Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is a big-budget, super-huge sequel that delivers

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is not an exciting-sounding sequel. It’s one of those video games that feels like an expected followup, and it has probably fallen behind in the industry’s “buzz” and “hype” quotients as a result.

Just like the last entry, 2011’s DX: Human Revolution, this game puts you in the shoes of the same cybernetically enhanced anti-hero, offers the same “play how you want” system, and even replicates a lot of the last game’s powers, controls, and aesthetic. You’d be forgiven for glancing at a snippet of gameplay and wondering which game is which.

Don’t be fooled. While DX:MD has its issues with visual polish and hews a little too close to its source material, this is a rare case of a big-budget, super-huge sequel that builds upon its old foundation with deep, high-quality content in seemingly every aspect. Action, stealth, characters, dialogue, plot, and urban exploration come together in a tightly built world, and the results will delight anybody who loves a good first-person adventure game.

Even better, that’s only half of what’s being offered here. DX:MD ships with an additional mode: the surprisingly meaty “Breach” quest.

Czech yourself before you wreck yourself

Steamy shower time with Adam Jensen.

Steamy shower time with Adam Jensen.

Hey, Sarif’s still around!

Hey, Sarif’s still around!

Hot cup of morning Jensen, right there.

Hot cup of morning Jensen, right there.

Hey, Sarif’s still around!

Hot cup of morning Jensen, right there.

Aw, crap, I was late to the creepy seance.

In our eyes, “play how you want” means shoot dudes while they’re on the crapper.

Watch out for these robo-cops in the slums.

Hello from scenic Prague.

Cobblestone streets, flying drones. Very old-timey.

What, you don’t decorate YOUR downtrodden streets with fluorescent stick-lighting? What kind of monster are you?

This dude? Bad news right here.

Heeeeere’s Adam!

Let’s start with the core gameplay and our favorite mechanically augmented super-agent, Adam Jensen.

The year is 2029, and Earth’s biggest nations are overloaded with people who have installed mechanical enhancements on themselves—new arms, new legs, tweaks to their torsos, that sort of thing. Toward the end of the DX:HR, a switch was flipped by a scientist who’d regretted developing such technology, causing all of the world’s “augs” (meaning, people who’d augmented themselves) to go crazy and attack innocent people. Two years later, the world’s untouched meatbags ain’t takin’ too kindly to the world’s robo-sapiens. Everyone’s worried that such a freak-out could happen again.

But the game takes its time setting this story up. First, it plops players into a tutorial mission in Dubai, in which Jensen takes the lead in an Interpol task-force mission to break up an arms dealer’s distribution network. It’s a jarring start. We’re given no context as to why he joined this squad or how he got to this point from his work as the security head for an augmentation company last time around. It’s the kind of opening sequence that could turn off any diehard Deus Ex fan, as it combines zero plot payoff with boring stealth-or-combat path choices.

Thankfully, this sequence ends with a mysterious what-the-heck twist that sets the game into motion—one in which Jensen serves two allegiances. On one hand, we come to learn that he has joined this Interpol task force with a desire to stop violence and figure out whether augmented forces are working to terrorize the world—all while staying in touch with his former employer, David Sarif. On the other, he is also working covertly for The Juggernaut, a collective of underground soldiers and hackers trying to make sense of the Deus Ex world’s “Illuminati” of rich and powerful people running most business and political movements. Juggernaut worked to get him the job, but Jensen has reasons to believe in what he does for Interpol.

These allegiances eventually force Jensen to make hard choices, but this isn’t a diverging-path kind of game. Jensen sticks to his Interpol work while feeding scoops to his underground comrades. Most of his adventuring and exploration takes place in the large, bustling city of Prague, which serves as the game’s primary hub and home for many of its missions. Typically, you’ll walk through the city while following one mission, then run into a cop, a citizen, or an event that sparks a possible side quest.

For the most part, this structure—a major hub city connecting many of the game’s missions—plays out in very smooth fashion. Missions feed into each other in organic ways, and giant structures and sneak-around sequences have been built into zones that might otherwise look pedestrian. Eidos Montreal really rewards players who treat this game as a “play how you want” adventure, as well. Want to sloppily pick up and drop boxes in order to reach a high-up point at the top of a building? There’s probably a secret vent entrance up there. Does bribing a crooked cop seem like too easy a solution to a blocked path? There’s a whole quest on the other side of town that’ll take care of that problem in very satisfying fashion. Oh, and that huge data-security center just sitting in the middle of town? You can wait for a quest to find a reason to sneak through and collect its biggest secrets, or you can just beef up your guns and your tech and go crazy in there whenever you want.

Jensen returns with pretty much every power boost he had last time—really, the “tech-tree” menu will bring out a lot of deja vu—so you’re still able to give yourself boosts, like landing from great heights, increasing your health, or equipping a scanner you can use to see things through walls like baddies and interactive elements. Each of these has to be toggled with experience points, and you start out with nearly a dozen to pick from. It’s not maxed out, but it’s not starting from zero, either.

The big difference in DX:MD is the addition of some jacked-up powers that Jensen learns were somehow hidden in him all along. Whilst figuring out how the heck someone stealth-installed that tech into his body, he learns to take advantage of its juice in the meantime… at a cost. If you turn on any of the experimental bonuses—like the ability to turn electric elements off from a distance or shoot friggin’ lasers from your hands—you’ll have to permanently deactivate some other element of your suit. Whatever you deactivate will truly never come back, forcing a killer tradeoff that fuels the “oh, gosh, what am I going to upgrade” anxiety that people simultaneously love and hate about Deus Ex.

Movement, combat, activating powers, and the game’s other active systems work mostly like last time. You’re always keeping tabs on whether opposing forces, like crooked cops or angry bodyguards, have noticed you in a given sequence, and you can apply a mix of crawl-walking, hidden paths, and limited-use augmented powers to remain hidden. Your best powers drain your “energy” bar, which will always auto-refill to a small amount—enough that you don’t have to constantly use items to keep it juiced, but not enough that you can burn through a ton of your energy whenever you please. I liked the balance this power-management system struck, and I am happy to report you no longer have to chow down on candy bars and other items to keep your stamina high enough (like you obnoxiously had to do in DX:HR).

Big city, big dreams

Some of the game’s mission sequences are among the best I’ve seen in the cyberpunk-adventure genre, and a lot of that has to do with the buildings. This game was not designed to resemble a bunch of cordoned-off video game levels, but rather its buildings, structures, and cityscapes appear to be built for normal purposes. Into those, Eidos Montreal chiseled out a lot of interesting paths, both for explosive, run-and-gun combat and hide-and-stealth sneakery. The bank, the underground poker hall, the slum marketplace: these are all bustling zones that strike the right balance between feeling real and feeling built for exciting gameplay.

During combat, the AI is pretty good, though perhaps not as good as in the latest Hitman. Two times in my review gameplay, foes stupidly lined up, one by one, at a choke point from which I could pick them off easily and waltz through a giant portion of a mission. But for the most part, the foes peppering your locations are at least pesky when they’re not always smart. What’s more, Eidos Montreal understands how to place its grunts and guards within these giant structures, and they’re mostly there to force you out of a default “run in and shoot everybody” strategy. Even if you decide to play as a ruthless killer instead of a stealthy ghost, you’ll die very quickly if you expose yourself openly. You’ll want to scan ahead, find good points of cover, and keep an eye out for shortcuts and hidden vent paths whenever possible.

A slight tweak to cover-based combat also helps in the stealth-combat department. When you duck behind a box, a desk, or some other conveniently placed waist-high object, you can now see a small body-shaped icon projecting exactly wherever you want to jump or run to next. It’s a great visual cue that’s doubly useful when you absolutely, positively don’t want to wind up exposing yourself at the wrong place or in the wrong angle. This system also lets you round the corners of your cover object very easily by just holding down your main activation button so that you don’t have to jump out of cover to reposition yourself. Very slick.

Refreshingly, it’s also a blast not getting into much combat. Faking like a rat and slithering against a given zone’s fringes and vents is usually quite rewarding, especially thanks to so much story being scattered in places like people’s bedrooms and offices. Plot vehicles like e-mail terminals and books have become old hat in 3D adventure games as of late, but DX:MD does a lot to build its characters up with stories hidden in its nooks and crannies. Thank goodness the game’s “hacking” minigames have been spruced up. If you come to this game seeking plot, you’ll have to do a lot of hacking, and the grid-takeover game needed for every interface has just enough quick-strategy challenge to keep it interesting again and again.

Hacking minigames are pretty enjoyable this time around.

In spite of his gravelly, two-packs-a-day voice, Jensen’s voice actor generally kills it here, thanks both to believable anti-hero delivery and to a solid script all the way around. Other voice actors range from melodramatic to serviceable to damned good, and the dialogue only gets corny when a character is clearly a ham. Otherwise, heavy issues ranging from immigration to drug distribution to media responsibility all get paid surprisingly good lip service by this script, and Jensen’s relationships with everyone, from his military superiors to his underground accomplices, fuel the page-turning aspect of this game’s very, very long dialogue sequences. You’re going to hear a lot of chatter in this game’s dozens of hours—and praise be, it’s mostly good.

The only exception, really, is the main thrust of the plot: humans and “clanks” (the slur applied to the game’s augmented people) have been separated by a cyberpunk version of apartheid. The world is turning drastically against people who had machinery installed. The plot tries to draw parallels with other oppressive movements, but that comparison feels a little tone-deaf at times. Not outright offensive or horribly fumbled, mind you, but it’s hard not to see elements in this game, like an “augs only” sign on a door, and feel like some of history’s greatest prejudicial atrocities aren’t getting their fair due in comparison.

But wait—there’s more!

DX:MD has a giant campaign worth losing time within. My 30 hours with the game ahead of its launch left me salivating for more—and this trial clearly showed that the last game’s wretched, decried boss battles are gone. Greater augmented baddies await as I barrel my way toward the campaign’s end, but I’ve already had to deal with high-intensity villains and to discover non-lethal means of taking them down or avoiding them altogether.

If this campaign was the whole package, I’d call it a must-buy game.

Let’s soup up our avatar with perks and bonuses!

Let’s soup up our avatar with perks and bonuses!

The VR missions look damned cool, though sometimes the limited color palette of a given mission makes its content hard to parse.

The VR missions look damned cool, though sometimes the limited color palette of a given mission makes its content hard to parse.

The in-game shop doesn’t allow you to spend real money. Yet.

The in-game shop doesn’t allow you to spend real money. Yet.

The VR missions look damned cool, though sometimes the limited color palette of a given mission makes its content hard to parse.

The in-game shop doesn’t allow you to spend real money. Yet.

The more you play, the more bonuses, items, and “challenges” you can apply to future runs.

Everything about Breach seems built for microtransactions—and yet I never came close to needing to spend real money (which I couldn’t do in the pre-launch version, anyway).

Then Eidos Montreal went and added another game to the mix: Deus Ex: Breach. This side game casts you as, well, yourself—logging into a virtual reality interface and helping the hackers of 2029 explore the datacenters of the game’s biggest evil corporations. Forget telnet interfaces; instead, you take these datacenters down by playing miniature Deus Ex challenge levels and either killing the digital guards within or exiting the levels with downloads of their most precious terabytes of corporate data.

It’s a goofy premise, but considering it’s essentially the Deus Ex world’s version of the original Metal Gear Solid‘s masterful VR missions, we’ll allow it. The quick-burst opportunities to employ your personal mix of stealth and combat seem like the kind of thing someone should have modded into Deus Ex years ago; it’s a great way to plunk down about 15 minutes of time into a bunch of satisfying missions (or to spend all 15 of those minutes trying to get your highest score possible in one particular mission). These all control largely like the normal game, even with the same power-up systems—though instead of your personal system “overheating” due to experimental upgrades, now it can only accept so many specific power-ups. (In sticking with the VR-hacker theme, each equipped perk requires a certain number of GB in your memory, and that count can grow as you level your character up.)

If pure action doesn’t quite do it for you, Eidos Montreal went and sewed a plot structure into Breach—certain missions contribute toward a campaign to take down specific corporate crimes. You’re not going to call this the gaming plot of the year by a long shot, but the effort is appreciated, and it’s handled with a slick chat-text interface.

The hook of these small, frequent levels is that your progress earns you credits that you can spend on more guns, more ammo, more items, and more “challenge” patches, which are all granted randomly via “card packs.” The patch system is probably the most interesting, in that you can slap a patch onto a level run that pays you more credits if you complete a level with, say, only a certain type of weapon or without killing a single guard. For this sort of random-item game, I think the challenge-for-bonus system is among the cooler surprises.

Otherwise, we’ve seen this sort of system before; Breach is clearly built to stoke the same fires that burn when you unlock new cards or items in games like Hearthstone. I imagine this mode is an experiment on Eidos Montreal’s part to see how people react to being able to pay real money to buy more virtual items in Deus Ex games. That being said, thanks to perks that you can unlock in the campaign mode that apply to Breach and other normal progression within this mode, I never found myself wanting to spend real money. A full gameplay experience seems to have been baked in. (And in good news, you never have to play Breach to acquire any bonuses or perks in the campaign mode, should that be a dealbreaker for you.)

DX:MD packs in more Deus Ex, mostly polished, with tons of plot that we don’t want to spoil, a bazillion side quests and optional plot to sink your teeth into, a likable story, missions so good that I have described them to friends as “boss levels,” and a free side game with a tolerable microtransaction system. I’m still shocked. August is usually the triple-A dumping ground of the game-industry calendar, but August hasn’t seen a game this good in years.