Square Enix have been teasing a project for the last couple of days, with the codename Project CKP – Can’t Kill Progress. Now, Neogaf user arturkrang has revealed what appears to be confirmation that CKP was building toward the long-awaited Deux Ex: Mankind Divided reveal. The leak comes via Kanobu, a Russian website (as detailed here), and contains images, including the one above. The rest are below.
The reveal trailer for the new Deus Ex game [official site] shows the full meaning of that subtitle – almost every man in the video ends up divided right down the middle by a stonking great stabby cybernetic implant. Packed with ultraviolence, it’s the sort of trailer that tells me absolutely nothing about how I’ll actually play the game but I can’t deny that it’s done the trick. I’m even more excited than I was earlier today when I explained to Graham why Deus Ex makes my plastanium heart skip a beat.
It’s the haves against the have-nots – that’s the have-augmented-bits against the have-not-got-augmented-bits – and it looks spectacular.
I am, as you well know, always up for being a cool cyborg. Obviously I am jolly keen to play Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] and pop my cybergoggles out after saying something cool, but quite how cool will my cyberman get to be this time around? The announcement trailer had a few hints but it was all gussied up, so how real is it? If you want solid details now, you’ll need to wait on the magazine run by the USA’s largest games retailer. Or wait for someone to read that and summarise it online. They already have.
Like: yep, it does still have boss battles. And: it’ll draw from all of Human Revolution’s endings. Also: heck yeah that is a P.E.P.S. electrogun popping out of Adam’s arm.
Our first in-game glimpses at Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] come from the FPS-RPG’s E3 trailer, including an amazing moment when Adam EMPs a guy with mechanical legs and they go all wobbly. Also Adam now has the power to turn into a faceted black statue from a vaporwave album cover. Oh, and I suppose it reveals a release window: early 2016. It’s a good thing to watch with your eyes and listen to with your ears. We’ve got a few screenshots too.
Fail Forward is a series of videos all about the bits of games which don’t quite work and why. In this episode, Marsh Davies discusses Deus Ex: Human Revolution [official site], its beards, its many lovely desks and what it says about power.
“Deus Ex meets District 9″ is how the company described Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] during a demo I attended at E3. Set two years after Human Revolution, Mankind Divided showcases a society still deeply fearful after the Aug Incident where mechanically augmented people turned violent, stripped of self-control after a signal deliberately interfered with their in-built bio-chips. The scale of the incident means augmentations are now viewed with suspicion and augmented people treated as outcasts. Adam Jensen himself is working as a counter-terrorist agent fighting some of the resultant crime. Well. That’s his day job. He secretly believes the task force was set up by the Illuminti for a different purpose and is working to take them down.
“He’s a tool and a weapon,” is executive game director Jean-François Dugas’ analysis of this Adam Jensen.
Sending me four new Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] screenshots for Gamescom (I say ‘screenshots’ – one looks like an actual screenshot and even that might be staged), Square Enix are probably hoping I’ll gush over the graphics tech or pore over them for plot hints. Nope.
I am, however, really into a sculpture which appears in one screenshot of the Prague city hub. That screenshot up top there. The sculpture on the right – the withered tree holding aloft a concrete cube. That’s great that, isn’t it? Let’s have a closer look:
Deus Ex: Human Revolution had the best ceilings of any game ever made. I’m not kidding. I’ve had screenshots of that game’s ceilings as desktop wallpapers and I know others who have done the same. Each one was a sculptural work designed to communicate the cyber renaissance setting. I spoke to gameplay director Patrick Fortier about this at Gamescom and unfortunately it sounds as if sequel Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] won’t carry on the game’s ceiling-based legacy in quite the same way. “That dream is dying,” he said.
Turn your mind back to Gamescom earlier in the month – it was via a Twitch stream that Eidos Montreal announced a few more details on Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site]. The game, they said, would get a New Game Plus Mode, which refers to a feature that was previously seen in the Director’s Cut version of Human Revolution back in 2013. So here we go, a trailer recapping all the info you likely missed at the start of August while you were ogling German language conferences and the sauerkraut of their countrymen.
At Gamescom 2015, I had the opportunity to talk to Deus Ex: Mankind Divided gameplay director Patrick Fortier. We talked about feeling a sense of ownership over Deus Ex at last, expanding the language of its level design beyond vents, and the politics of a “mechanical apartheid.” Before I asked him about the game’s ceilings.
One Deus Ex: Human Revolution mission centred around an old friend from the Deus Ex universe, Tracer Tong, was locked off in pre-order DLC (and later sold seperately). It was a bit of a gross move. Apparently not learning from their mistakes – a pretty Deus Ex-y theme, to be fair – publishers Square Enix have announced all the pre-order guff for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site].
It’s a big mess, of course, and includes the unpleasant step of saying they’ll release the game four days early if enough people pre-order. How about we not pre-order games any more and Squeenix simply release it when it’s ready, eh?
“Never pre-order,” we say, which is shorthand for “Pre-ordering is a gamble, so do be careful when placing bets and don’t be swayed by the free shrimp buffet that is bonus DLC.” Pre-order bonuses are usually harmless enough, but Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] publishers Square Enix had the awful idea of saying they’d release the game early – only if enough people pre-ordered.
Following loads of folks telling them it was an awful idea, Squeenix have now scrapped the ‘Augment Your Pre-order’ plan and stuck the game with its original, unaugmented release date of February 23rd, 2016.
I’m in the camp that thought Deus Ex: Human Revolution was a hell of a good starting point. The level design ran up against apparent technical limitations, chopped into distinct sections rather than flowing naturally from streets to interiors and back again, and the stealthy approach sometimes felt more difficult than it should have been thanks to sticky cover and too-rigid AI.
During a day of hands-on experience with follow-up Mankind Divided, it became apparent that Eidos Montreal felt similarly about their first stab at their cyberpunk revival. Moving from the tech renaissance of Human Revolution, the sequel steps into a fractured world of corporate feudalism. It’s looking superb.
Deus Ex: Revision [official site] is a project that overhauls “the environments and soundtrack” of Ion Storm’s classic, and it’s out now on Steam. The release has the backing of Deus Ex’s current publishers and developers (Square Enix and Eidos Montreal), and is designed to work exclusively with the Steam release of the original.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided[official site] is already looking like a worthy follow-up to Human Revolution as well as an inventive prequel to Ion Storm’s original cyberpunk classic. When we visited the studio to play the game earlier this month, we also spent time talking to two of the brains behind the game about the inspirations and processes that go into this bleak vision of the future.
First up, here’s Jonathan Jacques-Belletête, executive art director at the studio. We spoke to him about collaborative storytelling, fashion, architecture and graphic design. Along the way we learned about content cut from Human Revolution, the places that Deus Ex is going next and why Jacques-Belletête believes that India could be a perfect cyberpunk setting.
I’ve played Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] and I liked what I saw. A brief visit to just two areas suggested a more confident and open approach to first-person stealth-action. My preview focused on the level design because that’s where most of the improvements seemed to be but Eidos Montreal are also determined to improve player character Adam Jensen. That’s already evident in the improved control scheme, particularly as it relates to use of cover, but it’ll also be felt in his new augmented abilities. You can see some of those in the new trailer below.
Disappointing endings are a staple of Deus Ex games, aren’t they? That’s fine, though, because almost everything leading up to those final two minutes when you choose which button to press is pretty great. Unsurprisingly, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] will be continuing the series’s sequel tradition of openings which kinda ignore which button you picked, but the ending this time will be more than a mere button-press. So its lead writer say, anyway.
Everything looked rosy when I traveled to Montreal to take a look at Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] earlier this year. The areas I played improved on Human Revolution in every way that matters and Adam Jensen controlled better than ever. All was well and I was looking forward to playing the game in February, right around my birthday. Moments ago, word arrived of a six month delay – the game will now be coming out on August 23rd.
“Alice! Cara! Alice! What have you been listening to at your office Christmas party?” you beg. “Tell us, please!” Well, obviously the Rogue Warrior credits theme a whole lot, plus SomaFM‘s Christmas stream and… when she was napping, a song from Billy Idol’s reviled 1993 concept album Cyberpunk. God help me, it’s stuck in my head and I must write this to get his leering face out. So: after a day of festive cheer, I’m convinced that Eidos Montreal should bring in Billy Idol to ‘do a Mass Effect’ and provide a rockin’ song for the end credits of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site].
I have only three questions about Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site]. 1) Can I get a dollhouse-scale recreation of that tree sculpture? 2) Does Adam Jensen take showers or baths? 3) Have Eidos Montreal spoken to Billy Idol yet?
A new trailer answers that second question for me, but if you have any more you might find them answered in the six-minute overview of Eidos Montreal’s cyberpunk FPS-RPG sequel. It gets into the plot, looks at Adam’s cool new powers and pals, teases more consequences to decisions, and shows lots of pretty shots of cybercities.
