GameSpot's The Lobby: Should we be excited for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided?
GameSpot's The Lobby: Should we be excited for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided?
12:33

GameSpot's The Lobby: Should we be excited for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided?

Video Games
[MUSIC] Let's talk about Adam Jensen, shall we? Yeah. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, originally supposed to come out February this year. I believe so. Now it's coming out August 23rd, five years to the day since the Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I can't believe that's been five years. Yeah. That's troubling. Yeah. I agree. I didn't even realize it had been that long. Isn't that crazy? Quite a long time. 2011. Because it seemed they were dead on to make a sequel to this game. It seemed to do well. Yeah. Totally. It seemed to surprise people. Were talking about it well past the release date too. It was still a relevant game for a while. Yeah, a lot of people seem to enjoy it. The only criticism of that one, if I remember correctly, was the boss fights forced you not to be stealthy and forced you to play a certain way. The whole game is about player agency and then start to throw it at the window. That's exactly right yeah. So you played a bunch of it how much have you played Scott. Yeah so I got to play it back in September and then I got to play it again last week and saw different sections both times so back in September I saw of like Just dedicated story missions that were focused on combat or stealth, it was just like straight-up gameplay. So what I played more recently was like the open world segments and a lot of the social conversation systems. So I've now actually seen a really well-rounded portrait of the game which was really nice. The more recent stuff was like, I got to check out Prague, which is sort of the home city. It's sort of like Detroit was in human evolution. You'll jump off from there and go to other parts of the world to do missions. But that sort of seems to be the hub area, the main hub area. So I got to kinda look around for side quests and explore and find hidden stuff Stuff like that, so, yeah new areas, side quests, conversation system. Even saw some new [UNKNOWN] stuff like that. Cool. I wanna keep this open to the people in the chat as well. [UNKNOWN] in the game spot chat or the twitch shout. If you have any questions, I'll be sure to pass them on. First of all I wanna ask you about Prague, because I get a real Half-Life 2 vibe off of the gameplay when I see this, cuz that was also set in some sort of generic, we don't know, Belarusian maybe, or Eastern European city, right? Yeah. What was it like exploring Prague? How big was the open world? What were you ...with the moment-to-moment action, just like, you ambling around and talking to people, or were you like using your stealth and stuff like that. Like how did that actually feel? Yeah, so during those sections, you're free to explore at your own pace. Like you, you, there are no like time restrictions, really, there are no... Directives, you can kind of just like take your time between missions and explore and do whatever you want. To be clear it's not like a fully open world game, it's not one big giant map, it's actually a bunch of discrete, open areas that are connected by a subway system. So you can kind of like explore this area then run down into a subway station and like Pick a new destination there's a little cutscene and it whisks you away and you're at the next area. The darkness. Kinda yeah so it's a little more like that yeah there's some definite like vibes to the way the city's designed. It's actually for me kinda the same problem as Detroit or Shanghai in the previous game where the city areas don't Really feel like cities to me. They are like weirdly tubular, if you're running around in Grand Theft Auto or something, you see an area you can run over to it. You can go where ever you want, it feels like a natural city. Here your options of where you can go are like very limited so it ends up feeling like a game level. But that's just me wanting immersion. But as a playable game space, it is actually really impressive. It is really densely packed with things to find, hidden areas, vents, terminals to hack, people to interact with, way more people than there were in the previous game. Many of whom give you side quests now. In the previous game there really only were a handful of side quests in the entire game. So, even though as a city, it doesn't feel super believable, as a game space it seems to work really well cuz there's a lot to do. So are you jumping from frog den to like different missions that are in different parts of the world from there? Yeah, so There was a story-based mission that occurred within Prague, but then immediately after completing that, I went to a different section of the city, which I guess is, yeah, so technically still in Prague, but not in that same hub world where I started. Right. So that was still technically in Prague, but it looked very different. It was a bombed-out train station. But then after that, sort of the final segment that I played was in a different part of the world entirely. It was in This slum for augmented people called Gollum City, that looked very like BladeRunner-y like dystopian, everything was made out of scrap metal somehow, really eerie gold lighting throughout. So yeah that was totally Separate from the main city, and I just got on a chopper to get whisked away to that part of the world, where ever that happens to be. So it's still like a linear, first person- Totally. slash third person, I'm guessing, experience. Well- The narrative, and the main campaign is definitely linear. Yeah. How did the action feel then? Is it familiar to Human Revolution, is it the same sort of cover mechanic, third-person, you can stealth, you can actually, did it feel all that different? Because a lot of people in the chatter are pointing at the The fact that this seems like, the reception to this seems to be quite like there isn't much hype going into this. Almost like it feels like a known quantity. Does it play a lot like the previous game? No, it definitely does. I mean, certain things have been Improved or fleshed out. Like for example, the big game play hook for Adam Jenson is that his body has like all these cybernetic enhancements which manifest in various ways. Usually in terms of like weapons, or hacking abilities, or stealth abilities things like that. So There are new augments available, many of which allow you to play non-lethally, which in the previous game most of the augments seems to be combat oriented. Right, yeah. So they clearly heard that criticism, were like, okay, we're going to try to implement new augments that really foster new play styles and encourage people to play different way. But, yes, that part of it is still very true. The game very much focuses on allowing you to play the way you want to play and a lot of the staples of the game player are there, like the switching between third person to first person when you go under cover The ability to like, cloak and move and find the hidden vents or hacking terminals, all of that stuff plays very similarly to how it did in the previous game. Well i guess the devil's in the details on a lot of this sort of stuff. Like, so how did it feel to you over the hours you were playing? Was that an enjoyable experience? Were there levels that you played through that you said hey, I wouldn't mind doing that as action or stealth or-- Did it feel too familiar? It was kind of a mix. I mean, I think the game still actually has some rough edges. There are clearly a lot of great ideas and I'm still optimistic about the game. I will say that the combat, I never quite got a feel for it. I never really had too much fun. I feel like the game really limits your ammo supply and your energy supply. So if you're going full out and you're trying to kill everybody You have to be very careful in how you do it, because you can easily run out of resources. Right. Or just get straight up murdered. Then you just use a chainsaw and [LAUGH] Yeah. This is very much not doom. Yeah, but in a way I actually think that's kind of great. There's so many great first person shooters out there that if you want to just go like bang bang shooting whatever, you have tons of options for that. What I think this game does really well is Giving you almost more like a Mass Effect-style approach to things where you can socialize your way through things, you can stealth your way through things. I really- [CROSSTALK]. Can you sex your way through things? Probably. There is a potential love interest in the story. Maybe, maybe not. But I didn't see any sex. There's a shower scene, so that happens. Got to see all that augmentation. Yeah, sexy augments, and like a steamy shower. That was cool. I know what I'd augment. No sex scenes that I saw though. But yeah, they really flesh out the dialogue system, which I am a total sucker for. I love branching dialogue trees, like Mad Spectre or Fallout. Yeah. So there's a lot more of that in this game. And I feel like you have more control over those conversations as a player than you did before. You have more opportunities to pick dialogue options and direct the way things are going. So I thought that that was really cool. So I'm optimistic about those pillars, like the social, and the stealth pillars, to me are Are really exciting and really fun, similar to previous games but still really cool. Cool, I'm kind of curious about how you felt about the facial animations. [LAUGH] I got problems with Adam Jenson's voice just personal take but looking at the facial image and the people talking, it looks really outdated. Yeah, no I definitely agree they look really wonky and almost out of sync and I kept wondering if I don't think that is just our video. That is how I remember it being when I was playing the game live. Like just me and the console and the TV. So, I don't know what the deal is but I agree. It is pretty dated. So, I am wondering, does that aspect manifest itself in other ways. Are you noticing that this game is pretty sound throughout or Based on that's what I'm looking at with the dialogue stuff. It seems like they sort of picked and choose what to really pay attention to .>>Yeah, I've Have you seen that maybe is the case with the game at large? Yeah I would say that another good example of that is actually the aiming, which is another reason why I really don't like the combat that much. It's not bad but I feel like the aiming is tuned for a mouse and keyboard. I was playing on a controller, so it's very one to one To one. So when you zoom in, suddenly the [UNKNOWN] 's really jumpy, even if the sensitivity's way down, which I tend to turn stupid when I'm playing shooters on a console. But in this case, you actually had to turn it down so I could aim accurately while I'm aiming down site. So, I mean, there's still a month before the game is out. I'm certain there will be a day one patch because that's what happens with every game. So it's entirely possible some of those edges will be smooth before the game comes out so I don't want to like, totally condemn it. No. But I think what you're hitting on is accurate. I think there are some rough edges. There are some things in the game that Look better than other aspects of the game. Right. Look or feel better. So, I mean, tons of great ideas and I have a lot of faith in this team because they really seem to know what they're doing. But, yeah I mean, it wasn't a flawless demo. I didn't come away going, like this is so amazing. I can't wait, I'm a little more [LAUGH] reluctant to show it with praise, but we'll see. And it's certainly not like trying to catch dispersions on the dev team, but they're working with a budget and a schedule, and some things have to fall by the wayside. [CROSSTALK] Yeah this is sort of the tragedy of AAA development, it's always, you're managing time and budget and power and just a million factors and Your ambitions sometimes are not going to align with the final product but you do the best you can.>> I was actually pleasantly surprised by how much they ended up reigning it in for the previous game. How much they sort of Like it was a game with rough edges, no doubt. But it had sort of enough of a concise vision it was, kept me coming back anyway. Tha's kind of the story of Deus Ex as a whole series though. I don't even think it was just the last game. I feel like every Deus Ex game I've looked at is kind of like yeah there's something about it that just doesn't feel like. [LAUGH] They didn't get to go to the finish line all the way. Yeah. But everyone seems to love aspects of it. Yeah. Difficult franchise to take over as well. Definitely is. I agree, though. It's just something about the franchise. There's something about its conspiratorial world. In the idea of the augments and the fact that you really can play combat, stealth, or packing, or social. Right. It really does support all of these pillars, that's pretty unique. I mean not many games can really pull that off. Right. So I can see why Why for certain people this franchise is like just something they will always love warts and all. Yeah it's interesting you say that because there hasn't been many games which have done as push. We have Dishonored 2 coming out in 2016 which is Very similar in that sort of respect and then also [UNKNOWN] Specter working on the new System Shock remake as well which probably won't be for a while but kind of similar stuff. Be cool now. I'm excited for that to exist I mean the early trailer the new System Shock looks really great so if they can make the whole game looking that great then Thumbs up. There you go. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, coming out August 23rd. Scott, where can they see your preview? What's it called? It's on Game Spot right? It is on Game Spot. I believe it's just called, exploring Mankind Divided's open worlds social systems and more. Relatively boring title but just wanted to inform people, listen, here's the stuff for the game that we haven't been able to see yet, come check out what we actually played recently. Yeah, it's hard to sex up Adam Jensen in a headline, so. [CROSSTALK]. He has the worst voiceover. It's like- it's the Batman problem. I get why you're doing this, but it's a bit It's a bit like you're forcing it. It's so hammy. Yeah. The dude kind of sounds like that in real life though, which is like, look up interviews with that guy. His voice is, he actually sounds like this in real life, it's really crazy. [UNKNOWN] the supporting NPCs sound far more convincing than the guy that they have playing the lead. [INAUDIBLE] Smoking two packs of reds every day. [LAUGH] It's like a thin [INAUDIBLE]- He's got cybernetic lungs, it's cool, he's be fine. Actually, yeah, good point. [INAUDIBLE] The future of smoking. Future [INAUDIBLE]. Okay, let's wrap it up, and Scott thank you so much for coming on. Absolutely. I really appreciate it. [BLANK_AUDIO]

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