A little while ago I was invited to an event to sit down and play a new demo for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. The build included the previously shown Prague hub along with a new area and the newly revealed Breach game mode. We were also able to interview the developers behind Mankind Divided and the mobile game Deus Ex Go.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Developer: Eidos Montréal
Platform: PC, PS4, & Xbox One
MonsterVine was invited to a hands-on preview event
Mankind Divided opens up with a lengthy recap on the events of Human Revolution and considering it’s been exactly five years since its release, I really appreciated the refresher. The demo dropped me right in the beginning of the game, the Dubai mission which functions as the game’s tutorial. You’re quickly reintroduced to Adam Jensen who is now part of an Interpol team and you’re dropped into a Dubai tower to deal with some unsavory characters. There’s nothing particularly noteworthy about this part so I won’t really go into any more detail since it mainly functions as a brief recap of how to play. To keep things short, the mission can either go well or terribly depending on how you handle certain objectives and the mission ends with you waking up in your Prague apartment after a terrorist attack.
The game properly starts things off in Jensen’s apartment with a slew of interactive objects to mess around with and can end with a video chat with David Sarif if you choose to answer his call. After finally leaving Jensen’s apartment I immediately noticed my neighbor’s locked door and proceeded to do the polite thing by showing them a proper breaking and entering procedure. The hacking minigame is more or less the same as it was before but the way it controls feels a bit snappier. I was easily able to jump between nodes, juggling the act of fortifying and capturing sections while keeping an eye on the timer counting down. After succeeding, I then proceeded to take anything that wasn’t nailed to the ground and was introduced to a new religious element to the game with a group of augmented people who worship a machine god. They unfortunately didn’t give me a side-quest involving passing out pamphlets and preaching the good word of the machine god, but this nice bit of world building was nice to see. Every inch of this game is filled with even more things to read to immerse you in this world than there ever was in Human Revolution and you could easily spend a good chunk of your time simply reading e-books or emails.
After reaching the streets, Prague starts to feel incredibly similar to Detroit in its wide open streets with tight alleys jutting off in every direction that are just ripe for exploring. It’s a good deal larger than Detroit and Prague itself is split into multiple areas that are accessed by a subway system. These subways are segregated, just adding more to the already tense atmosphere in the game. You can either do things the easy way and go down the path with the other augs, or test your luck by trying to enter the section designed for regular humans which is a quick way to receive a one-way trip to the game over screen. Prague is also quite a vertical place with apartments to scale and underground areas to discover; it took all of my effort to stick to the main story path and you could easily get lost for a good chunk of hours.
One particular location that caught my attention was a small area close to Jensen’s apartment guarded by two thugs with more inside. With the police patrolling fairly nearby I was a bit hesitant to start a possible firefight in the middle of the streets out of fear of being targeted by both sides but I quickly learned that you can play both factions against each other. I managed to egg the thugs into attacking first which immediately caught the attention of a police drone that came in and cleaned house before returning to its patrol. It was stupidly satisfying pulling that off and I was able to pick the place clean without fear of any thugs walking around. Unfortunately my fun stopped once I hit an area flooded with poisonous gasses and I couldn’t unlock the gas filter aug since I currently needed to go repair them after an incident that happened during the tutorial.
It’s at that point where I decided to continue on the story path for the sake of not being limited by my current inability to use my augs so I headed down to the bookstore to find Václav Koller, a man who could repair my malfunctioning augs. As I got there I decided to try out a different control scheme which was an incredibly bad idea as I immediately accidentally shot someone with my shotgun and caused all hell to break loose. For the next five minutes I proceeded to play a game of hide and seek with the enemies as I desperately tried to sneak my way through the field of grenades that were being lobbed my way. To keep things short, I didn’t succeed and died embarrassingly enough by having my head blown off while I was cowering behind the dumpster.
I was then reminded of the very old tradition of constantly saving because I had hit an autosave bug and I had lost maybe 3 hours worth of playtime. After realizing my huge mistake I decided it was a good time to try out the new Breach mode.
When I first read how Breach was going to be a sort of arcade version of the mechanics from the main game I was a little apprehensive at the idea since it sounded like the exact opposite reason I come to a Deus Ex game for, but it works surprisingly well as a nice distraction from the main game. In Breach your goal for each level is to reach every data tower, download the info, and get out as fast as possible. Obstructing your path are computerized guards, turrets, and once you collect all the data the level itself starts blocking your way to the exit.
Breach is interesting because it plays like Deus Ex, but forces you out of the comfort zone the series built for you. The faster you complete a level, the better your reward. So you’ve got this situation where you’re told to rush your way through a level while also not being seen by enemy AI and making sure to capture every node, including the optional ones, if you want to finish with a good score. Planning how to tackle a stage is a key element of Breach since you’re limited in what you can bring into a level. You have the same augs as Jensen, but a memory limit to how many you can equip. Your items/weapons are also stored in an inventory outside a mission so you have to select your loadout before entering.
Completing levels will reward you with loot in the form of guns, ammo, and items that all come in different rarity levels. There are also booster packs to acquire that will give you modifier cards that you can apply in a level that will alter things like your score multiplier, your weapon damage, or my particular favorite was the one that made you run crazy fast which will be popular for speed runs. Since these modifiers aren’t unlimited you’ve got to decide whether to save these cards for a level that’s giving you a bit of trouble or using them to help get you that highscore that’s been eluding you. This is also where the ugly face of DLC pops its ugly head with you being offered a choice for spending hard cash on various items. You can just purchase upgrades and booster packs with credits earned by playing, but hopefully there isn’t any sort of major grind that rewards players who fork over real money.
What’s easily going to be my favorite part of the game is being able to complete a level and send a challenge to your friends, wagering some points on whether or not they can beat your time or score. I’m a sucker for this kind of social shit talk and really can’t wait to see how quickly players will finish some of these levels. Eidos Montréal crafted an interesting game mode that takes the slow burn gameplay of the series and ramps it up into a hectic, leaderboard focused shindig.
After getting my fill of Breach I decided to jump back into Mankind Divided and hopped onto a PC version of the game which looks, and plays, drastically better than the Xbox One; it was like night and day and highly recommend anyone get the game on PC if that’s an option. I thankfully didn’t have to start all over since the person whose system I commandeered saved almost religiously and I was able to continue a bit past where I left off.
After leaving Koller I decided to head to the Interpol headquarters for my next mission which was to arrest the leader of the Augmented Rights Coalition which required heading to a new area, Golem City. This area is the exact image you picture when thinking of a slum city in a cyberpunk setting. It’s not quite as expansive as Prague, but there’s still a good amount to explore and interesting characters to meet.
It’s here where I played around with some of the newer augments you’ll find in Mankind Divided. The remote hacking aug and Icarus dash are perhaps the most interesting new additions as one allows you to hack things from a considerable distance and the other lets you “dash” to a location similar to the blink ability in Dishonored. I’m still not sure how to feel about these two augs since they both sort of simplify the process of hacking and exploration in the game but I’m interested to tinker with them in the full release.
Besides those you also have the Tesla arm which allows you to target up to four enemies and zap with electrifying darts. This is an incredibly useful tool that I unfortunately didn’t get to use very often during my demo due to a lack of ammo. Jensen can also acquire an aug that turns his arm into a concussive cannon which is really going to make it hard to play a silent playthrough with. Some of these augments did end up feeling a bit too useful, particularly the dash and remote hack, especially for someone like me who has a lot of patience and can wait for the free battery cell to recharge. Besides that, new elements to the game include the ability to instantly customize elements of your current weapon such as the ammo type or firing speed and experimental augs that are slightly different versions of existing augs that can cause Jensen to overheat and experience glitches if too many are equipped.
Considering I had sneaked my way through most of the demo and was my main form of playing in the series, I decided to hop out of my comfort zone for the final section of the demo by going guns blazing. As you can assume, this doesn’t play like Call of Duty so firefights still don’t feel super great but it is a noticeable step up from Human Revolution. The shooting and cover mechanics, while still not perfect, are snappier than it was before and I felt a lot more confident in my chances of surviving a shootout here than I ever did in Human Revolution. The AI unfortunately still doesn’t seem equipped to handle a gunfight with them constantly moving out of cover and trying to run up into my face to shoot me. I could understand if this happened with shotgun wielding enemies who are meant to rush your location, but during almost every fight I’d have a dozen enemies all get out of cover to rush at me. This is hopefully something that will be fixed by the time the game releases. So even though stealth is still the way to play this series, I didn’t feel totally helpless once the bullets started flying like I did in past titles. The rhino armor coats Jensen’s body in a weird polygonal armor that’ll protect you from incoming bullets and additional augs like the Icarus Strike or projectile arm blade really help shift fights in your favor.
So during my time in the final section of Golem I basically slaughtered my way through every room with a mix of gung-ho revelry that would make an 80’s action movie proud. As you can imagine, killing all of those people didn’t do me any favors when it came to confronting Talos Rucker at the end of the area and I had to talk him down during a conversation. These conversation battles are still a highlight of the series as you tiptoe through a minefield of dialog choices that can either lead you to a peaceful solution or worsen the situation. He didn’t take too kindly to me icing everyone and I pretty much blew the whole mission. Things got a bit worse when his goons busted into the room and I proceeded to run like a bat out of hell to the extraction point since I was completely out of ammo and items. Through sheer dumb luck I managed to just barely make it and was returned to Prague where I immediately saw various consequences of my actions in Golem. It was at this point that my time with the demo ended because I had begun to play quite a bit past where I was supposed to stop and was quickly ushered off the system.
Mankind Divided is the exact kind of game you want from a sequel. The art design is more focused, everything about the gameplay is improved, and the story seems to be telling a more interesting tale than before. Even though I played the game for nearly six hours, I feel like I barely scratched the surface of what Mankind Divided has to offer and I’m eager to jump back into this world when it releases next month.
