You probably don't remember, but last year, in The Moosies, I had some predictions about the following year. One of them was that Deus Ex: Mankind Divided would be my Game of the Year 2016. Even then, that was based on basically nothing outside of the fact that I liked Human Revolution a lot, and had low or no expectations for a lot of the games this year that I ended up liking (The Witness, Overwatch, and Doom, etc). So, all these months later, having played the game to completion, do I still think it's Game of the Year worthy? You probably already have an idea about that based on the title of this.

Overall, I really like Mankind Divided (MD). It's a great game, and for the most part, definitely better than Human Revolution (HR). That was a game that was pretty deeply flawed in a lot of ways, but still had plenty of heart. And, it combined two things that I really love: Tactical Espionage focused stealth, and dialog trees. It wasn't quite the Mass Effect and Metal Gear hybrid I've long dreamed of, but it felt like it was about as close as anyone was ever going to get.

That was five years ago, and any time you wait half a decade for a sequel, it starts to affect your expectations. In the case of Uncharted 4, the numerous delays, and seemingly troubled development (remember all the people that left Naughty Dog?) lowered my expectations. And, of course, that game ended up being fantastic. With MD, I intentionally limited my exposure to the game pre-release, because I knew I was going to buy it, unless it was objectively really bad, or horribly broken.

There isn't much in the way of big budget stealth games these days, and I wasn't going to help sink that ship by not buying one of them, you know? Metal Gear is a shambling corpse of what it once was, and while I keep hoping a new Splinter Cell will be announced every time Ubisoft announces new things, I fear that franchise may be on an extended hiatus. And I know Dishonored 2 is a thing, but I didn't especially like the original, at least not nearly as much as many others did. What little I've seen of the new one doesn't look like they've addressed my problems, so we'll just see about that.

Anyway, the point I was trying to get to was that, with the passage of time, ye olde rose tinted glasses have made HR seem better in my head than it probably actually was. I played a lot of that game, and I even got the Platinum Trophy. And with that ever rosier view of that game, my expectations for the new one rose. After a five year wait, I was expecting perhaps more than I should have.

In a lot of ways, MD feels like the game that HR should have been. Just in terms of the general feel of the game, the (higher overall) quality of the voice acting, and little improvements here and there. Of course a PS3/360 game from 2011 never would have looked as good as this game does, but you get what I mean. This feels like a slight evolution of HR, rather than a, well, revolution. And after five years, I guess I expected more. Either that, or it to be a much bigger game than it is. Not that I think this game is "small," or doesn't have enough content. I don't think the game has an in-game play time, so I don't know how long it took me to complete, but there's plenty in there if you don't rush through it, and take the time to do the side quests (which have the best writing in the game and are worth your time).

That said, it also feels like a smaller game than HR. That game had two cities to explore. Sure, they were both small portions of cities, but there were still two of them. This game only has one. Yes, it's divided into two districts (like Hengsha in the previous game), but I would wager that it's less overall space to explore. I don't remember the exact number of story missions in that game, but I'd also wager than MD has fewer of them. I still think MD is a better playing game overall, and there's definitely an argument to be made for quality over quantity, but after such a long wait, it's hard to not feel at least a little disappointed by that part of the game.

Maybe disappointed is the wrong word. Surprised, perhaps? I'm sure they didn't spend the entirety of those five years making MD, and maybe there were a lot of internal problems during development that led to a lot of content being cut. I don't know. What I do know is that I spent the vast majority of the game really enjoying it, only to be left with a feeling of...It's not quite the faux-phantom pain that MGSV's ending left with me, but it's certainly similar.

All of that said, if you want a sneaking game with dialog trees, this game is really good at both of those things. There's still a bunch of different ways to tackle most situations. Want to sneak in undetected by using passive augs to bypass stuff like poison gas and electricity? Sure. Want to turn invisible and saunter right past the guards? Go for it. Want to shoot your way through everyone? I mean, I guess you could. Want to talk your way through? You can during the handful of cases where that's an option.

The shooting is still the weakest link, but aside from that, everything feels good, and works well. I'm still a fan of the first person walking around and third person cover system. Now there's easy ways to move from cover to cover with a single button press. I don't think that was in the previous game. Maybe moving from one side of a doorway to the other, but this lets you point at cover in front of you, and move to it just by pushing X. It's a nice touch.

All of the augs from the previous game return, and along with them are a bunch of new, "experimental" augs. You unlock these the same way as the others (with Praxis points you get from either leveling up, or finding in the world), except these overheat your system, and will apparently cause "glitches" to happen if you don't turn other augs off to compensate. I don't know what those glitches are, because I never let myself stay overheated. There are some "glitches" early on as a part of the story, so I imagine they're probably like that.

It's an interesting, but ultimately lacking system. One of the problems I have with it is that only a couple of the "experimental" augs seem like they might actually cause Jensen to overheat (yes, this is a "lore" problem). I totally get it with the dash one (it works a lot like the Blink ability from Dishonored), and the Titan shield (which creates a big shield (made of nanomachines?) around Jensen). But remote hacking? Shooting electric stun darts? Those don't seem any more heat intensive than say, turning invisible, which is one of the returning augs. If each of the augs caused a different amount of overheating, I'd let it slide. But, so far as I can tell, it's the same amount for all of them. Granted, I only ever unlocked two (the dash and remote hacking), but I'd assume they all cause 50% overheating. And that all the ones you can deactivate reduce the heat by 50%. Also, you can deactivate other "experimental" augs that you haven't spent points on, if you want. Again, doesn't seem quite right lore wise.

Once you get the ability to start interacting with this system, the game makes a big deal out of how you have to "permanently" disable systems to activate others, and then immediately says, "But hey you can do this side quest and then have them all on." You can't turn in that side quest until much later in the game, but you still know that's going to be an option. Even so, I think it'd be more interesting if the demands of these augs were higher, but you could turn systems on and off at will throughout the game to manage heat.

For example, imagine that the Titan shield causes a lot of heat, but provides a lot of protection. If you get into a firefight, you could go turn that on, but turn off a bunch of stuff like the cloak that you don't need. Then, afterwards, go back to stealth mode. I dunno, maybe that'd be too tedious, but I think something along those lines would be more interesting.

Even then, most of the "experimental" augs didn't seem like they'd be that useful. I did a no kill playthrough, so I never really got into any firefights. I did somehow trigger an alarm or two, and I'm still upset about that, but I can get that Trophy some other time. Remote hacking, especially once upgraded to do more than just let you turn off TVs (and that annoying Picus channel that people feel the need to have playing on MULTIPLE TELEVISIONS IN THE SAME ROOM AT ONCE), is really useful. It lets you temporarily disable cameras, turrets, and robots. Like I said, really useful. I found the dash to be somewhat useful in a handful of spots, but also only once upgraded. At first, you tap the button and just fly forward a set amount. Upgraded, you can hold to charge, and see an icon of where you'll end up. You can also just point at the floor next to you to cease the dash if you decide not to.

I didn't get any of the other "experimental" ones because none of them seemed that useful, at least for how I was playing. The Tesla would be good for knocking out a few enemies at once, but again, you need to upgrade it several times to really be of use. I like slow motion, but the slow motion aug doesn't seem useful unless you're getting into lots of shootouts. Same for the Titan shield. And then the last one (I think) just lets you should out one of Jensen's arm blades, which seems like it might be fun in a dumb way, but also not great? Maybe it explodes or something, I don't know.

There is one spot in the game where you have to make a choice about what mission you do next, and the game actually follows through with not letting you do the other one afterward. It's not nearly as big a choice as say, the one in Witcher II that dictates which version of Act II you experience, but it's still more than I expected, frankly. Also an interesting choice given that, like I said, this game doesn't really have as many story missions as it feels like it probably should. Definitely in terms of quantity of narrative (and quality of it), if not in terms of actual time played.

Maybe they thought Breach Mode would be a good way to add to the time played. If they did, they were pretty wrong, I think. I feel bad saying it, because on paper, Breach Mode is a cool idea. It's series of VR missions with a cool art style, wrapped around the premise of hacking into servers to steal data from corporations. Most of it is just generic data, but there are some story lines to follow about specific cases, and they do conclude with some voice acting from the Picus lady, if you're like me and skip a lot of text but listen to every spoken word in games.

My biggest issue with Breach Mode is that it has booster packs full of random items, and it makes the whole thing feel like it's there just for you to buy these packs. I wouldn't mind if those packs were just weapons. My issue is that's how you get things like ammo, and healing items. So far as I can tell, aside from giving you one full magazine of regular ammo at the start of the mission, booster packs are the only way to get ammo and other consumables. There's also booster items, that are one time use, and do things like boost your health, or make a certain weapon type more effective, but only for one mission. I ran out of armor piercing ammo in the mode, and the only way to get more is to hope the next booster pack I get has some in it. Or pay money and keep buying them until I get more. I haven't looked into what you can get in terms of purchases, but the whole thing feels sleazy.

[I should note that you can use real money to buy things for the story mode too. But there's way more stuff in there than you would realistically ever need, so while I'm not happy about it, at least it didn't impact the design/balance/whatever of the story. Or, at least you get way more than you need if you play like I did. Which is to say taking everything that isn't nailed down.]

Especially when the Breach Mode levels aren't that great to begin with. There's an emphasis on speed that isn't there in most of the story mode in the game, and I feel like that only encourages rushing and being sloppy. There's also some levels that fail you instantly if you get detected, and that's always fun. Everyone loves insta-fail stealth. (Sarcasm.)

The only reason I've played as much of the mode as I have is because there's Trophies associated with it. I really don't want to play any more of it, but I've only gotten one of those Trophies and as much as I know I shouldn't be trying to Platinum game, of course that hasn't stopped me yet. But I don't know. Breach Mode just rubs me the wrong way in so many ways. And that's a bummer, because I really like that art style, and bite sized stealth levels using the mechanics of this game could be great.

But it's not.

Hm, is there anything else I should say? I do like that the ending of the game isn't literally a few buttons you have to choose between like HR. I'm not going to spoil any of what happens, but there's more to it than that, and I like that aspect of it. Actually, there is an issue I have with something in that final mission of the game, and I guess I'll go into SPOILER mode and talk about it. I feel like it HAS to be a bug, because nothing about it makes sense.

Again, these are SPOILERS for literally the final mission in the game, so don't read it unless you've finished the game, or don't care.

You know, the AI in this game is kind of weird when it comes to certain things, like when they see you stealing things, or hacking into things. And by weird, I mean they either don't care at all, or go straight for their guns and start shooting you. I guess that kind of makes sense with the police and the lore about all the anti-aug sentiments (more on that later), but not so much when you're in the secret Interpol base that you work at. Sure, they should be upset if they find you hacking someone else's computer, but not enough to go straight for lethal gunfire, instead of trying to use their words. It's just weird, given that, in 2016, you'd think they would be able to do more with the AI than that.

That also brings me to how the police deal with you, and the game's focus on augmented people being discriminated against and whatnot. The game goes out of its way to stress how much hardship augmented people see, and certainly tries to make it look like that's the case. But, it's mostly just window dressing. For example, Prague is broken up into two districts that you can travel between, and you need to take the subway to get between them. The station in the first area of the game (near Jensen's apartment) has this big divider between the sections for augs and "naturals," complete with barbed wire, and heavily militarized police, well, policing the area.

But, you don't actually have to go through the augmented section. You can just saunter down the "naturals" section, and they don't stop you. They might yell something at you, but that's about it. You will get a different subway loading screen, with some people looking at him uneasy, and then a cop will yell at you and check your papers when you get off. I do like that they recorded five or six different versions of them yelling, sometimes in English, sometimes in Czech, sometimes from a lady, and sometimes a dude. Even that doesn't last forever, because if you do it enough, eventually they just give up and you don't see any more of those.

It just feels like they half-assed some of that stuff, especially after the entire marketing campaign around the game was about this "Mechanical Apartheid." All it really amounts to in the game are the aforementioned heavily militarized police in the streets, and at one point in the game you go to Golem City, which is a big slum-type place built for augmented people. The game doesn't really do anything interesting with it story wise, and it sometimes just comes off as, "we wanted to do a story about racism but not actual racism because that would be hard." Which is not to say I think it's terrible, I certainly think it's handled better in game than it was in the marketing. But I don't think that aspect of the story is great, and given the quality of the side missions, I know they can do better. And I sincerely hope they do better in the next game.

This game also feels a lot more like Jensen just on his own doing stuff than the last game did. Which, I know isn't true in the story, because he works with other people, but this game doesn't really have equivalents for Frank Pritchard or Faridah Malik. They were the two characters that Jensen talked with the most over the radio. Kinda like Otacon and Meryl from MGS. Except Pritchard is much snider than Otacon, and there's no romantic subplot between Jensen and Malik. Again, there certainly are characters that Jensen talks with, but none of them are around enough, or have enough personality to have really stuck out to me. I'm not saying this game should have just been the same exact back and forth between Jensen and them again (though apparently the first DLC is using the return of Pritchard as a selling point), but while I like Jensen (and think he has a better overall performance in this game), I also don't think he can carry a game on his own as well as the devs of MD apparently did.

Speaking of things they should improve, I still think the facial animations in this game aren't very good. Or, at least, most of them aren't. Occasionally when you get into a "speech-off" with an NPC, the animations are noticeably more accurate to how human faces actually move when people talk. The previous game was like this too. I get that doing facial scan stuff for the amount of dialog that a game like this has probably wasn't in the budget (well, it definitely wasn't), but in a game where you spend a lot of time looking at people talk, they should have done a better job of animating the people talk. Sometimes it's so bad I started to think there was some sort of delay, either for the audio, or the face. As if it was out of sync with the TV or something. But that never happened with anything else in the game, or any other games I've played using the setup I always use, so it had to just be poor lip-syncing on the game's part. Or maybe it was just me, I don't know.

Stuff like that is also weird given how specifically detailed other things in the game are. If you find a billiard table in the game, and shoot one of the balls into one of the pockets, you can then see the ball roll down the thing in the side a few seconds later. If you put in the Day One Edition code, you can unlock other jackets for Jensen, and see the ones you aren't wearing hanging in his apartment. And they change if you change his jacket. Conversely, it's only ever the default one in the pre-rendered cutscenes, so I ended up sticking with that in the long run, because the switch bothered me. But, all throughout the game, there's tiny little details in all the levels, apartments, offices, etc, that show how much time was spent making the places feel more authentic.

I just wish they had spent that time on making the faces move better, is all I'm saying. And I know that's not how game dev works, the environmental design (or whatever) team was most likely not also the facial animation people. I'm just saying.

Also, when you drag bodies in the game, they just kinda float around in front of you, like Jensen is using telepathy or something. It's silly.

Anyway, I know I've harped on the game a lot, but I really do like it. The sneaking is fun, and I think most of the side quests are really good. Honestly, I wish this game was just about Jensen as a detective going around the city solving crimes for people, instead of embarking on this conspiracy laden quest to find the Illuminati. At least if there's going to be a noticeable difference in the quality of the storytelling between Detective Jensen and sneaking after the Illuminati Jensen.

If you're into stealth and story focused games, you really should play this one. It's not perfect, but it's still really good in most ways. As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you have a good day.

Great write up! I had a lot of the same feelings as you about the game. It's more of Human Revolution and for that I can't complain too much, but there's too many niggling issues with it that I can't outright recommend it to everyone.

As for your issue with the ending sequence, I had no problems looting all the guards for their pocket secretaries without raising any alarms. You may have hit a bug, but I think that it's more likely that some bystander caught you looting the guard, triggering a panic state and causing the Big Bad to know that you were there. I found that sequence to be quite finicky on when you're spotted, so I ended up dragging guards into isolated rooms and vents before I looted them. Hopefully that helps!

@darth_navster: It does help, thanks. I'm glad, if nothing else, that it wasn't intentional design, because that would be INSANE.

Great write up. I actually didn't buy this game, which is surprising since I somehow manage to buy most major releases even though I only finish half of them. A number of things threw me off, one being Jensen himself. His voice is ridiculous. Two being all the things you took issue with. The story sounds uninteresting with an attention grabbing marketing campaign that now comes across as even more obnoxious when I hear the story actually isn't that great. The "lack of content", and in general lack of changes from Human Revolution are also quite strange. From all the previews and build up to this game I was expecting a huge world with tons of new powers and mechanics. Instead they made Human Revolution 2.5. Nothing about it is grabbing me in anyway, which is the exact opposite of how I assumed I would feel.

@cjduke: I do think Jensen's performance is a good bit better than it was in the previous game, but I didn't hate him there either, and I wouldn't call him especially great in terms of ability to "emote" (or whatever). Honestly, part of the reason why I like him is because I used to follow his voice actor on Twitter (back when I followed a lot of Canadian voice actors for some reason), and he seems like a cool guy there. I'd still say it's worth a shot once it goes on sale if you liked Human Revolution back in the day, but if what I wrote dissuaded you, I'd say wait.

I pretty much agree with everything. I LOVED Human Revolution, mostly because-like you-it was the closest thing to a mashup of Mass Effect and Metal Gear Solid (two of my favorite series) I'll likely find. There's something... Off about Mankind Divided. Yeah, it plays and looks better, but it's just lacking that certain something that drew me to HR. On top of that, the "subtle as a sledgehammer" aug apartheid stuff just ends up being goofy at best and groan inducing at worst.

I do love me some Jensen, but I doubt I'd rank this as one of my fave games this year. It's good... Just not great, ya know?

I agree. I haven't gotten super deep into it because of some of the same things you mentioned bugging me. I'm playing on PC with everything set to either High or Max and man do NPCs look terrible. The guy across from your apartment building looks last gen console where there are so many things around him, including Jensen himself that look amazing. This has the feel of a game that needed a few more months in the oven but got rushed to hit a date instead.

I'm not even a graphics snob / PC only guy either. Two of my favorites this year have been Firewatch and No Man's Sky, both of which I played on PS4. It's been one of my bigger disappointments of late, because I had such high hopes based on the previous game.

I just finished Mankind Divided. I pretty much agree with all of your sentiments @mooseymcman. I loved the first Deus Ex and Human Revolution (Invisible War is garbage), so I was really excited for Mankind Divided. I really enjoyed my time with MD, but I was expecting more of an evolution of HR. MD just ends up being a tweaked, updated version of HR. Plus the story of MD just didn't really do it for me. Feels like they didn't do their naturals vs augs premise justice. Hopefully we don't have to wait 5 years for the next game, but all I can imagine is it being pretty similar to MD in terms of scope and mechanics.

I am still not through the entire game (though I think I'm pretty close, just landed on a roof in London), but it dawned on me what my biggest issue with this game is: it is one of the most poorly written "conspiracy" plots I have encountered.

Deus Ex games are about conspiracies, everyone knows this, everyone expects this going into the game. I knew this going into HR, but I didn't know what the conspiracy was or who was involved and I had a good time trying to figure it out. Wondering whether Sarif was on my side or theirs, what Megan had to do with it. What makes the stories interesting is finding the conspiracy and getting to the bottom of it, figuring out who is behind it, how they did it and why they did it; unraveling a mystery. There is absolutely no real mystery or intrigue in MD. The entire conspiracy, which I could sum up in a sentence or two, is laid out almost from the beginning. Literally the first mission in the open world reveals most of the conspiracy and who is good, bad, or good forced to do bad. The choices you are presented with throughout the plot are meaningless because it is obvious who you should trust and who you shouldn't. Maybe this last bit of the game will drop some major twists, but there have been no signs that anything about this story is anything other than what it seems on its face, so any twist would feel unearned and unimpressive.

I hear a lot of complaints about the "Aug Apartheid" stuff, and while I agree its pretty shallow for the most part, there were a couple bits that actually made me stop and think. At the beginning of the game, I would always try to take the naturals-only route into the subway. I was a goddamn Interpol agent with some badass military hardware and sweet shades, I had the credentials, I could go where I wanted. Getting stopped by the police EVERY time really started to get to me and I eventually started just going into the segregated path. Its dumb and simplistic but it actually made me think about what it means and how it feels to resist constant oppression. Sure, its got the depth of a Law and Order episode, but I've been known to watch and enjoy kitschy network dramas from time to time. MD is more like a law and order where the cold open reveals everything thats going on and the rest of the episode is spent watching people ask questions you already know the answer to.

It's still a well-crafted stealth game, and I've enjoyed the gameplay but without a decent story pushing me along it is not nearly as enjoyable as it should be. Makes the campaign feel more or less like the Breach mode with textures.

@ioftd: The closest thing the game has to a twist is in the mid credits sequence, is all I will say. And even then, it's not really a big twist or anything like that. But yeah, those are some really good, valid points about how this game handles "conspiracies."

@mooseymcman said: Anyway, I know I've harped on the game a lot, but I really do like it. The sneaking is fun, and I think most of the side quests are really good. Honestly, I wish this game was just about Jensen as a detective going around the city solving crimes for people, instead of embarking on this conspiracy laden quest to find the Illuminati. At least if there's going to be a noticeable difference in the quality of the storytelling between Detective Jensen and sneaking after the Illuminati Jensen.

I had a similar feeling while playing through the game but I don't actually think that Deus Ex or Jensen are the correct vehicle for this. There is a really good game out there that should be made where you play a detective. And no I don't mean L.A Noire, maybe a detective game that doesn't devolve into a daft GTA style shooter at the end.