IAmTheWalrus on 11/4/2018 at 13:17
So Mankind Divided's been out for a while now. What are your thoughts on it?
Personally, I can't get it to run without stuttering which is bad enough but I can't get past the shift in tone and atrocious writing. Now I don't know what makes good writing, but I don't think it's anywhere good enough here to deal with the politics it's trying to deal with. Whereas Human Revolution forced its politics down your throat, at least it was handled with maturity. Mankind Divided feels like it was written by some college kids. I can't over look it. The characters are forgettable and totally unlikeable, also nowhere near as well voice acted as HR characters or as interesting and the game plays like some CIA TV show type crap. On top of that gameplay is clunkier and frustrating. I've got 406 hours on Steam playing the original game. It's my favourite game ever. HR is up there as well, so to me this may be the most disappointing sequel I've ever played.
Apparently I have 72 hours on MD but have only ever gotten a little bit through the ghetto near the beginning.
Dia on 12/4/2018 at 12:42
All stuttering and lags aside (yeah, I had to suffer those, too), I have to say I enjoyed DX:MD immensely. Though the first cutscene was way too long, as was the later cutscene where Jensen first meets up with Vega, as soon as the first mission unfolded in Dubai, I was hooked.
I disagree that 'the characters are forgettable and totally unlikeable', except for Alex Vega who was way too pushy and too much the knee-jerk reaction type, imo. She seemed like she was always trying to force her views/opinions down Jensen's throat and trying too hard to turn him against Miller. Vega was too much like a ghetto thug and besides, I don't trust her boss, Janus.
I liked Jim Miller, who hated having 'a desk strapped to (his) ass', but who was a good commander/leader, regardless of the personal drama he was going through at the time (so sad about him & Neil). I liked the crusty and rather aggressive Duncan MacReady because you knew he had your back, regardless of what he thought of you personally. I got the biggest kick out of characters like 'K' (Kazdy), who was great comic relief ('Smash the State before the State smashes your nose') and Vaclav Koller, the street-smart, chatty aug doctor who was naïve enough to get himself mixed up with the 'big boys', Radich Nikoladze and Otar Botkoveli. Hell, I even did an extra play-thru just so Botkoveli could overthrow Nikoladze. Okay, I'll admit that the character of Marchenko was pretty formulaic, but he did have a touch of pathos, you gotta admit (I do wonder what happened to his wife & kids, though).
I'm looking forward to the next DX game and hope this time Jensen can do some serious damage to the Illuminati (I called it on Delara Auzenne, btw, lol). Glitches aside (which were nothing compared to the glitches I've experienced when playing EA/Origin games), I had no problem with the gameplay, either. To each his/her own, right?
P.S. I really thought Jensen would've been over Megan by now. *sighs*
heywood on 12/4/2018 at 13:00
Yeah, it's heavy handed with the apartheid is bad theme, to the point of cliche. I think the characters are supposed to be unlikeable, that's part of the theme. You do warm up to a few of them by the end of the game though. And the breadth of the story is surprisingly narrow for a Deus Ex game. There was a point where I thought it was on the cusp of opening up into something bigger, but it didn't, and the story ends with a lot of loose ends.
I can't complain about the gameplay though.
heywood on 12/4/2018 at 19:33
Dia, I'm with you on Vega. The first time you see her, she instructs you to bug your employer/home base for some hacker you don't know. I was disappointed that the game forces you to betray your boss and plant the whisper chip, without offering a good reason why Jensen would go along with it. It was like being forced to send the NSF distress signal, but at least Deus Ex gives you ample justification to believe UNATCO is corrupt before it forces you to do that. I was kind of annoyed with Vega after finding out I couldn't skip that objective. Besides that, the Juggernaut Collective story line seems under-developed and doesn't really serve any purpose being in the game except to feed Jensen some intel.
IAmTheWalrus on 14/4/2018 at 02:12
Look, maybe I just need to one day do an actual full playthrough with a computer that can run it better. Maybe I'll grow to like it. I just couldn't look past the writing no matter how badly I tried. Bad writing wouldn't be 1/10th the problem I find it to be here on any other game other than a Deus Ex game. I really do find it that much of a problem. I read a little on how the story goes and I figured I didn't even miss out on anything in that regard since very little seems to happen, but I didn't read right to the conclusion so I guess something huge could easily still happen. Good to hear your thoughts.
Dia on 14/4/2018 at 11:29
@Heywood: I thoroughly agree about Vega. I was annoyed that I couldn't just skip the whole whisper chip part; it sucks that you're railroaded into that action (which I totally disagreed with) or you can't progress in the game. It just seemed so out of character for Jensen to go along with something like that without finding out more about Janus. Of course, the intel Vega gleans from the chip eventually forces Jensen's hand to investigate his own people more thoroughly (using the NSN) which provides more insight as to what's really going on behind the scenes in the TF29 hierarchy, but still, it rankled to have to be forced to cooperate with Vega so readily. The end of the game conversation between Vega & Jensen mollified me a bit, though. I want to know who (or what) the hell Janus is and what his/her/its real agenda is, too. ;)
@Walrus: I'll have to respectfully disagree. I thought the writing was satisfactory for the most part and yeah, having a PC that is capable of handling the game with no glitches, lags or stuttering would, without a doubt, help one's enjoyment of the game. Not everyone is going to like the same game, though. To each their own. Peace.
froghawk on 28/4/2018 at 13:20
I mean, no DX game has ever had truly good writing. There have been interesting concepts in every one, certainly, but the first two games are very cold and don't feature fleshed out characters or good dialogue (plus plenty of great cheese), while the last two are a little thematically focused to the point of repetition and their final acts flop. I come to DX for amazing gameplay and some epic story concepts, but the actual writing has always been b-movie and the games themselves have historically been a technical mess. Sounds like walrus is wearing rose colored glasses.
Thirith on 30/4/2018 at 09:58
Not to kidnap the thread, but since the people posting in it are most likely to be able to help me: any tips to someone who's just got started on Mankind Divided? Any "I wish I'd known xyz when I got started on MD"?
heywood on 30/4/2018 at 22:56
A few tips:
If you're playing the PC port, turn off MSAA. It kills performance.
Choose "Give Me Deus Ex". MD seems a bit easier than HR was, especially early on, so there's little reason not to play on the highest difficulty. Also, I suggest you turn off your radar and quest markers. I liked playing without the radar, it adds some challenge by forcing you to actually observe enemy patterns and patrols rather that just sitting under cover and watching little arrows. It also helps with immersion. I wished I had that option when I was playing HR.
Get the Remote Hacking aug as early as you can. The other aug choices are personal preference.
Regarding weapons:
In the opening cut scene, chose the dialog options that get you the tranq gun.
Don't bother with the sniper rifle. It takes a lot of inventory space and you can't silence it. Besides, you can fit a scope and silencer to the AR and use that for sniping.
If you feel the desire to hoard cash, you can sell every weapon you pick up in Prague (and ammo too). But if you already have a certain weapon, and you pick up one of the same type, all you get is a spare round of two of ammo, you won't have the second weapon in your inventory to sell. This means that if you want to scavenge weapons for cash, you have to sell them one at a time: pick up a weapon, take it to a merchant and sell it, go back and pick up another weapon, repeat. It was too tedious for me to bother with, but if you feel like you need cash e.g. to buy a praxis kit, there are a lot of weapons out there.
As Dia and I were discussing, one of the first objectives you'll receive after the intro level is to plant the "whisper chip". I tried to skip this objective because I didn't feel like bugging my boss' office as a favor to some hacktivist you don't even know. But there comes a point where you can't progress if you haven't completed this objective. So don't do what I did.
There are a couple of choices you make which affect the plot, but nothing Earth-shattering. I won't spoil them for you.
Thirith on 1/5/2018 at 07:36
Great, thanks, heywood! I've switched off the quest markers - though I'm hoping there'll be an in-game map giving me at least a rough idea of what is where in Prague.