Support NeoGAF

[JCHandsom]

(SPOILERS)

So I decided out of the blue to go back and replay Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. I finished my replay today and I have some thoughts.

First, the good. The main aspect that drew me back into playing Mankind Divided was it's gameplay, that classic mix of area traversal, stealth, gunplay, hacking, and speech conversations. It's incredibly rewarding to explore every different approach to any given situation and have it be valid. Want to hack your way through every door and security system? Want to non-lethally stealth your way through, undetected? Want to shoot em up and leave a pile of bodies in your wake? Something else? Typically whatever level you're in there's at least 2 or 3 ways to get through it with whatever your preferred method of play is. It wasn't uncommon for me during my return trip through the main story to come across paths and secrets that I had no idea existed the first time I played. I tend to reload saves constantly in games like these, testing every option presented to me, challenging myself to tackle an encounter differently than I did last time.

The new gameplay additions are a joy to play with, even if they throw off the delicate balance of "Everything is different but viable in its own way" that existed in Human Revolution. The TESLA augment sorta invalidates the Multi-Takedown, since it doesn't eat up energy, can be used at a distance, and can take down up to 4 people spaced apart instead of only 2 people standing right next to each other. The new multitools likewise kind of undercut all the hacking augments given how anything, no matter what security it might have, can be hacked by holding down a button. Overall, the gameplay is Human Revolution's plus more, which is the thing that drew me back in the first place.

Unfortunately, the game's story and characters are a marked step down from Human Revolution. We're introduced to a whole new setting, with new characters filling in the roles left behind; Instead of David Sarif as "The Boss" character we have Jim Miller, instead of Frank Pritchard as "The Jerk Friend" we have Duncan Macready, and so forth. The problem is, these characters aren't given nearly enough screentime to develop the way their counterparts were in Human Revolution. The only times we interact with Macready are in the first and last mission, and every scene with Miller is just him giving Jensen his next assignment, and the same can be said of almost every character in the game; we either barely ever meet them, or they do the same thing over and over with no real development.

No one gets it worse than the games nominal antagonist, Viktor Marchenko. He's a big, uninteresting brute whose only a stooge for Page and the Illuminati who you run into a grand total of 3 times, including your final encounter with him at the very end of the game. While the bosses of Human Revolution weren't much better, they were at least given proper introductions and send offs to make them seem intimidating, and Hugh Darrow was a great twist-villain who was somewhat sympathetic in his goals and motivations. Viktor Marchenko is an angry Ukrainian guy trying to do bad things because the real bad guys told him to.

The main story doesn't fair much better, as it feels like a truncated part of something larger. We start the game with an entirely new status quo, with no time to get a feel for how things have changed in the past two years outside of a phone call from Sarif. We spend most of the game in one location (Prague), whereas previous games had a much more vibrant, globetrotting feel to them, and the mystery/final confrontation falls flat when there are other, more pressing and interesting matters waiting to be resolved, like Janus, the Illuminati, Jensen's Mystery Augs/Clone theory, etc. Human Revolution ended on a world-altering event and decision, while Mankind Divided feels like an unsatisfying cliffhanger to the original Deus Ex.

Of course, you can't talk about Mankind Divided without mentioning its politics

Let's not beat around the bush here; Mankind Divided's heavy-handed apartheid/racism metaphor just doesn't work. While it does do some interesting things to get its point across, like having semi-random unskippable cutscenes of police officers checking your papers, or store clerks refusing to do business with you (even though it's okay, all the actually important stores are more than happy to do business with you) it ultimately feels unearned and exploitative. It never feels like Adam Jensen, one of the most heavily augmented human beings on the planet, is actually a victim of this discrimination that's supposed to be everywhere. He doesn't have to deal with unwarranted police brutality because his papers are always in check, you can still go pretty much anywhere you want, and there aren't any longstanding consequences for actively trying to fight the oppression you're seeing. But then again, why would there be? Why would you want anything frustrating like that in your power fantasy of one man versus the Illuminati? Just have the social commentary serve as window dressing for the fun stuff, it's not like the two will tonally clash at all!

It also leads to, in retrospect, same really head-shaking "both sides" moments, where Adam can just as easily pin the blame on ARC (the Civil Rights/Black Panther/BLM analogue) as he can on the police state. Oh, and did I mention that the plot revolves around augmented people being planted inside of ARC by the powers that be to ferment extremism and terrorism to stir up people's hatred of augmented people, and that you hardly spend any time actually trying to combat the corruption and systemic violence that is the root of the problem? *Sigh*

All in all, I still really enjoyed my revisit with Mankind Divided, even if more of the character/story/political problems were more apparent this time around. The gameplay is still rock solid, and I can't deny the fun I had exploring this cyberpunk dystopia one more time.

 

[Rukun]

Really I thought the engine they had in HR was much better. It felt a lot smoother and I'm not sure why they went with a new one, delaying the game by two years IIRC.

I loved the original and HR. There were only a couple times I got that same feeling and sense of infiltration/exploration in MD: the palisade bank and the first time you go into the anti-terror HQ.

I didn't like the layout of Prague as a hub world, and really the level design catered solely to different ways to use every Aug - without actually being logically arranged, interesting to move around in, or look at.

 

[Thoraxes]

I was actually looking at this the other day since it's so cheap on consoles now, but I think i'm still going to hold out for the PC version to hit $10 next time a big sale rolls around. It seems like it still has that fun nature to the playstyles you can choose, and honestly that seems good enough for me. Shame about the story you mentioned, but that stuff usually doesn't bother me too much in games like these.

 

[JCHandsom]

Really I thought the engine they had in HR was much better. It felt a lot smoother and I'm not sure why they went with a new one, delaying the game by two years IIRC.

I loved the original and HR. There were only a couple times I got that same feeling and sense of infiltration/exploration in MD: the palisade bank and the first time you go into the anti-terror HQ.

I didn't like the layout of Prague as a hub world, and really the level design catered solely to different ways to use every Aug - without actually being logically arranged, interesting to move around in, or look at.

Yeah, Prague as a hub world pales in comparison to Detroit/Hengsha in HR, given all the districts (except the Red Light District of course) all sort of bleed together into the same gray city.

Favorite level is still probably The Rucker Extraction, since Golem City kinda feels like a mini-hub area, with its own characters and side stories to explore.

 

[dex3108]

In the end main twist was only hinted and story we got was definitely part of something bigger. It is unfortunate that we won't see whole story.

 

[TitusTroy]

this seems like one of those games that will be remembered more fondly as the years go by (same with ME: Andromeda)...got a lot of lukewarm reviews at launch but it seems that people are appreciating it more as time passes

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Let's not beat around the bush here; Mankind Divided's heavy-handed apartheid/racism metaphor just doesn't work.

I would compare MD's politics most closely to what you see in X-men, wherein it acts as a metaphor for several things simultaneously and is not a 1:1 match for any of them, in part because of its fantastical or science fictional conceits. It's not like real BLM, it's not like South African Apartheid, it's not like the situation in Palestine, but it does have shades of all three while bringing along the associated baggage of the Science Fiction. In one sense it's quite plausible that people in the future would appropriate the language and symbolism of the past whether or not it's a 1:1 fit for the realities of the day, but on the other hand because these events are so recent (or in some cases still ongoing), it's awkward to include it in that capacity from the perspective of a creator in 2016.

 

[JCHandsom]

I would compare MD's politics most closely to what you see in X-men, wherein it acts as a metaphor for several things simultaneously and is not a 1:1 match for any of them, in part because of its fantastical or science fictional conceits. It's not like real BLM, it's not like South African Apartheid, it's not like the situation in Palestine, but it does have shades of all three while bringing along the associated baggage of the Science Fiction. In one sense it's quite plausible that people in the future would appropriate the language and symbolism of the past whether or not it's a 1:1 fit for the realities of the day, but on the other hand because these events are so recent (or in some cases still ongoing), it's awkward to include it in that capacity from the perspective of a creator in 2016.

I think the biggest difference between what X-Men does (from what I've seen) and what happens in Mankind Divided is that the X-Men are constantly being portrayed as being victims of an unjust system. I never really felt that way playing as Adam; there's no solidarity shown between Adam and his fellow augmented in the way there was within the Mutant community, only sympathy extended out of a general sense of kindness, and that's only if you decide you actually want to go out of your way to help them.

The lack of general character development also hurts this; Macready never really changes his opinion on augs from what we see, Miller never really cares about you being augmented in the first place so he never really comments on it, the one other augmented character on your team is a totally optional side character you can ignore, and Marchenko has no nuance to his motivations, no self-righteous justifications for his violent actions, no remorse or conflict over targeting members of his own people, etc. It feels like all the cruelties that are happening occur off-screen while everyone in the main story ignores it. I will say that some of the side quests do a better job in fleshing this aspect of the game out.

 

[Javier23]

In the end main twist was only hinted and story we got was definitely part of something bigger. It is unfortunate that we won't see whole story.

Well, I mean, it's all leading up to the original Deus Ex. The main power players in MD feature prominently there as the main characters.

 

[SpaceWolf]

Let's not beat around the bush here; Mankind Divided's heavy-handed apartheid/racism metaphor just doesn't work.

I agree with this. There's a clumsiness to the social commentary, so much so it could get kind of offensive at points.

 

[Mivey]

Having finished the game recently myself, it kinda shows that they pieced together the story last minute. I am assuming they had something else in mind for all these characters and just didn't have the time to plan the stuff better. It's kinda sad. Maybe they didn't have enough budget to give you more optional dialogue with the characters? A mission or two from each of the people in TF29 would have also been nice.

I actually really liked the Prague hub from a gameplay perspective however. It might not be as visually interesting as Detroit and Henghsa taken together, but it was so much deeper as a place to explore.

 

[horkrux]

I would compare MD's politics most closely to what you see in X-men, wherein it acts as a metaphor for several things simultaneously and is not a 1:1 match for any of them, in part because of its fantastical or science fictional conceits. It's not like real BLM, it's not like South African Apartheid, it's not like the situation in Palestine, but it does have shades of all three while bringing along the associated baggage of the Science Fiction. In one sense it's quite plausible that people in the future would appropriate the language and symbolism of the past whether or not it's a 1:1 fit for the realities of the day, but on the other hand because these events are so recent (or in some cases still ongoing), it's awkward to include it in that capacity from the perspective of a creator in 2016.

That's an interesting point.
Such intend could easily be shown though, by offering other views on the matter ingame, like f.e. people criticizing the terminology, how it's effectively appropriated and current events aren't comparable (that happens all the time, so why would it change in the future).
Since they're not doing this, and since the marketing is clearly using terms like apartheid as if they actually applied, you can be sure they just thought it was a good fit. There's no meta commentary on appropriation here, it's just bad.

 

[Crypt]

I really liked this game. I played through it twice when it came out. I enjoyed it more than Human Revolution.

For all the complaints about getting half a game, I thought I got my money's worth. I think my first playthrough was 37 hours. The story was generic but nothing terrible and I didn't really have a problem with it ending where it did. To me, it was fun to play, which is the most important part.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

I think the biggest difference between what X-Men does (from what I've seen) and what happens in Mankind Divided is that the X-Men are constantly being portrayed as being victims of an unjust system. I never really felt that way playing as Adam; there's no solidarity shown between Adam and his fellow augmented in the way there was within the Mutant community, only sympathy extended out of a general sense of kindness, and that's only if you decide you actually want to go out of your way to help them.

The lack of general character development also hurts this; Macready never really changes his opinion on augs from what we see, Miller never really cares about you being augmented in the first place so he never really comments on it, the one other augmented character on your team is a totally optional side character you can ignore, and Marchenko has no nuance to his motivations, no self-righteous justifications for his violent actions, no remorse or conflict over targeting members of his own people, etc. It feels like all the cruelties that are happening occur off-screen while everyone in the main story ignores it. I will say that some of the side quests do a better job in fleshing this aspect of the game out.

The the game does inconvenience you despite having super-police credentials. It's pretty clear even without sidequests that if you were an ordinary augmented citizen your life would be a lot harder than Adam Jensen, who ranks highly in the power structures of the world and still faces high levels of harassment until people scan his ID card. This is especially true once you take a peek inside Golem city.

In terms of the X-Men, they're always being portrayed in a weird way since unlike being gay or an ethnic minority, you literally have superpowers, and for a sizable portion of the mutant population you'd never know they were mutants unless they displayed their powers or told you. Deus Ex's augmented situation is reminiscent of the mutants in several ways - a lot of them are enhanced over baseline humans, some of them are super powerful comparatively, and there's a fairly even split regarding if you'd even be able to tell they're augmented. Someone with a neuro-aug or a leg can easily pass as human without much effort to conceal their status, while others are obvious and stick out like a sore thumb. Just like the mutants, some of the Augs are portrayed as being in the wrong and extremists, while others are adamant about seeking a peaceful solution in the face of large scale discrimination.

That last bit is one of the sticking points people have. People are concerned about the potential syllogisms - if Augs are like Black People in the United States (because they used an Aug Lives Matter slogan), and then the game says more or less "the descrimination is obviously bad, but both sides have problems!" is that the creators saying the same thing about the real world? I don't think it does necessarily, but I see the worry and can understand it.

That's an interesting point.
Such intend could easily be shown though, by offering other views on the matter ingame, like f.e. people criticizing the terminology, how it's effectively appropriated and current events aren't comparable (that happens all the time, so why would it change in the future).
Since they're not doing this, and since the marketing is clearly using terms like apartheid as if they actually applied, you can be sure they just thought it was a good fit. There's no meta commentary on appropriation here, it's just bad.

I don't think it was deliberate, it's just one of those things where it seems a lot more plausible than people give credit for. People always frame their struggles in historical context and usually wind up making exaggerated comparisons to greater struggles in the past. In the case of the augs their struggle in the game world is extremely legitimate, but the creators were also extremely blind to the fact that making comparisons to active real world things would draw ire because they are seen as trivializing it, or using it to score cheap world building points without framing it in the proper context. Acknowledging what I've said here, I would have slapped whomever suggested including MECHANICAL APARTHEID and AUG LIVES MATTER in marketing materials and the game world because even if you can theoretical argue for their inclusion, in practice they add nothing to the game and just upset people.

 

[JCHandsom]

The the game does inconvenience you despite having super-police credentials. It's pretty clear even without sidequests that if you were an ordinary augmented citizen your life would be a lot harder than Adam Jensen, who ranks highly in the power structures of the world and still faces high levels of harassment until people scan his ID card. This is especially true once you take a peek inside Golem city.

It's not that I didn't understand that the discrimination was happening and that things were bad, it's that I didn't feel like I, me the player or Adam Jensen, was particularly affected by it. I chose to care as much as the game let me, and even then all I can do is say "Yeah the police are the problem" and then proceed to do nothing about it because I'm chasing conspiracies and augmented terrorists.

Even acknowledging the credential stops as an inconvenience requires a caveat, because almost every time I was stopped by the police they were intimidated/impressed/frustrated by my super-badass gear. It tries to be an example of the discrimination augs face daily while at the same time trying to make the player feel special. It's a microcosm of the tonal dissonance between the social commentary and power fantasy that is the entire game.

That last bit is one of the sticking points people have. People are concerned about the potential syllogisms - if Augs are like Black People in the United States (because they used an Aug Lives Matter slogan), and then the game says more or less "the descrimination is obviously bad, but both sides have problems!" is that the creators saying the same thing about the real world? I don't think it does necessarily, but I see the worry and can understand it.

Yeah, I wouldn't go so far as to say that the game states something as drastic as "The moral of the story is that minorities can be extremists too and the answer is in the middle!" but I do think the game hampers itself and ends up sounding confused and muddled in its commentary.

I don't think it was deliberate, it's just one of those things where it seems a lot more plausible than people give credit for. People always frame their struggles in historical context and usually wind up making exaggerated comparisons to greater struggles in the past. In the case of the augs their struggle in the game world is extremely legitimate, but the creators were also extremely blind to the fact that making comparisons to active real world things would draw ire because they are seen as trivializing it, or using it to score cheap world building points without framing it in the proper context. Acknowledging what I've said here, I would have slapped whomever suggested including MECHANICAL APARTHEID and AUG LIVES MATTER in marketing materials and the game world because even if you can theoretical argue for their inclusion, in practice they add nothing to the game and just upset people.

Pretty much, yeah.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

The Season Pass is on sale for $7.50 at Square Enix Store right now, for anyone who doesn't know.

I finally got around to picking up the Season Pass so I could play through the 2 DLC missions.

The first one, System Rift, is a surprisingly cool and fun little romp through a closed area of Prague which was visible in the main game but not accessible. It sort of made me think of Half-Life 2 Episodes 1 and 2, where you have a smaller and focused version of the main game compressed into a few hours of play. The sequence where you are inside of cyberspace has some nice puzzle elements and is probably one of my favorite parts of the Deus Ex fictional world. We didn't really get enough of the being inside cyberspace during the main game and seeing it again here was really nice.

I still need to play through the second one but this little bit of DLC a year later just reminds me how much I liked this franchise and how sad it is that Squenix has apparently killed it. They never even got around to fixing the bugs in the highest settings of the PC version, including Ultra shadows which don't actually work and you need to set them to High. I played through System Rift on a 1080 Ti, unlike the 1080 I had when I played through the main game, and it was easily holding 50-60 fps with all settings maxed except Shadows in 4K. The game looks as great as I remembered and it runs a lot better with the better video card now.

 

[Bishop89]

Loved it.

Not as much as HR though.

Prague being fully explorable is great and the combat is probably more solid but HR has better everything else (music, story, characters, atmosphere)

I missed the piss filter really sells the cyberpunk setting

 

[theofficefan99]

I really want to play HR and this but like I don't wanna care about something that ends on an unresolved cliffhanger.

 

[RuhRo]

Even acknowledging the credential stops as an inconvenience requires a caveat, because almost every time I was stopped by the police they were intimidated/impressed/frustrated by my super-badass gear. It tries to be an example of the discrimination augs face daily while at the same time trying to make the player feel special. It's a microcosm of the tonal dissonance between the social commentary and power fantasy that is the entire game.

This is a very smart point.

 

[Metal B]

It's not that I didn't understand that the discrimination was happening and that things were bad, it's that I didn't feel like I, me the player or Adam Jensen, was particularly affected by it. I chose to care as much as the game let me, and even then all I can do is say "Yeah the police are the problem" and then proceed to do nothing about it because I'm chasing conspiracies and augmented terrorists.

Playing as Jensen in Mankind Divided felt as being a white, liberal person in real life. You know and see, that other people with different believes, sexuality and skin colors have problems, but you aren't actually affected by it. It's a big missed opportunity and i could see, that SquareEnix was against making a game, where the game world was hustle against the main character, since it would be too controversial and taking away the power fantasy.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

I really want to play HR and this but like I don't wanna care about something that ends on an unresolved cliffhanger.

Human Revolution and Mankind Divided are both prequels.

The original Deus Ex and Invisible War occur after these games. Nothing is left unresolved, especially if you see all the endings of Invisible War.

 

[theofficefan99]

Human Revolution and Mankind Divided are both prequels.

The original Deus Ex and Invisible War occur after these games. Nothing is left unresolved, especially if you see all the endings of Invisible War.

But... isn't this game being apparently half-finished and ending on a cliffhanger a major complaint?

 

[Tacitus_]

But... isn't this game being apparently half-finished and ending on a cliffhanger a major complaint?

I wouldn't say it was half-finished nor that it had a cliffhanger ending. You stop the terrorist plot and are given a sequel hook in arranging a meeting with Janus. It's more of a "huh, that's it?" feeling. People wanted more than simply foiling a bombing.
If the third game doesn't happen, the only thing that'll be left open is what ultimately happened to Jensen. We know what happened to the wider world, we know what happened to the conspiracy of the Illuminati.

 

[horkrux]

But... isn't this game being apparently half-finished and ending on a cliffhanger a major complaint?

You could definitely play HR. It basically stands on its own, as long as you don't play MD afterwards )

 

[KillLaCam]

I just hate the ending. Like I thought I was near the middle of the game and was like finally stuff is happening".
Human Revolution had a really interesting story all around but Mankind Divided ended the second that I became interested. I was expecting something really cool to happen because of the hidden Versalife stuff. This gen has been bad for scifi games

The gameplay was great though.

 

[nOoblet16]

I can't see how anyone could think they were in the middle of the game while playing the last level.

You spend all your time prior to it chasing down the bombers, you finally find the bombers and go to a separate non hub location where you have to foil plans of a mass bombing. The music ramps up, the intensity of the encounters is ramped up and the only big baddie that you've seen so far in the game is in the level with you..talking to you. How then can it feel like it's only the middle of the game and there's someone else who's the villain, someone you haven't even seen? What kind of game doesn't even show the main villain even at the middle of the game? You start the game trying to find the bombers responsible and you finish it by finding them and stopping them...it's a self contained and complete story with hooks for a sequel..which is to be expected of the 2nd game in a trilogy.


The game ends on a note where you go "that was all? Hmm" but I just can't see how anyone can think the last level is mid game considering all the cues you get in that level and the prior levels. It even took me 30-35 hours to get there because I was doing side content as well. Golem city is intense enough to feel like middle of the game...which it is. GRAM felt like the last quarter and by the time you get back to Prague the final time I'm not sure how you can think that this is only the middle of the game considering there's a full blown curfew in what was previously an open hub and the game even tells you that it's the point of no return and you won't be able to do side quests when you leave it !

 

[Coxy100]

I can't see how anyone could think they were in the middle of the game while playing the last level.

You spend all your time prior to it chasing down the bombers, you finally find the bombers and go to a separate non hub location where you have to foil plans of a mass bombing. The music ramps up, the intensity of the encounters is ramped up and the only big baddie that you've seen so far in the game is in the level with you..talking to you. How then can it feel like it's only the middle of the game and there's someone else who's the villain, someone you haven't even seen? What kind of game doesn't even show the main villain even at the middle of the game? You start the game trying to find the bombers responsible and you finish it by finding them and stopping them...it's a self contained and complete story with hooks for a sequel..which is to be expected of the 2nd game in a trilogy.


The game ends on a note where you go "that was all? Hmm" but I just can't see how anyone can think the last level is mid game considering all the cues you get in that level and the prior levels. It even took me 30-35 hours to get there because I was doing side content as well. Golem city is intense enough to feel like middle of the game...which it is. GRAM felt like the last quarter and by the time you get back to Prague the final time I'm not sure how you can think that this is only the middle of the game considering there's a full blown curfew in what was previously an open hub and the game even tells you that it's the point of no return and you won't be able to do side quests when you leave it !

Fully agree mate.

Personally I thought the game was outstanding. Still not outclassed the original, but damned close.

 

[Jyester]

Loved the game. This series is unique in that I actually enjoy its stealth gameplay. HR was better, but I'm glad we got MD.

The the game does inconvenience you despite having super-police credentials. It's pretty clear even without sidequests that if you were an ordinary augmented citizen your life would be a lot harder than Adam Jensen, who ranks highly in the power structures of the world and still faces high levels of harassment until people scan his ID card. This is especially true once you take a peek inside Golem city.

In terms of the X-Men, they're always being portrayed in a weird way since unlike being gay or an ethnic minority, you literally have superpowers, and for a sizable portion of the mutant population you'd never know they were mutants unless they displayed their powers or told you. Deus Ex's augmented situation is reminiscent of the mutants in several ways - a lot of them are enhanced over baseline humans, some of them are super powerful comparatively, and there's a fairly even split regarding if you'd even be able to tell they're augmented. Someone with a neuro-aug or a leg can easily pass as human without much effort to conceal their status, while others are obvious and stick out like a sore thumb. Just like the mutants, some of the Augs are portrayed as being in the wrong and extremists, while others are adamant about seeking a peaceful solution in the face of large scale discrimination.

That last bit is one of the sticking points people have. People are concerned about the potential syllogisms - if Augs are like Black People in the United States (because they used an Aug Lives Matter slogan), and then the game says more or less "the descrimination is obviously bad, but both sides have problems!" is that the creators saying the same thing about the real world? I don't think it does necessarily, but I see the worry and can understand it.



I don't think it was deliberate, it's just one of those things where it seems a lot more plausible than people give credit for. People always frame their struggles in historical context and usually wind up making exaggerated comparisons to greater struggles in the past. In the case of the augs their struggle in the game world is extremely legitimate, but the creators were also extremely blind to the fact that making comparisons to active real world things would draw ire because they are seen as trivializing it, or using it to score cheap world building points without framing it in the proper context. Acknowledging what I've said here, I would have slapped whomever suggested including MECHANICAL APARTHEID and AUG LIVES MATTER in marketing materials and the game world because even if you can theoretical argue for their inclusion, in practice they add nothing to the game and just upset people.

I get that OP had a different experience with Jensen's 'opression', but I personally thought that the plight of the aug population was rather tangible. The check point cut-scenes were only part of it.

Like you mention, it wasn't the best idea to borrow real-world terminology, as it draws direct comparison to real life events, which may not be desirable considering the nature of ARC. To be honest though, I missed the "aug lives matter" pamphlets (were they featured prominently?) and thought that the game did a good job of portraying a resistance that started to radicalize in reaction to a hyper-oppressive regime.

In the end, the story was underwhelming, but I still loved the gameplay and the world-building. I pray to the angry gods of Squeenix for a sequel.

 

[Bunga]

I can't see how anyone could think they were in the middle of the game while playing the last level.

You spend all your time prior to it chasing down the bombers, you finally find the bombers and go to a separate non hub location where you have to foil plans of a mass bombing. The music ramps up, the intensity of the encounters is ramped up and the only big baddie that you've seen so far in the game is in the level with you..talking to you. How then can it feel like it's only the middle of the game and there's someone else who's the villain, someone you haven't even seen? What kind of game doesn't even show the main villain even at the middle of the game? You start the game trying to find the bombers responsible and you finish it by finding them and stopping them...it's a self contained and complete story with hooks for a sequel..which is to be expected of the 2nd game in a trilogy.


The game ends on a note where you go "that was all? Hmm" but I just can't see how anyone can think the last level is mid game considering all the cues you get in that level and the prior levels. It even took me 30-35 hours to get there because I was doing side content as well. Golem city is intense enough to feel like middle of the game...which it is. GRAM felt like the last quarter and by the time you get back to Prague the final time I'm not sure how you can think that this is only the middle of the game considering there's a full blown curfew in what was previously an open hub and the game even tells you that it's the point of no return and you won't be able to do side quests when you leave it !

Completely agree, in no way did it feel like I was mid-game (for all the reasons you describe) when it ended. It just didn't have a very good ending.

 

[Bishop89]

Completely agree, in no way did it feel like I was mid-game (for all the reasons you describe) when it ended. It just didn't have a very good ending.

Yeah this is how i feel. I didnt hate the ending, it just wasnt anything outstanding.
A bit shocked people thought it felt they were around the mid-game point, it clearly suggests its the ending.

 

[Budi]

Loved the game, didn't blow my socks of like HR did but I do think that it improved on many fronts. It's just that my expectations were really high. And the game somewhat reached those expectations so can't complain. The side quests were excellent and the level design in Praque especially was sublime. To many Jensen seems wooden and dull, but I do appreciate his grit and sarcastic wit. Not to forget Toufexis' raspy voice. Surprisingly considering the praxis kit microtransactions, I felt they handed those and xp out too much. I had to deliberately not use all my points to keep the game more interesting. Just in the end I invested everything I had and the game become a breeze. Ofcourse this could be the fault of certain augments being too powerful and not being too generous with upgrades.

I don't think I can comment on the discrimination and opression angle better than people here already have. Personally I had no problems with it, quite the contrary actually. I like when games atleast try to tackle these issues, could the game had done this better and with more discretion? Sure.

Edit: For the ending and the story, I can see why some people are upset. But to me it did tell a self-contained story (quality of it is another matter), but clearly left some threads hanging for the sequel. I wasn't surprised when the game ended. The fact that we might not ever get that sequel upsets me, not that the story was supposed to continue.

 

[captainnapalm]

I don't really buy the idea in Deus Ex that people in the near future are willingly cutting off their limbs and replacing them with metal ones. It's not a believable premise and the pay-off - the apartheid metaphor - isn't really worth it either. The whole thing feels terribly contrived. I don't recall it bothering me as much in the first game but in the second game it really hits you how unrealistic it all is.

For me the biggest problem with the game though is that the open world hub is just too dense. That kind of gameplay isn't suited to a large hub. And I don't like that you can come across mission and side mission content without already having started the missions. I don't think that's good design.

 

[Budi]

I don't really buy the idea in Deus Ex that people in the near future are willingly cutting off their limbs and replacing them with metal ones. It's not a believable premise and the pay-off - the apartheid metaphor - isn't really worth it either. The whole thing feels terribly contrived. I don't recall it bothering me as much in the first game but in the second game it really hits you how unrealistic it all is.

For me the biggest problem with the game though is that the open world hub is just too dense. That kind of gameplay isn't suited to a large hub. And I don't like that you can come across mission and side mission content without already having started the missions. I don't think that's good design.

I had a school mate about 10 years ago, while he didn't willingly lose his finger he had it replaced with an USB stick. Not the same thing I know, but reminded me of it. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...-has-lost-finger-replaced-with-USB-drive.html The article says Helsinki but he is/was actually from Riihimäki. =P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acVc6H7wYbA

 

[captainnapalm]

I had a school mate about 10 years ago, while he didn't willingly lose his finger he had it replaced with an USB stick. Not the same thing I know, but reminded me of it. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...-has-lost-finger-replaced-with-USB-drive.html The article says Helsinki but he is/was actually from Riihimäki. =P

That's pretty cool.

 

[888]

I keep trying to get into it despite loving HR. The game has that floating camera feel that I hate. Overall it feels super dated to me for some reason.

 

[Mivey]

I don't really buy the idea in Deus Ex that people in the near future are willingly cutting off their limbs and replacing them with metal ones. It's not a believable premise and the pay-off - the apartheid metaphor - isn't really worth it either. The whole thing feels terribly contrived. I don't recall it bothering me as much in the first game but in the second game it really hits you how unrealistic it all is.
.

In the whole world, of ( presumably by 2027) more than 8 billion people, you have had only around 60 million augs, remember reading that in MD. Purely mechanical augments are also probably a minority, you also have neural ones that allow you to think faster, process more information. I could absolutely see people go for this kind of stuff to get ahead. Then you also have a lot of augment done for industrial workers. Being able to easily lift heavy weights and perform a lot of complex operations without tools is probably a huge boost for production, I would also assume these augments are paid by corporations for workers.
Furthermore, why would anybody actively need to cut of their limbs? They might have had some accidents, or born with various kinds of defects.
You are underestimating the possibilities of transhumanism in real life.

 

[DISSESHOWEDO]

Loved both HR and MD, HR a little more. The only dissapointing thing with MD is that it ended out of nowhere. One second I'm playing and the next the credits roll.

Really hope that SE return to the franchise and give us a third part with conclusion (3-4 dev time at least).

 

[captainnapalm]

In the whole world, of ( presumably by 2027) more than 8 billion people, you have had only around 60 million augs, remember reading that in MD. Purely mechanical augments are also probably a minority, you also have neural ones that allow you to think faster, process more information. I could absolutely see people go for this kind of stuff to get ahead. Then you also have a lot of augment done for industrial workers. Being able to easily lift heavy weights and perform a lot of complex operations without tools is probably a huge boost for production, I would also assume these augments are paid by corporations for workers.
Furthermore, why would anybody actively need to cut of their limbs? They might have had some accidents, or born with various kinds of defects.
You are underestimating the possibilities of transhumanism in real life.

Accidents and defects I get, but it just seems like there are so many people doing it they must be opting for it. I just don't think people would willingly subject themselves to that kind of body horror. Jensen had no choice.

Don't have any problem with elective neural augs though. I could see that happening.

Overall it feels super dated to me for some reason.

That's the other big problem with MK. Five years wait for a sequel significantly smaller in scope, that feels and plays too similar to the original game. Movie sequels often get criticized for always needing to go bigger and better, but MK makes you realize why sequels kind of do need to do that.

 

[Ponchito]

I agree with your points OP. I love the wold of Deus Ex, I hope we get something down the road.

 

[PeterGAF]

There's actually a part of the racism/apartheid aspect of the game that I really liked: you mentioned in your post that the police checks are random. They are not. You only get stopped if you go through areas you're not supposed to be in as an aug. for example using the line for natural at the train stations or boarding the section of the train for naturals instead of the aug section will trigger a cutscenes where your papers are checked. Because these cutscenes were kind of annoying and I no longer wanted to put up with them I just started going where I was supposed to be instead of sticking it to the man. It's a clever little commentary on how people can be worn down to ultimately put up with unfair treatment just to avoid confrontation and to get by, thus allowing the unfair treatment to continue and be accepted as normal. I though it was a smart and subtle way of handling the issue. Not all issues regarding race in the game are this smart or subtle, but I don't think any of it was handled in an overly bad way either.

 

[nOoblet16]

Accidents and defects I get, but it just seems like there are so many people doing it they must be opting for it. I just don't think people would willingly subject themselves to that kind of body horror. Jensen had no choice.

Don't have any problem with elective neural augs though. I could see that happening.



That's the other big problem with MK. Five years wait for a sequel significantly smaller in scope, that feels and plays too similar to the original game. Movie sequels often get criticized for always needing to go bigger and better, but MK makes you realize why sequels kind of do need to do that.

Most augs are neural implants, then you have people who have had accidents, then you have a small number of population like the soldiers and mercenaries like the Belltower operatives who are pretty much forced to go through augs despite having perfectly functioning bodies due the nature of their work or their employers coercing them.

As the post you quoted said, 60 million augs in total in a population of 8 billion. The above three situations I mentioned would easily be enough to meet that 60 million number. It's not hard to imagine that happen.

 

[Sailent]

I agree with this. There's a clumsiness to the social commentary, so much so it could get kind of offensive at points.

They always try to sell the shit like "Yeah, people is not racist or homophobic anymore, too evolved for that, now they hate the augmented exclusively".

 

[Vic_Viper]

Loved Mankind Divided. My only gripe is that the story felt like it was only half of what it should have been. Shame that SE killed it off before they could finish the story they were trying to tell. Had they let them do what they wanted and not required them to tack on the unnecessary Breach mode the game probably would have done been a much better product.

If Tomb Raider's success is anything to go by, Deus Ex could have had much longer legs sales wise if SE hadnt so publicly labelled it a failure.

 

[MisterShine]

I'm actually replaying the game now as well! Got the season pass for real cheap like a year ago but figured I'd replay the main game too. Possibly debating playing the series in reverse order just for chuckles.

I get that they were trying to do a multi-part story with this game but honestly a lot of it falls flat. There's little development with the side characters or with Jensen. Honestly I'm not even sure why he's the protagonist of this game, despite what some theories concerning his identity might have us think.

My first run through was my standard No Kills No Alarms run through so this time I'm actually playing with all the toys and having a blast. Also doing NG+, which is awesome, since I now have almost all of the augs and can really go nuts.

Yeah, I wouldn't go so far as to say that the game states something as drastic as "The moral of the story is that minorities can be extremists too and the answer is in the middle!" but I do think the game hampers itself and ends up sounding confused and muddled in its commentary...

I think this is just the nature of an RPG? The game itself doesn't have a whole lot to say other than discrimination and prejudice is bad... it sets up the world for you and lets you react. Want to be a wishy-washy fencesitter 'both sides!' ? Sure. Want to straight up excuse terrorist attacks on civilian targets? Sure. Want to not care at all about the problems of other augs, either because you don't care or see yourself as having bigger problems?

You can do all that. I appreciate it, personally.

 

[Ristifer]

I think this is just the nature of an RPG? The game itself doesn't have a whole lot to say other than discrimination and prejudice is bad... it sets up the world for you and lets you react. Want to be a wishy-washy fencesitter 'both sides!' ? Sure. Want to straight up excuse terrorist attacks on civilian targets? Sure. Want to not care at all about the problems of other augs, either because you don't care or see yourself as having bigger problems?

You can do all that. I appreciate it, personally.

I think I remember the devs saying something similar to this when the game was releasing. They wanted you to think about it independently.

 

[JCHandsom]

I can't see how anyone could think they were in the middle of the game while playing the last level.

You spend all your time prior to it chasing down the bombers, you finally find the bombers and go to a separate non hub location where you have to foil plans of a mass bombing. The music ramps up, the intensity of the encounters is ramped up and the only big baddie that you've seen so far in the game is in the level with you..talking to you. How then can it feel like it's only the middle of the game and there's someone else who's the villain, someone you haven't even seen? What kind of game doesn't even show the main villain even at the middle of the game? You start the game trying to find the bombers responsible and you finish it by finding them and stopping them...it's a self contained and complete story with hooks for a sequel..which is to be expected of the 2nd game in a trilogy.

I certainly didn't think that I was in the middle of the game while playing the last level, but I did feel like I was playing something truncated down from something much larger.

Human Revolution has a very similar premise that it executes much better; your goal is to track down the people who attacked Sarif Industries, left you for dead, and killed (in actuality kidnapped) your girlfriend. This is in contrast to the Ruzicka bombing in Mankind Divided, where there is comparatively little emotional weight due to the lack of buildup and overall impact. Over the course of Human Revolution, you follow a trail of clues that eventually unravel a grand conspiracy to control the minds of all augmented people that twists into a madman's plot to kill tens of millions of people. You solve the initial problem by defeating the group that attacked you and rescuing the Sarif scientists, confront the mastermind of the larger conspiracy, stop it, and in the process you end up irrevocably changing the world through your actions, just like in the first Deus Ex.

As you point out in your post, all you end up doing in Mankind Divided is stopping the bombers from bombing another building/poisoning a bunch of people. You get glimpses of the greater conspiracy and who the main players are (Page, Manderley, Janus, etc.), but you never directly confront them like you do Hugh Darrow and Zhao Yun Ru, and you don't end up changing the world on the same scale as you do in either Human Revolution or the original. To say that it's a step down in scale from the previous games would be accurate.

 

[Vintage]

There's actually a part of the racism/apartheid aspect of the game that I really liked: you mentioned in your post that the police checks are random. They are not. You only get stopped if you go through areas you're not supposed to be in as an aug. for example using the line for natural at the train stations or boarding the section of the train for naturals instead of the aug section will trigger a cutscenes where your papers are checked. Because these cutscenes were kind of annoying and I no longer wanted to put up with them I just started going where I was supposed to be instead of sticking it to the man. It's a clever little commentary on how people can be worn down to ultimately put up with unfair treatment just to avoid confrontation and to get by, thus allowing the unfair treatment to continue and be accepted as normal. I though it was a smart and subtle way of handling the issue. Not all issues regarding race in the game are this smart or subtle, but I don't think any of it was handled in an overly bad way either.

I'm pretty sure I've been stopped regardless what train I took. I actually tried taking only the first tram and there are no penalties and the checks stop after 3-4 times. Also merchants that don't want to sell you stuff don't seem so intimidating when you have mechanical arms that shoot fucking blades out of them and you can kill and rob these merchants without consequences. Instead of oppressed, the game made me feel badass, so I don't know if that's a great portrayal of oppression. I also can't agree with subtlety part of it, as most of the stuff like making you sit in the back tram are more cliche than clever.

Overall, the game felt pretty boring to me because Adam Jensen himself looked bored. He is in a city he doesn't know helping task force he doesn't want to work for, to fight the war without clear sides that's also doesn't really involve him. Up until last hours I was lacking any motivation to do any of the quests since it felt useless for the main character.

As for the ending, the mission felt more like a sidequest than a finale. You either stop one of many terrorists you don't care about or save a bunch of civilians you don't care about. This is literally the same as the tutorial level in Human Revolution.

 

[JCHandsom]

I think this is just the nature of an RPG? The game itself doesn't have a whole lot to say other than discrimination and prejudice is bad... it sets up the world for you and lets you react. Want to be a wishy-washy fencesitter 'both sides!' ? Sure. Want to straight up excuse terrorist attacks on civilian targets? Sure. Want to not care at all about the problems of other augs, either because you don't care or see yourself as having bigger problems?

You can do all that. I appreciate it, personally.

I think that's fine in most contexts, but when you position your game as having "important stuff" to say about racism and discrimination by appropriating imagery and language from real world issues (Aug Lives Matter, Mechanical Apartheid, references to internment/concentration camps, segregated bathrooms, etc.) I find the "Make your own moral!" approach to be disingenuous.

It also bears repeating that even if one does choose to care about the oppression the augmented are facing, like I did, it is hampered by the fact that I can't really do anything about it outside saying "this is bad."

 

[Ristifer]

I certainly didn't think that I was in the middle of the game while playing the last level, but I did feel like I was playing something truncated down from something much larger.

Human Revolution has a very similar premise that it executes much better; your goal is to track down the people who attacked Sarif Industries, left you for dead, and killed (in actuality kidnapped) your girlfriend. This is in contrast to the Ruzicka bombing in Mankind Divided, where there is comparatively little emotional weight due to the lack of buildup and overall impact. Over the course of Human Revolution, you follow a trail of clues that eventually unravel a grand conspiracy to control the minds of all augmented people that twists into a madman's plot to kill tens of millions of people. You solve the initial problem by defeating the group that attacked you and rescuing the Sarif scientists, confront the mastermind of the larger conspiracy, stop it, and in the process you end up irrevocably changing the world through your actions, just like in the first Deus Ex.

As you point out in your post, all you end up doing in Mankind Divided is stopping the bombers from bombing another building/poisoning a bunch of people. You get glimpses of the greater conspiracy and who the main players are (Page, Manderley, Janus, etc.), but you never directly confront them like you do Hugh Darrow and Zhao Yun Ru, and you don't end up changing the world on the same scale as you do in either Human Revolution or the original. To say that it's a step down in scale from the previous games would be accurate.

I think MD was trying to hammer home the influence of the Illuminati with regards to the Human Restoration Act. But in the grand scheme of things, it's handled fairly poorly. The whole Act/Nathaniel Brown context isn't really all that fascinating. Nor does it really feel like it has any impact on the player. At least, that's the way I felt about it. Others may have felt it had more significance in the plot. But it just didn't deliver for me.

 

[stn]

Story could have been handled better but I loved the missions, gameplay, and the world. Prague was an amazing hub, maybe my most enjoyed ever.