Category: Side Notes

I used the long to finish up Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. If you enjoyed the gameplay of Human Revolution you’ll enjoy the gameplay in Mankind Divided as it’s basically the last game plus more. In that regard I really enjoyed playing through Mankind Divided. However, the ending can best be summed up by Pickles:

We got you your favorite thing, disappointment!

There are going to be some minor spoilers here so if you haven’t finished the game you should stop reading unless you want an idea about what happens. The end of the gaming involves you saving some people and fighting an end boss. What makes the ending disappointing is that it leaves a lot of story threads unresolved and it feels far less epic in scale than the last game. When I finished the final boss I thought I was maybe at the halfway point until a notification popped up alerting me than I had unlocked New Game+ mode.

If you’ve played a Deus Ex game you know that it delves into some serious conspiracy theory shit. The Illuminati are trying to control humanity and I expected this would be the game where Majestic 12 would split off from the Illuminati. Instead the Illuminati only really appears in a handful of cutscenes and the plot is rather mundane. They want to turn the world against augmented humans and… that’s about it. To that end they’ve invented a new poison, which is talked up into being much more interesting than it turns out to be, and send a big augmented dude with a bunch of bombs to perform acts of terror. The big guy is the end boss even though he feels like a midway boss if you’re comparing him to most Deux Ex games. Likewise, after fighting him you expect the actual Illuminati plot to be unveiled but instead the game just kind of ends.

So Mankind Divided is a really fun game that suffers from a very lackluster plot and an ending that leaves a lot unresolved. At $60 I don’t feel that the game was worth it, especially since Square Enix forced the Eidos crew to shoehorn a microtransaction system into the game (fortunately that doesn’t ruin the balance of the game, you can get through the entire game easily without having to buy anything from the online store). If you’re thinking about picking this game up my advice is to either wait for it to drop in price (I’d say it’s worth $30) or at least wait for the Director’s Cut or whatever they’re going to call the edition that includes everything you’ll end up paying extra for in the form of paid downloadable content (which seems to be stuff that was purposely removed from the main game just so it could be sold for more money).