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Notes -
I finally finished Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, starting it (and its previous prequel to Deus Ex, Human Revolution) from scratch after putting them down many years ago.
Gameplay-wise, they try to stay faithful to the original Deus Ex, except for the common modern concessions (a distinct cover system, which I liked, lack of body-part-specific health, which I disliked, and health regeneration, which I despise). Playing at "Give Me Deus Ex" difficulty was too easy, apparently because the difference in damage taken vs "Give Me a Story" difficulty is only 21%, not a full 300%. One of my fondest memories of the original Deus Ex showing its colors was 10 minutes into the game, getting killed for the first time, thinking "What is wrong with this game, that I can die from a single pistol shot to the head?", then thinking "What is wrong with every game I've played before, that I don't expect to die from a pistol shot to the head?" The level of nonlinearity (lots at the tactical level, a little at the strategic level) was on-par with the original, in both good ways (many different combat/stealth/hacking alternatives, a few major story beats that can be changed, hub levels with a lot of non-combat interactions, side quests that are intriguing but not overbearing, revisiting of old locations under new conditions and with new goals) and bad (the stereotypical Die Hard Ventilation Shafts are as common in little apartment complexes as they are in big office buildings, and their routing is obviously extradiagetic everywhere). Mankind Divided also completely backed away from the biggest complaint about Human Revolution (dumb boss fights pawned off on a subcontractor or something for development); there's now only one "boss" in the entire game, the cutscene before that fight doesn't hand you an idiot ball, and the fight itself leaves you a great number of tactical alternatives (including simply finding a way out and fleeing, I'm reading).
Story-wise ... it doesn't fit as well as it should, I think because they painted themselves into a corner with the first prequel. In Deus Ex you met maybe a half dozen mechanically-augmented characters. They're in a strained position in between "superhuman abilities" and "becoming obsolete due to nano-augmentation", which is interesting, but they're mostly economic elites or their elite enforcers, and it's clear that they should have been superhuman and rare back in their day. Human Revolution did "superhuman", but to do a "baseline-vs-augs" story they gave up on "rare"; they're now common and you meet dozens of them. Mankind Divided uses the ending of Human Revolution to flip the script the rest of the way, with mechanically-augmented people still common and treated as subhuman due to the prior conflict. Even tonally in its own context this doesn't always work; the dialogue and situations mostly pattern-match the kind of bigotry you see against underperforming subpopulations, not against overperforming-but-hated ones. The ending gives some closure, albeit not as much as it should. This is clearly part of a trilogy that was never finished, but it does stand well enough on its own that I don't feel cheated.
Graphics-wise ... did we just hit "good enough" a decade ago? I'm reminded of a comparison I saw of the 2013 vs 2018 Tomb Raider video games, where the main character's hair was more flowing and realistic in the latter, and that was about it. I'm sure kids these days could find a lot to complain about before I chase them off my lawn, but after living through an era where every year felt like a completely new paradigm, it's nice to be able to just treat even decade-old AAA graphics as a solved problem, and focus on gameplay and story.
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