembles a test chamber, usually with a handful of rooms connected by a corridor or two, with a simple goal: locate several servers dotted around each level and activate them, then return to your spawn point before the countdown timer reaches zero.

It's a basic and lightweight set-up, resembling something akin to a first-person assault course, with many of its levels no bigger than a family home. Challenges can usually be finished on first attempt in five minutes or less, and I suspect the best speedrunners will eventually be able to master some maps in less than 10 seconds.

But it’s the tension that really sells it. Whereas Mankind Divided's main campaign trades on freedom and choice, Breach mode plays on decisiveness and pressure. It’s a futuristic data heist, as thrilling as (one presumes) breaking into the vault at the depths of a commercial bank.

As soon as you activate enough of each level’s servers, the security system enters panic mode and attempts to lock you in, usually with just a minute or so ticking on a countdown clock.

There is a wonderfully tantalising twist during the lockdown process, because not all of the servers will be activated yet. That creates the dilemma: do you escape with your bounty or go for glory and delve deeper into each level?

There's a lot more at the Gamespot link that I'm not going to post, but this quote highlights the main reason I think this game mode is an awesome idea, and would be highly shocked if it didn't deliver on a core gameplay level.

“The realism of Mankind Divided feeds into everything, including level design, because everything has to be so credible. The buildings have to be structured in a way that seems lifelike. So we thought, 'Let's just take those gameplay pillars and put them in a very fun environment.'"

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/br...er-solution/1100-6440564/?ftag=GSS-05-10aaa0b