Set two years after the events of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Mankind Divided is a world worse than you left it, which is saying something. This describes Deus Ex: Mankind Divided fully, though none of that diminishes the accomplishments of Eidos Montreal here.īack when Mankind Divided released, a lot of its themes about prejudice against minorities and corruption of justice were contested as ingenuine, but after the last five years, it’s unnerving how hard the game hits.
It wasn’t a wholly new ride, but it had just enough to keep things fresh. You got something meaty, meaningful, and experimental. They weren’t quite full games, but they also weren’t $10 hour-and-a-half epilogues. For the youngins, back before the days of DLC, we got standalone expansion packs. In fact, I’d say it’s a damn good one, and better for it. I was able to find the joy in Mankind Divided by acknowledging it’s not a full-blown sequel - it’s a modern take on the expansion pack. However, I took delight in voraciously exploring every sidequest and point of interest and fiddled with some of the divergent outcomes for a few narrative branches. It’s a midpoint cliffhanger in a trilogy that clearly wasn’t originally planned as a trilogy.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is perhaps one of the most contentious “sequels” of its console generation.
