Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Preview
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GameInformer has recently put online their own magazine preview of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. If you want to read three pages on the upcoming Deus Ex title from Eidos Montreal, with a particular focus on how the design offers multiple solutions and versatile tools, this article should have you covered. A snippet:
I retreat into the room. This is Adam Jensen's life now, this room. It's an incongruous end for a man who has dedicated the two years since the events of Human Revolution to becoming the perfect walking weapon. Human Revolution Jensen was the improvised, slightly buggy prototype who could only punch two people before having to recharge his batteries. Mankind Divided Jensen is colder, harder and deadlier. Eidos Montreal refer to him as Jensen 2.0.
Jensen 2.0 has just come up with a very stupid plan. With the right upgrades Jensen can lift huge objects, like the massive bin sitting in the corner. I open the door and grab the fridge-sized object, hugging it against my belly for dear life. The robot opens fire, and the bin soaks up the bullets it's working! I bump the robot backwards. The robot's guns fire point blank into the bin as we perform an absurd rotating waltz into the corridor. I'm a genius. I silently thank Prague council's commitment to bin sturdiness and slowly back away. I make it fi ve steps before the bin breaks. I'm an idiot.
I'm also dead, but laughing. In Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, even a tiny and almost featureless room can create moments of emergent absurdity. (That's exactly the kind of story that we look for,) gameplay director Patrick Fortier tells me. (We really believe in the strength of spontaneous moments. They're really powerful, and we believe that they're as exciting for players as the big scripted moments.)
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Mankind Divided will play out over a collection of hub zones, although Eidos Montreal hasn't confirmed how many yet. The Prague level I explored takes place in one corner of a sizeable area roughly two or three city blocks in size. The rest of the zone was locked off so I couldn't explore first-hand, but the new hubs will be more populated and detailed than Human Revolution's, thanks in large part to Mankind Divided's new engine.
(It's definitely a bigger monster than Human Revolution was,) says audio director Steve Szczepkowski. (In Human Revolution we could put maybe twelve people on screen that were moving, and then maybe another six static that would just sit and do their occupation. Well, that's doubled.) The amount of dialogue has grown as a result. (I don't remember what the total actor count is, but I know we're already way over a hundred. And that's with unique characters and all the factions we have so there's a lot of voices. We've done a lot for the acting economy here in Montreal.)
