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Deus Ex: Mankind Divided |OT| We Asked For This

N

Nessus

Member
Is there a consensus on Breach? Is it worth playing if you're not willing to spend money on microtransactions?

Also, does the story in Breach connect to the story in the main game at all?
 
D

Drewfonse

Member
Gozer the Gozerian said:
Would anyone else agree that the balance between action "missions" and dialogue/fetch quest stuff seems unbalanced in this game, in favor of the latter?

I won't go into much detail in the non-spoiler thread but I swear I could almost count on one hand how many real classic infiltration missions there were with large, complex, multi-floor hostile compounds that you have to complete multiple tasks in,stealth or guns blazing, the classic Deus Ex formula.

While I enjoyed the stories in the side quests, the vast majority of them follow a variation of the same formula: talk to X person, investigate Y apartment, break into Z basement and avoid maybe 1-3 guys and a security camera, talk to X person again, etc. I'm okay with that when the stories are as good as they are, but man, I feel like 80% of my playthrough was that sort of stuff and I felt really starved of the meatier "action" missions. I haven't done an actual count but I think at least half of the main missions were not much more than "go talk to somebody somewhere".

It's interesting because I actually felt HR had the opposite problem, where the second half of the game in particular was long infiltration mission after mission after mission with no breather in between, feels like they swung too far in the opposite direction this time. It stinks because I actually think the core stealth and combat gameplay is way better this time around, so I almost wish HR and MD had the opposite problems in that regard.
Click to expand...


Couldn't agree more. I've enjoyed what I've played, but I'm pretty far into it, and the structure of the main missions is much too basic. I absolutely loved the
Rucker
mission, but since then it's been a pretty steep drop off in quality of the main missions.


I'm really missing the in-depth infiltration missions. Some the ones are almost laughably short and not particularly well done. I am enjoying the overall story arc, though.
 
G

Gozer the Gozerian

Member
Late game location spoilers:

It was such a cocktease
coming out of GARM and seeing that beautiful laboratory built on the waterfall with all the crazy views and then you just immediately et in the copter and leave :(
 
S

Sub Zero

his body's cold as ice, but he's got a heart of gold
Nessus said:
Is there a consensus on Breach? Is it worth playing if you're not willing to spend money on microtransactions?

Also, does the story in Breach connect to the story in the main game at all?
Click to expand...

The consensus is that it's a lazy cashgrab designed to exploit players by becoming almost unplayable in the later levels if you don't spend money on it. You should only bother with it if you really want to earn the trophies/cheevos associated with it.

And it doesn't really have anything to do with the story at all, except from the fact that's it's a mode based on the worst and most tedious sequence of the main game
 
G

Gator86

Member
Finished the game without activating an alarm or going hostile, didn't get the foxiest of the hounds. Thanks, devs.

Fantastic game overall and still one of the best franchises in gaming. The amount of options you have in approaching objectives is still tops. The only dings on the game are the kind of lackluster new augs, the worst audio mixing in gaming history for the pre rendered cutscenes, and the amount of running back and forth for some of the quests.

Can't wait to play DX3 though. Would be amazing to get 1 on PS4 or a remake to tide us over though.
 
B

BadHand

Member
Gator86 said:
Finished the game without activating an alarm or going hostile, didn't get the foxiest of the hounds. Thanks, devs.
Click to expand...

Apparently failing a hack, even if it doesn't set off an alarm, fails the achievement.

I'm fully expecting to not get the achievement either, having read that 10 hours in.
 
G

Gator86

Member
BadHand said:
Apparently failing a hack, even if it doesn't set off an alarm, fails the achievement.

I'm fully expecting to not get the achievement either, having read that 10 hours in.
Click to expand...

Oh wow, amazingly poor form from the devs on that one then. What a waste of time reloading saves on every misstep.
 
A

Ashtar

Member
So i finally got to the part the part where fake johnny depp offers to fix your stuff but i go to his crib and hes not there and the objective marker points me backward ... glitch?
 
3

31GhostsIV

Banned
Had a little spare time this evening, so thought I'd play through the 'Jensen's Story' day one DLC.

So.. I crack open the box and find a code. Oddly, it doesn't fit in PSN so I read the instructions.

Turns out, I have to sign up for an SE account, then put the printed code in there, then they give me a PSN code. Fuck off SE.
 
N

Neutron Pong

Neo Member
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided's staff pay tribute to influences on the field agent map at the Task Force 29 headquarters:
AzfEboz.png

n22TJ6X.png
 
ebullientprism

ebullientprism

Member
15 hours in and the train rides are really doing my head in. Just did sm07 (I think) and I had to take two train rides to talk to someone in two different places. Just put the quest stages in the same area ffs. It takes a solid 2 minutes to load. Why put people through that?

One fault in a very good game so far.
 
W

WadiumArcadium

Member
Finished it this evening. After the disappointment of No Man's Sky it was nice to play something that met my expectations again. The main story was good but like The Witcher, the side quests were the highlight, especially the
Cult of Personality
and
The Harvester
quests. I really liked Prague as a hub but I missed some of the more cyberpunk style locations from Human Revolution. The ending was abrupt but
London
was a fun final mission and I liked that you could complete
both objectives if you were fast enough.

I knew there was something off about
Delara!
 
theDeeDubs

theDeeDubs

Member
Snacks the sober sea lion said:
Is anyone going to try a Factory Zero and/ or no knockout run? Might not be much fun without ever leveling hacking, but I assume it's possible. Feels like they really went overboard on giving you options and instead of stealth in some areas, it's more about finding the right series of vents.
Click to expand...

This was what disappointed me the most about the game. Just finished it earlier. I enjoyed most of it, but I was mostly disappointed compared to the last game. I just felt level and encounter design was a huge step down from the first game. The last level was quite bad.

Exploiting jump and grab throughout the game was great however.
 
C

casparnic

Neo Member
The facial animations are terrible in this game. Also the animated connection between the heads and the bodies looks like something from a previous generation. That scene with Miller in the NSN where he is walking around two projections having a conversation (the final scene in the NSN is just awful. I'm surprised there isn't more comment on this.
 
L

Laurentius

Member
I feel like at some point in development they should have sat down and said "let's design an entire level with no vents". Would have been a good exercise to try and figure out some more creative routes. I'm not saying vents should never be used, but they're too often the crutch the game uses for all stealthy routes.
 
L

Laurentius

Member
casparnic said:
The facial animations are terrible in this game. Also the animated connection between the heads and the bodies looks like something from a previous generation. That scene with Miller in the NSN where he is walking around two projections having a conversation (the final scene in the NSN is just awful. I'm surprised there isn't more comment on this.
Click to expand...

There's plenty of comment on that. It has to have been brought up at least 100 times or more in this thread alone.
 
vivftp

vivftp

Member
Just finished it up - loved every minute of it. I took my sweet time exploring everything, doing everything... I'm sure I spent about 70-80 hours in the game.

I do have some theories, and I wonder if anyone else came to the same conclusions. I'll spoiler tag 'em...

The Adam Jensen we play here is not the original. He's a clone with the memories of the real Jensen. The real Jensen is either locked away in some lab somewhere or dead.

This is based off the later convo with Sarif on the TV where he mentions the augs he installed in Jensen had serial numbers and they would have been easy to use in identifying Jensen when he was recovering after the events in the first game. The way he delivers that line, it's almost like he's thinking the same thing. Also, we know the bad guys have schematics for all of Jensen's augs, which they would need for the clone

So the Illuminati had clone Jensen implanted not only with Jensen's normal aug loadout, but also the new ones to do their bidding.


Thoughts?

In the end I finished up the game with over 215,000 credits (could have had about 60,000 more if I sold some of the extra stuff I was holding) and 226,005 XP.
 
G

Gozer the Gozerian

Member
Laurentius said:
I feel like at some point in development they should have sat down and said "let's design an entire level with no vents". Would have been a good exercise to try and figure out some more creative routes. I'm not saying vents should never be used, but they're too often the crutch the game uses for all stealthy routes.
Click to expand...

It's especially disappointing because there's at least one point in the Human Revolution Director's Cut commentary where they specifically mention that they felt they over-relied on vents as stealth shortcuts and that was an area they wish they could've done better.
 
theDeeDubs

theDeeDubs

Member
Laurentius said:
I feel like at some point in development they should have sat down and said "let's design an entire level with no vents". Would have been a good exercise to try and figure out some more creative routes. I'm not saying vents should never be used, but they're too often the crutch the game uses for all stealthy routes.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I always love finding the optimal paths and patrol timing through enemy-infested areas, but by the end of this I was just skipping the obvious path because the areas weren't designed to be done that way in this game. I resorted to just looking for the vent by continuing further down the hall instead. They even jacked Dishonored/DARK's teleporting, but failed to capitalize on it by relying too much on vents for "stealth". I did find a few neat way to bypass a large portion of one area with the teleport at least however.
 
T

the black pearl

Member
theDeeDubs said:
Yeah. I always love finding the optimal paths and patrol timing through enemy-infested areas, but by the end of this I was just skipping the obvious path because the areas weren't designed to be done that way in this game. I resorted to just looking for the vent by continuing further down the hall instead. They even jacked Dishonored/DARK's teleporting, but failed to capitalize on it by relying too much on vents for "stealth". I did find a few neat way to bypass a large portion of one area with the teleport at least however.
Click to expand...

What is "DARK"?
 
M

megalowho

Member
Finished with the most favorable outcome, all side missions complete and the Pacifist achievement. Really enjoyed my playthrough, level and quest design was consistently fun throughout. Yeah, navigating environments is a little formulaic and the AI is pure video game, but it's still satisfying to sneak around, exploit, explore and watch that experience bar fill. The variety in ways to approach situations was apparent even at the very end:
cloaked in the grates, EMP grenade at Marchenko's feet, stepped out for the nonlethal takedown, game over.

Didn't mind the conclusion and the narrower scope but I was prepared for a middle chapter experience, which they succeed at delivering. Despite not following through on every thread the game still does its job expanding on the universe in meaningful and interesting ways, plus Prague is a rich hub city. Thought the mechanical apartheid backdrop was handled well for the most part, even if hearing some of the more overt commentary coming from the citizens and politicians of "Prague" made it lose some of its bite for me.

Can't say enough good things about the side content, probably the single most impressive aspect of the game. Also Deus Ex has perfected this style of dialogue interaction, from showing you both shorthand and full sentences so intent is clear to the tense showpiece debates with key characters. The social aug is still cool and there's just enough QTE's to make them feel meaningful without being a crutch. Facial animation could improve and there can always be additional response options but for the most part, this is what I want other studios to copy.

Biggest missed opportunity (third act spoilers):
Jensen walking the subway tunnels is funny but could have been funnier. Kept thinking, what would Kojima do. The series in general could use a little more MGS inspired humor and weirdness to undercut the self serious cyberpunk, it seems to want to at times. Maybe for the really silly Illuminati finale they'll ham it up a bit more.
 
L

Laurentius

Member
I really enjoyed
taking out all of the guards at the Apex building without alerting any of the guests. It's unique objectives like that that I wish were more relevant in the game.

Gozer the Gozerian said:
It's especially disappointing because there's at least one point in the Human Revolution Director's Cut commentary where they specifically mention that they felt they over-relied on vents as stealth shortcuts and that was an area they wish they could've done better.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I feel like there was a ton of stuff they acknowledged as problems in the commentary that were not fixed at all in Mankind Divided. Kind of sad.
 
B

boredJonathan

Member
So I thought I wrapped up all the side quests in Act 2, but when going to get on there helicopter again I'm being told that I'll be abandoning quests. I don't recall this warning last time so I feel like I must be missing something. However looking on line I've completed SM06 through SM10. They are in my History list. And those are the only side quests in this act.

So what else am I missing? Do Points of Interest count? Is there a list of those somewhere?
 
L

Laurentius

Member
Alright, finally got around to finishing the game. I actually didn't mind the ending and quite enjoyed the final area. Maybe it was because I had already heard that it was abrupt/unsatisfying for a lot of people, so I was prepared for it.
 
D

Dan

No longer boycotting the Wolfenstein franchise
boredJonathan said:
So I thought I wrapped up all the side quests in Act 2, but when going to get on there helicopter again I'm being told that I'll be abandoning quests. I don't recall this warning last time so I feel like I must be missing something. However looking on line I've completed SM06 through SM10. They are in my History list. And those are the only side quests in this act.

So what else am I missing? Do Points of Interest count? Is there a list of those somewhere?
Click to expand...
I think you get the warning no matter what, it doesn't actually check what you've completed. It's just a general warning that some things in the game will change going forward.
 
L

Laurentius

Member
One thing I think MD does really well is setting up
TF29 as the predecessor to UNATCO. Everything from the visual design (that blue, though), the music, the premise by which it was founded, and the involvement of Manderley. It's really obvious, but I like it.
 
-COOLIO-

-COOLIO-

The Everyman
great finale. they threaded everything together very well.
though, abrupt, as everyone has been saying.
 
S

Springfoot

Member
vivftp said:
I do have some theories, and I wonder if anyone else came to the same conclusions. I'll spoiler tag 'em...

The Adam Jensen we play here is not the original. He's a clone with the memories of the real Jensen. The real Jensen is either locked away in some lab somewhere or dead.
Click to expand...

We were discussing this in the other thread, and I don't think that's the case. Here are two passages I found from the Deus Ex Black Light novel that fills in the story between HR and MD:

He looked down again at his hands, his arms. Both of them were identical, carbon-black synthetic constructs that terminated at his shoulder joints. Once they had been smooth and polished, but now they were scarred and pitted with surface damage. He tried to remember the time before he'd had them, but for now there was a blank space where any memory of meat and bone might have once existed.

Touching his bare chest, he found healed scars but again, nothing to connect them to. The part of him that was flesh felt almost as artificial as the metal and plastic.
Click to expand...

It would be strange for the Illuminati to go through all the trouble of recreating all the scars and battle damage he suffered before and after Panchea, cleanly and precisely fit the new clone with fake Serif augs, and then go and sloppily add the new experimental stuff (since Koller mentioned how obvious it was the new ones weren't done with same level of care as the original Serif augs).

And this one is during a private conversation between Illuminati heads Elizabeth DuClare and Lucius DeBeers after Jensen unexpectedly pops on the grid:

But now Jensen had resurfaced, and there was a chance that she could regain control of the situation. "Not for the first time, I must admit, I wonder if things would have been better if we had simply left him in the sea after Panchea..."
Click to expand...

I go into more in the thread here and here, but based on that material from the book, I think we're still
playing in the same body as the original Adam Jensen, although it's heavily hinted his mind or memory have been altered.
 
L

Laurentius

Member
Prima apparently accidentally spoiled the identity of Janus. https://www.reddit.com/r/Deusex/comments/51b2r9/prima_accidentally_spoils_identity_of_janus/

It's Volkard Rand, the random bald guy in the mid credits Illuminati scene (the odd one out that never showed up in the original). Makes perfect sense if you rewatch that scene. Now the nonsense about "it's Daedalus" can stop (that theory made zero sense, given that Morpheus doesn't even exist yet in MD and Morpheus was the predecessor to Daedalus).

Makes me wonder if he's working in conjunction with Page. The mid credit scene seems to pretty clearly setup the next game to be about the fall of Janus -- which may put Page in a position to begin his MJ12 coup.
 
F

Furyous

Member
If I go to
the bank
by myself early on will that cancel out that entire quest later or just that option in the quest itsefl?
 
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