Microreview [game]: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

The other cyberpunk game

Cyberpunk 2077 launched to great fanfare and...frustration at its myriad bugs and shoddy current-gen console ports. But all is not lost for those who lack a true gaming PC - there is in fact another cyberpunk game that, judging from its sales, you probably haven't played. And it's good! 

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (2017) is the fourth major release in the venerable series, and a direct sequel to 2011's Human Revolution. The graphics are obviously better, but the gameplay is more or less the same. You play as Adam Jensen, an augmented agent for the United Nations. Your task: to uncover the person or group responsible for a major terrorist attack - and stop them before the strike again.

Mankind Divided takes place in the near future, 2 years after the events of Human Revolution. The world is socially divided into two categories: humans and the augmented, or "augs," who are cybernetically-enhanced humans. You may recall that anti-aug prejudice plays a major role in Human Revolution; now it's far worse - after all, the terrorist attack was essentially a virus that took over people's augmentations and led them to commit violence against the un-augmented. Despite the fact that this was not a conscious decision or choice on the part of the augmented, fear and mistrust has grown exponentially. The result is a form of apartheid, where augs are crowded into ghettos and subject to intense scrutiny and repression by security forces. 

The game is very clearly trying to evoke both the experience of Jews under the earlier phases of Nazism and that of black South Africans under the white Apartheid regime, as well as other recent examples of the same thing. There are no massacres - yet - but there is wholesale repression and mistreatment. The choice of Prague as setting is key here, with the augmented ghetto aptly named "Golem City." 

Within this context, Jensen has to uncover the clues as to who committed the atrocity. Early signs point to the radical Augmented Rights Coalition, or an even more radical splinter of the ARC. But this being a Deus Ex game, you know the real perpetrators are the ones pulling strings from the shadows. The conspiracy angle isn't terrible interesting or well-realized - no surprise there - so it's thankful the game does pretty much everything else well. 

Gameplay is, as I mentioned before, largely unchanged from Human Revolution (though there are a few tweaks). You can decide whether to go with a combat/lethal or a stealth/non-lethal approach. You can also combine the two, though there are specific achievements associated with either and by committing to one it allows for greater deployability. I went with stealth/non-lethal, because that's always my preference in games that have well-developed stealth mechanics. As you level up, you can choose the augmentations that best suit your purposes. I focused on hacking, cloaking and sound suppression first, then branched off into other areas as the game progressed. A combat-focused build could start with armor enhancements, inventory expansion and better targeting. 

Overall I found the stealth mechanics to be very good, though not quite as developed as, say, the Splinter Cell series. The AI is solid - the game is hard but not cheap. And while there certainly was a degree of trial-and-error, I never found the game frustrating or tedious. Nearly all problems have multiple solutions; nearly all destinations can be reached multiple ways. The hacking minigame is also surprisingly enjoyable, the kind of thing that would translate well as a mobile game. And I do really like how Eidos Montreal integrated RPG elements into this framework. It's much smoother than, say, Mass Effect: Andromeda. Augmentation progression has a good pace, and you loot just the right amount of items. Oh, and shops actually sell stuff that's worth buying! 

This is also a game where choices matter, including choices made in conversation. Certain outcomes are only possible if you make the right choices, while others are only possible if you have the social augmentation and use it correctly. I was a bit "meh" on this - in theory, it's great, but in practice the social augmentation is clunky, non-intuitive and poorly explained. So if you want to unlock everything, you probably need to consult a walkthrough. Or play the game twice. 

The best part of Mankind Divided, though, is Prague. This is not a true open world, like in Witcher 3 or Fallout, but a semi-linear/semi-open world, like in Witcher 2 or the Mass Effect series. So don't expect to get truly lost. But the Prague that Eidos Montreal has created is beautiful, easily navigated and immersive. Twice you leave and come back, only to find the context changed significantly. And Prague isn't a place normally associated with cyberpunk (like Hong Kong, Tokyo or New York), so there's a novelty element to it as well. It's interesting to see futurism juxtaposed against the old buildings. 

The story is both here and there. Thematically, it's rich and well-realized...it's just that some of the actual plot points don't make a lot of sense. And the whole "illuminati" conspiracy angle, which was so much fun with the original Deus Ex, now feels equal parts tired and, given current events, more than a touch irresponsible. Luckily Mankind Divided focuses more on the game's social themes, which as noted above are thought provoking. 

All in all this is a very good game, and criminally underrated. Especially recommended for fans of stealth - a genre that's fallen on hard times lately, it seems - and those who like their games smart. 

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 for grappling with big ideas, mostly successfully; +1 for strong and varied gameplay mechanics; +1 for mood and design

Penalties: -1 for big gaping plot holes; -1 it feels shorter than it should be

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10. "Very high quality/standout in its category."

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POSTED BY: The G--purveyor of nerdliness, genre fanatic and Nerds of a Feather founder/administrator, since 2012. 

A Confession re: Gaming Anxiety

Some Words About Video Games

 
I have a confession to make. Some games make me so anxious to play them that I don't play them. The absolute worst thing in the entire world (1) is the feeling that I'm wasting time, even when I'm playing video games. This is why I dread playing multiplayer games and I'll never get into something like Dota 2. If I spend 45 minutes playing a game, I don't want to lose. I can't play RTS games, because if I do something dumb and screw up so bad that the whole mission is a waste, I'm not going to go back to it. I can't play XCOM. I can't shake the feeling that everything I do is going to lead to me failing the whole game because I let a rookie die. Even save scumming doesn't help because I don't recognize long-term problems until it's too late. I'm not going to back to an earlier save to correct a problem if I've wasted hours learning I screwed up.

Where this truly bites me is when I use this excuse to avoid playing games that I genuinely enjoy and would have a great time with if I could just get over myself. It took me a decade to play Deus Ex because I wanted to see and do everything. If I couldn't do that in one run, then I'm wasting time. I'm not good enough to play it, or it's going to take multiple playthroughs to do it, and I've got a whole stack of other games to play. It took me 10 years to realize that it was stopping me from playing a really good game and it's not even vital to the game to "see and do everything". You shouldn't play it that way. I used the same excuse to avoid Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, a game I really, really loved once I got into it.

Today, this is manifesting in my third serious attempt at Dishonored 2. I was really excited for Dishonored 2. Then I started it and all of the choices and freedom overwhelmed me. I stopped playing almost immediately after the tutorial. Later, I came back to it and got halfway into the first real mission. I got to a room with an upgrade rune in it that I couldn't figure out how to retrieve without murdering a lot of people. I'm trying not to murder anyone, so this was a real problem. Since I couldn't get that rune, I quit.

But today, I got over it. I just finished that level leaving behind two runes. And I'm okay with that. I had fun. That's what's important! Video games should be fun. If they're stressing me out, I'm not going to play them, but some of it is give and take. The time loss with RTS and MOBA games isn't something I can avoid. It's part of the game. But a stealth/action game with tons of options on how to play has those options so that I can feel free to enjoy it, not constrained by my own self-imposed limits. Those games speak to me, and I'm ignoring them when I dump unrealistic expectations on myself.

Tomorrow, I'll forget I wrote this and drop Dishonored 2 again.

---

1. Literally not the worst thing in the world.

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POSTED BY: brian, sci-fi/fantasy/video game dork and contributor since 2014

CYBERPUNK REVISITED: Deus Ex by Ion Storm

Dossier: Ion Storm. Deus Ex (2000)

Filetype: Video Game.

File Under: Cyberpunk Derivative

Executive Summary: J.C. Denton is a newly trained United Nations Anti-Terrorism Coalition (UNATCO) agent. He is tasked with retrieving a stolen shipment of the ‘Ambrosia’ vaccine, the cure for the Gray Death, from National Secessionist Forces (NSF). However, J.C. learns that the Gray Death is a man made virus, and someone is controlling Ambrosia shipments to shape world governments. This is only the tip of the conspiracy as J.C. travels around the world to find who is pulling the strings.

High-Tech: J.C. is one of the first nano augmented people in the world. His body is full of nanites that give him superhuman strength, regenerating health, the ability to see in the dark, and cloak, among other augmentations that make J.C. more than human. J.C., however, is preceded by a whole class of people who were mechanically augmented, like your typical cyborg. Still superhuman, but not the future that J.C. represents.

Computer hacking is also a big part of Deus Ex. Though gameplay, J.C. gains experience that he can put towards his hacking skills. There’s no minigame involved, but hacking can be augmented with items such as ICE Breakers, and often reveal story elements as well as useful information such as lock codes.

Sentient artificial intelligences also figure heavily in Deus Ex. Some are allies of J.C. and aid him throughout the game, and others are not. These AI have their own motivations and goals in the context of the game.

Low-Life: The common person in Deus Ex lives in fear of the Gray Death. It leads to a short, painful death as the victim’s body is consumed by the virus. The distribution of Ambrosia is controlled by FEMA and it is a temporary cure. Without a steady supply, the infected can expect to die shortly after it runs out. This makes anyone without a stable source extremely susceptible to control by forces that can interrupt the flow of Ambrosia.

Dark Times: Deus Ex is dense with social conflict. The most obvious is that which is dictated by the Ambrosia vaccine; the haves versus the have nots. The wealthy and those in power seem to have no problem getting a hold of the Ambrosia vaccine, but the poor suffer and die on the streets from Gray Death. This is largely what leads the NSF to steal the vaccine shipments, though not their only motivation. Then there is conflict between the nano-augmented (J.C. and his brother Paul) against the mechanically augmented. Recognizing the nano-augmentation is more operationally flexible and less physically obvious, the mechanically augmented feel like their future is limited. The AIs in the game are also an oppressed class, controlled by their creators but yearning for freedom.

Above all of this, the shadow organizations that seek to control the world are winning. The world governments are still there, but more or less helpless against the power of extragovernmental agencies that exert their control.

Legacy: Deus Ex was a big deal when it came out. It was Ion Storm’s biggest success and won many ‘game of the year’ awards for combining first person action, huge levels with an enormous array of options to complete them, RPGlike progression and a narrative far deeper than most video games, even today. It’s arguably one of the best video games ever made.

In Retrospect: Believe it or not, I finished Deus Ex for the first time not that long ago. I’ve owned it since 2000, but it was too much for me back then. As you might be able to tell, there is a lot to Deus Ex and it’s almost overwhelming. The first level alone allows for so many options and very little direction that it is often a huge turn-off for most people who expect to be spoonfed the gameplay systems slowly until the training wheels come off. There are no training wheels in Deus Ex.

Even if you get past the first level of the game, there is so much going on in the background and the foreground of the game, that it’s easy for completionists (as I’m sometimes compelled to be) to get frustrated. You have to learn to accept that you’re not going to read every line of dialog, open every door, hack every computer, or solve every mystery on your first time through Deus Ex. When I first bought Deus Ex, I was not ready for that game.

However, as I grew older, I came to accept some of my completionist tendencies didn’t need to be satisfied, and I just sat down and played the game. It is an extremely rewarding experience. Play the game however you like, and Deus Ex will probably accommodate you. Are you stealthy? You can play it that way. Do you like to shoot everyone? You can play it that way. Do you want to spend a lot of time underwater or in environmental suits? It kind of works!

This same manner of engagement applies to the story and lore of the game. There is a lot of it, hidden in books, encrypted on hard drives, stored on datapads, and these things are littered all over the levels. It’s a game that relishes in secrets and rewards those who seek them out.

The game does suffer a bit technically. It’s early Unreal engine, and it shows. The game has never been a looker, but you can improve it with a user made renderer that brings some newer Unreal engine improvements. It probably still runs fine without them, but they do improve the experience.

All told, there is a lot of things that other games have copied from Deus Ex, and many of them have done them better, but the number of games that succeed at doing so much is extremely small. Though successes in their own ways, not even the sequels to Deus Ex come close to its scope. In an industry that thrives on iterating to increasing improvements, it is as close as video games gets to a timeless classic.

 
Analytics

For its time: 5/5
Read/watched/played today: 5/5
Cybercoefficient: 10/10