Deus Ex Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Pre-Release Thread

[Venser]

If you're referring to the thumbnail then he doesn't have his shades down and you practically never saw him in HR without the glasses.

No, his face in the game looks different and he has the shades on.

The cool thing about the 1st Deus Ex was that it did the whole SciFi thing with understatement.
It was a plausible near-future version of the real world (ok, admittedly some things should have been a bit more futuristic looking).
DX:HR was already too futuristic for a game set less than 20 years from now.

That's exactly what Harvey Smith said about Invisible War: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGIdYl2oN74&feature=youtu.be&t=32s

 

[Lacrymas]

That's because it's cyberpunk and that's one of the defining characteristics of that genre - believable near-future. Well, maybe not the "believable" part, Blade Runner is cyberpunk, but it's set in 2019 and it's a completely different existence and technology level entirely. I don't think HR looked too futuristic though, it was all an illusion created by the neausea-inducing yellow filter. It was basically now, but with transhumanism. The entire aesthetic of it wasn't Deus Ex though, it was a different game entirely. They only used the Deus Ex name because of recognition, and maybe because it dealt with transhumanism. Deus Ex didn't deal with transhumanism though, it was already a done topic. It dealt with shadow governments and conspiracies, obsolescence and betrayal. Not saying that every game in a franchise has to deal with the same topics, but they did really try to shove some conspiracy in there, so there's that. Too bad that neither problem that it raises goes anywhere. They are never explored beyond the superficial and are dropped sometime after the mid-point. Jensen is a non-entity as well.

 

[grimace]

It looks pasty as fuck. I'm more concerned about the fact that the whole thing doesn't look like Deus Ex at all anymore. The first one that is. I don't have a snappy remark though, because it's sad.

I miss being able to customize my JC Denton. I was playing the role I wanted to play in Deus Ex.

Adam Jensen is not who I would role play as in a Deus Ex game.

I want to play Gunther.
I always loved his character.

It's amazing how much depth they were able to add to him regarding his anonymous e-mails, and communications with agent navarre, etc.

I would love to play as a Gunther-like character.

 

[Infinitron]

The original Deus Ex isn't really about THE CONSPIRACIES. That's because it's about a world where the Conspiracy has already won. There's a facade of normalcy but it's all a joke. It's in DX:HR where you foil an honest-to-god conspiracy. Installing mind control firmware in people's augmentation chips? The original Deus Ex's MJ12 would have done that before breakfast without breaking a sweat if they wanted to.

 

[Lacrymas]

That's because it's about a world where the Conspiracy has already won. There's a facade of normalcy but it's all a joke..

Exactly; I said it *dealt* with conspiracies, not that it's about conspiracies. HR is about conspiracies. It's the only problem that was important in the end and it was disappointing. Transhumanism, withholding of knowledge, glamorization of news personalities, healthcare and the dissemination of media were way more important and interesting topics it brought up, but never went anywhere with.

 

[Helly]

If you have questions for the devs put them here, I might meet them before the end of the week.

 

[grimace]

If you have questions for the devs put them here, I might meet them before the end of the week.

I have many questions.

Will a zero kill run be possible?
Pacifist stealth build possible?

Will hacking be expanded?

 

[Neanderthal]

Any chance we'll see General Sam Carter, love to play a game as him, no augs, no nanos, just one tough motherfucker.

 

[Zombra]

If you have questions for the devs put them here, I might meet them before the end of the week.

What will be done to differentiate lethal and nonlethal gameplay? Will it once again be "Press X to kill, press Y to knock out"? Will it once again be "sniper rifle to kill, tranq rifle to knock out"?

 

[cherry blossom]

Too bad we are playing as Adam Jensen again. I also hate his gravelly voice so much, the same way I hate Geralt's voice, it makes them sound like pussies. We all know we aren't going to get Deus Ex: Not-popamole, so we might as well play this one.

Witcher with American dubbing is the wrong way to play the series. Original Polish voice acting is far superior, and authentic.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.pcgamer.com/deus-ex-writer-each-ending-in-human-revolution-was-the-correct-ending/

Deus Ex writer: each ending in Human Revolution was the 'correct' ending

At PAX Australia I had the opportunity to talk with Mary DeMarle, lead writer on Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. DeMarle also wrote Human Revolution, and had some interesting insights into how Mankind Divided will expand on the oppressive, dystopian Deus Ex vision. She also discussed how the studio is dealing with the last game's awkward, branching ending.

Warning: there are huge spoilers for Human Revolution in this interview.

The cities in Human Revolution – Detroit, Hengsha – are pretty typical sci-fi settings. What’s the motive for setting part of Mankind Divided in Prague?

There’s a couple of reasons. When we started working on the game we were aware of the fact that, okay, Human Revolution was basically North America and Asia, and we’re really missing Europe. We thought we had to have a European country in this one. That was one of the reasons, and there were a lot of things in terms of the Czech Republic that were enticing to us. Some of it was history, although we have departed from it quite a bit for the future. Knowing about the velvet revolution [was part of it], but there’s also the Golem myth there, which is a very important segment of the country’s history. We were looking at the idea of the segregation of the augmented people, so the myth of the golem of Prague fit in there thematically.

Will the hub city layout carry over from Human Revolution?

On a production level, we still speak about things in terms of hubs and compounds, so there is a bit of that – you’ll be into a city hub and then you’ll go to a different location. But one of the things we also wanted to do was put compounds more into the city hubs themselves, so that it’s a mix of both. So, yes, we’ll still have some of that, and hopefully we’ve pushed it a bit further.

There was a huge morally ambiguous decision at the end of Human Revolution, with several different outcomes that dramatically affected the story's close. Where does Mankind Divided pick up? Which of those endings is ‘true’?

A lot of people ask which ending we settled on to grow from, and the answer I give is “which one did you choose?” Everyone chose their ending and it was a big decision. We had people write to us and say they had half hour discussions with their partner about what they were going to do. We don’t want to rob that from anybody. We realised that there are three people in the world who know what decision was made: Adam Jensen, Eliza, and you, the player.

So you guys know, but the rest of the world [in the Deus Ex universe] only knows that the “aug incident” caused millions of augmented people to go crazy all over the world. When you’re swept up in tragedy your focus is only on that. It’s only in the aftermath of [the tragedy], when you’re finally able to step away, that you’re able to hear the noise. By the time that happens, the message has gotten out but by the time anyone is ready to hear it, there are a lot of competing messages. People will, in the face of tragedy, try to make sense on their own, so there are plenty of messages, plenty of false reports and rumours.

So in that way all the endings are true and none of them are true.

Exactly. The thing that is true, that everyone knows, is that millions of augs went crazy and hundreds of millions of people died, and the Panchaea installation got so damaged that it collapsed and people died in it, and then there are rumours.

What are your feelings regarding transhumanism?

I get this question a lot and every time it changes slightly. In general I would say where technology is leading mankind, and where we’re able to experiment, there’s great potential. It’s great what can happen. There are people whose lives have been changed. People who are born unable to hear suddenly can. I remember listening to a woman who was born without legs speak, and she’s a great athlete and model now, and she gets to change her height because she has artificial legs. There’s a part of me that embraces all that and there’s a part of me that is a bit of a technophobe. I hate it when my computer doesn’t work and I don’t want to deal with it. Would I go and cut off my arm and get a new one? Probably not, because I already have a hard time making a doctor’s appointment!

Is it difficult to deal in themes as weighty and morally ambiguous as Deus Ex in a video game?

I’ve never thought about that, but it’s always difficult to tackle it in any medium. In games it might be difficult in terms of the fact that when you’re dealing with weighty, heavy issues you really need to have… we don’t like to deal in black and white. We like to have the shades of grey. But people have a tendency to latch onto something simple, and when you’re working with a game you’re working in a team. So there’s a challenge in the fact it’s not a single creator, it’s a bunch of people bringing that vision together. And then I think there’s the challenge that the audience. Why do you play a game? Sometimes you want an escape, something simple, but at other times you want to explore something deeper.

Augmentations weren’t unanimously frowned upon in Human Revolution, but from what I’ve read about Mankind Divided, they kinda are. How has that affected the tone and aesthetic of the game?

We’re definitely going for a much darker vision. Not everyone is against the augments, and there are many people still on the fringes. Adam Jensen isn’t the only one who didn’t ask for it. There’s various people out there who needed these things to stay alive. There are a lot of people who still believe in the potential of augs, as David Serif has always believed. What their struggle in this one is, ‘hey guys, remember we were victims’. We’ve definitely gone, as I’ve said, for a darker tone. It’s a much more somber game. We’re starting to move a little bit away [from the HR aesthetic], into blue-ish tones, like the original, as we head into that era.

You guys used the phrase ‘mechanical apartheid’ in your marketing, and that caused some controversy. What is your personal response to that, as a writer?

We know that it is a charged word, we definitely know that. Yet it’s so perfectly suited to what we’re doing, that the use of it was appropriate in that context. I certainly understand why people would be upset and offended, and yet at the same time if we’re not able to explore these complex issues then what are we able to do? Not every story is rosy, not every story is black and white, and one of the things about science fiction is that we’re trying to show a mirror to the world. We need to be able to examine these things or else we’ll never be able to grow and change. That’s my philosophy, but having said that I never want to offend anyone who has lived through those struggles, and the most I can hope for is that if I approach it with sensitivity then hopefully something better will come of it.

You told GamesRadar that there won’t be a multiple choice ending in Mankind Divided. Why?

For Human Revolution we actually didn’t want [the ending to be dictated by] a press of a button, [but we had to] for production reasons and timeline and schedule. We actually wanted to have the player do things, and we believed that if you really believed in your ending you’d have to work for it. Really what we wanted to do from the get go was, “can we really push the narrative in ways where choices you make early on can impact later”? Now we’re embracing the idea of choice and consequence.

So it’ll be influenced by the whole playthrough and not a choice at the end.

Yes.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Deus Ex writer: each ending in Human Revolution was the 'correct' ending

This sounds suspiciously like Deus Ex: Invisible War in regard to the original Deus Ex.

 

[Metro]

I didn't find the DXHR story interesting so I largely ignored it. Jensen was some prototype specially bred for the advanced aug program that would eventually yield people like Denton and Simmons? And Darrow and that Asian lady was... I have no idea. Towards the end it got too heavy handed to be interesting.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Witcher with American dubbing is the wrong way to play the series. Original Polish voice acting is far superior, and authentic.

And ruined by shitty lip-sync. And by shitty I mean non-existent.

 

[alkeides 2.0]

The thing about DX:HR ending is that all of them only vary in the transmission Eliza Cassan claims she will send. How do you know what she will or will not actually send? She might just be giving you the illusion of choice.

And of course in Deus Ex you know that augmentations never actually go away.

 

[Lacrymas]

I don't think it's possible to turn away from such technology. In a real sense. It's such a tremendous leap forward for humanity that it will be impossible to sweep it under a rug. That's why I think that they shouldn't dwell on that debate at all and shouldn't have given such a choice in general. Most of the interesting themes in HR weren't explored enough and that's why we have ending-tron 4000, and nonsensical choices, given the context of the situation, even if we ignored the cheapness of the ending-tron.

 

[Infinitron]

Elias asks for this:

 

[Alfons]

What will be done to differentiate lethal and nonlethal gameplay? Will it once again be "Press X to kill, press Y to knock out"? Will it once again be "sniper rifle to kill, tranq rifle to knock out"?

Is there a single games that has a lethal and a non-lethal option that deviates from the "lethal is the easier but less money/less points/oh you're a bad person, shame on you option and the non-lethal is the opposite of that" model?

 

[Zombra]

Is there a single games that has a lethal and a non-lethal option that deviates from the "lethal is the easier but less money/less points/oh you're a bad person, shame on you option and the non-lethal is the opposite of that" model?

You mean besides DXHR?

Legion

 

[Alfons]

You mean besides DXHR?

DXHR follows that formula exactly. All games I played that have a non-lethal option don't give you anything for it aside from, maybe, a story "you're a good person" tap on the back. SC gave you higher score penalties for kills, but that's it. There's never a real gameplay advantage for choking out a guy instead of shanking him to death.

Edit: Actually dishonored made subsequent levels harder depending on how violent you were, so it kinda balanced it out, but not really. Just blinking like a retard through enemy lines is the easiest way to play the game.

 

[WhiteGuts]

Alpha Protocol made certain missions a lot harder if you go gun blazing. I particularly remember the Ambassy mission (I think) that will be filled with marines or whatever if you kill too many people on your way there.

 

[anus_pounder]

Alpha Protocol made certain missions a lot harder if you go gun blazing. I particularly remember the Ambassy mission (I think) that will be filled with marines or whatever if you kill too many people on your way there.

Not that you really need their help anyway, but getting marine guards and then bluffing your way in makes them allies and a better match against G22/VCI guys than the usual cops a full stealth player would get.

 

[Alfons]

Alpha Protocol made certain missions a lot harder if you go gun blazing. I particularly remember the Ambassy mission (I think) that will be filled with marines or whatever if you kill too many people on your way there.

That's not what I'm talking about. Most games do the stealth vs action ok. I'm talking about when you are in stealth there is no good mechanics reason to not kill a guy. DXHR tries and fails at giving you one by giving more EXP. Which is barely an incentive since pistol headshots are the easiest way to remove people. I played it as a pseudo speedrun stealth. Go in a straight line and stealthfully kill everyone in the way with measured abandon. I didn't bother moving bodies so if I ever did a stealth takedown I did the nonleathal one turned around and shot them in the head.

I'm trying to remember the name of the game where killing dudes was much louder than knocking them out, comically so. Whether you stabbed a guy or shot him in the head when he was conscious or not the guy's cry would split the heavens, whereas if you knocked him out he would make a quite "ugh" sound. This thing is so vague in my head that I'm not even sure if it exists or if it was some obscure tech demo.

 

[Zombra]

DXHR follows that formula exactly.

Not quite exactly - you missed the main point. Lethal isn't even easier in DXHR. It's literally "Hold B to kill, tap B to KO." Same cost (1 candy bar), same effect. Sniper rifle, tranq rifle, gameplay is practically identical.

Reading your follow-up posts, it seems like you're agreeing with me, so I don't know what we're bickering about.

 

[Jaedar]

Not quite exactly - you missed the main point. Lethal isn't even easier in DXHR. It's literally "Hold B to kill, tap B to KO." Same cost (1 candy bar), same effect. Sniper rifle, tranq rifle, gameplay is practically identical.

Reading your follow-up posts, it seems like you're agreeing with me, so I don't know what we're bickering about.

Lethal is actually HARDER, since the knockout is entirely silent, while the lethal one makes just as much noise as if you'd just shot them in the head with a pistol.

Same for tranq versus sniper rifle. Rifle might havea silencer attachment though, can't remember.