A new live-action trailer for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] tells a little story of how the futureworld goes from the “Huzzah hooray, cyborgs are the future!” optimism in Human Revolution to “Cyborgs want to eat my baby, please lock them away” panic. I think I just enjoyed a live-action trailer…? Not only because of swish cybertech and dark megacities either. What times we live in!
I have never played more than five minutes of a Deus Ex [official site] game, but I do find the transhumanism and the artwork fascinating. I also had a dream pretty recently about Adam Jensen where it turned out that instead of being a modified human he was actually a secret bee with all these insecty body mods.
His sunglasses were actually his compound eyes and he had a weird stabbing wing that he could shoot out of his arm and pin people to walls with what was inspired by the foreleg of a praying mantis. I think he might actually have one of them in the real game but not from a mantis, more from some kind of galactic hypertriangle or something. He also slept in a hive and was often covered in honey. LOOK IT WAS A DREAM I DON’T KNOW.
Anyway, I feel like that’s as decent a set of qualifications as you need for writing a post explaining that you can watch the Deus Ex Universe pre-E3 livestream thingummy here from 4.30pm BST.
Shower scenes seldom Make You Think, unless it’s about what exactly you’re getting for that Premium Netflix subscription, but if anything sticks out for me about the impressive yet oddly unexciting Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site], it’s the sight of Adam Jensen washing his hair. Eidos Montreal’s latest presentation begins in Jensen’s new Prague apartment – a casually affluent man-den where you can phone other characters, watch newscasts that track your decisions through the story, answer emails, tinker with crafting resources, and generally get acquainted with the sleek, cadaverous sort-of-human in your charge.
“You can kill dreams,” Adam Jensen growls, “you can kill innocence, you can kill freedom, but you can’t kill progress.” A serious lad, that one. While Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] doesn’t launch until Tuesday, the cyberpunk FPS-RPG’s launch trailer is already here. Very gruff. Very growly. Pretty flipping cool and all. Have a gander:
Adam Jensen has blades sheathed inside his wrists, skin that lets him turn invisible, and robotic thigh muscles that enable him to walk in an almost permanent crouch. It’s surprising that his real superpower then is the ability to turn on a visual overlay which reveals the locations of vents in the environment.
Deus Ex Mankind Divided is the sequel to Human Revolution, set two years after the events of that game caused the world’s augs – humans who have had machines implanted in their bodies and brains – to momentarily lapse into a violent mania. Now distrust of augs has caused mass panic and various secretive groups are working to either heal society’s divisions, incite further panic, or oppress the augmented further. It’s your job as Jensen to pick your way through those secretive groups – via a lot of crouching through vents.
Gosh oh golly, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] is out in less than 24 hours! Square Enix have confirmed Steam unlock times and I’m mighty excited. The cyberpunk FPS-RPG is pretty great, our Graham thinks – the lucky dog! Luckily for me and my overexcitement, publishers Square Enix have also poured a cool glass of cyberwater over my cyberhead to make me calm down and instead ask “Why would you do that now?” They’ve detailed the contents of Mankind Divided’s DLC Season Pass, y’see. Nothing cools that launch giddiness like DLC announcements!
If you’ve played Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] yet, you’ll already know that the game has an astonishing seven unskippable intro videos before you get to the main menu. You’ll likely know it because you’ll have seen all seven of them at least three or four times while you fiddled with graphics settings to get the ludicrously bloated game to work on your rig. You’ll likely want to poke a stick in the eye of the person who decided to make them unskippable. Below we’ll save you the expense of that stick.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] has received its first patch-me-do, now ready to be added via Steam. It’s not a biggun by any means, but should stop some of the more immediately annoying crashes people have experienced. They’ve also made some suggestions about improving performance by, well, telling you to switch off MSAA altogether.
A second PC patch has been released for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, hopefully leaving fewer players divided (do you see, because “divided” is in the title of the game) over the annoying mouse issues, as well as other tidying up.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is a beautiful game, but it doesn’t deal in sweeping vistas and natural beauty. Its visual currency is instead invested in ornamental stag heads, tree statuery, fluorescent lighting, swooping electrical cables and complicated ceilings and stairwells. I took 18,000 screenshots while playing the game and I’ve collected the best inside. Beware: here lie spoilers for environments, locations and, probably, with some plot details embedded within.
Deux Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] will get its first story DLC just one month after launching. Titled “Shadow Rift”, this new story content will welcome back… well, obviously don’t read on if you don’t want to know who’s been absent.
Following the release of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided In Unsubtle Ways [official site] many players have been struggling with stuttering, freezing, crashing and general technical problems. But Squeenix and co have been patching away, trying to exterminate all the problems and get the thing looking as shiny as a pair of edgy 90s sunglasses. The latest patch does some more of that. Perhaps more importantly, the developers are also introducing support for DirectX 12, which may or may not fix all your problems. It’s only a preview build though, so come with me to find out how to apply the update.
Surly cyberman Adam Jensen is teaming up with the pop star Sia and some wazzock to rob a data bank. That’s the premise of the first Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site] story DLC, System Rift, which launched today. A little caper and a bit of banks might even put a smile on his cyberface. Here, check out the launch trailer:
What was the best city videogames allowed us to visit in 2016? The RPS Advent Calendar highlights our favourite games of the year, daily, and behind today’s door is…
The pre-order virtuaguff of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site], which includes an extra story mission, is now free for all players. A patch on Friday whopped it in. The ‘Desperate Measures’ mission isn’t big but it does poke into that train station bombing which drives a fair chunk of the game so, er, good that it’s finally available to everyone. This blob of freebies also includes some new skins to dress up Adam Jensen, though don’t get your hopes up for more than different coats and body armour – no casual slacks and polo necks for this mopey cyberman. … [visit site to read more]
Adam Jensen is off to the cyberslammer next month in the second story DLC for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [official site]. Square Enix yesterday announced the ‘Criminal Past’ DLC, a prequel mission which will send Adman undercover into a prison for robomen. That’s why they call it Criminal Past, see: it’s set in the past (of the future), and there are criminals. The marketing droids must feel chuffed with that wordplay but tch, they missed such great names as The Gig House, Rigbrig, Spring Spring, and The Clank. … [visit site to read more]
Yesterday, Square Enix announced that they’d be announcing something today, as that’s how marketing works now. Yesterday, Marvel also announced that they’d be announcing something today, but no-one knew if they meant a film, a comic, a TV series or that Ike Perlmutter had ordered that Captain America was henceforth to be depicted as an outspoken climate change denier.
Different companies announce different stuff on the same day all the time, but there was something even more needlessly vague than usual about these two, and so a few souls put two and two together and speculated that it could be same announcement – Square Enix publishing a Marvel game. Whaddaya know, true believers? They were right. Except it’s games, plural. And both Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal are on the case. … [visit site to read more]
A big Deus Ex: Breach [official site] today is bringing daily runs to the Mankind Divided side-game. Each day, hackers jacking into the datanet will get to run new randomly-generated server networks. The update, the first since Breach launched a free-to-play standalone version, also brings new weapons, items, and maps. Breach may not be my jam but ooh I am a sucker for daily runs; I do enjoy my Isaac daily every afternoon. … [visit site to read more]
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, the story of a robo-boy who never loses his sunglasses, is free on Steam at the moment. You can play without spending a dime until tomorrow evening. If you decide that you can’t part with it after taking it home and introducing it to your family, then you can also buy it at a discount of 75% from the usual price.
The CEO of Square Enix, Yosuke Matsuda, has spoken out about the future of Deus Ex. At the start of this year, Eurogamer reported that we shouldn’t expect a new Deus Ex game anytime soon – and they’re right, though we should get one eventually. It simply isn’t Deus Ex’s turn yet, with the studio first focusing on other projects such as the next Tomb Raider and an Avengers game.
Matsuda explained all this in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, where he also talked about Final Fantasy’s anime spin off, the studio’s approach to the Eastern and Western markets, as well as augmented and virtual reality.
