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The sequel baiting is so blatant it's depressing. You can imagine that Square Enix will already be setting a target of a new game in three years or less and Deus Ex will be milked so completely.
I think my initial impressions of the game were slightly flawed so I'll try to clarify some.
I loved Prague, but the same hub all the time didn't give you the sense of adventure. It was a really good one, it let you explore the area very well via streets, sewers and rooftops, and it was much better than the HR hubs, but HR was limited a lot by time constraints, technology they had to work with such as the older generation consoles and generally less of an understanding of what they were dealing with.
I thought the side quests were very interesting, in parts more interesting than the main story. There's one where you need to stop a cult, one where you have to solve a murder, one where you're being chased by Morgan Everett's men piecing together what happened to Eliza Cassan. I won't go in to details, because the side missions are not worth spoiling, and very different from one another.
Locations: I didn't like the locations outside Prague. Golem had some good bits namely the Arc territory parts, but it felt close and the only part I enjoyed was where it opened up to give you a sense of scale. Sadly this area was quite sparse and involved no NPC interactions. The decorations like wings were good and the civilian areas were well stacked up, and perhaps I am not giving it the credit it deserves, but it felt quite bland. You have to admit they really didn't do a great job with Garm. The level design was good for gameplay, but the level was so boring in itself. Three rooms and two corridors, no interesting icy parts and a lack of interesting features bar the ice drill.
Lip syncing I felt was worse in this than HR and there's really no point in hand animating it anymore, they used motion capture for takedowns and such so why not lips.
To be honest, I think Jensen needs to die soon. I thought he might have died at the end of Human revolutions and in some way I wish he had, but he's still a likeable character. My only fear is he will become so horribly overused. |
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Ooooooooh...
I finished MD a few days ago and yes, the gameplay, the graphics, UI, art direction and general usability of the game have been vastly improved and overhauled. The Prague hub is amazing and very immersive.
HOWEVER.
Oh my gawd the story. People play Deus Ex games for the choices and the fascinating stories, and this game gives you a couple of very interesting choices to pick from, including the end which can have a profound impact on how it turns out, however, the narrative itself is incredibly lack-lustre.
I won't spoil anything for those who haven't played it. Basically, the story has two problems: it ends so very fast and abruptly that as soon as you are really getting into it the game finishes with a very down beaten final boss. Secondly, the narrative is not suitable to a Deus Ex game. Sure they've made games with terrorists in them before, but if you're going to put them in, don't make the game about following leads and revealing who is behind these "escalating attacks". it's one of them hardest, most contemporary and close to the bone things you could write about. Making it interesting is one, keeping it that way whilst building tension and not making it seem to real is another. I often felt the game substituted story with tension, relying on you being so caught up in the moment as to miss the gaping plot hole.
To address the second point more closely, what goes on in a Deus Ex game? Corporate conspiracy, God delusions, strange experimental weapons and technology, transhumanism, secret societies and complex characters. Mankind Divided either skips or poorly touches all of these. It felt more like an international police simulator, and whilst that's technically what you are, it doesn't make for a good experience.
The game left a lot of questions and although HR left some, I got a feeling of closure, of accomplishment. The story was long enough, well paced and had fantastic revelations. This game starts confused but well, and by the time you start really getting into it, unravelling the mystery, it ends before you get real questions. I was left baffled and wanted to know more. What was the significance of Tarvos if you read the emails that disclose they are simply a rebranding of Belltower? Who are the Golden soldiers, where do they come from and how long have they been there? What happened to the Illuminati after the incident? When did Orlov experiment on you? it felt like these were left unanswered to create wonder, but they only made me wonder if the writers were lazy.
The music was ok, not a patch on HR but some tracks were pretty good.
The locations were actually pretty poor. The Prague hub was excellent in all ways, but visiting it three times? And the others could have been more interesting. The game presented us with loads of cool places to go: Rab'iah, Alaska, San Francisco Versalife lab. All of these places could have extended the story a bit more... but no. Deus Ex 1 had an ocean lab and you got to go to Area 51. HR had Hengsha the two-tiered city and the Panchaea installation. I was really hoping for something equally cyberpunk and sci-fi, and I was very much dissapointed.
The characters voice wise were well acted, Elias Toufexis really had the measure of Jensen and the side characters were consistent throughout. But the relationships were not well developed. I had hoped MacReady to be the next Pritchard, and turns out he's barely in it at all. Miller was decent but he spends too much time berating you, at least Sarif used you as his puppet in a vaguely subtle way. Vega wasn't bad but the interactions with her and Jensen were cold and business-like, not making her easy to get on with. And the Illuminati... what a bunch of wet sods. I mean come on, no one could say any of them were threatening in the slightest, they were doing their very best to ensure their super-duper plan had the highest chance of failing. And did Morgan Everett suddenly become black? Though tbh I kind of liked that guy's voice acting so suits me. The only decent one was Bob Page, suprise suprise, his menacing Spacey-like accent and his ruthless ideals and no-nonsense attitude made him seem competent.
Ugh.
All in all, great mechanics, art style, graphics, overhauled augmentations, fantastic sound all around, but the story itself, whilst not bad by simple fact of being terribly written, was full of questions, plot holes, monotonous characters and locations and ended as soon as it got going. The way the terrorists were introduced made no sense and the plot became needlessly ambiguous when all the answers lay in incredibly obvious emails.
In conclusion: Buy HR, enjoy a much more immersive if slightly clankier experience, then decide if you want more. And wait for the price to go down. |
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I know, been following it's progress for years now and that prologue was a great taste of the dedication. It's mainly him and a few other artists and they've pulled off all this FOR FREE.
And not to mention Aaron Dembski-Bowden has co-written the screenplay. Incredible, really looking forward to this.
If anyone says "meh" just remember: they did this all themselves, built everything, animated it all, got all fresh voice acting, wrote it and directed it themselves, and all from the mind of Erasmus Brosdau. Emperor bless him. |
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Swiftsabre
Relic Entertainment
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VonManteuffel 
Heartless Jäger 
