Mankind Divided is like playing the first two thirds of a complete game that never came to be. It feels like the most obvious middle chapter of a planned trilogy that doesn’t seem to ever be. And the rushed nature of the game leaves a lot to be truly desired since the series has still been frozen in ice by Square Enix.
The main story ends abruptly just as when it was really going somewhere very interesting. Leaving many characters who seemed more important to fade into the background until they become kinda relevant. Marchenko, who’s built up to be the closest there is to a main antagonist, lacks the needed character to be truly captivating which isn’t helped that his final boss feels more like a mini-boss appetizer to something else that never happens. I think the “Jensen Stories” are the real culprits for how troubled production probably was. As one of the DLCs is very clearly a cut side-mission from the main game that for whatever reason got awkwardly repurposed back this way.
However, the story, while still not quite reaching the levels of the first Deus Ex, is much better than Human Revolution in terms of setting up really interesting wider implications for this setting while ramping up the conspiracy aspects in typical Deus Ex fashion. Seeing Bob Page be the evil bastard he is manipulating things behind the scenes and noticing the trajectory of how it folds into the original game is really fun stuff. So many of the side missions to do in Prague and I guess Golem City are very engaging not just in terms of gameplay but getting to see dystopian oppression between the augmented and normals, and how easy it’s starting to collapse on itself due to higher forces puppeteering everything.
What Mankind Divided massively improved upon the most from Human Revolution is the outstanding emergent level design and environments. Prague is just an absolute gem of an open-world, showcasing the lavishly unorthodox Cyberpunk Renaissance aesthetic, the police brutality and racial stigma, and how rich in atmospheric detail it is. A good chunk of my playtime came down to just exploring every nook and cranny I came across, whether it be breaking into people’s apartments, running and gunning random cops, and kidnapping a random mobster undetected from a Russian mafia base. The augmentations here are more of the same as the original but the experimental ones really elevate it to a whole new level. Combat has never been any more fun but most importantly badass as Adam Jensen doing multiple stealth take downs while launching Tesla rockets at enemies. While the gameplay still caters towards a stealth oriented build there’s a lot of leeway and player freedom to adopt whatever play styles or approach needed to complete missions. Going back to Human Revolution is made even more difficult after playing this because of how incredibly well this set the bar for what these new games can truly achieve as immersive sims.
While we may never get to see how Bob Page overthrows a global shadow organization, how augmentation became obsolete as nano-augmentation becomes the next big thing, who even is Janus, how Adam Jensen confronts the Illuminati, or the inevitable baby J.C Denton cameo, Mankind Divided still delivers an incredibly worthy addition to the Deus Ex name and comatose franchise.
The main story ends abruptly just as when it was really going somewhere very interesting. Leaving many characters who seemed more important to fade into the background until they become kinda relevant. Marchenko, who’s built up to be the closest there is to a main antagonist, lacks the needed character to be truly captivating which isn’t helped that his final boss feels more like a mini-boss appetizer to something else that never happens. I think the “Jensen Stories” are the real culprits for how troubled production probably was. As one of the DLCs is very clearly a cut side-mission from the main game that for whatever reason got awkwardly repurposed back this way.
However, the story, while still not quite reaching the levels of the first Deus Ex, is much better than Human Revolution in terms of setting up really interesting wider implications for this setting while ramping up the conspiracy aspects in typical Deus Ex fashion. Seeing Bob Page be the evil bastard he is manipulating things behind the scenes and noticing the trajectory of how it folds into the original game is really fun stuff. So many of the side missions to do in Prague and I guess Golem City are very engaging not just in terms of gameplay but getting to see dystopian oppression between the augmented and normals, and how easy it’s starting to collapse on itself due to higher forces puppeteering everything.
What Mankind Divided massively improved upon the most from Human Revolution is the outstanding emergent level design and environments. Prague is just an absolute gem of an open-world, showcasing the lavishly unorthodox Cyberpunk Renaissance aesthetic, the police brutality and racial stigma, and how rich in atmospheric detail it is. A good chunk of my playtime came down to just exploring every nook and cranny I came across, whether it be breaking into people’s apartments, running and gunning random cops, and kidnapping a random mobster undetected from a Russian mafia base. The augmentations here are more of the same as the original but the experimental ones really elevate it to a whole new level. Combat has never been any more fun but most importantly badass as Adam Jensen doing multiple stealth take downs while launching Tesla rockets at enemies. While the gameplay still caters towards a stealth oriented build there’s a lot of leeway and player freedom to adopt whatever play styles or approach needed to complete missions. Going back to Human Revolution is made even more difficult after playing this because of how incredibly well this set the bar for what these new games can truly achieve as immersive sims.
While we may never get to see how Bob Page overthrows a global shadow organization, how augmentation became obsolete as nano-augmentation becomes the next big thing, who even is Janus, how Adam Jensen confronts the Illuminati, or the inevitable baby J.C Denton cameo, Mankind Divided still delivers an incredibly worthy addition to the Deus Ex name and comatose franchise.