New DEUS EX game cancelled

A new Deus Ex game in early development at Eidos Montreal has been cancelled. The news broke as Embracer Group, who acquired Eidos Montreal in 2022, confirmed over 100 layoffs at the company.

"I never asked for this."

"A new Deus Ex game? I'm pretty sure everyone asked for that."

"No, I was referring to the layoffs and cancellation."

"Oh, that was unclear."

"Yeah, I get that now."

Embracer Group went on a buying spree of IPs and development studios during and just after the COVID pandemic, when video game stocks were riding high. Embracer planned to leverage a huge portfolio of talent to do a massive deal with a Saudi investment company. However, as the post-COVID video game bubble burst, the Saudi company pulled out, leaving Embracer suddenly flapping in the breeze. The company has since been shedding jobs and closing down studios at a rate of knots as it tries to balance its books.

The Deus Ex franchise is one of the best-regarded in all of video gaming, with original entry Deus Ex (2000) still often cited as one of the greatest video games ever made for its iconic story, characters and incredible freedom of choice. It is often cited as a shining example of both the RPG and immersive sim genres, with the player allowed to follow the story and events however they wish, no matter how implausible or seemingly game-breaking. Console-centric follow up Deus Ex: Invisible War (2003) was much less successful, both critically and commercially, and was believed to have killed the franchise. However, the series was brought back from the brink of extinction for Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011), which was regarded as another modern classic and sold extremely well. Sequel Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (2016) was critically praised, but sales were cooler, with anger over an attempt to monetise the single-player-only game with cosmetics and a cliffhanger ending which some believed made the game feel incomplete.

Eidos Montreal were moved to other projects, spearheading development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018) and working with Crystal Dynamics on Marvel's Avengers (2020). Eidos Montreal then developed the well-received Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy (2021) before the Embracer sale, and apparently began work on a new Deus Ex at that time. It was unclear if this game was a follow-up to Human Revolution and Mankind Divided (which followed the same cast and storyline) or a new story in the same universe, or even a remake of the original game.

The Deus Ex series has bounced back from total extinction the past, so hopefully that will be the case here.

New DEUS EX game in development

Eidos Montreal are "very early" in development on a brand new Deus Ex game. The studio was recently sold by Square Enix to Embracer Group, along with all of its attendant IP.

Eidos Montreal previously developed Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011) and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (2016), which were both extremely well-reviewed and Human Revolution sold very well as well. Mankind Divided underperformed according to Square's expectations and the studio moved to developing Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018), and Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy (2021). Eidos Montreal is currently providing assistance to Playground Games in their reboot of the Fable franchise for Microsoft.

It is unknown if the new game will continue the prequel story of Adam Jensen that began in Human Revolution and was left unresolved in Mankind Divided, or will be a sequel to the original two games, Deus Ex (2000) and Deus Ex: Invisible War (2003). It might even be a modern remake of the original game, which remains one of the most highly-acclaimed video games of all time but could do with a makeover in terms of graphics and UI (although, strictly, only if the original game's insane freedom and branching story are kept intact).

As the game is in its earliest stages and the last Deus Ex game took five years to make, it might be a fair while before we hear any more about the project. At least it's good to know the franchise will continue, eventually.

Square Enix offload DEUS EX and TOMB RAIDER studios and IPs

Square Enix has announced an intent to sell several of its highest-profile studios and IPs to the Embracer Group. Under the mooted deal, Embracer would buy the studios Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal and Square Enix Montreal (totalling 1,100 employees), along with IPs including Deus Ex, Tomb Raider, Thief and Legacy of Kain. Currently in-development projects, like a new Tomb Raider game, will continue under the new owners.

Japanese company Square Enix bought Eidos and Crystal Dynamics in 2009 to shore up their overseas development portfolio. Initially the deal seemed to go well, with Crystal Dynamics releasing a Tomb Raider reboot trilogy (Tomb Raider, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Shadow of the Tomb Raider) and Eidos Montreal releasing the well-received and high-selling Deus Ex: Human Revolution. However, subsequent releases seem to have underperformed, at least according to Square Enix's expectations. A Thief reboot in 2014 sold poorly and got mediocre reviews, whilst Deus Ex: Mankind Divided sold poorly in 2016, after a controversial attempt to leverage microtransactions in a single-player game. The Crystal Dynamics-developed Marvel's Avengers also underperformed in 2020, which seemed to impact on sales of Guardians of the Galaxy in 2021 (despite stronger reviews).

However, the long tail on these releases is often quite significant, with the Deus Ex and Tomb Raider games continuing to sell well long after their release. This has led to memes as fans criticise Square for cancelling projects too quickly and in a kneejerk fashion, despite them eventually working out.

The Embracer Group is a Swedish video game holding company and publishes games under the names Nordic Games and THQ Nordic. Embracer recently acquired Gearbox Entertainment, creators of the Borderlands franchise, and board game company Asmodee as a way into the physical gaming market.

What is remarkable is the price: Embracer will get their hands on some of the most popular and beloved IPs in gaming for $300 million, which seems very cheap, and may reflect Square Enix's decision to get out of the overseas market to refocus on their core Japanese brands.

If approved by all the relevant parties, the deal should complete in mid-2023. It's likely the first game released under the new deal will be a new Tomb Raider game, whilst Deus Ex fans will be crossing their fingers for a new game in that franchise.

A Potted History of Cyberpunk: Part 3

See Part 1 and Part 2.

As with any new movement, it’s barely even started before people start saying it’s over. In the case of cyberpunk, the genre was facing declarations of its mortality before the ink was cool on William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy. But through the late 1980s and early 1990s, key works in the genre continued to appear from new talent.

The Queen of Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk had been, at least so far, a male-dominated subgenre. In 1987 Pat Cadigan became the first woman to publish a major work of the genre, Mindplayers. In this novel a young woman faces mental delusions after using a stolen cyber-interface and has to be “cured” by a type of mental hacker, a mindplayer. Cadigan’s novel delved into the interrelationship between technology and identity in a way that recalled Philip K. Dick. She expanded on many of these themes in sequel novellas and the related novel Fools (1992).

Her second novel, Synners (1991), is a more epic exploration of cyberpunk ideas. It is set closer to the present day than most cyberpunk works, in a more recognisable version of Los Angeles, as individuals from both sides of the law get swept up in an impending technological crisis.

Cadigan moved on to explore other types of fiction (ironically just after The Guardian proclaimed her the “Queen of Cyberpunk” in 1994), but in later years returned to the genre thanks to her work on the Alita: Battle Angel franchise, penning a novelisation and an original novel in the setting of the 2019 movie.

Other women writing in the genre soon gained prominence, most notably Lisa Mason for her debut novel Arachne (1990) and Melissa Scott for her 1994 novel, Trouble and Her Friends (1994).

Playing in a Cyberpunk World

Given the technological nature of cyberpunk narratives, it wasn’t long at all before cyberpunk stories started appear in the form of video games. One of the first was The Screamer (1985), a CRPG featuring, unusually for the time, real-time combat. The Megami Tensei and Metal Gear series both began in 1987, having cyberpunk themes even if the settings were not outright cyberpunk.

It wasn’t until the 1990s the technology existed to really do cyberpunk games justice. Captive (1990) was a cyberpunk take on Dungeon Master, a first-person, real-time “dungeon” crawl, with the dungeons now being technologically-advanced bases and the enemies being robots. The game was enjoyable, but a fairly obvious SF remix of an earlier game. Its sequel, Liberation (1993), was vastly more ambitious. Liberation created a huge cyberpunk city in (primitive) 3D where every building could be searched and explored, and the player had to follow a chain of clues to find an imprisoned captive. In a similar vein was the Mercenary trilogy – Mercenary (1985), Damocles (1990) and The Dion Crisis (1992) – the latter two of which featured an entire star system (complete with relativistic effects as you travelled between different worlds), though its cyberpunk credentials were less impressive.

Particularly notable was Flashback (1992), a platform game with an incredibly-animated main character, heavily inspired by Prince of Persia (1989) and Another World (1990). Flashback was a significantly longer game with a much more involved cyberpunk story, featuring the main character having his memory erased by invading aliens and having to fight to retrieve it whilst defeating the invaders. The game was hugely successful, spawning a direct sequel, Fade to Black (1995) and a remake (2013).

Also in 1993, Bullfrog Productions released one of the greatest cyberpunk games of all time. Syndicate saw the player taking control of a super-corporation complete with its own paramilitary force, which the player can upgrade and develop by taking over rival territory. The game casts the player as a morally dubious corporate business leader who can pursue his or her agenda through outright violence, more surgical assassination techniques or using a “persuadatron” to override people’s implants and turning them into unwitting slaves. Syndicate was a huge success and was succeeded by Syndicate: American Revolt (1993) and Syndicate Wars (1996), as well as an uninspired first-person remake, Syndicate (2012) and a superb “spiritual successor,” Satellite Reign (2015), which expanded impressively on the original game’s themes in a massive, open-world cyberpunk city.

Almost as influential was Beneath a Steel Sky (1993), a huge adventure game featuring an epic narrative set in a futuristic city. The game’s visual design was created by Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons and the game was a big hit. The developers were side-tracked by the Broken Sword series, which was a massive hit, but released a long-awaited sequel, Beyond a Steel Sky, in 2020. In 1997 a similar adventure game was released based on the film Blade Runner, and was a cult success.

That same year Squaresoft released Final Fantasy VII, the first game in their long-running fantasy series to incorporate cyberpunk ideas such as class struggle, industrial squalor and biological-machine interfaces. The game was a colossal success, resulting in a remake in 2020 and additional games in the series exploring similar ideas.

In 2000, Ion Storm released what many consider the ultimate cyberpunk video game: Deus Ex. Set in the near future, the game focuses on augmented humans caught up in a complex global conspiracy. The game allowed for massive, unprecedented and rarely-matched-since amounts of player freedom and influence on the outcome of the plot. Widely regarded as one of the single finest and most important video games ever made, it has enjoyed a sequel, Invisible War (2003) and three prequels, Human Revolution (2011), The Fall (2013) and Mankind Divided (2016). Human Revolution and Mankind Divided delved more deeply into cyberpunk themes of transhumanism, identity and corporate corruption.

Cyberpunk became more of a background setting for video games such as Mirror’s Edge (2008), Hard Reset (2011) and Far Cry: Blood Dragon (2013). More in-depth exploration of cyberpunk themes came in games like Transistor (2014) and the Watch_Dogs series (2014-present), which depicts the transitional period as a more modern world gives way to a cyberpunk future.

The largest and most popular cyberpunk video game of all time – and the most contentious – launched in 2020. Cyberpunk 2077, based on Mike Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk tabletop RPG, features jaw-dropping graphics and impressive freedom to explore a futuristic city, coupled with a compelling, rich storyline and memorable characters. However, the game launched with a plethora of technical issues and missing features, which gave the game a mixed reception. Launched a few months earlier, the much smaller, tighter and more focused Cloudpunk sees the player as a sky taxi driver undertaking some very odd jobs over the course of one strange night, set in a beautifully-realised city.

Cyberpunk continues to be a rich genre and source of ideas for future video games to mine.

Satirising the Genre

Heading into the 1990s, cyberpunk was well-established enough for writers to start poking fun at it. Of course, satirical takes on the genre had existed before, with Judge Dredd starting barely after the genre really even got off the ground. But as the genre had evolved, a slight tendency for it to become po-faced and self-serious had developed.

In 1992, Neal Stephenson poked fun at the genre in his seminal work Snow Crash. Main character Hiro Protagonist (a deliberate pun) is a pizza delivery driver and hacker who discovers a computer virus that can affect the human mind in the real world, leading to a dizzying journey of discovery taking in Sumerian history and mythology, political struggle and cryptography (expanded on his non-cyberpunk epic, Cryptonomicon, and its prequel/sequel trilogy, The Baroque Cycle). The novel is part of cyberpunk but also challenges and subverts the genre.

Similarly metafictional is Headcrash (1995), by the genre-namer himself, Bruce Bethke. The novel features a protagonist who sets himself up in an online VR community as a cool, trend-setting guy only to realise he is one of millions of people trying to do the same thing and as a result has just become another kind of anonymous everyman. Bethke used the novel to communicate his disdain for the sub-genre of cyberpunk which simply copied Neuromancer, a derivative strain he called “Neuromantics.”

Not satirical, as such, but certainly revisionist, was Jeff Noon’s seminal novel Vurt (1993). This book featured a cyberpunk-like narrative, but rather than relying on computers and technology, it instead employed biological devices to create a shared hallucination which any human can access through colour-coded feathers. The novel thus achieves much of the same impact as cyberpunk through a different means. The novel was hugely successful and was followed by a sequel, Pollen (1995), and prequel, Nymphomation (1997).

Enter the Matrix

Ironically, it was well after the highwater mark of cyberpunk as a distinct literary genre that it finally broke through to the mainstream with a huge, hit movie. The Matrix, written and directed by the Wachowskis, was a complex and mind-bending story about a young hacker who discovers that the real world is a lie, a computer simulation generated to entertain the human race, who in reality are imprisoned living batteries for a machine intelligence. With visceral kung fu action, mind-boggling philosophical asides and astonishingly cool production and costume design, The Matrix was a box office and critical smash, as was its collection of animated prequel films, The Animatrix (2003).

Unfortunately, the two sequel movies proper, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions (both 2003) were less well-regarded, criticised for obtuse plotting and emphasising action over the storytelling. Debates over the trilogy’s place in the cyberpunk genre continue (the film features no kind of overt class struggle, a key part of the literary genre, though the theme of humans being cogs in a machine is present), but it was important for making certain cyberpunk ideas, such as machine-human interfaces, more readily accepted than they had been previously. The series will return later this year with a new entry, The Matrix Resurrections.

Integration

As the years passed, cyberpunk as a discrete genre became less of a readily-identified thing. “Cyberpunk novels” became less commonplace, with elements of cyberpunk instead being integrated into more established SF genres. Peter F. Hamilton’s sprawling space operas are primarily in that genre, but also feature machine-brain interfaces and towering cities of mega-skyscrapers familiar to cyberpunk fans. Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon (2002, adapted for television in 2018), a hyperviolent, body-swapping corporate thriller set in a far future San Francisco, was praised as a modern cyberpunk classic, but its sequels set on other worlds are almost in completely different genres. J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5 television series is a space opera but also featuring virtual reality cybernets and computer simulations so real they cannot be told apart from real life. Even Star Trek, the most traditional of SF universes, dabbled in cyberpunk ideas by introducing the holodeck and biological-machine hybrid races such as the Borg.

Cyberpunk was arguably also defeated by real life. As a genre, cyberpunk is mostly near-future and posits a future of massively overcrowded cities. But the world’s population is clearly never going to get to the point to require such ridiculously massive cities with mile-tall residential blocks. Real-life computer development has been in some ways more advanced than posited by early cyberpunk – which mostly failed to predict the arrival of smartphones – but also failed to account for the fact that humans are likely too squeamish to accept the level of body modification and invasive brain procedures posited by the genre. With hackers and computer viruses taking down power plants and damaging infrastructure, the idea of wiring a computer interface straight into your cerebral cortex has become distinctly less edifying.

But in some respects, by exploring ideas of massive social and economic unrest caused by technology, the gaping and dramatically-growing equality gap between rich and poor, and the rise of systemic exploitation and those rebelling against it, maybe cyberpunk ended up being far more prescient than it first appeared. In many respects we are now living in a cyberpunk world, albeit one featuring slightly less neon than was imagined in the past.

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Square Eidos selling 53 great games (and DAIKATANA) for peanuts

In one of the best-value deals I've ever seen, Square are selling 54 games from their Eidos subsidiary at an unprecedented price (just £28 in the UK).

The list includes the following games:

• Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider II, Tomb Raider III
• Tomb Raider IV: The Last Revelation, Tomb Raider V: Chronicles
• Tomb Raider VI: The Angel of Darkness, Tomb Raider Anniversary, Tomb Raider Underworld
• Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris, Lara Croft GO
• Tomb Raider (2013), Rise of the Tomb Raider
• Just Cause, Just Cause 2, Just Cause 3
• Deus Ex, Deus Ex: Invisible War, Deus Ex: The Fall
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut, Deux Ex: Mankind Divided
• Thief, Thief II: The Metal Age, Thief: Deadly Shadows, Thief (2014)
• Life is Strange: The Complete Season
• Sleeping Dogs: The Definitive Edition
• Kane and Lynch: Dead Men, Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days
• Battlestations: Pacific, Battlestations: Midway
• Dungeon Siege, Dungeon Siege II, Dungeon Siege III
• Conflict: Desert Storm, Conflict: Denied Ops
• Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2
• Legacy of Kain: Defiance, Blood Omen 2: Legacy of Kain
• Anachronox
• Omikron: The Nomad Soul
• Daikatana
• Supreme Commander 2
• Project Snowblind, Mini Ninjas, Order of War, Flora's Fruit Farm, Pandemonium
• Pandemonium, Deathtrap Dungeon, Goetia, Hitman Go, The Turing Test

This list includes the entire Tomb Raider franchise from the 1996 original through 2015's Rise of the Tomb Raider (excepting only the most recent game, Shadow of the Tomb Raider); the entire Just Cause series apart from the recent Just Cause 4; the entire Deus Ex and Thief series (arguably the two greatest action-stealth-RPG cross-genre series in gaming history); the first season of the critically-acclaimed Life is Strange series; both Kane and Lynch games; the entire Dungeon Siege trilogy; most of the Legacy of Kain series (excepting only the original Blood Omen, for legal reasons); the two Battlestations games; the two Conflict games; and Supreme Commander 2 (not the far superior first game, which was published elsewhere).

The list contains some splendid curiosities. Project Snowblind was supposed to be Deus Ex shooter spin-off, but became its own thing. Omikron: The Nomad Soul is a 1999 adventure game noteworthy for its soundtrack, composed specifically for the game by Literally David Bowie, who also appears in the game (as does his wife, Iman). It was also David Cage's first video game, paving the way for his later work at Quantic Dream.

The unsung jewel of the collection is the 2001 RPG Anachronox, an offbeat, humour-filled SF epic whose story structure seems to have rather heavily "inspired" BioWare in the later creation of Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect. Anachronox, comfortably one of the funniest video games of all time, also has some of the most quotable dialogue and probably the single greatest RPG companion character (sort of) of all time. Plus your mouse pointer is a sentient robot who is also a member of the party. Barking mad, hugely influential, ugly as hell these days but a classic game.

The collection also contains the fascinating Daikatana, widely-regarded as the single most overhyped video game of all time (possibly excepting only Duke Nuke'Em Forever). Definitely not a good game, but an interesting historical artifact.

Proceeds from the sale are going into coronavirus research.

New DEUS EX games "on hold" after "disappointing" sales

Square Enix have put the Deus Ex video game series on indefinite hold following disappointing sales of the latest game in the series, Mankind Divided.

The official reason is that Square has signed a massive, multi-million dollar deal with Marvel to develop a series of new games based on their superheroes, with a major new Avengers game being the first out of the gate. Square has moved the Crystal Dynamics team (responsible for the latest Tomb Raider games) over to The Avengers and reassigned Eidos Montreal from the next Deus Ex game to pick up the next Tomb Raider title, provisionally entitled Shadows of the Tomb Raider, instead.

This move has attracted controversy. Unlike the previous Deus Ex game, Human Revolution, Mankind Divided was supposed to be the opening title in either a two or three-game series that would have completed the story of Adam Jensen and the rise of the world seen in the original Deus Ex games. Although the primary storyline of Mankind Divided is resolved in that game, there some dangling plot threads that were due to be picked up in the next game. Indeed, Eidos Montreal were several months into the development of the next game when Mankind Divided was released, suggesting the millions of dollars of work may have now been abandoned already.

However, Eidos Montreal does have two teams; their second team was working on the Thief reboot whilst the first was working on Mankind Divided. The possibility that one of these teams could continue working on Mankind Divided II has unfortunately been shot down: the second team is now working on a Guardians of the Galaxy game, part of the same Marvel deal.

Given the titanic money involved in the Marvel deal and the disappointing sales of Mankind Divided, it seems unlikely that we are going to see a new Deus Ex game in the near future. This is disappointing, but nothing new to fans of the franchise, which previously had an eight-year hiatus between Invisible War and Human Revolution. The game universe and fiction is compelling enough that, even if Adam Jensen's story is over, we will likely see it return at some distant point in the future.

It's also unclear if Mankind Divided's sales were disappointing, in that Eidos and Square lost money, or didn't meet unrealistic sales expectations. Apparently Square felt that the performance of the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot game was disappointing despite selling over a million copies in its first months on sale, which by any sane metric is actually very impressive. Mankind Divided's sales have been described as a bit less than Human Revolution's in a comparable time period, but harder figures have not been released.

In the meantime, dystopian SF RPG fans are holding out hope for CD Projekt Red's epic Cyberpunk 2077, although that is not expected for a couple more years.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Prague, 2029. Two years have passed since the Aug Incident, when almost every single one of the seventy million cybernetically-enhanced humans on Earth went insane for several minutes, killing millions of people and destroying trillions of dollars of worth of property. Although Adam Jensen and Sarif Industries successfully stopped those responsible for the Incident, the fear, hatred and paranoia of "augs" has increased to disastrous levels. Jensen, now an agent for Interpol working in the Czech Republic, is caught up in a terrorist bombing apparently carried out by an aug terrorist group...but soon discovers a far more complex and devious plan is in motion.

Mankind Divided is the fourth major game in the Deus Ex series and the second in a reboot prequel series which began with 2011's Human Revolution. Human Revolution was an exceptional game, offering a compelling plot and multiple ways of solving every problem thrown at the player. Mankind Divided is very much in the same vein, a cyberpunk roleplaying epic in which you play Adam Jensen and have to guide him to the resolution of a labyrinth conspiracy taking in themes such as discrimination, political corruption and media manipulation.

Mankind Divided is so close to Human Revolution in gameplay that it's a very easy game to recommend if you enjoyed the previous game in the series. It uses the same format, with a city hub area where you can pursue side-missions and the main plot, which occasionally takes you off to dedicated story locations such as an office block in London, a ghetto for cyborgs located outside Prague or a research outpost in the Swiss Alps. It would be wrong to call this a real open-world RPG, like Skyrim or The Witcher 3, but it's also not a strictly linear game either. At any one time you usually have a significant number of side-quests, storylines and optional activities to pursue.

This game improves on the previous one in several key ways. The first is that the reviled boss battles that blighted the previous game (although much improved in the definitive "Director's Cut Edition") are gone. There is a boss battle at the end of the game, but you are presented with a myriad number of options to resolve the encounter without having to resort to direct combat. This will be a relief for players focusing on stealth and hacking builds rather than combat ones. There are also more augments available and cleverer ones, allowing you to hack terminals from a distance, incapacitate several enemies simultaneously or use your wrist-mounted blades as ranged weapons.

I was also extremely impressed that Eidos Montreal reigned in the scope for this sequel. The first game had two hub areas - Detroit and Hengsha - and transformed from a small-scale story about corporate espionage into a massive, world-changing epic about the fate of the human race. Rather than ramping things up even further, Mankind Divided dials things down a notch. There's still big events and Jensen's actions will determine the fate of hundreds (maybe thousands), but he's not directly saving the world this time around. Adopting a smaller scale in a sequel is counter-intuitive, especially in an age which often demands increased and more pointless bluster and explosions in sequels, but it often provides game and film series with their best installments: Mass Effect 2, The Empire Strikes Back and so forth.

Mankind Divided doesn't quite hit those heights, and on reflection it's probably a marginally weaker game than its forebear (although there's not much in it). Human Revolution started with a dramatic showdown and presented the player with some memorable, well-acted characters like Malik, Pritchard and Sarif to deliver its storyline. Mankind Divided doesn't quite do that. It's characters are a bit less vital and interesting, at least to start with, and the reasons why Jensen is part of Interpol and what he has been doing since Human Revolution's ending are not explained at all in the game (this is left, frustratingly, to a tie-in novel). In addition, the game opens with Jensen able to wander at will around Prague. This is cool and I'd notched up five hours of side-missions and exploring before I even ventured into Jensen's headquarters to pick up his first assignment. But it does remove urgency from the narrative and the story is simply a bit less interesting than Human Revolution's, not gaining real urgency until near its conclusion.

But what Mankind Divided does do is paint its world of paranoia and mistrust in stark, convincing detail. It riffs off topical events without lazily exploiting them and examines its core issue from all sides: the prejudice faced by the augmented is terrible, but it is pointed out that they did all completely flip out due to an outside agency and cause untold damage, so some paranoia may be justified. At one point we are told that the number of augs in the world has been reduced from 70 million to under 7 million: 90% of the augmented population has been slaughtered as a result of the Incident, the greatest loss of human life since World War II, which is both a startling moment and also one that dovetails into the original Deus Ex game (in which augmented humans are quite rare, despite being set 25 years after these reboots). But Mankind Divided also doesn't dwell exclusively on the paranoia and fear rampant in the population (giving the game its name). It is also a rather humane game, touching on human relationships that can bridge the cybernetic divide and encouraging players to follow non-lethal routes through the game. Like it's forebears, you can complete the game without killing a single person.

Gameplay is mostly unchanged since Human Revolution, with you often having to infiltrate secure locations and achieve objectives. You can go in all guns blazing, but it's often more fun to knock out enemies and hide the unconscious bodies, or even "ghost" through levels using air vents and hacking computers without anyone being aware that you were ever there. This is just as much fun as it's ever been, and is even better with some improved and more inventive level design than the already-impressive Human Revolution. This results in some dynamic action set-pieces that evolve organically out of you using all the tools at your disposal, getting into a firefight one moment, vanishing into the air vents and sniping guards with tranquiliser guards a moment later, hacking the alarm system to head off reinforcements and then bursting through a wall to knock out a key enemy with a well-aimed punch. It's all fluid, fast and natural, rewarding careful exploration and reconnoitring of objectives and levels.

The negatives of the game are relatively minor. The supporting cast is a bit less well-characterised than in the first game and there isn't a huge amount of backstory for what Jensen has been up to. At roughly 30 hours (for the main quest and all the side-missions) the game is quite large, slightly bigger than its forebear, but it also feels like the introduction to a much bigger story rather than a complete story in itself like its predecessor. Although the main villain is defeated at the end of this game, the shadowing conspiracy that was backing him remains at large and a mid-credits sequence (because even games have to have these now) drops a couple of major plot revelations and sets up the inevitable sequel.

Still, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (****½) is a big, freeform, free-flowing RPG that rewards player intelligence and ingenuity. If it doesn't quite hit the same level of quality as its forebear, that doesn't stop it from being a compelling game. It is available now on PC, X-Box One (UK, USA) and PlayStation 4 (UK,  USA). A sequel has already been in development for over a year, so hopefully we won't have to wait so long for the next game in the series.

Technical Notes: I played this game on my five-year-old quad-core PC, recently upgraded to an nVidia 760 graphics card, so hardly a cutting edge system. I ran everything on High (the third-highest setting) and the game looked great. I did switch off advanced shadows to increase framerate later on. The only technical issue I encountered after that was area transitions, such as using the subway in Prague, seemed to take a slightly too long time to load. Gamers with more memory than 8GB should see that speed up pretty quickly. I also completely ignored the odious microtransactions completely and didn't feel penalised in any way: in fact, the game is a little too generous in the ammo, experience and upgrades it gives you in the main story, to the point where I barely used any of the actual in-game stores, let alone having to use the pointless Square store stuff.

Live-action trailer for DEUS EX: MANKIND DIVIDED

Square Enix have released a well-made, live-action trailer for the forthcoming Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. This is the sequel to the excellent 2011 CRPG Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Mankind Divided is set in 2029 and develops a plot point from the preceding game, where a terrorist organisation triggered a signal which sent every person in the world with upgraded, augmented technology insane for a few minutes. Millions of people were killed as the hacked augments went on the rampage. In the aftermath of the bloodbath, people are understandably weary of augmented individuals. Their civil rights have been revoked and the great "mechanical apartheid" has begun. Augmented civil rights protests have been ruthlessly quashed, and less restrained groups have sprung up, prepared to fight for equality and freedom.

The player controls Adam Jensen, an augmented law-enforcement agent who now works with Interpol to bring down the most dangerous augmented terrorist groups. However, Jensen is also working to expose the shadowy group who deliberately sent the augmented insane with outlawed technology. Jensen hopes that by doing this had begin repairing the trust between augmented and non-augmented humans.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will be released on PC, PS4 and XB1 on 23 August.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Director's Cut

The Director's Cut of Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a re-release of the SF RPG with added and revised features. I reprint in full my original review from 2011, followed by analysis of the differences between this new edition of the game and the original.

Detroit, 2027. The human race is changing, with nanotech research and cybernetics technology making 'augmented' humans stronger, faster and smarter than their 'normal' forebears. Numerous groups are opposed to augmentation on ethical and religious grounds. Adam Jensen, chief of security at Sarif Industries, one of the leaders in augmentation research, is severely wounded when terrorists attack and destroy one of Sarif's labs. Saved by augmentation, Adam must investigate the attack, discover the motives of those seeking to destroy Sarif Industries and, ultimately, decided which side of the argument is the 'right' one.

Human Revolution is the third game in the Deus Ex franchise, serving as a prequel to the events of the original Deus Ex and its lacklustre sequel, Invisible War. Set twenty-five years before the first game, Human Revolution helps show how that world of nanotech and enhanced humans came into existence. As a prequel, Human Revolution requires no existing knowledge of the earlier games and makes an ideal jumping-on point for new players.

Contrary to screenshots which suggest that it's a FPS, Human Revolution is a science fiction roleplaying game played from a first-person perspective. The game is built around the idea that though there is a central narrative the player must follow (this isn't an open-world SF RPG like Fallout 3), the player has tremendous freedom in how he or she follows that narrative. The game has a robust combat system which will satisfy those who like shooting things, but it also has a solid stealth mechanic for those who prefer sneaking around in the shadows (or, more often, inexplicably large air ducts). The game also has a hacking system so players can also hack into computer networks and turn automatic defences against enemy forces. Even within a particular play style, there is flexibility, with the ability to stun or knock out opponents rather than killing them being a particularly welcome feature (and the game has achievements for those who complete the game without killing anyone). Most players will probably mix and match styles as the mood takes them, or depending on the mission.

Deus Ex was infamous for its tremendous flexibility and freedom, adapting its storyline to cater for the player deciding to kill off major NPCs on a whim and letting them simply escape from tough bosses rather than being forced into difficult battles (especially if they were not built for combat). Human Revolution isn't quite as liberal in its approach to gameplay, most notably due to the four tough and unavoidable boss fights which have been commonly and frequently criticised. In a game which enjoys giving you different options in almost every circumstance, being forced into situations where you have to break out the heavy artillery is annoying, especially if you've been upgrading your character for say stealth or hacking and are not optimised for combat.

However, this is the only major criticism I can level at the game. In almost every other arena, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a triumph. The game has a fantastic atmosphere and sense of place, backed up by an absolutely superb soundtrack and carried through some top-notch writing. Deus Ex is one of the most critically-acclaimed games of all time, and there were doubts that Human Revolution could live up to that precedent. These doubts have been laid to rest. The game is more than worthy of its illustrious heritage, and deserves plaudits for its clever design. It employs regenerating health and a cover system, two features of modern FPS games which are often groan-inducing and tiresome (is there a company somewhere that specialises in building chest-high walls and inexplicably littering them over levels?), but Human Revolution takes ownership of them. The regenerating health is justified as a force-shield, whilst the cover system (well-implemented as these things go) does double time as a tactical combat mechanic, allowing your character to move around whilst suppressed, rolling from cover to cover, firing blindly and finding sniper vantage points. Actually, the cover system pulls triple duty as a stealth mechanic in non-combat situations as well.



The game has a lot to say about the rights and wrongs of cybernetics, augmentation and the power of corporations and governments, but tries not to get preachy. As the game progresses, your character can develop his own opinion on matters, informed by the events he's experienced and the choices he's made, and the multiple endings (there are four radically different resolutions, each with three different endings based on your character's actions earlier in the game, meaning a total of twelve possible outcomes) can see him reaching very different conclusions. Whilst you can't create your own character, you can certainly develop him in more depth than in most CRPGs. This is helped by an excellent 'dramatic conversation' mechanic where you must argue with a major NPC over an important topic, trying to convince them to help you or surrender without the need for violence. Major plot revelations crop up in these conversations. However, it's odd that there aren't more of these (there's only three or four in the game), as in their own way they are more critical to the game than the tedious boss fights.

The game's central storyline is gripping, tightly-written and populated with memorable, well-acted and flawed characters. However, the game has two large hub areas (in Detroit and Heng Sha) where you can wander off from the main story for a while and pursue some side-quests. A couple of these side-quests are extensive, taking a couple of hours apiece to complete, and are a great opportunity to gain additional XP and increase your character's skills and augments. These hub areas are rich in incidental detail and flavour (overhearing citizens discussing the news stories of the day, being offered food from stall-owners etc), but arguably there's little to do in them outside of the (relatively few, for the size of these areas) quests and buying some equipment and weapons from a few vendors. A bit more going on in each zone would have expanded the play-time (which at 25 hours is reasonable but not particularly notable for an RPG) and made the game a little richer. Also, the game rarely strays far from the traditional FPS paradigm of having most of its actions set indoors in successions of corridors and offices. A little more variety in locations (perhaps more outdoor opportunities for stealth or combat) would have been nice.

These kind of complaints are very minor. In a world of increasingly bland and 'safe' first-person shooters, Deus Ex: Human Revolution (****½) stands out with its strong writing, well-defined characterisation and its refreshingly open approach to freedom and choice, whilst having compelling action sequences as well. It's one of the strongest RPGs, and indeed games overall, of the last couple of years and is well worth a look.

The Director's Cut
The Director's Cut is a re-release of the original Deus Ex: Human Revolution with a number of new features. The most notable is a set of Wii U-exclusive features which make excellent use of that console's touch-screen controller, allowing players to hack computers and refer to their map, quest log or inventory without switching out of the main view. I haven't seen these features in operation, but other reviews indicate they are well-implemented.

Of more interest to PC and other console players are the upgrades to the actual gameplay. The most notable of these is that The Missing Link DLC - which takes place about two-thirds through the original game - has been integrated into the main narrative. There are good and bad points to this. First, if you haven't played The Missing Link before it adds about 4-5 hours of gameplay set on a remote base in the middle of the ocean. It adds new environments and enemy types and, like the main game, a series of situations to resolve through combat, hacking, stealth or a combination of all three. There's also some tough moral choices. The DLC integrates into the main storyline quite well, with Jensen's continuing investigation into the attack on Sarif Industries informing the expansion. Unfortunately, the expansion's biggest weakness remains: it removes all of your augments and upgrades, forcing you back into the state you were at the start of the game. This makes the first half of the DLC a chore as you rebuild your skill set back up to something useful. The Director's Cut really should have eliminated this tiresome mechanic (originally necessary because it was played separately from the main game) and allowed you to continue with your existing inventory and skill set. Still, once it kicks into gear it's a very worthy expansion to the game.

The second notable change is to the boss battles. Much-criticised in the original game, The Director's Cut reworks them so each boss can now also be defeated by stealth or hacking as well as direct combat. Unfortunately, defeating the third boss, Jaron Namir, requires hacking skills. Depending on a choice made earlier in the game, your augments may be completely offline during this battle, making hacking impossible and forcing you to defeat him in direct combat. Fortunately, as this battle comes shortly after The Missing Link, in which you can acquire a powerful missile launcher which can take Namir down in just a couple of hits, the developers have a way around it.

Eidos Montreal also claim to have upgraded the game's graphics. To be frank, this claim seems dubious. The textures seem identical, the lighting and shadows appear to be the same and the character models are still the mixed bag they were in 2011. The console versions may indeed look better, but the PC version is identical.

Finally, the game adds a 'Game+' mode in which your augments and weapons loadout continue into a new game. This is a nice touch if you plan to replay at the hardest difficulty level (which is notably more punishing), but given you can max out 90% of your augments in a single playthrough, it will leave you as an almost unbeatable tank during the replay.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution - The Director's Cut improves on the original game, but it's more of a series of minor upgrades than a major transformation of the whole game. If you've already completed the game (iffy boss fights and all) and The Missing Link, it's questionable if there is enough here to make it worthwhile, especially on console where you have to re-buy the entire game. Wii U users will likely enjoy it tremendously as a rare and much-needed example of what their console can do. PC players, however, will find that the Director's Cut is an extremely cheap upgrade on Steam if they already own the original game and The Missing Link, in which case it's a no-brainer.

For new players who have never experienced the game before, the improvements remove the original game's most annoying niggles and leave it as a cyberpunk RPG masterpiece it aspired to be. If you haven't played the game before, the Director's Cut (*****) is a must-buy. It is available now in the UK (PC, X-Box 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U) and USA (PC, X-Box 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U), or from the Steam platform on PC.

DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION sequel confirmed

Eidos Montreal have confirmed that they are working on a new Deus Ex video game, which will be the fourth in the series. They envisage several new games on several platforms falling under the umbrella title of Deus Ex Universe. First up a title for PC, PS4 and X-Box One which they will reveal more about in the near future. They also posted some concept art and said that 'trans-humanism segregation' will be a key theme of the game.

In addition, Eidos will later this month launch a Director's Cut of their well-received 2011 game Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The game has been optimised to work with the Wii U's gamepad and its built-in screen, but will also be available on PC, X-Box 360 and PS3. The Director's Cut will fix the much-derided boss fights by allowing them to be completed in a variety of different ways (including stealth and hacking) instead of straight-up combat, with a number of other changes to enhance the gaming experience.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut will be released on 22 October. No release date has been set for the new Deus Ex game.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Detroit, 2027. The human race is changing, with nanotech research and cybernetics technology making 'augmented' humans stronger, faster and smarter than their 'normal' forebears. Numerous groups are opposed to augmentation on ethical and religious grounds. Adam Jensen, chief of security at Sarif Industries, one of the leaders in augmentation research, is severely wounded when terrorists attack and destroy one of Sarif's labs. Saved by augmentation, Adam must investigate the attack, discover the motives of those seeking to destroy Sarif Industries and, ultimately, decided which side of the argument is the 'right' one.


Human Revolution is the third game in the Deus Ex franchise, serving as a prequel to the events of the original Deus Ex and its lacklustre sequel, Invisible War. Set twenty-five years before the first game, Human Revolution helps show how that world of nanotech and enhanced humans came into existence. As a prequel, Human Revolution requires no existing knowledge of the earlier games and makes an ideal jumping-on point for new players.

Contrary to screenshots which suggest that it's a FPS, Human Revolution is a science fiction roleplaying game played from a first-person perspective. The game is built around the idea that though there is a central narrative the player must follow (this isn't an open-world SF RPG like Fallout 3), the player has tremendous freedom in how he or she follows that narrative. The game has a robust combat system which will satisfy those who like shooting things, but it also has a solid stealth mechanic for those who prefer sneaking around in the shadows (or, more often, inexplicably large air ducts). The game also has a hacking system so players can also hack into computer networks and turn automatic defences against enemy forces. Even within a particular play style, there is flexibility, with the ability to stun or knock out opponents rather than killing them being a particularly welcome feature (and the game has achievements for those who complete the game without killing anyone). Most players will probably mix and match styles as the mood takes them, or depending on the mission.

Deus Ex was infamous for its tremendous flexibility and freedom, adapting its storyline to cater for the player deciding to kill off major NPCs on a whim and letting them simply escape from tough bosses rather than being forced into difficult battles (especially if they were not built for combat). Human Revolution isn't quite as liberal in its approach to gameplay, most notably due to the four tough and unavoidable boss fights which have been commonly and frequently criticised. In a game which enjoys giving you different options in almost every circumstance, being forced into situations where you have to break out the heavy artillery is annoying, especially if you've been upgrading your character for say stealth or hacking and are not optimised for combat.

However, this is the only major criticism I can level at the game. In almost every other arena, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a triumph. The game has a fantastic atmosphere and sense of place, backed up by an absolutely superb soundtrack and carried through some top-notch writing. Deus Ex is one of the most critically-acclaimed games of all time, and there were doubts that Human Revolution could live up to that precedent. These doubts have been laid to rest. The game is more than worthy of its illustrious heritage, and deserves plaudits for its clever design. It employs regenerating health and a cover system, two features of modern FPS games which are often groan-inducing and tiresome (is there a company somewhere that specialises in building chest-high walls and inexplicably littering them over levels?), but Human Revolution takes ownership of them. The regenerating health is justified as a force-shield, whilst the cover system (well-implemented as these things go) does double time as a tactical combat mechanic, allowing your character to move around whilst suppressed, rolling from cover to cover, firing blindly and finding sniper vantage points. Actually, the cover system pulls triple duty as a stealth mechanic in non-combat situations as well.

The game has a lot to say about the rights and wrongs of cybernetics, augmentation and the power of corporations and governments, but tries not to get preachy. As the game progresses, your character can develop his own opinion on matters, informed by the events he's experienced and the choices he's made, and the multiple endings (there are four radically different resolutions, each with three different endings based on your character's actions earlier in the game, meaning a total of twelve possible outcomes) can see him reaching very different conclusions. Whilst you can't create your own character, you can certainly develop him in more depth than in most CRPGs. This is helped by an excellent 'dramatic conversation' mechanic where you must argue with a major NPC over an important topic, trying to convince them to help you or surrender without the need for violence. Major plot revelations crop up in these conversations. However, it's odd that there aren't more of these (there's only three or four in the game), as in their own way they are more critical to the game than the tedious boss fights.

The game's central storyline is gripping, tightly-written and populated with memorable, well-acted and flawed characters. However, the game has two large hub areas (in Detroit and Heng Sha) where you can wander off from the main story for a while and pursue some side-quests. A couple of these side-quests are extensive, taking a couple of hours apiece to complete, and are a great opportunity to gain additional XP and increase your character's skills and augments. These hub areas are rich in incidental detail and flavour (overhearing citizens discussing the news stories of the day, being offered food from stall-owners etc), but arguably there's little to do in them outside of the (relatively few, for the size of these areas) quests and buying some equipment and weapons from a few vendors. A bit more going on in each zone would have expanded the play-time (which at 25 hours is reasonable but not particularly notable for an RPG) and made the game a little richer. Also, the game rarely strays far from the traditional FPS paradigm of having most of its actions set indoors in successions of corridors and offices. A little more variety in locations (perhaps more outdoor opportunities for stealth or combat) would have been nice.

These kind of complaints are very minor. In a world of increasingly bland and 'safe' first-person shooters, Deus Ex: Human Revolution (****½) stands out with its strong writing, well-defined characterisation and its refreshingly open approach to freedom and choice, whilst having compelling action sequences as well. It's one of the strongest RPGs, and indeed games overall, of the last couple of years and is well worth a look. It's available now on PC (UK, USA), X-Box 360 (UK, USA) and PlayStation 3 (UK, USA), as well as on the OnLive cloud gaming platform for PC and Mac users (UK, USA).