Deus Ex Mankind Divided Hands On: “All Signs Suggest It’s An Improvement On Its Predecessor In Every Way”As well as leading newcomers through the basics of the various optional approaches that are at the heart of the game – stealthy slaughter, guns blazing, sneak and subdue, leave no traces – Dubai is a showcase for Mankind Divided’s reworked cover and power mechanics. Use of cover hasn’t changed dramatically but, as with every action in the game, the implementation is smoother and less prone to error. At the click of a button or push of a trigger, Jensen moves efficiently from one position to the next and doesn’t feel as if he’s velcroed into place as soon as he attaches to a waist-high wall or desk. The HUD displays the path he’ll take between pieces of cover and if you choose to dash into the open, it’s possible to see the exact spot you’ll reach.
As well as making all of Jensen’s movements flow more naturally, the new engine better facilitates the kind of positional awareness that the third-person camera was implemented to support.
Where Human Revolution’s spaces were constructed like a series of individual boxes connected by corridors, Mankind Divided’s hubs are like blocks of Swiss Cheese.
An enormous amount of care has gone into making the theatre feel like a natural place, where vents exist as parts of the architecture, with utility and purpose, rather than convenient shortcuts. It’s almost possible to move from the beginning of the level to the end without leaving cover but such a route is reliant on clever use of Jensen’s abilities rather than opportune waist-high walls.
As a stealth game, Mankind Divided already feels exemplary. Slight changes to visual feedback and enemy barks make AI behaviour more convincing and legible, but it’s in the level design that the game really shines.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is reinventing the art of the side-questMost intriguing is how side-quests don’t just support the main story, they can tie into it, becoming part of how it plays out, without you ever knowing - as DeMarle puts it, your actions in the wider game can “haunt” the critical path through the game.
“Players might not even know they’re on a side-quest,” says Fortier. “It’s going to feel like they’re on a main quest. What I love about them is that we get to explore other sides of themes that we’re dealing with, and on a more human level. Those are the quests that often stay with you and make the world gel together, so to me they’re fundamental. They’re what wraps the whole thing and makes it a believable world and not just a series of objectives that you’re doing in order to complete the game.”[/i]
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided lets your choices define you in its oppressive worldMany of the augmentations available in Human Revolution were obviously geared toward either a lethal approach (the Typhoon) or a stealthy strategy (cloaking). Thisdale said that the developers used telemetry data from the previous game to track players' usage of particular augmentations, and realized that some were much less popular or useful than others. Instead of removing them, the studio redesigned them to provide more options to players, and to make all of those choices viable in Mankind Divided.
Mankind Divided will offer augmentations that have very specific use cases, like unique ammo types that are effective against a particular type of enemy. Even the Tesla gun arm can be used non-lethally. Those kinds of choices will affect "how you negotiate those tougher enemies," said Thisdale. And as Eidos Montreal said earlier this year, it'll be possible to complete Mankind Divided without killing anyone — even bosses.
What Playing the Same Level for Three Straight Hours Taught Me About Deus Ex: Mankind DividedLike with its predecessor, Mankind Divided’s core gameplay is multifaceted and open-ended. It presents you with a problem, provides you with tools, and says, “Figure it out,” allowing for experimentation and, potentially, some gratifying eureka moments. In this case, I needed to infiltrate a heavily guarded theater in order to confront a mafia kingpin. My tools? A curated loadout of weapons and augments. Typically you acquire these upgrades in a gradual, calculated manner, but because this mission was pulled from the middle of the game, I was simply presented with three different pre-created loadouts, each of which was designed with a different play style in mind: combat, stealth, or a balance of the two.
Whereas Human Revolution used discrete, non-replenishing “batteries” to fuel Jensen’s special augmented abilities, Mankind Divided opts for a far more flexible energy bar. Now when you use an ability, it may gradually drain the meter while that ability is active or take off a certain chunk upfront but recharge up to a certain point afterwards. Each augment seems to utilize energy in a different way, and perhaps most forgiving of all, your meter will never remain completely empty. Every time you bottom out, the energy bar will gradually regenerate up to a certain point--basically enough for one good takedown. Energy for augments is still somewhat scarce, but if nothing else, I’m grateful to see a more sophisticated system in place.
I did collect various inscrutable “parts” such as hydraulic micropumps and gyroscopic regulators while exploring the theater level. This--coupled with the “Combine” option in the familiar block-based inventory menu--leads me to believe we’ll be able to craft custom weapons and equipment at some point.
My stealth playthrough delivered some excellent moments as well. Highlights include: sniping a guard with my tranquilizer rifle while hidden in a vent, then sniping the next three guards who came to check on their buddy; avoiding detection by remotely hacking a patrolling robot; and piling passed-out bad guys on a basement stairwell because yes, other guards will be alerted if you just leave limp bodies lying around. These mechanics haven’t changed as much as those related to combat, but the theater’s level design allowed for the same non-lethal fun that made stealth such a thrill in the previous game.
The Smart Evolution of Deus Ex: Mankind DividedLevel design is the unsung X-factor of a Deus Ex game, as providing the proper context for the different augments is the key to making character progression choices feel meaningful. The Dvali Theater level (which takes place roughly two thirds into Mankind Divided) does this with great success, providing both obvious and more subtle opportunities to leverage Adam Jensen’s many new wonderful toys.
The remote hacking aug is similarly useful in both combat and non-combat scenarios. Some cameras in Mankind Divided simply don’t have big enough blind spots to effectively sneak past, which means some paths through the level are out unless you want to let everyone know you’re there. That makes the ability to temporarily disable security cameras from a distance incredibly valuable – being able to bring a menacing security mech to its knees from the safety of cover is admittedly a nice cherry on top though.
More subtle than the relationship between your abilities and the surrounding environments are the many little tweaks in Mankind Divided. The hacking interface, for instance, is a lot slicker-looking, which ends up being kind of significant given how much time you spend doing it as a stealth-oriented player. There’s even a slew of new abilities to employ during a hack, intended to help you face the new curveballs enemy security systems will now throw at you. Other subtleties include a cover traversal system that allows Jensen to move swiftly and tactically between cover points with a simple point-and-click, and the revamped energy bar, which is structured so as to let players use their abilities a bit more frequently.
Mankind Divided is shaping up to be the best Deus Ex yetYou have more ways to tailor your own approach, and that's what Deus Ex is all about. The level design supports that too, of course. Dubai was a relatively linear mission designed to teach crouching, jumping, punching and elevator-calling. The dark, rainy Prague level I also played was a more traditional Deus Ex area. Eidos Montreal walled off one corner of a much larger hub and invited me to infiltrate a theatre occupied by a criminal gang.
There are many ways in. A series of ladders lead to the rooftop (I killed a sniper, took his gun and cleared out the lobby from street-level in one playthrough). There's a vent up there that drops you deep into the building. You can walk in through the front door if you want to fight. An open window presents a quieter route. I thought it would be remiss of me not to find a way to get in by stacking boxes, so I used a construction platform to carry a huge box onto a ledge, and then put it on top of another huge box to find another way up to the rooftop. Then I reached back and picked up the box, so I could throw it at a guard.
The Dawn engine is a heavily modified version of IO's Glacier engine, and it allows for far more detail than Human Revolution. It also supports lots of clutter, much of which can be picked up and thrown to cause distractions. Prague and Dubai looked and felt completely different, one wet and grimy, the other arid and airy. The removal of Human Revolution's gold filter allows the team to create places that feel more varied
