Note that this review applies only to the main portion of “Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.” A separate review of the “Breach” mode will come at a later date.
The “Deus Ex” franchise is beloved for being, well, more than other video games. Gaming is no stranger to conspiracy thrillers, but none of the others can match the complicated and very thorough paranoia of “Deus Ex.”
In the tradition of many great mystery stories, “Deus Ex” games start out complex, weaving a ton of disparate threads into one over the course of dozens of hours. It’s not always neat — video games never are, given how so many aspects of them tend to fluctuate up to release, necessarily altering or damaging the storytelling along the way. But “Deus Ex” had its formula, and it usually worked: a naive character gets caught up in events, things get out of hand, and either by choice or circumstance that character ends up as the lynchpin for some kind of massive, world-altering event as the machinations of the Illuminati or some other controlling entity are dragged into the light.
“Deus Ex: Mankind Divided” deviated from that template from the start by bringing back the protagonist of the last game, “Human Revolution.” After all he’d been through, Adam Jensen was no longer naive. He wasn’t stumbling into a conspiracy. He was looking for one.
But, in another stark deviation from the “Deus Ex” formula, he only sort of finds it. And that’s because “Mankind Divided” forgets to ever bring its myriad plot threads together, coming to a close during what feels like the second act of this story. Leaving the rest, presumably, for an infinite number of future franchise titles.
Jensen is working, as “Mankind Divided” opens, for an anti-terrorism unit called Task Force 29. This group was formed to deal with the aftermath of The Aug Incident, in which people who had received mechanical augmentations — robotic arms, for example — all went nuts and began violently attacking everyone around them. The world is, as the title says, divided between “naturals” and augmented people.
The seven million “augs” remaining have become second class citizens, facing institutional discrimination from an establishment that now fears them. Park benches are designated “naturals only.” Augs are forced to ride in their separate subway car when they use public transit. Overzealous police ask any augmented people they see for ID papers. The city of Prague, where most of “Mankind Divided” takes place, has set up a horrendous ghetto known as Golem City where it likes to send augs to live in squalor. It’s a big ole racism metaphor, and it works — there’s never any question that it’s wrong to treat augmented people this way. It’s a far cry from a “Bioshock Infinite” and its ilk, which like to act like all sides of any conflict are wrong.
Meanwhile, a proposed United Nations charter would cement that second-class status worldwide. So a lot of augs, feeling to pain of living under a boot, decide to strike back. Task Force 29 is set up to deal with these “augmented terrorists.”
But Jensen, himself extensively augmented, is a double agent inside Task Force 29. He also works with the Juggernaut Collective, a hacker group that seeks to expose the behind-the-scenes controllers of world events.
In this game, that’s the Illuminati. The Collective thinks Task Force 29 is the Illuminati’s puppet, which is why Jensen works there. But the Illuminati has many puppets and, as always, there’s a lot more going on than meets the eye.
Our trip through this obtuse mystery and really awful world is a pretty great one. From purely a play perspective, “Mankind Divided” is easier to deal with than its predecessors, which tended to be overly complicated in how they handled play. Sneaking around is easier than it’s ever been, for one thing. This time around the game functions very tightly, especially in comparison with its antiquated predecessors — and, yes, I’m including 2011’s “Human Revolution” under that banner after playing this one.
Part of that is, I think, due to the inclusion of a variety of premapped control schemes for those playing with a gamepad. The “Standard” scheme in particular brings the overall feel into line with how so many other games handle, thus lessening the learning curve significantly. Jensen’s augmentations — you get to decide how Jensen’s mechanical parts will be upgraded as the game goes along — are still a mess to deal with, with too many options. However, it does feel as though you earn upgrades at a quicker pace than in “Human Revolution” making those augmentation decisions less painful.
The story is long and meandering, but not so much so that it’s impossible to keep track of. The pieces are (mostly) there for you to put together, should you have the inclination.
The problem is that Jensen himself never puts them together. “Mankind Divided” does not include a self-contained story, as the game ends after he deals with one of the Illuminati’s many pawns.
The man who becomes our big bad is clearly just a subvillain in the story. In a regular conspiracy thriller, he’s the sort of character our heroes confront only to be propelled deeper down the rabbit hole. Except in “Mankind Divided” the story just ends there.
Jensen knows there’s more going on, and afterward he discusses how now it’s time to go after the hands who were pulling the strings. I get it as the setup for a sequel, but that conclusion, or lack thereof, renders the experience of playing “Mankind Divided” totally unsatisfying while we wait for that sequel to arrive. It feels like the end of a TV pilot, except instead of the next part coming in a week it’ll be years, probably. Or, if we’re “lucky” the story will continue in chunks of downloadable content we have to pay for.
Which makes it hard to recommend “Deus Ex: Mankind Divided” right now. It had all the makings of a great video game, until it opted out of providing any sort of conclusion. For any game, that would be a knock on it. For the latest iteration of a franchise beloved for its storytelling, that makes “Mankind Divided” a huge disappointment.
20 Most Disappointing Video Games of All Time (Photos)
One of the games industry's most enduring traditions is promising much and delivering much less. But some releases miss the mark more than others, and this is the list of games that missed hardest.
While "No Man's Sky" is certainly a contender for this list, by the way, it's too fresh to include right now.
20. "Mass Effect 3" (2012)
The culmination of a trilogy in which players were constantly told that every choice they made mattered, but in the end it turned out very few actually did. Adding insult to injury, the ending ran counter, thematically, to everything we understood about the series to that point. It was a soul-crushing experience.
19. "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3" (2010)
After "Modern Warfare 2" in 2009, developer Infinity Ward lost a ton of longtime staff when the studio's heads became embroiled in a legal battle with publisher Activision over unpaid royalties on the game. "Modern Warfare 3," perhaps understandably, came out really lackluster, ruining the conclusion of what had been a great series within the "Call of Duty" franchise.
18. "SimCity" (2013)
It was so exciting to get another SimCity game -- until it was revealed that for some inexplicable reason you'd have to be connected online to play. And then the game came out and nobody could connect.
17. "Aliens: Colonial Marines" (2013)
Finally, like, a legit Aliens game, we thought and were promised. Except actually it was just a totally unremarkable shooter made without a modicum of creativity.
16. "Fallout 4" (2015)
A classic example of the games industry's inability to focus and insistence on constant late-stage reshuffling. It's a totally confused mess, with none of the charisma of previous "Fallout" games.
15. "Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One" (2011)
The main games in the series weren't selling well, so Sony and Insomniac Games decided to shake up the formula by putting together a totally bland, new and not-fun "Ratchet & Clank" built around playing with friends. It turned out the shift in philosophy robbed the property of most of its appeal.
14. "Too Human" (2006)
One of those games that took forever to make but promised a transcendent gaming experience at the end of the tunnel. As usual, the final experience wasn't transcendent so much as it was just bad.
13. "Duke Nukem Forever" (2011)
"DNF" was in production for what felt like centuries, and saw the light of day only when Gearbox Software purchased the "Duke Nukem" property and funded it to completion. And, as usual, a game in development for a decade turned out to be pretty bad, and fans who'd been waiting half their lives for it were pretty sad.
12. "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion" (2006)
Bethesda is known for producing games that are open and allow players to go whatever they want and do whatever they want. A decade ago this was an enticing prospect, and "Oblivion" really kicked off the current wave of that kind of game. Unfortunately, all the stuff that there is to do in "Oblivion" is pretty boring and everywhere you can go looks the same as everywhere else.
11. "Hellgate: London" (2007)
A great example of a video game going with a really interesting and appealing Hollywood-esque marketing campaign that bore very little resemblance to the final product.
10. "Far Cry 3" (2012)
"Far Cry 2" was about how everything is bad, calling out racism and imperialism in particular with a big ole "Heart of Darkness" reference at the end. "Far Cry 3" was about how much fun racism and imperialism are.
9. "Doom 3" (2004)
The definition of a game that has no identity. Thought it could be a run-and-gun shooter and a horror game at the same time, but the result is just an incredibly aggravating experience and a badly told story. What was supposed to bring "Doom" into the modern age was instead just a total pain.
8. "Superman 64" (1999)
The Nintendo 64 offered what felt like a golden era there for a minute, with "Superman 64" to be a crowning achievement a few years into the console's life cycle. But it was only an achievement in jankiness.
7. "E.T." (1982)
One of the earliest examples of a cheap, movie license money grab, the E.T. game was a total disaster -- but it would set the standard for movie tie-in games to come.
6. "Half-Life: Opposing Force" (1999?)
This "'Half-Life' from a different perspective" game made a lot of standard video game sequel mistakes. There's always this pressure to add more stuff -- enemies, weapons, story, etc. But "Opposing Force," despite occurring at the same time and place as "Half-Life," had so much new stuff that it felt completely removed from it.
5. "Dragon Age: Inquisition" (2014)
After the rushed "Dragon Age 2," which included a lot of great ideas for how to tell a story in a game, BioWare course corrected with "Inquisition" by abandoning every single one of those good ideas in favor of building a game that's all about monotonous busywork and not at all about telling a story.
4. "Shenmue" (2000)
Yu Suzuki spent more than half a decade bringing this cult role-playing game to the Sega Dreamcast, building up hype every step of the way. Unfortunately, it's one of the most boring games I've ever played.
3. "Rise of Nightmares" (2011)
We'll probably eventually look back on motion-controlled gaming as a really dark and wasted period (we're already getting there now). "Rise of Nightmares," a zombie horror game that you'd play by waving your arms and kicking the air in front of Xbox 360's Kinect camera, should be the poster child for the industry's complete inability to figure out what to do with motion controls.
2. "Assassin's Creed 2" (2009)
This game marked the moment when publisher Ubisoft decided it would turn the only major historical action franchise in gaming into a generic boring activities simulator. It didn't fix the problems players had with the first game -- instead just adding new, more irritating ones. And, ultimately, setting the standard for what just about every other Ubisoft game has turned into at this point.
1. "Spore" (2008)
This EA sim promised to chart the evolution of a species that players would create, from a single-celled organism to space travel -- but in a really awkward and fundamentally uninteresting way. "Spore" was, from a certain point of view, exactly what its creators promised, but it turned out that what was promised was way less cool than it sounded.
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A lot of fans found ”No Man’s Sky“ lackluster, but that’s just the latest in a long line of letdowns
One of the games industry's most enduring traditions is promising much and delivering much less. But some releases miss the mark more than others, and this is the list of games that missed hardest.
While "No Man's Sky" is certainly a contender for this list, by the way, it's too fresh to include right now.
