Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Previews, Gameplay Footage
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An embargo seems to have lifted, because a large number of outlets has started publishing previews and gameplay footage videos of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Eidos Montreal's sequel to the 2011 Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It makes sense, given that the game is coming out next month, something that had slipped my radar until recently.
IGN:
For example, while looking for a low-key way to meet up with returning hero Adam Jensen’s local augmentation specialist in Prague, I stumbled across a fake police checkpoint that was actually a front for an extortion ring. I guess I could have pulled out a gun and shot my way through, but with cops circling, I’d be risking getting caught in the middle of a bloodbath. If I’d put some points into my cloaking device, that would have gotten me past the thugs and the infrared sensors they were using to keep intruders out, but alas, I was not so equipped. I’d have to do it the old fashioned way. What I thought would be a simple smash-and-grab turned into an hour-long story unto itself, complete with a mix of stealth and gunplay, some family drama, and a healthy dose of moral ambiguity. Without spoiling anything, I’ll just say Mankind Divided’s world is a cruel one, where even the best intentions can’t fully protect the weak and innocent.
And this doesn’t even begin to discuss the myriad ways you can complete a mission. After the opening tutorial in Dubai, Jensen’s aug’s suffer a bit of a glitch, so he needs to go and see his “tech guy” to get them fixed. Without spoiling too much, something happens during the fix that leads Adam to discover new aug upgrades within his system, many of which you’ll have seen in the trailers.
However, in order to avoid Jensen completely frying his circuits, the tech whizz had to do a factory reset. As I said, this game demands your attention, but in a momentary lapse I didn’t notice Adam’s Ctrl+Alt+Del had removed all upgrade points on his system. When the game notified me that I had 11 points to spend on improving him, I spent everything on hacking and conversation perks, meaning I had nothing in terms of combat or exploration. I couldn’t even jump that high.
This meant my way of playing the game was entirely different to that of everyone else. What at first felt like a terrible error in fact opened my eyes to the other ways to play the game. In Human Revolution, I played like a stealthy Hitman. In Mankind Divided, I had to become a smooth-talking hacker: analysing people’s speech patterns, knowing how to respond (the Alpha, Bravo, Omega chat-analysis tool returns from HR) and avoiding combat at all costs. It was the polar opposite to my experience in Human Revolution, but equally enthralling and rewarding.
And then there’s the narrative itself, a byzantine behemoth of social commentary, conspiracy theory, and old-school speculative fiction. What would happen if society discriminated between “naturals” and the augmented, who are equipped with artificial arms, legs, or organs? The team behind Mankind Divided thinks the resulting conflict would look eerily familiar.
One surreal sequence set in Prague played like a highly evolved game of Papers, Please. Most of the unmodified, “natural” NPCs I encountered mistrusted or even disparaged me, simply because protagonist Adam Jensen is augmented — a “clank.” It was an unnerving and dehumanizing ordeal, but it firmly planted me in the game’s universe. I’m betting all that societal strife pays off nicely in the final game.
Start climbing and the other apartments in Jensen’s block might be empty of people, but true to Deus Ex there’s ways and means to sneak into them. And they’re packed with story. Indeed, DeMarle tells me that there was a level designer who was solely devoted to environmental storytelling in the city hubs. “She’d work with artists to decorate these (flats) to tell these stories, and later work with the narrative team to craft these stories… the environmental stories are akin to writing poetry—you’re just putting in glimpses through emails and it’s the reader’s responsibility to connect the dots and make up their own story.”
Go lower, into the sewers and there are environmental puzzles involving electricity and poisonous gases. There are augs hiding out from the cops. There are shortcuts and secret entrances to half the buildings in the city. And, at the far end of one sewer pipe, there’s even a group of mesmerised people led by a persuasive man called Richard and surrounded by even more persuasive turrets.
“The side quests are made to be scalable, depending on your choices.” says DeMarle. Though I've been asked not to spoil any of the quests, I can see that expansiveness in the ones I completed. At several points in each quest chain, Jensen is given a chance to back out of further commitment, perhaps to solve the problem by violence or money—or even just walk away and leave them unresolved. “Or you can go farther and each step along the way, based on your choices, it can expand and introduce new characters, who might come back later.”
Venture Beat has a short interview focused on the Breach mode:
GamesBeat: How does the leaderboard add a social component to it?
Marty: As I was saying, there’s a lighter turn to it. It’s very arcade. We embraced that aspect. When you shoot the [A.I. enemies], damage appears in the air. The HUD feels very much like an arcade game. The leaderboard element, I hope the players will enjoy it as much as we did on the floor because we spent hours challenging each other, trying to beat each other.
We have two leaderboards. One is for score. Your main objective in a map, 90 percent of the time, is to find some data. You rack up your score for finding the data, but also for all the actions you perform inside the map, like finishing undetected or killing [A.I. enemies]. The other leaderboard is the time leaderboard. The quicker you finish, the higher you’ll rank on the leaderboard. What I love about having both is that if you want to be the best at both, you have to find completely different ways to play the map. Obviously, if you want to get a lot of points, that takes time.
Finally, there's quite a lot of gameplay footage. The folks at GamerSyde have uploaded it on their website to make sure that their high quality videos won't be compressed by YouTube, while Giant Bomb and PlayStation Access used the popular video sharing platform, allowing me to embed the videos below:
