Sub-par combat? Eidos Montreal says, “We can rebuild it”
Ah yes. The eternal balance between stealth and combat. Many a game has been sacrificed at the altar of the ‘play your way’ mantra. When you look back at these titles, though, stealth seems to be the only right way to go about things for the likes of Dishonored and Mankind Divided’s predecessor Human Revolution. Sure, you could dip into the guns and glory playstyle as and when you got spotted and couldn’t be bothered to reload your last save to try again, but really the onus was on not being seen in the first place.
This time out of the cyberpunk gates however, the team behind Deus Ex’s gold and black flavoured rebirthing is putting an augmented truckload of enticing new elements into its much more buoyant combat toy box.
A quick recap for those who either didn’t play the first game, or ended up tearing their hair out at one of the many infuriating boss fights and ultimately walked away from it. Mechanically augmented ex-cop-turned security guard Adam Jensen spent the last outing stumbling upon secret organisations, conspiracy theories and shady dealings as he worked his way towards a big, definitive endgame choice.
Mankind Divided has chosen one of those to seal as canon, and it’s the one which leads to a mechanical apartheid. In the year 2025 a global catastrophe unfolded, which saw the augmented population of the world ravaged by a cyber attack and their bodies at the whims of hallucinogenic rages. There was widespread slaughter and, in the aftermath, fear has induced a period of anti-transhuman sentiment and a reactive branch of pro-transhuman terrorism.
ROBO DRAMA
Two years later, Adam finds himself working for an international task force, established in order to tackle these new augmented terrorists. On the side, however, he’s clocking in for a hush-hush organisation called the Juggernaut Collective. This gaggle of hackers and activists (or hacktivists, if you must) is out to uncover the conspiracies orchestrated by the Illuminati, who happen to be pulling at every string going.
And so here comes the first of your many choices in Mankind Divided: who will you trust out of these two organisations? As Adam we’ll be completing missions for both groups simultaneously and we may find that their objectives clash, either with each other or our own (admittedly dubious) moral codes. In the back rooms of Eidos Montreal, the team calls this the choice between Reason and Emotion (their caps, not ours).
For all the fancy pants philosophising that Deus Ex’s story does (and we wouldn’t want it any other way), it’s the moment-to-moment balance of quiet tension and balls-out action which immediately rises it up the Hot 50 rankings. Jensen comes loaded with a multitude of fresh, combat-orientated augmentations to ensure we have plenty of hard choices to make with each Praxis Point we unlock.
AUG THE LINE
Our immediate favourite is the PEPS wrist gun. This baby unleashes a frankly ridiculous wave of kinetic force, which used to be a separate (and woefully limp in comparison) gun in the first game. In our private demo we see Jensen whip it out when faced with three lightly armoured security force agents. Like a Jedi, only about 500% more violent, Jensen uses the PEPS to blow the group away, instantly rag-dolling them into the furniture. We’re told there will be more options such as this to engage in combat yet still retain a non-lethal moral high ground.
Non-lethal not really your thing? Then there’s the Nano-Blade projectile, the Deus Ex version of a throwing knife. You know those handy elbow blades that Jensen uses when brutally taking down enemies up close? You can now launch them across the room for instant, 100% silent distance kills. In our behindclosed-doors walkthrough Jensen uses this aug to completely clear a room of foes after a series of silent takedowns. It’s smooth, it’s impressive to behold and it’s immensely empowering. We want.
Anyone who did try to play Human Revolution as a combatfirst affair will be waving their fingers in the air for attention right now. It’s all very well giving us these neat new toys, you might murmur, but Jensen is about as equipped to survive actual bullets as a china plate. Well, fret not, as Eidos has thought up Titan: this augmentation covers Jensen in a fractured, black glass-like digital substance, which forms a bulletproof layer of protection.
NAMIR-LLY READY
With the added ability to soak up a bit more damage in a firefight now in your hands, it’s possible to take more risks. You can stick your head out from cover more readily. With this tied to an upgradeable skill rather than being an out-of-the-door general improvement, you now have more say in how your custom Jensen evolves. So the combat upgrades won’t start to step on stealth players’ toes.
Wait, you’ve still got a finger wagging? Those veterans among you will also want to hear how boss fights have been changed. It’s no secret that the encounters tailgating Human Revolution’s story sections were appallingly badly designed. It’s not something that the devs at Eidos are unaware of, either. This time out we’re told there’ll be no returning to the format of old when it comes to these fights. All the rules the team adheres to when giving you choices throughout the main game will apply to every boss now, too.
At the root of everything exciting about Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is the very impressive new Dawn Engine. As we’re first shown it, again behind those closed doors, it’s via a series of short panning shots depicting new locales that will appear in the game.
The dingy, dilapidated slums before us are filled with so much detail that even these action-barren slices of the world provoke furious notetaking on our part. Corrugated pathways see rain water spill into individual rivulets, while dust motes paint the air with a musky filth you can almost taste.
This doesn’t appear to be detail for detail’s sake, either. During a particularly momentous firefight later on, bottles smash, paperwork scatters and everything reacts to the bullets flying in all directions.
There’s one other especially intriguing area that Eidos Montreal has looked at improving over the original. At the climax of Human Revolution you were essentially given four choices, regardless of what you had done across the journey of the game to get there. We’re told that the final moments of Mankind Divided will not be so clean cut. Or so… well… videogamey. Now we’ll be making key decisions during the entire game, from the first 30 minutes to the last, which will alter both how our own story evolves and, eventually, which of the many endings we’ll get to see.
END IT LIKE JENSEN
It’s a move that sits perfectly with that sense of a reactive world, one which is shifting and evolving at the behest of the players actions. The trick, as always, is to ensure that the flowcharts underlining these choices remain as hidden as possible. It’s something that’s incredibly hard to judge at this point in development, but the team is making all the right noises.
We may have jumped onto some of the faults of Human Revolution just now, but even now, four years on, it remains a bastion of cyberpunk storytelling quality and sleek, stylish visual design. With the added oomph of the new engine, along with a keen-edged desire to right the few wrongs of the last game and to add genuine depth to two different, fully fleshed-out playstyles, Mankind Divided might just be the stealth/combat hybrid to unite us all.