Future Shock

The first seven hours of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided reveal a dark, hopeless future gripped by fear and uncertainty.

- Andy Kelly

When Adam Jensen visits eccentric augmentation specialist Václav Koller in his secret Prague workshop, he thinks he’s going in for a tune-up. But he wakes up to discover that Koller has uncovered a selection of experimental augmentations that have been lying dormant in his mechanical body. The catch? They use a huge amount of power, and Jensen has to choose which of his regular augs to disable to use them.

Not only that, but Koller has triggered a factory reset in Jensen’s systems that means he’s back to square one. All those upgrades you carefully selected in Human Revolution? Gone. But don’t worry, because you still have your praxis points, meaning you can respec Jensen to either exactly what you had before, or something completely different.

These are two great examples of Eidos Montreal justifying its design decisions in a way that makes them feel connected to the story. They could have added a scene where Jensen buys a load of new parts off the internet or goes to cyberpunk Ikea and upgrades himself, but this is much more elegant. And having to basically remake your character build from the previous game gives a nice sense of continuity.

I’ve played the first chapter of Mankind Divided, which takes Jensen to three major locations: a ruined hotel in Dubai, the city of Prague, and a vast slum for augmented people called Golem City. It’s a hefty seven-hour chunk of game, and although there’s still tweaking and polish to be done, the build I played felt fairly complete.