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

dreamfall

Member
43 hours in, and just hitting the eighth story mission. I have this obsessive need to speak to everyone, and it's truly amazing that the developers have changed dialogue for NPCs in response to events as you progress through the game.

I love it so far, I'm realllllly taking my time to be fully entranced. A labor of love! Stumbling upon side missions out of the blue has led to some of the best surprises - blown away, completely.
 
At a certain point in the main quest you are presented with a binary choice, both time sensitive. A choice of two quests.

Is there a way to have my cake and eat it as there often is in these games?
 

mbpm1

Member
At a certain point in the main quest you are presented with a binary choice, both time sensitive. A choice of two quests.

Is there a way to have my cake and eat it as there often is in these games?

There are actually two points in the main quest where this happens.

The answer to that question depends on which point that is
 
Can I play this game a mix of stealth and killing? I'm early in the game and trying stealth, but I'm at a section with absolutely no more ammo for my tranq rifle, low energy, and a ton of bad guys. I'm ready to pull out my gun and start blasting...
 

mbpm1

Member
Can I play this game a mix of stealth and killing? I'm early in the game and trying stealth, but I'm at a section with absolutely no more ammo for my tranq rifle, low energy, and a ton of bad guys. I'm ready to pull out my gun and start blasting...
That's the most fun way to play it imo

You can play it as you like
 

Akuun

Looking for meaning in GAF
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.
I agree. I also really like the portrayal of
Manderley himself, especially during that NSN recording. He was being a hardass to Miller and ordering him around one second, then immediately after he's being a terrified mouse around Bob Page. It's completely in character for what kind of person he is.
 

joebruin

Member
Can I play this game a mix of stealth and killing? I'm early in the game and trying stealth, but I'm at a section with absolutely no more ammo for my tranq rifle, low energy, and a ton of bad guys. I'm ready to pull out my gun and start blasting...

unless you care about stealth related trophies...play the game how you want. also, i don't recall there being areas early in the game where you can't get past without engaging anyone.

looks for vents or just try and sneak by using cover and out of enemies FOV after observing them for awhile.
 
unless you care about stealth related trophies...play the game how you want. also, i don't recall there being areas early in the game where you can't get past without engaging anyone.

looks for vents or just try and sneak by using cover and out of enemies FOV after observing them for awhile.
I was afraid people in the game would call me a monster---an augmented piece of garbage that only knows how to kill. Then my feelings would be hurt :(

I'm loading it back up now. I'll try to find some sneaky passages around.
 
was anyone else (end spoilers)
really surprised, and sorta disappointed, you never got thrown into TF29 jail? I even had opened up all the doors and mapped out my escape route since I figure at some point I was gonna end up in a cell, but nope, never happened :( I'm sorta glad they didn't visit that so-often used trope in games, but its such a nice jail that was never really utilized.

If you arrest the machine god cult leader you can visit her down there near the end though
 

mbpm1

Member
was anyone else (end spoilers)
really surprised, and sorta disappointed, you never got thrown into TF29 jail? I even had opened up all the doors and mapped out my escape route since I figure at some point I was gonna end up in a cell, but nope, never happened :(

If you arrest the machine god cult leader you can visit her down there near the end though

I thought
there would at least be a quest where you had to interrogate someone but nope
 
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.

Yeah, I was really struck by
that one scene after GARM where you talk to Miller in his office. The blue from the screens and the gritty gray stonework just screamed UNATCO at me. You can also find eBooks (and I think K. rants about it too after his imprisonment) predicting that TF29 will evolve into something like UNATCO.
 
By the end of the next game we're going to bomb the statue of Liberty right?

The idea of the bombing being the result of some final battle between Jensen and Page would be amazing, but I looked it up and the bombing takes place in 2051.

So unless we're jumping forward 22 years from Mankind Divided, sadly no.
 
The idea of the bombing being the result of some final battle between Jensen and Page would be amazing, but I looked it up and the bombing takes place in 2051.

So unless we're jumping forward 22 years from Mankind Divided, sadly no.

Or we going to get a Metal Gear Solid V type of sequel with Old Jensen and Old Page punching it up on top of the statue before it explodes.
 
The idea of the bombing being the result of some final battle between Jensen and Page would be amazing, but I looked it up and the bombing takes place in 2051.

So unless we're jumping forward 22 years from Mankind Divided, sadly no.

The Deus Ex wiki timeline is contradictory.

From the opening cinematic of Deus Ex 1:

"UNATCO?"

"Formed by executive order after the terrorist strike on the statue."

According to the Deus Ex Bible website (which is what the timeline page cites), Paul Denton joined UNATCO in 2040. Which would put that as the latest possible date the strike could have happened.

I can't find a source for the 2051 statue strike, or at least they don't provide one.
 
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.

Interesting theory, I like it and think it's plausible.

I need to replay the original soon just to refresh my memory on the finer details of that plot. I'd love for these games to continue until it meets the original timeline.
 

Iceternal

Member
The idea of the bombing being the result of some final battle between Jensen and Page would be amazing, but I looked it up and the bombing takes place in 2051.

So unless we're jumping forward 22 years from Mankind Divided, sadly no.

they should really stop trying so hard to fit the events of Deus Ex 1. A 15 year old game that 90% of HR and MD players have not played and will never play.

Or they should actually get much faster to the date when DE1 takes place and remake the game. But trying to build storylines around references most people will never get is suicidal.
 

vivftp

Member
they should really stop trying so hard to fit the events of Deus Ex 1. A 15 year old game that 90% of HR and MD players have not played and will never play.

Or they should actually get much faster to the date when DE1 takes place and remake the game. But trying to build storylines around references most people will never get is suicidal.

I miss being able to hide in the shadows from enemies in the original game :( I don't think a remake could work.

I would eventually like to run into a yound Gunther Hermann though.
 

Dalibor68

Banned
they should really stop trying so hard to fit the events of Deus Ex 1. A 15 year old game that 90% of HR and MD players have not played and will never play.

Or they should actually get much faster to the date when DE1 takes place and remake the game. But trying to build storylines around references most people will never get is suicidal.

We have completely different opinions lol. The development from HR to DE1 is one of the things I love the most. And Deus Ex 1 DOES hold up and IS still relevant nowadays btw.
 

Tizoc

Member
As long as they don't do a Kojima and retcon/fuck the timeline to oblivion, it filling in the gaps is one of the most exciting things.
Or they could just offer a story option which doesnt tie into deus ex
As in offer for example an ending that ties into deus ex and others that dont
 

Window

Member
I think it's true though that trying to construct a story all around references to the original while fun for the fans is fairly limiting. The fact that they completely upended the story and visual style of the original in HR giving them the freedom to construct their own world is probably what led to it being a better standalone story (with some connective tissue present in the form of some emails and major themes).
 

Iceternal

Member
We have completely different opinions lol. The development from HR to DE1 is one of the things I love the most. And Deus Ex 1 DOES hold up and IS still relevant nowadays btw.

No it's absolutely not relevant anymore. It's a cult niche game. And I tell you, most likely 90% of HR and MD players haven't played it and will never play it.
 

leng jai

Member
We have completely different opinions lol. The development from HR to DE1 is one of the things I love the most. And Deus Ex 1 DOES hold up and IS still relevant nowadays btw.

The original PC game isn't relevant at all these days, I doubt most people even know it exists. Someone playing it for the first time in 2016 would find it unplayable.
 

Dalibor68

Banned
I didn't mean relevant as in being in the news or it being a must-play for "new generation players" in 2016. I meant it in terms of design philosophy, branching paths, choice and consequence etc where to many developers it is still something to learn from and look up to. Go and ask Obsidian or CDPR what some of their inspiration for NV / C77 were/are.

Either way the argument "the first game is 15years old, thus the story should be ignored" is obviously nonsense. MGS1 was 17 years last year, so MGSV should have not followed MGS canon at all?
 
I think the best option is to have an ending that would lead to Deus Ex 1, but make the new series take a different branch as canon.
That way they get to continue the new series while leaving the old one as an alt-history timeline.
Then they can do some fanservice easter eggs that show the parallels between old and new timelines, without being straightjacketed by DX1's events.

I'm not really interested in a straight remake of DX1, or even a reboot with minor changes. I'd like a whole different story, and an alternate timeline allows that to happen without completely throwing DX1 under the bus.
 

Window

Member
The retrofitting of history that goes on in the MGS prequels is probably the worst element of their stories but Deus Ex and MGS haven't had identical presence in the market. Coming after a long break HR always seemed like a soft reboot to me. Kind of like Fallout 3 I guess.

Deus Ex as a reference point for design is absolutely not irrelevant however.
 

shiba5

Member
I just realized that Harvey Smith, the lead designer of the original Deus Ex, is also responsible for Dishonored. Makes sense. Kinda like when I was playing Dishonored and thought, "Gee, this reminds me a bit of City 17. And, as it turns out, Dunwall was designed by the guy who made City 17.
 
I just realized that Harvey Smith, the lead designer of the original Deus Ex, is also responsible for Dishonored. Makes sense. Kinda like when I was playing Dishonored and thought, "Gee, this reminds me a bit of City 17. And, as it turns out, Dunwall was designed by the guy who made City 17.

Yeah. As a matter of fact, there was a Twitter exchange between Harvey Smith and some person who expressed his dislike of Dishonored's art style and cited DX:MD as a game worth playing. Harvey explained the reasons, but the most amusing thing he told him was ''And I'm very familiar with Deus Ex franchise, thank you very much'' :D
 
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.
especially the music... i've been listening to that track over and over at work.
 

derFeef

Member
When you spend 10 minutes building a bridge out of boxes to get over an electrified area and then realize the area was open from the other end the whole time....
 
D

Deleted member 30609

Unconfirmed Member
It looks like I've permanently aggro'd the Palisade bank. Is there any way of resetting that?
 

Akai__

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.

While they do look somewhat similiar, I don't think it's him.
 

mrmyhthef

Member
Alright, I managed to finish the game. I have a question regarding the final mission:

What exactly are the conditions to getting the best outcome? I swear I'm some kind of idiot cause I managed to both save the delegates and confront Marchenko and I don't know how. I figure saving Miller with the antidote and getting the code to the meeting room from Vega would affect that. Except Miller did fuck all, told me to save Brown which made me think he was going to do something about Marchenko, nothing happened there. Similarly I don't see why you couldn't just hack the rank 1 keypad to get to Brown. I feel like those don't actually factor in the end.
 

Akai__

Member
Alright, I managed to finish the game. I have a question regarding the final mission:

What exactly are the conditions to getting the best outcome? I swear I'm some kind of idiot cause I managed to both save the delegates and confront Marchenko and I don't know how. I figure saving Miller with the antidote and getting the code to the meeting room from Vega would affect that. Except Miller did fuck all, told me to save Brown which made me think he was going to do something about Marchenko, nothing happened there. Similarly I don't see why you couldn't just hack the rank 1 keypad to get to Brown. I feel like those don't actually factor in the end.

You will always face Marchenko, but saving the delegates or the partying people is entirely dependent on you alarming or not alarming the enemies. You can take all the time you want, if you never get spotted.
 
So I'll be honest: I don't understand the dislike I've seen toward the
Miller NSN
segment.

It's like 10 minutes long (and if you have practice with remote hacking that might be stretching it) unless you're going for the no detection achievement for that section and reloading saves, and it's visually striking and unique.
 

SJRB

Gold Member
So I'll be honest: I don't understand the dislike I've seen toward the
Miller NSN
segment.

It's like 10 minutes long (and if you have practice with remote hacking that might be stretching it) unless you're going for the no detection achievement for that section and reloading saves, and it's visually striking and unique.

I did that part just last night, thought it was awesome.I actually said "woah" out loud when it loaded, it looked so cool.

And it's not difficult in the slightest, the "puzzles" are as subtle as a brick to the face. "Hmm geez, I wonder why this random crate is standing here in this bizarre area".

What's there to dislike?
 

leng jai

Member
I didn't mean relevant as in being in the news or it being a must-play for "new generation players" in 2016. I meant it in terms of design philosophy, branching paths, choice and consequence etc where to many developers it is still something to learn from and look up to. Go and ask Obsidian or CDPR what some of their inspiration for NV / C77 were/are.

Either way the argument "the first game is 15years old, thus the story should be ignored" is obviously nonsense. MGS1 was 17 years last year, so MGSV should have not followed MGS canon at all?

The MGS series had a steady stream of releases and 6 games in the last 15 years. Deus Ex one was released in 2000 and Human Revolution took 11 years to come out, and another 5 for this game.
 
So I'll be honest: I don't understand the dislike I've seen toward the
Miller NSN
segment.

It's like 10 minutes long (and if you have practice with remote hacking that might be stretching it) unless you're going for the no detection achievement for that section and reloading saves, and it's visually striking and unique.

It might be short, but that doesn't mean it's not terrible. I don't think it looks striking at all, and it feels and plays completely out of place in a Deus Ex game.

I'm all for one-offs or innovative sections and I sort of see what they were going for, but I just thought it wasn't any fun at all playing through it. Besides, it comes at a point when you expect the game to fully take flight and exciting stuff to happen with the plot. Instead, it all comes to a grinding halt and you have to Layton shit inside a computer.
 

Regginator

Member
Or we going to get a Metal Gear Solid V type of sequel with Old Jensen and Old Page punching it up on top of the statue before it explodes.

4VfTtwh.gif
 
I think the idea of Jensen's final game having multiple endings, with one of them being the one to lead to Deus Ex 1, is really clever. I'd be game for that.

So I'll be honest: I don't understand the dislike I've seen toward the
Miller NSN
segment.

It's like 10 minutes long (and if you have practice with remote hacking that might be stretching it) unless you're going for the no detection achievement for that section and reloading saves, and it's visually striking and unique.

I certainly didn't have a major negative reaction to it, although the art style didn't have much impact on me because I had dabbled with Breach mode by then.

My only complaint is that it was such a straightforward and basic segment from a gameplay standpoint. The main story already feels very sparse with the amount of actual missions, I would've liked some more "meat" to that segment.
 
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