Deus Ex Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

[DalekFlay]

Yeah, I'll give it a go. I don't think any marketing team wants a Forbes article calling their marketing ham-fisted at release, and I was one of the people that was put off. I'll be interested to see how the issue of cybernetics is handled with Poland V Canada, or Cyberpunk V Deus Ex though...

I forget, did you play Human Revolution? I thought that game handled the issue very well, the whole "freedom to upgrade" versus "freedom to live in a world where I don't feel I HAVE to upgrade to compete" thing was especially focused on. Mankind Divided focuses less on that and more on "everyone hates augs now and wants to restrict them,, what do you think?" You can, I believe, answer dialogs and whatnot in all the different ways you'd want to that question.

 

[Beastro]

If you want to never hear a Left-leaning perspective though then might not be the game for you (also WTF is wrong with you?).

Gotta realize lots of people who are pretty much conservative from birth have a tolerance level of things going back to growing up with the way cartoons and games always are, like in my case and the moralizing they did in the 80s and 90s ("Sorry, GI Joe, 'Violence is never the answer' is BS and depends upon the situation one is in. Besides if it was never the answer, then wtf did it just work today at school kicking the ass of that bully that was pushing around one of my friends and wtf do you think I'm even watching your bloody cartoon for in the first place???"), especially in cartoons like Spot the Smoggies where I cheered the villains on because they were the only ones with personalities that didn't make me want to murder them or wtf are empires always the bad guy in games and not sometimes helping the protag? *hums Heart of Iron*

For many people, if they were unaccommodating towards Leftist bent in games and TV, they'd have played/watched none as kids, which no one did.

The issue today is the over the overt, intolerable, self-aware level of shit being rammed down people's throats that would make Captain Planet seem subtle.

 

[Chippy]

I did (I even went back and bought a second copy when they enhanced it) but didn't feel they focussed enough on what it actually meant to become a cyborg. I talk to people all the time who consider swapping out body parts (like knees) in much the same way as replacing tyres on their car's, and I expect if tech from the game became available in real life, they'd be the first to say: "Yeah I can watch the neighbours shagging through the walls now bro!". But for other people like myself these games have a bit of a responsibility to tackle the more philosophical side of things, even if they only do it in text - like the Forgotten Realms books scattered around BG.

Edit: So if they put as much effort into that as they did the politics in the original, these latest games would be on a new level.

 

[DalekFlay]

The issue today is the over the overt, intolerable, self-aware level of shit being rammed down people's throats that would make Captain Planet seem subtle.

I get that, trust me. I'm pretty much a centrist who thinks both sides in the U.S. have gone insane right now, but the Left is especially good at being smug and fucking annoying. I totally get it. What I was trying to say was that games presenting both sides of an issue is a good thing, as long as the player can respond accordingly. I dislike it when people act like nothing on their monitor or TV can present to them a different perspective than theirs, be it Left or Right.

 

[Sacibengala]

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SQUARECRO

It is the chance to say what we think about this and everything else squareenix has been doing.

 

[Ivan]

holy shit, I'm climbing the age bracket

getting old FAST

 

[Multidirectional]

I should also let you guys know that Mankind Divided is Skyway approved.

 

[Falksi]

Personally I prefered HR, but MD was still a good solid game. The setting & more open-world-esq hubs detracted from the experience more than added to it for me.

Both games suffer from one daft decision tho - more experience for being a pacifist. It gives you all these good playstyles to use, yet penalizes you from using half of them. Daft.

 

[Paul_cz]

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SQUARECRO

It is the chance to say what we think about this and everything else squareenix has been doing.

Thanks for the link, I told them I am pissed about cancelation of deus ex in favour of marvel nonsense and asked them to get back to deus ex and sleeping dogs

not that I expect it will have any effect obviously

 

[Riso]

I bought the DLC for this game. If they suck it's your fault and I will never listen to you guys again.

 

[Space Nugget]

Holy-fucking-shit, I can't stand this game's plethora of godawful NPCs any longer. MacReady, Smiley, Chang, Koller... the dialogue writing is many levels of bad (that fits right along with other Square Enix games, like Thi4f and Life is Strange 2), and so is the cringy voice-acting (also: fuck that accent). On the gameplay side, I found many aspects to be clunky as fuck: jumping is shit, mantling is shit, looting is shit, and that's just the basics. Everything you can do or discover is either pedestrian or over-the-top.

Anyways, I just rage-quit DXMD for the last time. Now I'm thankful the game didn't do well and the series is dead for good.

 

[Athos]

Holy-fucking-shit, I can't stand this game's plethora of godawful NPCs any longer. MacReady, Smiley, Chang, Koller... the dialogue writing is many levels of bad (that fits right along with other Square Enix games, like Thi4f and Life is Strange 2), and so is the cringy voice-acting (also: fuck that accent). On the gameplay side, I found many aspects to be clunky as fuck: jumping is shit, mantling is shit, looting is shit, and that's just the basics. Everything you can do or discover is either pedestrian or over-the-top.

Anyways, I just rage-quit DXMD for the last time. Now I'm thankful the game didn't do well and the series is dead for good.

What was seen cannot be unseen...

Spoiler

I also finished this game recently and I think that rumors about it being the product of a split are belivable. Jensen is divided between two camps and in neither of them the characters are well rounded (Vega on one side and the TF29 crew on the other). The Interpol dudes in particular seem one-trick ponies: Chang is really, REALLY paranoid, Smiley is a Narcissus womanizer, Mcready is the grumpy bro you don't have any time to appreciate much before the final mission and so on. Even Miller is underdeveloped and you don't have time to understand really his motivation before the endgame hits. Marchenko was clearly designed to be the typical mid-game boss and according to the wiki he was supposed to be the sidekick of another Illuminati agent in a longer ARC questline maybe. Then there is Madame Photographe, carefully designed and with an important role but seen only as an anonymous background character spying on Jensen at the start and at the end of the game. I think they reused her part in what was maybe a main quest mission in the incoclusive side quest about your secret augs.

About gameplay mechanics, a missed opportunity is the overclocking stuff. There is no penalty unless you activate all the experimental stuff, no drawback whatsoever even though Koller tells you that the new augs eat your energy away. Also the balancing of the inventory space felt wrong to me, you can stack too much resources. Definetly the game feels rushed out of the door in certain aspects.

 

[taxalot]

And.... completed it. (well, the main story, I still have the DLC to do)

It's hard to give impressions. On a technical and gameplay standpoint, I really do not have much to say : it knows how to do its job, and it does it well. Levels are big and clearly allow different approaches. The city of Prague feels immersive, although it does feel like a smaller game than the previous one. It stil has some balancing issues because some of the augs are clearly overpowered (invisibility allowed me to basically skip an entire level).

But the main issues lie beyond gameplay, it's a...small game that feels like it's half of something. I was thinking I'd go back to Golem City and that it would be some kind of second hub considering how much they advertised the place in pre-release material and, well, you don't. There are sidequests, but in poor quantity (although the quality is there).

But the biggest disappointment is clearly the story : you can tell they are intent to bridge the gaps towards the original Deus Ex and this causes issues in itself because I pretty much know my actions are going to be in vain : Bob Page and Manderley are going to fuck everyone by the end of Jensen's story so whatever I did in that game felt pointless. I felt no struggle to reach for a good ending (and I didn't... okay, I guess I could have saved some lives ?)

But there are other things in the storytellng that do no take off : the segregation against Augs and the parallels with the black civil rights is so obvious that it gets really cringy, although I do not believe Augs segregation would be unrealistic in the Deus Ex world after what happened at the end of Deus Ex HR.
The game however fails to tell an actual story : I'm fighting a false flag operation but... why ? Where does this fit in the grand scheme of things ? What am I accomplishing really ? Sure, it's bad, but it feels inconsequential. The whole game's premise is merely a pretext to start the investigative work on the illuminati and as such you have an entire that feels like the first chapter or the prologue to something that will likely never come around if Eidos' late attitude is to be believed. If I hadn't already heard there was issues about the ending, I would have been pretty shocked when the credits started rolling.

This lack of involvement in the story made whatever remained of an actual story pretty confusing : it's hard to understand how the main characters interact with each other in terms of motivation, and also hard to guess what the motivations truly are. Illuminatis develop a pro-aug and anti-aug attitude depending on the times and people that might actually show where the story is headed but as a player I felt like I was spending the entire game in a blur, trying to stop terrorist actions without much understanding of what was at stake. To be fair, that's pretty much how Jensen felt in the game.

TL;DR : Deus Ex MD is a very competent game with a pretty bad story. I liked Deus Ex HR a lot better.

 

[unfairlight]

I'm fighting a false flag operation but... why ? Where does this fit in the grand scheme of things ?

I'd like to remind that the game was blatantly unfinished and that the final boss of the final release was probably intended to be near the mid point before it had to be rushed out. I'm sure they intended to flesh it out with DLC and the Deus Ex Universe thing before they dropped that idea because MD flopped so hard. I don't think the story is bad, it's simply unfinished.

 

[taxalot]

Oh yes, the entire Marchenko deal basically spells how unfinished the game is : he's the only actual boss fight in the game (which I finished in mere seconds in a ridiculous fashion (EMP mine+Takedown)), but also you barely see him in two cutscenes and that's it. He's not fleshed out and he has mid-boss written all over his face.


Something is also to be said in enemy variety in itself : the patrolling robots and over-powered units that are usually the hallmarks of Deus Ex final sequences are almost absent in this game.

It's pretty sad, because in the end the game length's is fairly honorable in itself. It is indicative of poor planning, however.

 

[Athos]

There are sidequests, but in poor quantity

Poor quantity? I felt that the sidequest were more than half of the game. I agree with the rest, the game was clearly cut in half and stitched toghether for a quick cash grab for Square Enix. It's not in ugly shape, but feels incomplete.

 

[RK47]

Most of the 'side quest' involves you just poking around in a room and collecting info from data hacks or loot anyway.
There is a quest where you can get into a wrong conclusion from an investigation but that's just one of the few examples.
Overall, the frustration with the game is that it barely moves the plot forward.

 

[Athos]

Most of the 'side quest' involves you just poking around in a room and collecting info from data hacks or loot anyway.
There is a quest where you can get into a wrong conclusion from an investigation but that's just one of the few examples.
Overall, the frustration with the game is that it barely moves the plot forward.

I don't think so, I played the game recently and I remember many of them. Some sidequests were quite long with dedicated assets. The "poking around a room and collecting info and getting xp" were the Point of Interest you have to buy from the shady dealer.

Edit: There are 12 side mission plus various POI, the Main Quest has 17 missions but at least a couple are mutually exclusive. https://deusex.fandom.com/wiki/Deus_Ex:_Mankind_Divided_walkthrough

 

[Barbalos]

Fun game to play, but one of the worst endings I've ever seen. Soo many unfinished plot threads and leads.

 

[DalekFlay]

And.... completed it. (well, the main story, I still have the DLC to do)

The prison one is very much worth playing. The others are meh. Agree with your thoughts on the main game, its main problem is definitely feeling incomplete.

 

[Carrion]

I liked Deus Ex HR a lot better.

I agree on most things about your post, but I think out of the two games I might still pick MD. Human Revolution is a more complete game for sure, but it too has major storytelling issues, like the forced conflict between augs and non-augs that doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you think about it. MD has some major flaws and feels like half a game, but it takes major steps forward in level and quest design, generally allowing for a more free-form approach to solving problems. I found myself enjoying the gameplay more than in HR, which felt pretty formulaic with its convenient air ducts and more straightforward levels.

 

[DalekFlay]

I agree on most things about your post, but I think out of the two games I might still pick MD. Human Revolution is a more complete game for sure, but it too has major storytelling issues, like the forced conflict between augs and non-augs that doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you think about it.

Eh? The augment debate in HR is one of my favorite game plot points. The idea of how such augmentations would change society might not be handled as well as a great and well-researched novel could do it, but for a video game it's pretty well done. The basic concept of a divide in ability and therefore employability between those who augment and those who don't is a good basic concept to build a divide around.

 

[AW8]

MD has some major flaws and feels like half a game, but it takes major steps forward in level and quest design, generally allowing for a more free-form approach to solving problems. I found myself enjoying the gameplay more than in HR, which felt pretty formulaic with its convenient air ducts and more straightforward levels.

Overall the gameplay took a huge leap forward in MD. Jensen is a lot squishier and toothless in HR due to the lack of offensive and defensive augs, so whether you play stealthily or loud you're forced to glue yourself behind cover. The Stun Gun makes a lot of noise and Jensen doesn't pull enemies behind cover when doing stealth takedowns, so overall stealth is more frustrating and leads to a lot of quickloads unless you want to run into a vent and wait for enemies to reset.

In my loud playthrough of MD I barely ever used cover because I never needed it. Just spec yourself as a tank and shoot enemies with the correct ammo type before they shoot you and you'll be OK.

Eh? The augment debate in HR is one of my favorite game plot points. The idea of how such augmentations would change society might not be handled as well as a great and well-researched novel could do it, but for a video game it's pretty well done. The basic concept of a divide in ability and therefore employability between those who augment and those who don't is a good basic concept to build a divide around.

I'm currently playing through HR again and I don't think the idea is that well executed in-game. The aug hatred makes sense in MD because of the ludicruous comic book-level Aug Incident orchestrated by Ozymandias Hugh Darrow, but in HR it mostly seems like people hate augs because of some fanatical conviction that it's "wrong to play God". The closest the game comes to the theme of employability is the sidequest in Shanghai where the prostitute refuses to get augmented to bring in more customers - which feels more like a comment on plastic surgery, to be honest.

 

[TheChickenKing]

To parrot comments on how literally unfinished Mankind Divided is, I'd say it's probably my personal most heartbreaking release of all time. I liked the plot threads they were setting up, even if not all of them worked (the "Aug Lives Matter" parallels were awkward and did nothing for a subplot that made sense on its own and really didn't need modern political relevancy). The gameplay took the "good ideas but awkward execution" found in Human Revolution in some really solid directions. And then the story fizzles out just before you reach what should be the start of the big finale.

It's amazing how much that undercuts the game. All of a sudden, the conspiracy they were building never reaches a resolution and so the entire game feels pointless. All mystery with no "aha!" moment. The good ideas in the gameplay clearly never received the polish they deserved, making it a much more solid entry than Human Revolution but one that still doesn't reach its own potential. To make matters worse, the lack of a proper finale means that there's no big boss fight or final encounter where you get to push your abilities to their extreme, an arguably critical part of any game with a huge focus on progression and character growth.

As far as I understand it, the devs did have a specific vision for where they wanted the game to go before Square Enix stepped in and told them to break it into two separate games. Of course, vision doesn't guarantee quality, but the build up was purposeful enough throughout the game that I'd give them the benefit of the doubt on that point. And then, of course, Square Enix steps in and puts the entire franchise on hold because the invasive microtransactions they forced into the game weeks before release combined with the creative vision they forced the devs to butcher did not lead to good sales. Fuck Square Enix.

 

[Carrion]

Eh? The augment debate in HR is one of my favorite game plot points. The idea of how such augmentations would change society might not be handled as well as a great and well-researched novel could do it, but for a video game it's pretty well done. The basic concept of a divide in ability and therefore employability between those who augment and those who don't is a good basic concept to build a divide around.

I don't think the concept stands up to scrutiny all that well. For one, augmenting yourself means that you need to cut off a body part, go through an expensive operation and take a specific medicine (produced by a single company) for the rest of your life. That alone would be a pretty big hurdle for most people, aside from which it's hard to see augmentations being that big of an advantage in most jobs. The social aug would probably be the most useful one but makes you look like a creep, and what else is there? Sure, augmented limbs help if you're going to do heavy physical labor, but an average worker probably couldn't afford such augs anyway. The people that do are most likely already pretty well off (as in, the divide is already there), or they're using augs to gain back their sight or their ability to walk, in which case you would be a total fucking asshole to oppose them having the possibility of doing so.

The game just doesn't do a very good job convincing you that there actually is a divide caused by augmentations. The most concrete example it gives you is augmented whores, which seems more like a peculiar fetish than anything else. The ethical questions surrounding augmentations would spark a debate for sure, but would it really make people riot in the streets? Don't they have anything more pressing to worry about? There were some neat ideas regarding augmentations, though, like Neuropozyne addiction, the black market and the software upgrade (if only it had been something more subtle than a zombie virus), and I think they should've explored the theme more from that angle.

As a side note I didn't like how slick the augs looked. I wish they'd gone more for the Gunther Hermann look, since it's supposed to be early days for augmentation technology.