(WARNING: Spoilers for the video game “Deus Ex: Mankind Divided” ahead.)
There’s a lot going on in “Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.” That’s to be expected from a noir mystery like this — typically you have a handful of plot threads that have seemingly little to do with each other, and then over the course of the story the hero pieces them together in order to solve the mystery.
“Figuring out” is the bare minimum — actual resolution is not. But it’s important that the mystery is solved even if nothing more is accomplished; we need to see the big picture, or else the whole point of the story is lost.
Look at the movie “Chinatown,” for example. By the end, JJ Gittes manages to put the pieces together and deduce what’s been going on — but he hasn’t actually accomplished anything by doing so. The bad guys won, and there’s nothing he can do about it. “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” That’s an ending. The story is complete.
The video game “Deus Ex: Mankind Divided” does not have a complete story, so it fails to actually communicate any of the things it’s trying to say. And it’s got plenty to say. But without a proper conclusion, the meaning behind all of that is lost.
It’s not just a matter of open plot threads and narrative incoherence, although those certainly are an issue. But the big casualty is the theme of the story, which is all about racism and the systemic oppression that often leads to violence.
“Deus Ex: Mankind Divided” is set in a future version of our world in which we’ve developed the ability to mechanically “augment” ourselves with things like robotic arms and legs, enhanced eyes, super-strong skin, etc. By 2027, millions of people have been augmented when disaster strikes.
The world’s secret ruling class, the Illuminati, had intended to use these augmentations as a means of controlling the population. But the technology’s inventor, having decided that the augmentations he created were a perversion of evolution, went rogue and sent a signal that caused every augmented person to lose control and start behaving violently. Millions died in what would be known as the Aug Incident.
Two years later, at the time of “Mankind Divided,” the remaining millions of augmented people are second-class citizens and on the verge, pending the result of a proposed U.N. resolution, of losing their rights worldwide.
In Prague, where
You play as Adam Jensen, who is himself heavily augmented and happens to be one of the few people alive who knows of the Illuminati’s influence on world events. His purpose in “Deus Ex: Mankind Divided” is to pierce that veil and expose what they’re doing. He goes about this by working with a secret hacker group called the Juggernaut Collective, through which he’s infiltrated Interpol’s Task Force 29, an anti-terrorist unit and purported tool of the Illuminati.
What Jensen discovers is that the Illuminati is in cahoots with the help of a radical sect of the Augmented Rights Coalition, a group that is, officially, nonviolent. As oppression of Augs has increased, so have the number of “terrorist” responses, all of which the Illuminati makes sure to pin on ARC through its control over the media and intelligence organizations. It’s all a PR move to ensure the UN measure is passed.
In a few cases, that radical splinter off ARC really is the culprit. That group, whose members wear gold masks and are led by a hulking Aug named Marchenko, end up being positioned as the main villains of “Mankind Divided.”
But they aren’t. Those guys are just pawns of the Illuminati in some way. And this is where “Mankind Divided” falls flat on its face.
Jensen completely fails to figure out what Marchenko’s relationship to the Illuminati really is. Is he knowingly working with those secret power brokers? Or is the Dvali crime family, which has been funneling Marchenko weapons, enough of a buffer that Marchenko doesn’t know he’s being played to support an anti-augmentation agenda?
“Deus Ex: Mankind Divided” isn’t concerned with answering those questions, and that completely thwarts its racism metaphor.
Throughout the story, the question of whether violent force is a valid response to the institutional oppression of Augs pops up over and over. Jensen would say his own main goal is simply to prevent more death and destruction. Marchenko would respond that he wants to protect those like him who are suffering at the hands of an unforgiving system. It’s an interesting debate, and an eternal one in our own reality — but that discussion, in the big picture, is beside the point.
The real issue is whatever brought us to the point that we even need to have that debate. This has been, in all previous “Deus Ex” games, the entire point of the series — the world’s secret ruling class is sowing conflict to maintain control and the hero must deal with it. “Deus Ex” is supposed to cut through the bulls— and address the cause of the strife. As you wade through a totally messed-up world, the hero is supposed to keep an eye on the bigger picture, because he’s supposed to be seeking to actually make things better.
In “Mankind Divided,” though, the bigger picture is lost because we end up keying entirely on Marchenko and his goons, since the story ends right after Jensen deals with them. As a result, the focus shifts from exposing those responsible for creating a climate that drives people to terrorism, to being about how Marchenko is the bad guy because his terrorist tactics aren’t the correct moral response to the situation.
The normal path for this type of story would position Marchenko as the catalyst to a revelation. Taking him down would propel Jensen to the final act, where he would discover, finally, just how deep the conspiracy rabbit hole goes. But “Mankind Divided” is incomplete, ending before its final act. There is no rabbit hole.
And that’s how you get a bunch of game critics positing that “Mankind Divided” espouses a false moral equivalence — that the oppressed who are fighting back are no better than those who oppress them. That’s clearly not supposed to be the point, but the focus on Marchenko, and the abrupt end of the story once Jensen takes him down, does give that impression.
Look, we know terrorism is bad. Murder is bad. Marchenko and his people go after civilians, and that’s bad. We’re clear on this. A story about how murder and terrorism are bad is not interesting, which is, generally speaking, why we don’t get many of those.
We do get a lot of stories, however, about understanding why a person would do those things. The film “Syriana,” for one, which explores why a teenager in the Middle East might become a terrorist. Or the third season of “Battlestar Galactica,” which sees its protagonists suicide-bombing the occupying Cylons and their human collaborators.
Why is Marchenko a murderous revolutionary? Because of the machinations of an impossibly rich and powerful few who control the world outside the public eye. We know this just from playing this game. From the start of “Deus Ex: Mankind Divided,” Jensen’s stated goal is to deal with those hidden controllers. His true role as a member of Interpol’s Task Force 29 is one of a mole, not a cop. His chief interest in Marchenko is to see who’s hiding behind him.
But since publisher Eidos Montreal, for whatever reason, stopped short of bringing the story it was telling to its actual conclusion, Marchenko himself becomes the focus. Why he was doing terrible things stopped mattering. And all the meaning “Deus Ex: Mankind Divided” seemed to be trying to convey was lost in the ether.