Deus Ex : Mankind Divided

[buzzmong]

Deus Ex 4 has been announced:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/04 ... d-trailer/

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2kd7F3YFz8[/media]

I'm looking forward to this, partly because the first game was quite decent, but also because it's the same team behind it again, so I'm very much expecting this to address some of the flaws and surpass the last one in most other aspects.

Also: More cyberpunk! That is a good thing.

[Dog Pants]

I might be crucified for saying this, but I didn't even finish DE:HR. I loved the setting and neo-renaissance styling, but I found the not-but-actually-pretty-much-mandatory stealth tiring eventually.

[Mr. Johnson]

I might be crucified for saying this, but I didn't even finish DE:HR. I loved the setting and neo-renaissance styling, but I found the not-but-actually-pretty-much-mandatory stealth tiring eventually.

No, what you're saying sounds about right. I finished it and enjoyed the setting too but the gameplay was a bit annoying at times.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

It was a bit sloggy, especially towards the end, it'd bear a replaying now though I reckon.

[spoodie]

I was just reinstalling to have another look, I didn't finish it either. Perhaps upgrading to the Director's Cut would be a good option for a second try.

[Dog Pants]

If I was to do it again I'd go with a new philosophy I've been trying lately - treat it as entertainment rather than a challenge. Drop the difficulty to easy, forget about exploring every corner, getting every achievement, second guessing every decision, and just enjoy the ride.

[deject]

[Dr. kitteny berk]

I enjoyed DE:HR, but it was overstaying its welcome a bit towards the end.

I think a risk with a lot of games is the desire to see everything and get 100% completion. This kills the game.

Seriously, I don't get why people seem to gravitate towards trying to do everything, by the time you're at 85% of any game with side quests it's a massive fucking slog and you end up having a shitty experience from it.

Incidentally, every time I've tried to do loremaster in wow, I've burned out and quit the game.

[Joose]

For the most part I would agree with this. I use achievements and completion stats in games to drive me towards things I havent done yet whilst I am still having fun, not as a thing in themselves.

Well, mostly. If it is a relatively small game and I am likely to be able to hit 100% completion with only a bit of effort I do sometimes chase that, because there is something very satisfying about being able to look at something and say "that is done, I can do no more, it can now be filed away and never thought about again". For things like DE:HR, or the even worse games with open world stuff like AssCreed or GTA, those I don't try to "complete", but I do use the stats. Im having fun, im not sure what to do, I look at what I havent completed yet. I use it less like a To Do list and more like a menu.

[Anery]

I enjoyed DE:HR, apart from the boss fights.
I agree with Berk that the thing started to overstay it's welcome towards the end but for me that was the effect of potential shit boss fights looming over everything. I hope they have learned from their mistakes.

[Dog Pants]

They said today that you can stealth the whole game and do it without killing anyone, including boss fights. I'd prefer there to have not been boss fights, but they didn't bother me too much in DE:HR. Problem is they push you away from full stealth characters by forcing you into combat. Ironic, since the rest of the game felt like it was pushing me into stealth.

[buzzmong]

Well, just because you can do the game completely non lethal and in stealth doesn't mean you won't be gimping yourself while doing so.

I'll wait and see, but these are the devs who decided to give XP rewards for doing stealth actions like lockpicking and hacking, and put XP on "kills" in such a way that lethal got 10xp and stealh non-lethal got something like 30xp, both of which ending up dictating the way the game was played.

Hopefully they'll go back to a DX1 style and only give out XP for completing objectives, and make sure the player has freedom on how do those objectives.

[FatherJack]

I went the third, hack your way through route and found it rather troublesome that I had to go toe to toe with the bosses, although not impossible - just hard (and a bit repetitive/tedious) like Quake and Doom bosses were in the day.

It kinda ruined my choices after the first boss though, as from then I was always conscious I'd need a bit of a mix.

[Joose]

So, its out at last and I have mixed views. Overall positive but still mixed.

On the plus side:

Theres no fucking boss fights. Or at least, I havent met any and I am now many hours through. I dont just mean the boss fights are better, I mean they are entirely absent.

Sneaking is much more fun than it was. You get a lot more sneaky toys than you used to, a lot more non-lethal options (or at least the non-lethal options are now all viable and interesting) and its more varied. I dont feel like I did in the last game sometimes, where there always seemed to be exactly two options: murderbastard or ghost. Now there are different kinds of sneaking, different ways you can sneak, sneaky with murdering, sneaky with no murdering, etc. Even being a gun toting tank man seems more viable than it used to be, although I suspect the emphasis is still on stealth.

Im not 100% sure but I think they have improved the hacking mini-game. It feels a lot more of an interesting challenge this time. I may just be misremembering the last one though.

Its god damn beautiful. Not just the engine, which is excellent, but the level design. The Kowloon Walled City like area was particularly nice. I mean, not *nice* nice, it was a horrible pit of sadness and angry people, but it was extremely detailed and interesting to look at.

Its not all great though. I have only a rough idea of what the hell is going on with the story and the game doesn't seem particularly interested in explaining anything to me at all. I know that has always been kind of the case with DE games, but at least in the last one there was a clear "oh no I am part robot now this makes me sad" theme running through it. I absolutely do not understand what is motivating the main character though this game in the slightest. Theres a bad situation, and he is trying to...achieve...something. I dont know what. Or why. Also the voice acting...oh god, the voice acting. Im pretty sure that for a lot of the voice acting they recorded the first take, after zero run throughs, and just went with that. Almost everyone sounds like they are reading an autocue, and people have emotions apparently at random. Apart from Jensen, whos primary emotion seems to be mild boredom.

The biggest issue for me, story wise (no spoilers, dont worry) is that they seem to have only half committed to their overall theme. The whole point of this games story is that people are scared of augs now, so augmented people are segregated and treated like shit. Its a potentially interesting situation to be explored. How does the player react when the cops horse him into the position of second class citizen? In the last game the problem was that the rich could afford augs and the poor couldn't, how does society deal with the fact that this has almost entirely been reversed? The answer the game gives is a shrug. They are trying to act like being augmented in this world is like being black in america at its worst; they are making direct references to it being like apartheid. You, as a player, should be experiencing some of that. But no, if you go to the non aug side of the train all you get is some dirty looks and a policeman who checks your credentials then almost visibly shits themselves when they realise who you are. You can't have a story about your character being oppressed and at the same time have it be a power fantasy. The latter completely undermines the former.

The bit about the rich now being outcast is also entirely ignored. People with augs are poor now, and apparently its always been like that. Apart from the ones that are not poor for some reason. They were always rich.

There's small things about this setting that bug me too. If you have augs, people will spit at you and call you names in the street. And yet, some of the people with augs just have robot feet showing, or little bits of stuff on their heads. So...why dont they wear shoes? Or a hat? Or grow their hair out a bit? Probably half of the augmented people having a hard time could pass un-noticed by everyone who doesn't have a body scanner by just getting dressed a bit more consciously in the morning. If augs are bad, maybe dont flaunt the damn things.

Jensens ability to get away with outright theft is a bit immersion breaking too. Unless you are in a high security area, you can just pick up whatever the fuck you want and walk off with it and noone gives a shit. At most, if the poor person you are taking money from is standing right next to you and staring at you whilst you take it, they might say a quiet "hey, no" or something. This has absolutely zero impact on anything at all though. You can stand right next to your boss, rifle through his drawers and steal his booze and he doesn't blink an eye.

Above complaints aside, im having a lot of fun with the game. Its far from perfect, but its good enough that I am certainly going to play it through to the end then start again. Ive been mostly sneaky and non-lethal this time, I might do the next run as a murderbastard. And then maybe again trying to ghost the whole thing start to finish.

[Joose]

Part 2, because I forgot to put this in part one: By god, they really fucked up the pacing and placement of sections in this game. I'll be vague to maintain spoilerlessness, but avert your gaze if you are particularly sensitive to such things.

The game starts in Dubai, with you sneaking through a hotel. The hotel is not very interesting and there is no real explanation of why you are there beyond "bad men do complicated bad thing, make thing stop". Theres a reason the first real mission in the last game worked well: even if you understand nothing about the setting or the conspiracies or anything like that, everyone can understand "rescue the hostage". Its a clear and simple objective to ease you in. This game has you...I think you are there to stop a arms deal? Or rescue an undercover agent? Maybe both? But the agent set up the deal and you go in not wanting to blow his cover, so...I dont know. Either way, apart from a very brief view of the outside of the hotel the place is not visually interesting, doesnt have a clear or engaging story and does a bad job of setting up the rest of the game. Poor start.

You then go to Prague, which is lovely! But you get there in the daytime, and its much more interesting looking and Deus Exy later, when you go back at night. Again, not presenting the player with the strongest of starts.

And then...you basically stay in Prague for most of the game. I mean, its an interesting setting, and is pretty damn huge as an area, but I kept waiting for the bit where you travel to some new hub area and it just never happened.

So, yeah. Its a game that starts with the weakest bit of the whole game, in the least visually interesting bit of the whole game, and then very slowly cranks both of those up over time. It does seem to be getting steadily stronger and more visually interesting, but I can imagine there are a lot of people who will play through the first hour ish and go "well this is shit" and not get through to the bits where it gets better.

[FatherJack]

I think it's hard to show what they are trying to show without seeming heavy-handed or ridiculous, and they got it both right and wrong in parts. The obvious parallel between the aug/natural separation and racial segregation is not just heavy-handed but stupid and wrong.

Augs on the whole chose to be how they are, plus could do things like shoot knives out of their arms and had actually quite recently gone on a very real killing rampage under mind control because they were augs. Millions died. Even ones who just had a gammy leg replaced still became a huge danger when out of control.

I think the reactions you get are about right. People hate what you are, but they are also fucking terrified. The segregation is passive-aggressive, bubbling up in violent protests, but face-to-face with an actual aug, especially a military-grade one like you are, is enough for most people to back down.


I'm a bit sad there aren't new hub areas beyond Prague. As soon as I got there I eagerly explored every corner, but that now means I've pretty much done every side mission I'll ever get already. There are enough options for getting to places that hardly anywhere is off-limits and while exploring is fun, it's a shame that whenever I need to go somewhere for a side quest, I already know exactly how to get there.


I agree about the reactions to your larceny being immersion-breaking, and have noticed it extending beyond that. If all else fails you can quite often just blow doors up with hand grenades, and after about 30 seconds of muttering everyone just treats it as a normal, everyday occurrence. Conversely there are a couple of guys who seem to be locked in the "you're really bad at stealth/how long should we keep looking" dialogue-lines used when you are caught sneaking around -even though, while I set off an alarm, they never actually saw me.


The first mission was a nice introduction to having a lot of augs, so you can see which ones you will actually use, rather than having to buy each one to try them out, but was a bit dull otherwise.

I think the augs are visibly noticeable more so the player can tell, than that they are really bad at hiding them, unless they were going for a sort of Nazi Germany armband system where it is law to have to show your augments openly. They do use it as a plot device sometimes, where the camera angle changes and you suddenly notice they have the connector things on their heads.

I am enjoying it, but it seems like the special ops missions are one game, then Prague is another game, then there's the setting that seems to live in isolation. I talk to people and hack and sneak around in Prague and it's like me and the NPCs politely forget I'm like this killer robot that could easily murder everyone in sight with only the mild inconvenience of having to deal with or hide from a few puny cops.

[Joose]

I think the reactions you get are about right. People hate what you are, but they are also fucking terrified. The segregation is passive-aggressive, bubbling up in violent protests, but face-to-face with an actual aug, especially a military-grade one like you are, is enough for most people to back down.

For interactions with the regular people, sure, but you get the same reaction from the police. They frequently have you outnumbered, with a big walking tank behind you, and still you can just walk down the "naturals only" bit of the train station and they wont even say "please dont do that". They are quite happy to beat the shit out of the other augs they see, and will immediately open fire on you for opening the wrong door, but they wont try and stop you doing the thing no other aug is allowed to do. I have the horrible feeling the devs feel like this is a reference to Rosa Parks or something.

I think the augs are visibly noticeable more so the player can tell, than that they are really bad at hiding them

You are almost certainly right, but it still leaves the world less believable as a result. Real people in that situation would just put shoes on. These people dont, which reminds you that they are not real people. The devs could have easily got the best of both worlds by simply making the foot augs not quite foot shaped, so covering them up with a shoe wouldn't be an option.

[FatherJack]

I have the horrible feeling the devs feel like this is a reference to Rosa Parks or something.

It's clear they had racial segregation in mind with a lot of the design and in the cut scene before you have any control your character and another aug character deliberately walk through the wrong train station exit gate. It annoyed me that they did that with no repercussions or even comment. Even if your character didn't actually have an apartment in Prague you would expect he had been briefed on the situation there, drawing attention to yourself almost immediately doesn't seem like the cleverest move.

You maybe get a brief telling-off the first time you do it at each station, but I think you should get a lot more than that, so you could empathise with the way the other augs are treated and learn to navigate more carefully through the world and the politics.

However, I'm not saying it should be a racism simulator, because the naturals have a very real and valid reason to distrust augs, albeit from a manufactured and unlikely plot device from the last game. Leaving aside the shtick that ALL of the augs went mad and attacked, what would any normal reaction to that even be? "Get that fucking thing out of my/their head immediately!" Not "oh it might not happen again so leave them be but be mean to them"

Real people in that situation would just put shoes on. These people dont, which reminds you that they are not real people. The devs could have easily got the best of both worlds by simply making the foot augs not quite foot shaped, so covering them up with a shoe wouldn't be an option.

To be fair the aug feet, or at least the female heels, do look more like boots than feet. There could be practical reasons why they can't wear gloves or shoes, and of course originally showing off your augs was a sign of high status, suggesting why most of them are so overt.

[Dog Pants]

Picked this up on sale just before Christmas, directly after finally getting round to finishing Human Revolution. Really enjoyed it for the most part, only stopping when I had to and barely playing anything else. I think the turning point in the series was embracing the sneakies.

I disagree with some of the criticism above, and I've also seen people criticise it for ending suddenly (possibly as a lead-in to DLC). I won't go through each point, but my only real gripe was having to go backwards and forwards between the two Prague areas at one point. This at a time where I was being sneaky and having to reload a lot due to the city being a poor environment to understand lines-of-sight due to barriers not really being apparent on radar or robo-sight. The long loading times and trying to get in and out of the metro stations started to really piss me off.

I personally thought the way you were treated in the stations was a nice touch. You get let through because you're an Interpol agent, but they stop you every time and mumble vague aug-isms at you. When the one guy shat himself upon realising I was a veteran death-bot I immediately thought of all the times NPCs fail completely to acknowledge who you are. The bit that made it for me though was when I realised that I was complying and going through the Aug gate, because it was quicker.

I was a bit unhappy at not getting the pacifist achievement though. I didn't carry a lethal weapon throughout the whole game. I suspect I failed because very rarely a disabling melee attack seems to kill your target. I suppose a robo-punch to the throat will carry that risk.

[FatherJack]

A robot blew up and killed some of the unconscious cops I'd sprinkled around in mine.