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

The voice actor does sound like he's trying to do a Clint Eastwood impression. Not that this is going to prevent me from playing that game.

Man, I can't wait for this. Couldn't get days off until that weekend after release sadly

@engineno9: I agree, it's very grating, and annoying to hear. I'll still probably play it because I enjoyed Human Revolution, but the gruff/Nolan Batman voice is over done at this point.

For me it's so hackneyed it loops right back around to entertaining.

@mrjamx814: Yeah, it may be near his normal voice but it feels like such an affectation like that Batman voice, which was bad enough in the few times it was used in those movies but having that for a ~30 hour game is just waaay too much.

Excited to play it, but the AI on display here was absurdly incompetent.

I don't disagree but, ...eh. They're being entirely up front about what it is, and you don't have to watch if you think there's no value.

Jensen and Geralt have the manliest voices in videogames.

is it me, or does the game look janky? "I know its til over a month out, but it looks rough. that being said, it may jut be the video play acting up.

Not a fan of those mini cut-scene takedowns, especially with that almost 1 second long black screen to load into them. They should learn from Doom.

Game looks good - will buy it for sure. Would love to play it on my PC, but I doubt I can run it without upgrades. Might have to go for PS4 route, which I really don't want to do - nothing worse than trying to aim at shit with sticks.

But yeah, I don't really care for the EX format, unless it's with a "friend of the site", like Lang. If it's the only way they can show footage, I'd prefer if they just declined. But I guess their stats show that it's worth doing, so I doubt they'll go anywhere.

1080p on consoles is arguable but far from the point here. Jeff has said that the capture equipment they use is very expensive and to upgrade to 1080p would cost a lot and I'm just guessing it's something CBSi don't want to invest in. If CBSi gave GB the budget for all new equipment, would the amount of people coming to the site, looking at ads, subscribing, etc increase? I very much doubt it. Drew and Vinny have always taken the stance that their capture gear is perfectly fine, they just need to increase the bitrate. I believe Drew recently said that they capture at around 1GB a minute on their capture gear which is obviously then compressed down.

Wait, are you telling me that Jensen never asked for this?

What about big ass spiders?

One thing that bugged me about the original was that you had to be crouched the whole game, resulting in you crouching during nearly all combat. Unfortunately this looks about the same.

That's pretty cool. He's an Eidos employee, right? Did they bring him in just to teach for a semester?

IM SO EXCITED. I JUST CANT HIDE IT.

I've seen a lot of comments about the 3rd person take down - I guess I don't remember but I thought I turned them off in Human Revolution? I played on PC and if they were always there I don't remember them being intrusive (its been a few years though, may have just forgot).

This looks real good. I can't wait.

@kill_la_kill said:

I’m currently playing through the Director’s Cut, and I’ve had the game crash on me maybe twice over the span of 40 hours. Other than that, I haven’t noticed any troubling bugs. Sure, there may be some unexplained slowdown and random graphical glitches, but overall the experience has been fine. (People with higher specs seem to be having the most problems; I’m sporting a 680 video card and i7 processor, so that may have something to do with it.)

Regardless, looks like that’s the only version available on Steam now. I would say try it out, and it if runs like crap (and if the in-depth forum bug fixes on Steam doesn’t help), then get a refund.

Oh, yeah, just a heads up… they took out the gold filter in the DC version, for some reason. As a result the game looks visually, well, boring. So I highly recommend getting this mod. Here’s an easy step by step guide on how to get it running. It really makes the game look a lot better in my opinion. If you don’t like the way it looks, then you can simply hit the Scroll Lock key to toggle it on and off in-game.

I saw a guy with a bionic hand and forearm walking down the street the other day. It was sorta semi-transparent so you could see all the little servo motors in the fingers and stuff. It looked pretty cool.

This game seems to be more of the same stuff from HR. I don't really know what else i was expecting though, and I loved that game so I'm sure I'll enjoy this.

I didn't realize Human Revolution was so polarizing. I thought it was the best FPS/RPG hybrid of all time when it came out. I'm really looking forward to Mankind Divided, though I wish they had kept the gold filter and thrown out the takedown cutscenes instead.

I didn't ask for this..but thanks!

I was really hyped for HR, but I was sufficiently cooled by the end, the problem with the previous outing was it was actually kind of repetitive by the close, and gunplay (which I felt was basically not even a viable path) was poor and lacked any kinetic impact. It also felt a bit rushed in spots, and some of the models were weaker than others, and don't get me started on the voice acting.

What it did do very well was establish a reasonable sense of place and tone, and aesthetically it was pretty dawn sharp and made great use of the infamous black and gold palette.

I like the watch-doggy hacking things from a distance and that the enemies aren't cookiecutter templates, but all have their own faces. Like that asian guy with the augments they scanned, looked on the standard of an important NPC. I also like that the physics-y things from the original Deus Ex are still here, like carrying boxes around to throw or block bullets with.

What i don't like is the hard cut to black during every execution. Doom and Dishonored have already shown how it can be done right. There's no reason to hardcut to a cutscene during a gunfight.

I'm also cautious about the conversations in Deus Ex. It often feels like characters wait a second too long to respond, like they're scrubbing around looking for the right response after you chose a dialog option. Additionally, it would be nice if the environments get a bit more varied. This is a cool aesthetic, but if you're playing a game for 20-50 hours, variety is the spice of life.

Looks good! I'm still probably more excited for Dishonored 2, but I won't say no to more Deus Ex either.

In terms of animation and cutscene/dialogue format, as well as enemy AI routines, Human Revolution looked like a last-gen game when it came out. I see they're sticking to their quality standards, as this looks like a 360 game in those regards.

I feel like in real life un-augmented people would be the outcasts. Look at plastic surgery, its already been happening for a long time.

Still not super impressed with this series, but I maybe should give it a second chance.

A member of The Police says "I'll be watching you". Hmm...

@shtinky: Criticizing the game with the dev sitting right there would be rude, and it would make the publisher/developer not want to help GB produce content for their site in the future. They have relationships to maintain, and they're not dicks. I'm sure that when the next Bombcast comes out, and they have an opportunity to speak about what they saw without the developer present, they will be more forthcoming. Just look at the Dangerous Golf QLEX, see how polite they're being, and then go listen to the Bombcast that followed. They were much more critical of it afterwards.

Ubisoft have really turned into UI hogs, all I see when looking at their games is a massive amount of information overlay, there are better ways to do this - they need to take a hint from games like Metro when it comes to implementing UI seamlessly into the world.

I guess it all comes down to lowest common denominator, unfortunately this means they treat their entire audience like people who have never played a videogame before.

This is a Eidos/Square Enix game

What I personally like about Deus Ex is inserting myself into a futuristic setting and really feeling that I have freedom to choose how to go about an objective. I mostly want to insert myself into a "normal" setting, not an intense warzone with destitute citizens and soldiers everywhere, at least not for most of the game. It's all a bit too bleak for me.

Maybe I'm elevating the previous games too much, but I felt like there were large parts of the games that were very much without conflict at all. So, basically I'm hoping that this game features settings substantially different from what was shown here, as this feels too similar to other games or just wrong in some way.

Wow this actually looks super super janky. Surprised.

There were only a few janky animations in Human Revolution, and it feels like whoever was responsible for those became lead animator on this game... which is a shame, and why the hell does the screen go black sometimes when doing a takedown?
This sort of claustrophobic environment is the only thing they've been showing of this game, so it feels like the choice aspect of a Deus Ex has been narrowed somewhat into what type of abilities you use, instead of using stealth abilities to aid your stealth approach, using the stealth abilities now IS the stealth approach. I feel HR had the right balance, this time even from the first trailer Jensen has reacted more like an unrealistic cartoon super hero than an upgraded human, it's not a direction i'm overly fond about.
Is it me or does that character Lubos sound like Father Grigori from Half Life 2?

Didn't this game put out a tech demo like a year ago that looked amazing. This doesn't look anything like it from what I can remember. Looks like another Watchdogs style graphical downgrade from the prerelease videos to the actual gameplay. I mean I dont care as long as its a good game but I wish the developers wouldn't do this.

Some of the animations are bizare, but for running on PS4 this looks sharp as hell.

Was Brad running this demo? Could have fooled me :P

I'm still looking forward to this game a lot, but this is my biggest worry right now. My assumption is that control is exerted through ownership of the distribution of drugs like Neuropoyzyne (sic?), which was a big thing in HR. With it being mentioned that the augment companies are going out of business maybe it's no longer easy to obtain the drugs you need as well.

that beard look weird to anyone else?

Lotta bitching and moaning in these comments. What a surprise.

I couldn't be more excited for more Deus Ex. This game looks fantastic regardless of it clearly not looking like a flawless gem. The atmosphere and world-building in this series is absolutely second to none and the environments are just awesome to be and play in. The art design continues to be incredible. The gameplay looks better in some crucial areas where Human Revolution faltered. It does seem like it has some of the same problems that HR had, but I never found any of those aspects that bothersome.

@humanity: Agree and I am super bummed that it seems like Titanfall 2 is making certain moves switch to a third person view.

Anyone else feel overwhelmed by the clutter in this game? I just feel like I take a look at most of the environments and it takes me a couple seconds to parse what I am actually looking at. It's a hard thing to put my finger on why that's the case. Maybe too many glowing objects and UI elements? I do not envy the challenge of making a believably cluttered but readable videogame. I'm sure the compression isn't helping things though.

This looks exactly like the game I want.

Ubisoft are so awful that even non-Ubisoft games are their fault. Have a lot of information you need to convey on screen? Screw it! Just let them guess what abilities are mapped or how many batteries they have! Objective markers? Who needs those! interactable objects? It's more immersive to click on everything and find them through trial and error!

I'm obviously exaggerating here but c'mon guys, these games are getting kinda complex and you kind of need a more complex UI to go along with it. Metro is not a great example of "clear and legible" UI. It is very pretty but sometimes you just want to know the status of some things without a fancy animation of putting your watch up to your face and all that.

EDIT: Although I do agree a bit more subtlety could be used here. The problem is they can't decide whether they want to make this a first or third person game. Dead Space is a tremendous example of context sensitive UI. Not sure how well you can pull that off in first person.

@engineno9: Agree. In a world where so many of our video game protagonists are/have been too gritty, he was just too over the top. Also the Adam's weird shoulders/proportions always bothered me.

Ever since I saw "The Hand", I've been ready for augments. Just kicking ass and scoring babes! Hell yeah!

@onekillwonder_: Whoa friend. Lotta opinions in this thread, of which you have one too. You liked the game, some didn't - someone having a differing opinion than yours isn't 'bitching and moaning'.

@onekillwonder_: There are legitimate complaints here that are far from bitching and moaning. Heck, I can't even find a low budget game that doesn't have a takedown animation transition, yet this AAA game sequel STILL doesn't have it.

I'm asking for some very basic immersion here. The fact it wasn't there in HR is insane. It is literally unfinished. Something is clearly missing. The fact it's not in this one is just mind boggling and unacceptable.

Even though this is a sequel to a AA title from 2011, it doesn't seem like they've improved a lot under the hood.

The jarring transitions from 1st to 3rd person are still there. The animation looks like janky over-acting motion capture with automated canned facial animations and generic NPC faces.

The visuals (besides the nice PBR shader work, additional static environment assets, higher geometry vertex count, and higher texture resolution) like jumpy non-smoothly transitioned animation quality, the enemy AI, the voice acting, etc. all don't look like they've improved as much as they should have.

To be honest, I wasn't expecting it to look as good or better than Uncharted 4 but the game has some real "jank" to it - and seeing as the first one was so successful, having this kind of stuff in a sequel from 5 years later seems a bit inexcusable.

I really enjoyed Human Revolution, too. I hope they get some of the jank fixed because it makes an otherwise impressive looking game seem like a lower quality product than it probably could be given a bit more focus and polish on those aspects.