Human Revolution was littered with problems. The narrative had terrible pacing issues and comes to a lame half conclusion in an undercooked, kitschy climax against a poorly developed antagonist. The quality of writing and characters varies widely. The final stage was rushed and half finished, leans on dumb zombie-like opponent tropes, as bigger plans were cut as further elaborated on by the developer commentary. The boss fights were all terrible and failed to accommodate the diversity of Deus Ex play style builds. XP bonuses and rewards were insanely skewered in favour of stealth, unbalancing the game. There was almost always an easy vent path path around your problem, so much so they joked about this issue in the commentary. Aggressive combat felt off no matter your choice of gun and augs. The energy system was badly envisioned and didn't make sense in play. There was no reason to not pour points into hacking as it was a crazy versatile solution to every encounter and borderline essential to explore the narrative's deeper background lore. The game's release was bloated with dumb pre-order junk, including missions and weapons. It had a rough development, the engine was tough to work with, and numerous arcs/stages/hubs/missions got cut. It looked technically dated as hell, art direction aside. It was delayed a handful of times and still didn't wrap up as nicely as it should have.
And yet it remains one of my favourite games of last gen, one I've played through ~5 or so times (counting the director's cut), and overwhelmed me in how accurately it faithfully captured the essence of Deus Ex even if in practice it isn't as narratively expansive, mechanically rich, or systematically deep as the franchise's glorious roots. Human Revolution rarely if ever offers the kind of scope Deus Ex did at its best. But it was still a very, very faithful sequel.
Maybe Mankind Divided isn't the sequel to Human Revolution it could have been. Maybe it had huge development issues, and maybe some dumb mistakes were made again that should have been learned from the latter title. I already know I'm going to be disappointed by the lack of hubs. And an under cooked, shortlived story and climax is lame given they admitted these problems were in HR.
But fuck it. There's still nothing out there like Deus Ex, because this dumbass industry seems to think these kinds of games don't warrant investment (or are too expensive, unsafe, I don't know). And while there's nothing wrong with dipping into reviews and reading impressions from those you trust and letting that temper your expectations and/or change your purchasing habits, it's fucking stupid to let these spearhead spiralling cynicism and disappointment for a first-hand experience you haven't even played. Quality isn't binary. Experience isn't either. Artworks are the sum total of parts and an experience can end horrendously shitty and still leave you with fond memories. A to Z, not A to B. And even then what you feel, and the extent to which, isn't necessarily going to align perfectly with what you read before hand.
The citation of Mass Effect 3 is a great personal example, actually. Do you know how much I fucking hate the ending of that game? I could write a goddamn encyclopedia of hate and disappointment for what I felt, and more importantly why. The negative emotional resonance that turd has within me is borderline overwhelming. And yet I still adored almost everything in that game up until the end point, bought and loved all the DLC, and put something like 200 hours into the fucking dope as hell multiplayer. It's the best shittest game ever.
Maybe Mankind Divided will be the best shittest Deus Ex. That'll be interesting.
