• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided I Review Thread I I asked for this

U

Unknown Soldier

Member
One thing that always bothered me in Human Revolution was the fact that you got more XP for a non-lethal takedown than a lethal one.

Also because of how the stealth mechanic worked, it was really annoying to kill everyone quietly.

I hope this has been addressed in Mankind Divided. The first 2 games gave you the freedom to kill or not kill and get the same result, and this was a glaring regression in Human Revolution.
 
W

WonderCheese

Banned
Have any reviews or early players commented on whether there are any sort of stats surfaced in the game? Human Revolution didn't have that, so going for a "no kill, no alarms" play through seemed annoying without being able to check your stats to see if you'd accidentally killed someone or set off an alarm without knowing. It's a small thing I guess, but some stats would help with my OCD concern around such things.
 
A

Azzanadra

Member
Kind of sucks about the story. I really enjoyed the one in HR, it was rough around the edges but I thought they would learn their lessons for the sequel. That said, story is subjective so I will wait to play through it before judging myself.
 
M

MrCookiepants

Member
Man, this game just oozes style. Everything looks incredible from the reviews I've watched. Don't really care about the main plot in WRPGs. More about the sidequests for me.
 
M

MasterMenace

Member
So I read about 15 more reviews and yea...apparently the game's pacing makes you think your 60% into the game, but it just abruptly ends...5 years and they can't make a complete game? No wonder this game didn't come out till now and got delayed from Februrary..and rumors of it being one big game chopped into 3...it's all true...development hell...can I just get 1 complete western rpg game in 2016...where is mass effect andromeda
 
E

Evo X

Member
MasterMenace said:
So I read about 15 more reviews and yea...apparently the game's pacing makes you think your 60% into the game, but it just abruptly ends...
Click to expand...

I don't feel too bad about that since I got the full game plus season pass for $67.49 on GMG, which is what a console game with tax retails for.
 
W

wutwutwut

Member
Man, reading the Eurogamer review it seems like this game is good. But it could have been a real chapter in the "games as art" thesis. I'm a bit sad, but I'll play the game on release day nonetheless.
 
J

jettpack

Member
Unknown Soldier said:
One thing that always bothered me in Human Revolution was the fact that you got more XP for a non-lethal takedown than a lethal one.

Also because of how the stealth mechanic worked, it was really annoying to kill everyone quietly.

I hope this has been addressed in Mankind Divided. The first 2 games gave you the freedom to kill or not kill and get the same result, and this was a glaring regression in Human Revolution.
Click to expand...

I totally dont agree. I was super into the way in incentivized a more challenging play style. It was definitely more difficult to nonlethal stealth and it was rewarded as such. Maybe its just be but I also found it more rewarding as well.
 
V

Valkyri von Thanatos

Member
Xaero Gravity said:
There was absolutely nothing interesting about Malik, yet some are oddly obsessed with her. Why is that? o_O
Click to expand...

She wasn't that special, but she was at likeable. Giving players the option to
save her, especially because it was a hidden option that the player had to figure out on their own and achieve against all odds
understandably made many players feel attached to the character. If she was a
"damsel in distress", which the game expected and told the player to save, people would not feel this way. Instead, by allowing the player to save a comrade in such a manner
, they made Malik a character that stood out among most others in the game.

See (DX1 spoilers, tagging just to be safe)
Paul Denton
for a similar situation, though admittedly
Paul
also does do a fair bit more to warrant
his
appreciation as a character.

One last thing is that some people ship Adam and Malik, but I don't really buy into that. I'd like her to come back, but I think any romantic involvement between the two would probably be unfitting, as I see the two as just good friends.
 
E

Effect

Member
It really does depend how it ends as far as I'm concerned. I'm trying to stay away from spoilers so I haven't read many of the reviews just wanted to get an overall feeling and see some of the scores. However I fully expect another game and hopefully the wait is shorter. I fully expect story DLC. I don't like it but they've likely got my money already if I enjoy myself as much as I did while playing DE:HR. That's how much I enjoyed that game. Also getting it 25% off makes that pill easier to swallow. The Deus Ex games have always been about the experience as a whole to me rather then just the stories. I wonder if this is how others feel about the Metal Gear Solid games.

I also wonder if this is why they made and included the Breach mode to extend the worth of the purchase, especially since that is suppose to feed back into the game and is built within the context of the main game itself. I am glad this exist if it does let me have that Deus Ex gameplay without having to always replay through the game.

Anyway my first play through of HR was over 30 hours. This doesn't include the Missing Link DLC either. I only got that when I got a copy of the director's cut a few years later. I know full well I could have gotten more time out of that game on my first playthrough. The story is fairly straight forward but I only read a fraction of the journal and newspaper entries, etc and those, along with talking with npcs, etc really add to time if you try to look at everything as these things explain a lot about the world itself. I love that stuff. I'm pretty sure you can speed (not even attempting to speed run it but just normally playing) through HR if you move from mission to mission and not take any time to smell the roses as they say. Some people play games like that. Others take a slower approach. Coming from playing a LOT of rpgs it's how I end up with save files of close to 100 hours. So I can see why there might be a difference in the times reported.
 
S

SlickVic

Member
SolidChamp said:
Anyone?
Click to expand...

Most people here probably haven't played Mankind Divided yet so it's hard to give a definitive answer.

The quick way to catch up is watching the official 15 minute recap on Youtube. But if you want a little more than that, you can also watch this guy's 3.5 hour cut of Human Revolution stitching the cutscenes and important gameplay moments together into a movie. I watched the latter a few weeks ago since I never finished Human Revolution and thought it was pretty well put together. It purely focuses on main story though so if Mankind Divided has some callbacks to Human Revolution side quests the reference may be lost.
 
M

MattyG

Banned
If I haven't played Human Revolution (started it twice, never finished), should I before this? Or is this an okay place to just jump in?

Edit: Oh, looks like that's already been asked. Damn, I cannot find a used copy of the director's cut anywhere for PS3.
 
jediyoshi

jediyoshi

Member
Preordered

#BringBackFaridah

VroCYSp.png
 
C

CertifiedFP

Member
Honestly, considering the reports about the story length relative to how long it's been since DXHR... I wouldn't be surprised if this was less a matter of "Cut and DLC" malice and moreso another end-result of developing an engine alongside a game, which is one of the factors that resulted in MGSV's half-complete state and what is evidently the cause behind the disaster that is FFXV. (Yes, I know some studios like Blizzard have a talent for this, but not all studios are created equal.)

Another notch on the belt for "Just license Unreal FFS." next to those other two - I mean, hell, when DICE was developing Frostbite, they didn't follow a methodology of waiting for the engine to be complete to make Mirror's Edge, they licensed UE3 so they could get both Frostbite and Mirror's Edge done at the same time without waiting for Frostbite to be done to start full development of ME. I mean, hell, it would seem that SE Japan's dev teams have learned their lesson after Crystal Tools and now Luminous, seeing as 7R and KH3 are using UE4.
 
V

Valkyri von Thanatos

Member
jediyoshi said:
Preordered

#BringBackFaridah

VroCYSp.png
Click to expand...

Yeah I'd like to see her again. I hope that the "canon explanation", which is that
Jensen did not save her from the crash
, is just a smoke-screen to
retcon her death if the player does not save her
. Why not, we've known for months now that they've already taken liberties with
retconning the ends of HR, retconning her death should be easy in comparison
.
 
W

WadeitOut

Member
MattyG said:
If I haven't played Human Revolution (started it twice, never finished), should I before this? Or is this an okay place to just jump in?

Edit: Oh, looks like that's already been asked. Damn, I cannot find a used copy of the director's cut anywhere for PS3.
Click to expand...

Honestly if you just wiki the story that plus the opening will have you mostly caught up.
 
V

Valkyri von Thanatos

Member
CertifiedFP said:
Honestly, considering the reports about the story length relative to how long it's been since DXHR... I wouldn't be surprised if this was less a matter of "Cut and DLC" malice and moreso another end-result of developing an engine alongside a game, which is one of the factors that resulted in MGSV's half-complete state and what is evidently the cause behind the disaster that is FFXV. (Yes, I know some studios like Blizzard have a talent for this, but not all studios are created equal.)

Another notch on the belt for "Just license Unreal FFS." next to those other two - I mean, hell, when DICE was developing Frostbite, they didn't follow a methodology of waiting for the engine to be complete to make Mirror's Edge, they licensed UE3 so they could get both Frostbite and Mirror's Edge done at the same time without waiting for Frostbite to be done to start full development of ME. I mean, hell, it would seem that SE Japan's dev teams have learned their lesson after Crystal Tools and now Luminous, seeing as 7R and KH3 are using UE4.
Click to expand...

Were you basing this idea on this reply on their AMA (which is probably over by now, but still)? It seems like that couldn't definitely be an issue, too bad that the Dawn engine will likely be outdated in not too long, but I'm sure it is more future proof than the old Tomb Raider engine they were using before it for HR.

It certainly seems tough, paraphrasing a good Yahtzee quote about Duke Nukem Forever, it's probably a bit like trying to build a building parallel to a boat slowly moving down a river. No matter how quick you make it, you have to eventually choose a spot on the river's bank to settle on, and watch as your goals float away and have to deal with what you've got here and now.

I am dissapointed in the story and scale complaints, but it sounds like the world and gameplay is still top notch, so I can take an "off-plot" as long as they bring it all back to the fore with the next game, and that there is a 3-4 year long wait for the next one and not 5 years. I have hope they'll be able to get the next done quicker because I think the Dawn engine will still stay relatively competitive before this gen is over, so they can hopefully speed development along a little bit faster next time.

Still can't wait to re-enter the world of Deus Ex. Just gotta wait for their third entry to see once again if they can surpass the gameplay (Psss.. Add skills back in, like swimming, also melee combat) and plot/scale of the original.

Mankind Divided area spoilers:

Interested to see if Prague really does dwarf Detroit and Hengsha from HR. I've heard it's got maybe 4 districts, which are each around Detroit size, so maybe Prague being the only real city is just a design choice to focus on and flesh out an entire location before trying to bring that depth to multiple ones in the next game.

One things for sure, we need this game to sell well enough for Square Enix to highlight a sequel.
 
P

Parham

Banned
Really want to pick this up on PC, but I'm doubtful it'll run on my GTX 570. Might have to wait for some post-launch impressions to see if my GPU can keep limping along for now.
 
V

valkyre

Member
Have other people finished the game in ~12 hour mark like the fellow gaffer? Because damn it i cant find a damn review echoing the same sentiments.
 
Fbh

Fbh

Gold Member
Damn I'm not sure if I should get this.

Loved the first one and in terms of gameplay this looks great. But the comments about shorter length and a super abrupt ending are telling me to wait for some sort of complete edition
 
N

nOoblet16

Member
Unknown Soldier said:
One thing that always bothered me in Human Revolution was the fact that you got more XP for a non-lethal takedown than a lethal one.

Also because of how the stealth mechanic worked, it was really annoying to kill everyone quietly.

I hope this has been addressed in Mankind Divided. The first 2 games gave you the freedom to kill or not kill and get the same result, and this was a glaring regression in Human Revolution.
Click to expand...
Then again it's not like killing and knocking out/ghosting were balanced equally in the first game, considering the way aiming worked. If anything it made you avoid using guns completely and go stealth because of how much more effective it was.
 
T

TitusTroy

Member
game sounds good but not amazing...what happened to the days of groundbreaking games getting released...don't see that as often nowadays...the original Deus Ex, Half Life...even Far Cry 1 and Crysis...everything now is too safe
 
B

Bittercup

Member
Hearing that the story is apparently weak makes me a bit worried. Not that Human Revolution had a particularly strong story but I can't remember there being many complains about it back then. Seems worse this time. Really not what I had expected.
But it fits with the rest of the year so far. Almost every game I was excited for in the end was just fine and had a big 'but' that dragged it down for me.
And gameplay is apparently fine so I'll probably still enjoy it.
 
T

Tovarisc

Member
TitusTroy said:
game sounds good but not amazing...what happened to the days of groundbreaking games getting released...don't see that as often nowadays...the original Deus Ex, Half Life...even Far Cry 1 and Crysis...everything now is too safe
Click to expand...

Witcher 3 comes into mind. Sure it has quite safe design for its open world, but world building and filling it with stories that you want to experience is at next level from other open world RPG's.

imo
 
T

thenexus6

Member
I got the game this morning

So far:

-Art direction is top. Atmosphere is great as always. I've seen the gameplay videos in the past but playing Prague yourself is really cool. Seems like such a massive area to explore. Very atmospheric and nice to explore somewhere set in the day time.
-Music seems great so far
-Frame rate is pretty smooth, noticeable drops during some conversations though
-Graphics seem decent, some character models are pretty low compared to others
- Hacking is better, it doesn't look as good as HR but its easier to do. No weird holding the left stick forward and releasing the button.

- I've noticed the voice syncing is off some time
- I had some serious pop in during a scene in the second mission / area. It was kinda funny actually.
- The HUD is so cluttered with icons I wish I could make them smaller or something. Maybe I should look into the settings (I did and you can turn off alot of options and scale the HUD which is great)
- Shooting doesn't feel that good. I played HR as stealth, but when I used weapons they seemed better than this game
 
L

lucebuce12

Member
Parham said:
Really want to pick this up on PC, but I'm doubtful it'll run on my GTX 570. Might have to wait for some post-launch impressions to see if my GPU can keep limping along for now.
Click to expand...

You might be able to skate by on low settings, but anything more than that is a bit out of your reach IMO.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

  • Poll
Deus Ex Human Revolution vs Deus Ex Mankind Divided
Opinion Poll Analysis 2
88
5K
SkylineRKR replied
What modern games have really good PC optimization ?
Opinion
14
5K
Furiousrunt replied
Suikoden I&II HD Remaster - Reviews Thread
2 3
105
6K
Donald mac Ronald replied
10 worst games of 2024 according to metacritic
31
3K
CLW replied
Split Fiction - Reviews Thread
2 3
147
9K
touchfuzzy replied
Top Bottom