The GWJ CRPG Club - Game 17: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (Over)

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For more information on the GWJ CRPG Club, go here.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is the GWJ CRPG's Club's 17th winner, winning over Skyrim by 2 votes.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided an action RPG from Eidos, and published by Square Enix. Gameplay features first-person shooting, stealth, and role-playing elements, all set in a futuristic Prague of 2029. It is the seventh of nine titles/variants in the Deus Ex series.

The game is playable on Windows, PS4, XBox One, Linux, and MacOS. There are also three DLCs that add extra content to the game. Those are optional for CRPG completion purposes.

We'll be playing this game until June 30, 2022. This thread is for friendly discussion as we play through the game. Share your reflections, successes, defeats, tactics, wishes, impressions, and whatever here! The more conversation the better, so post away.

For BIG spoilers, please use the spoiler tag. (No! I am your father!) Tactics, strategies, general story progression likely won't need them.

Anyone and everyone is welcome to participate, and can start at any time, so join the fun! One quick favor: If you decide to play, make a post here along the lines of "I'm in!" to let us know. If you start and finish the game before the end, you'll level up your GWJ CRPG Membership.

Helpful Links
Steam ($4.49 <-- SALE!)
GOG ($4.49 <- SALE!)
GreenMan Gaming ($3.60 <-- SALE!)
Playstation Store ($29.99)
Xbox Live Gold (with subscription)
Wikipedia Page
Fan Wiki
How Long to Beat (16-49 hours)
Is There Any Deal: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Achievements Guide
Metacritic (83 metascore, 6.9 user score)
Walkthrough
(Taking suggestions)

Members Completed
Math
Sundown
Alien Love Gardener
ubrakto
Sorbicol
prodiginy
WizKid
Redherring

Members Playing
Godzilla Blitz
GreyWolf
Merphle
Hardek
Maclintok

I’m in. Been sitting one this one for awhile, since I got a free key from someone when it was in a humble bundle. This is my reason to finally get around to it.

I'm in on this one. I really enjoyed the original Deus Ex, and with an estimated time to beat of about 30 hours, I think this will be a great way to knock off an RPG in my backlog and get 2022 off to a positive start.

If anyone's wondering, the DLC contains a couple of very solid missions. The second one is particularly good: a jail break scenario that's pretty long and reminded me a bit of Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. I'd recommend them, but they're not critical for the plot.

I played through the Dubai mission. Kind of lost as far as how to do things other than shoot people but it's starting to come together. So far so good.

I’m in.

Started this a few months ago but got distracted. Will restart and dive in.

I'm in, once I get back home. (And I finish cramming for the GOTY voting.)

I’m in. Merry Christmas to all. More steam sale purchases!

I'm in. I never ended up finishing Human Revolution after multiple attempts...maybe this will fare better.

I’m also in.

I'm in. By luck I started a playthrough about a week before the voting even began and am about 6 hours in.

In.

I'm about two hours in, taking my time with things so not much progress beyond a few of the initial side quests.

Spoiler:

I've convinced the police to take out Denholm and overtly fought my way into the book store to have my augs looked at by strung out black market ripperdoc guy.

Incredible visuals, this one's a trip through the uncanny Valley on my setup.

GreyWolf wrote:

I'm about two hours in, taking my time with things so not much progress beyond a few of the initial side quests.

Spoiler:

I've convinced the police to take out Denholm and overtly fought my way into the book store to have my augs looked at by strung out black market ripperdoc guy.

Incredible visuals, this one's a trip through the uncanny Valley on my setup.

Nice progress! I'm hoping to get stuck in for another bit today. I'm still just past the intro mission.

A few general thoughts:

  • Thank goodness for the Deus Ex: Human Revolution recap video. I forgot almost all of the plot.
  • The game is *heavily* pushing you toward a nonlethal playstyle, unless you like the idea of murdering cops.
  • Related to above, I'm seriously investing in hacking augs and anything else which open alternate paths (heavy lifting, high jump etc).
  • Also related to the above, I'm putting almost nothing into the "overclock" augs because they seem mostly combat-related.
  • Took me ages to realize that each metro stop isn't its own area. Several of them lead to the "main" area. The gameworld, while impressive visually, is starting to seem kinda small.

So far I'm enjoying it, but I wish it was more like Dishonored.

I won this a few months ago and here are my general thoughts:

- Immersive sims are probably my favorite genre, so I enjoyed the gameplay here. Sneaking around, exploring every nook and cranny, reading people’s journals/e-mails, knocking enemies out one by one- it never gets old for me. I went mainly with a stealth load out and avoided combat as much as possible.
- Love the world and futuristic aesthetic. That’s what bummed me out most when I was finished- the idea that we may never get to revisit it.
- I think Adam Jensen is a fine protagonist and there are some decent characters. Not on the level of Witcher or most BioWare games, but good enough.
- The narrative feels a bit of a mess to me. There are multiple references to characters and events from Human Revolution that I didn’t full remember, for one thing. The main plot is sufficiently self-contained that it’s not a deal breaker, but it’s clear they’re setting up a sequel that never materialized. Then to add on to the weird place of the game even further, they’re also setting up events and characters from the original Deus Ex which takes place later in the future. How many people out there played the original and still remember plot details from it? I had to look up who Bob Page is even and he was the main antagonist. Overall, it leaves Mankind Divided in this sort of limbo middle area of an ongoing story where things feel very unfinished.

If they ever revisit the series, which I hope they do, I’d probably recommend they do a complete remake of the original Deus Ex like they seem to be doing for KOTOR.

Are there zero plans for a sequel?

I for one never played a Deus Ex game before HR (and as I said way up above, I never finished it), so this is all very fresh for me.

GreyWolf wrote:

Are there zero plans for a sequel?

Human Revolution was a success with critics and in sales, so Square Enix had ambitious plans for a Deus Ex Universe(tm), including two AAA direct sequels for a complete trilogy, mobile games, comics… there were even preliminary plans for a movie or TV series I think. Mankind Divided didn’t sell enough copies, so Deus Ex (including the third Adam Jensen game) was shelved.

I think there’s good demand for this kind of game but developers need to space them out several years apart to build up anticipation. That way the narrative is “Acclaimed Deus Ex series is finally coming back! Hell yeah!” instead of just “Last year’s Deus Ex is getting a sequel.” Same with the Dishonored series.

I have this on PC and PS4 so not sure which one to do. Leaning towards PS4 but I’m notoriously bad at FPS games on PS4

I’d say I’m in, should have lots of time to play over the next week or two.

Just getting home later tonight so probably start tmw

Just reading this “9 things I wish I knew” guide which so far is giving advice on abilities to go for

https://www.pcgamer.com/deus-ex-mank...

Interesting, that article mentions to not worry about overclocking early on and go ahead and max out remote hacking. Which I've done, but I've also disabled a few nodes to balance out already. C'est la vie, hopefully it won't affect things too harshly.

GreyWolf wrote:

I'm in. I never ended up finishing Human Revolution ...

to be fair, neither did Square Enix!

*badum-tish*

Got a start so far. Lots of reloads on the first mission trying to stealth the whole thing (with tranq rifle).

Had a real tough time with the chopper, mostly because i'd get my ass shot off before I could complete the objective.

Spoiler:

I also couldn't find the battery hatch for the life of me, also, Singh died. I couldn't bring myself to try again after so many reloads /mourn

Just eyeballing it, I'm probably 2/3rds through the game.

Spoiler:

I liked the binary choice between 'investigate the orchid' and 'find the bombmaker'. It plays nicely with Jensen's double-agency and his (or at least my) conflicted loyalties. I chose to find the bombmaker and didn't regret it.

Now I'm working through the secret mountain facility and relishing the opportunity to be lethal. Still going full stealth though, because it's that kind of game.

And I’m off.

Watching the recap video was very helpful. And it kind of made me want to go back to replay Human Revolution again, since it seems like the story was pretty good. I only remembered bits and pieces of it.

I got through the intro mission; went with the tranq sniper, although I tried to sneak and knock guys out manually as much as possible. Had to reload after I did dumb things a couple of times. In general I’ll try to play this fairly stealthily, but stealth has never necessarily been my strong suit in games, so I may go loud from time to time. Not really aiming for that pacifist achievement.

I’m now into Prague, and have left my apartment so I can begin my primary mission of rifling through everyone’s apartments for emails or money.

EDIT: Made a bit more progress. My pseudo pacifist run was very short lived. In the second mission, going to the Aug man to take a look at me. I tried to stealth and tranq my way through the dudes outside his office, but it went sideways halfway through. Had to switch to the lethal rounds.

When I finally got enough praxis points to start upgrading my augs, I went with the emotion control one, plus a couple of levels of hacking so I could get into L3 laptops, the invisibility cloak, the strength to pick up fridges, plus the remote hacking, which was quickly put to good use as I helped tear down a forgery ring for a sidequest. Up next is a trip to Cista Ctvrt, where the main quest plus three side quests all need me to go now.

As a side note, I love how fast the game loads after a quick save.

Just picked up a Tobii Eye Tracker, excited to use this in the game!

73GB?!?!!!??!?!?!?!!!!!!

Edit: At least the download is only 32GB. I've just spent a good half hour scouring my Origin, GOG, Steam and Epic launchers to uninstall games I no longer play. And in Epic's case games it can't find because I had to reinstall it.

About to head into M6 (Golem City).

What I like:
- all the little details of the city combined with the freedom of movement.
- the bajillion ways you can define your build.

What I don't like:
- false urgency imposed in the main missions. I know the main campaign is short and I want to stretch it out, but it seems like the game's story/dialog pushes you into it. Not handling those things right away doesn't seem to come with consequences, i.e., they'll wait until you've gone off and wrapped up your side quests.

I understand that there's a precious balance to be had from a gameplay perspective, if they timed things up for failure it could end up coming down too far in the other direction. Not sure what a good solution is.

- it would be nice to be gradually introduced to the branches of your aug tree and what your character is capable of instead of throwing you into the deep end all at the start - it's difficult to know what to invest in or what you'd like your play style to be the first time through.

I'm in.
I've already played this game, so I'm doing what I call a psychopath run, with my goal to kill everyone.
EVERYONE!

WizKid wrote:

I'm in.
I've already played this game, so I'm doing what I call a psychopath run, with my goal to kill everyone.
EVERYONE!

Heh. Seems like I'm doing this anyway, just not on purpose

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