Quick Look: Unfinished EX: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided 07/14/2016

I'm glad it seems I'm not the only one who found the look of these animations to be strange. It doesn't look particularly bad, but there's something off about it.

@humanity: Though I didn't dislike the cover (though I thought the animations in general, from a facial and body perspective were both some of the worst parts about the game), I would have preferred a lean instead, similar to how Dark Athena did it. Human Revolution was one of my favorite games of 2011, with a handful of what I consider to be negligible issues. This actually seems to be similar, but I'm really excited for it; probably the game I'm most excited for this year.

From footage I saw earlier, there was some issues, like terrible lip sync in a few parts, and there was a point in which I thought the A.I. wigged out by sliding across the ground without animating, though I'm not sure if it was a glitch, or an ability they had. It didn't look great though. I just beat The Fall the other day, and I actually enjoyed it to my surprise as well.

Looks amazing, a great evolution of HR.

Little bit of 'jank' here and there, but I'm really loving the look of it. I'm excited, can't wait. The music sounds great, and the action does look better.

@zevvion: I do think that is a legit complaint. I'm willing to wait until the game's actually out to see if it's still like that and then decide if it's really that bad. I didn't bother me that much in Human Revolution, but that is totally something that should be addressed in a sequel five years later.

@humanity:

I don't disagree, I feel this sort of thing is perhaps the greatest challenge game design has had ever since going 3D.

And yet I think the ability to more or less turn off the HUD might be part of what makes me love Dragon's Dogma so and an elegantway to provide both experiences to gamers. Exploring a world with a just a health/stamina bar was just so liberating. I don't think it's much loved or talked about these days but it's also part of what I really enjoyed in King Kong (ironically a Ubisoft game) where you check your ammo with a button press or the way Far Cry 2 handled the map.

But I certainly don't begrudge somebody who wants/needs subtitles on screen prompts etc.

Deus Ex has so many different kinds systems it's probably unavoidable to some degree in those games that it needs a more direct way of informing the player.

Remember guys, he didnt ask for this.

@humanity: I've never met a first person cover system I liked

Some interesting points here, really digging these comments.

I'm not a game designer but from a creative slant (I work in advertising/marketing as a creative director) I find the UI in games often times to be the easy way out. I'm not saying it's wrong or that it can't be elegant or even stylistic but often I find it almost cheapens the experience. For me at least.

A real world map being used by the character instead of a map on the options screen, the ability to check your ammo by popping the magazine or reading a display on the weapon, indicators on the body that display health, etc. I find this type of information feed infinitely more interesting, immersive and often times more intuitive than the overdose of screen info we often get with games.

Perhaps a happy merging of the two is a good route as I believe it was @slag that brought up the point of how much information the modern game has to actually convey.

I dunno, interesting topic non the less. Great comments guys!

As much as I didn't like that "robot apartheid" bullshit that this game's marketing was doubling down on, it still seems like an interesting game. Yeah there's some jank, but I still find this series interesting enough to look past some of it.

@dizzuncan:That's understandable; I'm just not a fan of the "EX" videos. They just come across as an advert to me, instead of something informative or journalistic.

That was both underwhelming and attractive to me at the same time. I know I want to play this game, but I doubt I can afford it when it comes out, so will wait for a sale.

Would the story have changed if they gave the right quote to that guy?

@shtinky: I tend to agree. The crew can't really be themselves with a dev trying to proudly demonstrate their game in the room. All of my favorite Quick Looks are the ones that they spend tearing a game to shreds.

I'm going to be playing this day 1. It looks like much of the mechanics are nearly unchanged from the last game, which is kinda lame. But I loved Human Revolution for its story, art and sound design. I even loved the endings, which seemed to rub a lot of people the wrong way because it was just "press one of the 4 buttons in this room and watch a slideshow." Those were pretty great slideshows and each ending was very well written and narrated.

Cool! Thanks Patrick!

Ah, people complaining about QL EXs—a tale as old as time itself.

(I think they're interesting and can provide neat insight into a game's development. They're different, but still of value. Sheesh.)

Oh and hot damn I'm digging the look of that city.

From a purely stylistic perspective I really love "physical" UI solutions like checking a map in your hand or looking at your gun to see the ammo count. From a usability standpoint I do think the nature of the game tends to dictate how much time the player has to fiddle with these things. A game like Doom would simply not work well with that type of design because of it's frenetic pace. The weapon wheel already feels almost too cumbersome. Deus Ex is by nature a slower paced game so they could definitely get away with a few more stylized options that replace the rather glaring hud we see in the video, but to what end? In the modern age we already have so much screen realestate to work with that even a complicated hud as we see here isn't taking up all that much room in the grand scheme of things. As a point of preference perhaps for some it would be better but personally I was never a huge fan of the minimalist approach. Given the option to vignette the entire screen at the corners to indicate that you're in "stealth stance" or simply give me an icon on the hud I would probably prefer the icon. Thats just me of course.

Honestly as much as I enjoyed deus ex this series has been notorious for disappointment. Human revolution was basically impossible to find any ammo in levels and was a thinly veiled stealth game. I am very happy to hear the dev acknowledge this though and like Jeff mentioned I was also focused on how vertical the maps seemed. Human Revolution was incredibly linear feeling despite the advertising campaign stating there was so many other ways to play the game.

Someone commented from E3 how bland this game seemed and it was just a constant "fade out to black" takedown fest and shoddy sniper moments where the AI didn't react. I hope that was just an old build because I ABSOLUTELY LOVED this video and I can't wait for this game! Prior to this video I wanted nothinhg to do with this game so great job showing it off GB!

The animations and feel of the world was very lifelike and I hope this calms the sour taste I've had from this franchise because I can't look at Deus Ex the new generation games anywhere with the same reverence of Deus Ex (which doesn't really hold up comparatively to other FPS of the era). I also loved the gunplay but the lighting really was what sold me as wanting to traipse through this world down the road.

That seems overly cynical. Of course the reason developers do it is to market their game, but it's still a quick look at the game, and I find the developer's perspective on why they made the decisions they made insightful.

That's what we said when we saw the HR demo and it was still in the final release. We know the deal, the final version of MD will also lack any transition sequence.

On the topic of the game itself, I tried HR back near its release and couldn't get into it. I def want to give it another shot though because it seems like enough people really loved that game and it makes me think I missed something. So, any tips on how to get more out of it the second time? Is the beginning known to be kind of slow and I need to just stick with it to get to the good parts?

Those "cutscenes" are the takedown animations. The alternative to that would be the game having no take downs since jenson moves around so much during them the camera would break completely if it were locked to first person. And if the animations weren't as long as they are npcs would just flop over and they'd have to make different animations entirely for that.

Its part of the flow of the game just as it was in Human Rev and it was completely fine in human rev. If you don't like em then use a ranged stun weapon or go full lethal. This game is not meant to be played at a high pace, its not a shooter, its not a twitch action game and the animations are a reflection of that design.

I am really curious how they're going to weave this story to make augment as outcasts seem like a viable thing. Not to mention I am curious who so many average people have augments in the first place. But maybe that's just one of those things you have to accept and ignore. Nevertheless, I found it interesting when Mr. Fortier spoke about how talking to people give you a more nuanced image of the augmented leader that are looked at as though they might be terrorist. Because I remember seeing a TED talk about the reason why some big terrorist organizations succeed in poor areas; they build their own local infrastructure. Hypothetically, for this game, the good sides of these augmented could just as well be for a tactical reason rather than humanitarian reason.

Not sure this story goes all complex on itself rather than just keeping people on a scale of light to dark gray. But I'm interested nonetheless.

Gameplay looks similar and somewhere deep down I was satisfied to my own surprise when he didn't hack the padlock but broke it and them joking about it. I feel like Watch Dogs generous hacking ability of weird objects has made me afraid of in-game hacking in games in general. But also; that hacking interface looked real nice.

Not to mention how many computers they passed and I constantly wanted to check what were on them. Can't wait for this game, looks spectacular.

Looks really promising overall. The one thing I don't like is the fade to black transition before every takedown; it seems like kind of a weird, jarring design choice. Maybe this will be removed for the final version of the game?

The alternative is to create takedown animations that look good in first-person. DOOM managed it.

This is a live non-stage demo so why do they insist on panning the camera all slow like? Who actually plays that way?

Or did he?

That's very fair, and I do think it doesn't break immersion in a universe like Deus Ex to think Adam Jensen is basically looking through a DBZ scouter/ Google Glass-ish sort of thing the whole time. Or Watch Dogs or Metroid Prime for that matter

And like you pointed out with DOOM, some games and genres are simply too fast to have that info communicated any other way. E.g. Starcraft II or DotA, you got to have a minimap to be able to play effectively in either. Or a fighting game like Street Fighter V (although personally I'd love to play a fighting game without visible health meters). Or the play experience is such that the HUD doesn't really inhibit it at all\ due to the genre.

The reason I personally gravitate to minimalist approaches is I find when I'm playing an Open World game, that I tend to end up staring at the minimap, subtitles and various meters most of the time since it is the most efficient way to parse tactical/navigation information, which to me is also the least interesting things to see on screen. I'd rather look at the combat animations, set pieces, environments that I'm supposed to be exploring. I'm not tooling around In Vice City for the minimap. Thus i find that I typically enjoy what I'm doing more in games where I can turn it off, especially in Open World games.

No... the alternative is create transition animations like literally every single game in existence is doing and has been doing for the past 10 years. Also, this game moves slow. There are games that literally run 20x as fast with sleek takedown animations and somehow Deus Ex can't manage it?

Also, nobody thought it was fine in HR. Everybody disliked it. This is just one aspect of the game that makes it seem unfinished and it looks highly unprofessional.

Shootouts look...awkward.

Something about this game seems very 6 years ago. It's like a HD remake of an unreleased game.

I am kinda getting a metro 2033 vibe

My favorite part of developer quick looks is how they feel the pressure of talking for a video while simultaneously playing the game. Second favorite part is how they often get lost in their own maps.

I like this franchise and I will play this game

Did Jensen's head get larger since the last game? I don't remember his head being that big... @_@

I really enjoyed Human Revolution and I'm excited for this game. This looks like a big step up from HR. I got the chance to play this at E3 and I left wanting to play more. Only problem I had watching this was the enemy AI seemed really janky at times. Sometimes it seemed like they weren't even being affected by shots and their movement was weird. I don't know. Something seemed off about it. I hope that somehow got polished up a bit between the time this demo took place and when it just recently went gold the other day.

And I only read a bit of the first page of comments. To people complaining about not liking EX quick looks. Yeah I don't prefer them either. But I'm sure we'll get an official QL once the game is released so no need to worry.