Deus Ex Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Pre-Release Thread

[Jools]

Marketing droids are the reason the high powered business scene is shit. They're mostly a bunch of fucking retards.

 

[DeepOcean]

Nice art and sound design team, pity Eidos Montreal really still need real writers.

 

[tuluse]

The writing in HR was fine until the end when it fell apart. I'd put it above DX1 for the first 70% of the game though.

 

[DeepOcean]

The writing in HR was fine until the end when it fell apart. I'd put it above DX1 for the first 70% of the game though.

Their dialog wasn't offensive for the most part but while some conversation battles like the ones with Sarif and Tong are cool, others with Sandoval, Hugh Darrow and the clerk on the police station are a bit overdramatic. I had the impression who wrote them gone on melodrama territory way too much and tried really HARD to spark some conflict that wasnt there. The story takes a turn to the shitter right after you reach the top of Tai Wong Medical (fail by cutscene is bad, fail by retarded cutscene is even worse) and doesn't get out of there. Besides, the plot lacks a decent antagonist (based on the trailer, they seem to be fixing this with the big russian dude what is a positive.).

About Deus Ex 1, it had a shitty storyline but its priority was gameplay and to its credit it had genious ideas like the destroyed statue of liberty as first level and did a cyberpunk atmosphere with everything on decay, falling apart, the cyberpunk feeling was really well done. You spend way too much time on slick factories, slick labs and slick warehouses on HR and not enough on the ghettos and the shitty parts, there were the hubs where some urban decay could be seen but not major missions with you walking on the worse of the slums. (based on the trailer, they seem to focus a bit more on the shitty parts this time, what is an improvement)

 

[Infinitron]

I didn't think the "shitty areas" of DX were that interesting, personally. My favorite memories are from the "huge wacky science lab"-type areas (which had a different feel from most of DX:HR's offices, I'll note). Versalife, the Ocean Lab, Vandenberg. Some of the NSF missions in the game's first third could get really samey. In DX:HR, Upper Hengsha was the closest to replicating the vibe I'm thinking about here.

Not directly related, but I think that in general, DX's mechanics work best in "infiltration"-type situations and that the game kind of loses steam if you spend too much time in straight-up urban hubs.

 

[Infinitron]

DXTV Episode 0 originally aired on Twitch on April 8th, 2015, just before the reveal of the announcement trailer for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.
Expect more episodes of DXTV in the future, giving an inside look at the development of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, directly from the team at Eidos-Montréal!

Apparently seniority at Eidos Montreal is determined by the strength of one's French accent

 

[Gnidrologist]

I didn't think the "shitty areas" of DX were that interesting, personally. My favorite memories are from the "huge wacky science lab"-type areas (which had a different feel from most of DX:HR's offices, I'll note). Versalife, the Ocean Lab, Vandenberg. Some of the NSF missions in the game's first third could get really samey. In DX:HR, Upper Hengsha was the closest to replicating the vibe I'm thinking about here.

Not directly related, but I think that in general, DX's mechanics work best in "infiltration"-type situations and that the game kind of loses steam if you spend too much time in straight-up urban hubs.

I don't know what you mean by ''works''. I always had the best time in urban hubs in any of DX games. All those mega huge compounds are so samey and redundant. The worst par in HR game for me till now (haven't finished it yet) was when you went through the huge infiltration mission of chinese tower labs with the ambush at the end and then immediately thrown into Montreal facility which again includes huge lab compound + ambush at the construction site. Just like in first DX, urban hubs were breath of fresh air.

 

[Infinitron]

Hubs in moderation are fine and necessary. Spend too much time in one, however, and you'll eventually notice that you're no longer playing Deus Ex, but rather an Ubisoft-style open world game where you wander around unlocking "collectibles".

 

[CyberP]

The writing in HR was fine until the end when it fell apart. I'd put it above DX1 for the first 70% of the game though.

I think you are confusing writing with voice acting and presentation of the events (all those mo-capped anims & FPP during the boss battle convos, for example).

Some of the NSF missions in the game's first third could get really samey.

Well the setting was sometimes samey (returning to NYC three times was perhaps too much), but that's mostly where the similarities end given the gameplay diversity and expansive level design. Well, there was a bit of an overuse of the NYC_Streets1 music too, played on ~12 maps.

One thing that I find interesting is there are secret tunnels hidden in two separate womens restrooms in two successive maps (Brooklyn Bridge Station and the Mole People tunnels). That in addition to being able to barge in on the lady in the toilet in Unatco, well what are you trying to say, Ion Storm?

Didn't respect it much as a Deus Ex game but I thought a lot of great art design and effort when it came to modeling things went into HR and I can appreciate that. I appreciate hard work.

Cheap, poorly designed products manufactured day in day out in a Chinese sweat shop under harsh conditions is still cheap poorly designed products. Appreciate the hard work all you want, it won't change the underwhelming end result.

 

[ultimanecat]

Hubs in moderation are fine and necessary. Spend too much time in one, however, and you'll eventually notice that you're no longer playing Deus Ex, but rather an Ubisoft-style open world game where you wander around unlocking "collectibles".

I think I'm of the opposite opinion. DX's hubs offered the particular mix of gameplay styles that I enjoyed, where situations could blend between character interaction, exploration, stealth, and combat somewhat seamlessly. I never really felt that exploration was rote or collectible-focused in the hub areas (although once you know the game in and out, going to a certain place in a certain way just to get a certain thing can definitely start feeling like you're just mindlessly checking off boxes). If anything, these days when I play it's the hostile areas that are kind of a drag if I'm doing anything other than run-and-gunning.

 

[WhiteGuts]

Seems like they're trying to put as much distance as possible between them and the original game. What a shame.

I personally don't think cyber-renaissance is an interesting concept, on the contrary is cyberpunk watered down. Give me noir ambiance for fuck's sake.

 

[Infinitron]

Seems like they're trying to put as much distance as possible between them and the original game. What a shame.

I personally don't think cyber-renaissance is an interesting concept, on the contrary is cyberpunk watered down. Give me noir ambiance for fuck's sake.

But in this game the cyber renaissance is over. They're saying you're going to start seeing even more callbacks to the original game now.

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

Yep. I really hope all this cyber-renaissance nonsense give the way to the classic hi-tech/low-life vibe in DE MD.

 

[J1M]

DXTV Episode 0 originally aired on Twitch on April 8th, 2015, just before the reveal of the announcement trailer for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.
Expect more episodes of DXTV in the future, giving an inside look at the development of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, directly from the team at Eidos-Montréal!

Apparently seniority at Eidos Montreal is determined by the strength of one's French accent

They are swearing in official promotion material. Compared to what the rest of the industry is doing, that's quite a leap.

In some ways, I think hiding the developers in an office that speaks a different language is the only way to make a proper DX game without marketing and executives ruining it. Of course, they drop back into English as soon as the bosses leave...

 

[Love]

Eidos send forward its very own chatterboxes to tell Ben Maxwell from Edge their take on the new game and it certainly seems like the first Deus Ex is no longer of any importance or influence. While they used much of their PR for Human Revolution to emphasis their love and devotion for the original game they have now moved on to distance themselves a bit from their former effort:

“We weren’t consistent on Human Revolution and we knew it,” executive game director Jean-François Dugas admits. “Production issues prevented us from doing [the boss fights] the way we wanted, so my take was, ‘You know what? We know we’re not consistent, we’re not going to pull it off how we’d like, but at least let’s make them entertaining and not frustrating.’ It’s just that we failed at the frustrating part of the equation [laughs]. Those who were more into combat thought the bosses were really interesting, and it was easy. But a lot of players were playing stealth… Oh my God, that was a slap in the face. We fixed it on the Director’s Cut to a certain degree, but because the cutscenes were already made, the bosses had to die, so we were still forcing you to do that.”

“When you see the trailer, it’s a bit more action-packed than what we did for Human Revolution, and some people out there started to think, ‘Oh my God, this game is going to be more about action.’ That’s not true – it’s going to be the same recipe as it was with Human Revolution,” Dugas explains. “I think Human Revolution was doing a lot of that stuff in a good way, but in places we fell short of carrying it through as we should have. For this game, we’re trying to see it through.”

“We’ve always said we wanted you to be able to choose whether to kill everyone or kill no one, but the nonlethal tools we gave you in Human Revolution were… Basically, if you weren’t stealthy, you were kind of fucked,” Dugas says. “They weren’t quick weapons that could take out several enemies at once. This time, it is important that you can decide to not kill anyone, but still be a combat player – that kind of flexibility should be embraced.”

“In our industry, there’s this whole quest for photorealism,” Jacques-Belletête says. “These crazy maps and replicating each little atom of reality in real time. That’s amazing, but it becomes just that: a snapshot of reality. There’s no message in that; just plainly recreating reality has a lot of great technicalities to it, but it has no art. Everything about Crysis – the tech, how they create their photorealistic visuals – is amazing. But it doesn’t say much other than, ‘Hey, look at how crazily like the real ones these leaves look!’ You probably wouldn’t frame an image [of Crysis] and put it in your living room. It doesn’t have that artistic punch.
“We’ve always wanted to illustrate more than simulate.Now there’s still a big spectrum in that, and it doesn’t mean that our games have to look like Team Fortress – although I think that’s one of the most artistically well-controlled games in our industry – but we’ve always said that Deus Ex is a bit more like a graphic novel.”

“It no longer comes down to making a decision at the end of the game that defines which ending you get – choices early on in the game will cut off storylines for you, will affect the conclusion, and will create new opportunities down the line. We’re investing a lot more in making the story much more adaptive, presenting choices early on that will have repercussions on the critical path all throughout the game.”
“I’ve been in the industry for almost 20 years now, and I know that for much of that time it was a fight to champion story,”DeMarle explains. “It wasn’t until I came here and started working with JF that I was like, ‘Finally, someone gets that it’s important!’ JF and I are the story drivers and we do work incredibly closely together.”

“We want to have a series of core products that are going to be [supported] by transmedia products, which are going to tell a
bigger story,” Dugas offers vaguely. “And our goal is to eventually have all of those products working together in a meaningful way. We’re not ready to go deeper than that today, but [Deus Ex Universe is] not an MMOG. It’s about expanding the world on a regular basis as much as possible.”

A couple of years on from Human Revolution, Jensen now works for a corporately funded international task force hunting down augmented villains. The game will run on a heavily modified version of Io-Interactive’s Glacier 2 engine without offering fully destructible environments, but radial menus and takedown animations have been worked over for that cinematic experience. Is that now taking over the need for immersion?
Modifications include a triangulated shield protecting you from bullets for a short time, a cloaking device for complete invisibility from unmodded enemies, a last-known-position aug giving you the information where you were last sighted and X-Ray vision, which allows you to see and tag rivals through doors and walls, establishing numbers and patrol routes before choosing your entry point. Also Jensen is already ringing in the new age with Nanoblades for ranged and silent attacks and some form of remote hacking.

 

[Infinitron]

it certainly seems like the first Deus Ex is no longer of any importance or influence.

I do not see how the text supports your conclusion.

No, not even the parts about combat. Deus Ex potentially gave you a GEP gun right at the beginning

 

[tuluse]

Well he does say DX is graphic novel like when the first game was clearly going for a realistic look, but that's pretty incidental.

 

[Love]

I do not see how the text supports your conclusion.

No, not even the parts about combat. Deus Ex potentially gave you a GEP gun right at the beginning

I still have their talk about their commitment to the original prior to Human Revolution's release in mind, because they never shut up about it and now there is not one word about it in the whole article from I which I took the interesting quotes. What about their story ambitions in respect to the story of the old games? It sure would be interesting to know, how the game will position itself in terms of timeline continuity or retconning? Maybe those questions are too much to ask from nowadays gaming journalists, because they would have caught on about their description of combat. The GEP gun in the beginning is one of the extreme choices, but the game still lets you play the levels any way you want and does not force you to a stealth approach like Human Revolution does so often. But of course that was ten years ago, so how could we expect developers to get this right now? It's like the art of casting canons, they simply lost it.

Maybe it's not just PR: "What’s clear from the excitement shown by everyone we talk to is that there is a passion within the studio for creating the best Deus Ex game possible, but also a tinge of regret that Human Revolution wasn’t it. Almost every example we’re shown of something great in Mankind Divided is caveated with a self-deprecating – sometimes even selfflagellating – nod to one of Human Revolution’s failures. In fact, so ingrained is this attitude within every member of the team that it would be tempting to suspect it was an orchestrated PR push based on reverse psychology. But after spending time at the studio, it’s evident that the sentiment is genuine – the reality is that this medium-sized team took criticisms of its first game hard and is now entirely focused on avoiding any kind of repeat of them. The contrition is real, if not entirely justified, and simply a manifestation of how much everyone here cares."

 

[Infinitron]

What’s clear from the excitement shown by everyone we talk to is that there is a passion within the studio for creating the best Deus Ex game possible, but also a tinge of regret that Human Revolution wasn’t it.

That seems like a sentiment that most hardcore original Deus Ex fans would agree with.

If what you're really concerned about is story and how it connects with the original game's, then that is something they've addressed (briefly) in previous interviews. You can't really expect them to spoil it, though.

 

[Love]

That seems like a sentiment that most hardcore original Deus Ex fans would agree with.

If what you're really concerned about is story and how it connects with the original game's, then that is something they've addressed (briefly) in previous interviews. You can't really expect them to spoil it, though.

Of course not. But the question is, if a hardcore original Deus Ex fan should even care about their attempts, when he already considers the events of Human Revolution unfortunately placed in the timeline? Who knows? Maybe they will bridge their stories into JC's gracefully. But then again we got a whole new universe of Deus Ex coming at us....

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Of course not. But the question is, if a hardcore original Deus Ex fan should even care about their attempts, when he already considers the events of Human Revolution unfortunately placed in the timeline? Who knows? Maybe they will bridge their stories into JC's gracefully. But then again we got a whole new universe of Deus Ex coming at us....

Personally, I don't care about them tying it up to the original story (most of such attempts end up clumsily anyway), they could go in different direction and present an alternate scenario (say JC never happens because Jensen stops younger Bob Page) as far as I'm concerned. What I want them to do is take the story more in the conspiracy/shadow government/X-Files direction, improve level design, expand Jensen's arsenal/toolkit and make the gameplay more player involved.

 

[HiddenX]

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - The E3 Debate:

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Gnidrologist]

The GEP gun in the beginning is one of the extreme choices, but the game still lets you play the levels any way you want and does not force you to a stealth approach like Human Revolution does so often. But of course that was ten years ago, so how could we expect developers to get this right now?

HR is much more viable as a pure shooter and gives more enjoyment as one than original DX. Particularly because of incredibly retarded AI that DX had. Everyone simply ran at you so could blast them at point blank rage. Also better physics, sounds etc., which is obvious.
(cover system does help, trolololo)

 

[Love]

HR is much more viable as a pure shooter and gives more enjoyment as one than original DX. Particularly because of incredibly retarded AI that DX had. Everyone simply ran at you so could blast them at point blank rage. Also better physics, sounds etc., which is obvious.
(cover system does help, trolololo)

Since Deus Ex uses Unreal Engine it still feels better as shooter than Human Revolution. Which is quite funny because the Deus Ex difficulty level makes stealth and cover seeking mandatory and takes everything away from being a shooter.