There were two things about Deus Ex: Mankind Divided that unequivocally insulted me.

The first was that the credits aren’t skippable. Come on Square Enix, it’s bad enough that we have to wait for 15 minutes after Marvel films to see 10 seconds of teaser footage that could’ve been tacked on to the end of the film. Nonetheless, most video games are self-aware enough to realize that most of the players want to skip end game credits faster than Adam Jensen can say ‘Janus’.

The second insult to cause further injury was that the biggest swerve of the damn story was a scene IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CREDITS. I almost completely missed it. I was taking a bathroom break waiting for the credits to end when I heard voices coming from my television. I return to see some people talking and then all of the sudden, WHAM! Oh! This character is involved with that!? Why save the best scene of your game until after it’s over?

I wouldn’t have been as insulted with the unskippable credits and mid-credits swerve if it wasn’t for the fact the game just ended when I felt it was only halfway through the story. I was taken aback by the roll to credits. Adam Jensen was all geared up for an explosive second act in which he would finally go face to face with the Illuminati. Instead, the game teases us with Jensen deciding he wants to put a face to the name of a major Illuminati resistor.

The crux of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is not that it’s a bad video game or even a bad story. The issue at hand is that Mankind Divided is a disappointing sequel. I had my fair share of criticisms of Human Revolution’s story, but I’ll maintain that Human Revolution (Director’s Cut) is high on my list of favorite all-time video games. Mankind Divided picked up where Human Revolution left off and the gameplay is only slightly touched as to not reinvent the wheel but only improve the tire wear. Where Mankind Divided could really add some style points was in the story department, and for a while, I thought Mankind Divided learned mightily from its predecessor’s mistakes.

from Deus Ex Wiki

Human Revolution had too many names with too many motives and not enough clarity to separate the good, the bad, and the indifferent. Where games like Mass Effect and Infamous are more blatant about, this is good, this is evil, Deus Ex offers the intellectual alternative.

There are several ways to go about completing your mission, and it’s up to the player to choose his strategy. The base of the game employs the same strategies as Human Revolution. Open-ended mission environments that allow the player to test their stealth skills and ingenuity to outwit the bad guys. At the normal difficulty level, Mankind Divided proves to be a difficult game to brute force through. To an extent, the enemies in Human Revolution were easy enough to dispose of in a gunfight. Mankind Divided steps up the competition as Jensen’s enemies are often very well equipped.

from Zavvi

In my playthrough, I went all in on the hacking. My goal was to traverse the environments unseen until I could find a computer that could open up new pathways and take away hindering obstacles like cameras and eventually turrets and robots. I found a lot of enjoyment in turning friendly fire on for turrets and robots and watching all the guards gather around to get mowed down by machine gun bullets. On the flip side, the more elite guards could dispose of turrets and robots more efficiently, but thinning out the crowd is a major advantage, especially in the later levels of the game. There’s something about turning an enemies weapon against them that’s so gratifying.

Mankind Divided’s level design is great, and the gameplay, in turn, is rewarding and challenging. The only real bothersome feature is all stealth takedowns enter into a cutscene. Jensen’s cutscene takedowns are limited and as you continue stealth killing enemies throughout the game it does get laborious. The takedown cutscene lacks purpose.

One other minor complaint I have is that the menu screens can be burdensome.

I’m unsure if finessing the characters through dialogue has become more difficult or I’m just an idiot. In Human Revolution, I was playing characters emotions like a mentalist. In Mankind Divided, I usually ended branching conversations having to punch or shoot people in the face after I hurt their feelings. Even after I got the social enhancement augmentation I couldn’t seem to break characters down as well.

from Gameranx

I was all in on Mankind Divided’s story. I still stand by my judgment that Adam Jensen is an impeccably boring character to be at the center of a worldwide conspiracy, but the more interesting characters are those who surround him. The only major returning character from Human Revolution is David Sarif who calls Jensen a couple times to remind him that his new experimental augmentations could be linked to a guy that Jensen goes on a side mission to track down. Other than that, all the new characters are either douchebags or on edge.

A bothersome story oversight to me is that the game introduces an Illuminati resistor named Alex Vega. At first, I’m thinking she’s Jensen’s attractive sidekick, but rather she pops in every now and again to convince Jensen that his bosses are screwing him. The oversight is the fact that there’s no backstory given to how Vega and Jensen know each other. She’s just there and Jensen happens to entrust her with all the important details he knows. Human Revolution Jensen pretty much was ready to trust anyone who told him anything. Mankind Divided Jensen is a complete skepticist.

In the near future, the world has slipped into a frenzy after the Aug Incident that occurred at the end of Human Revolution. Darrow’s signal turned anyone with augmentations into zombie-like murderers which reminds me distinctly of Steven King’s book, Cell, in which anyone with a cell phone turned into a zombie-like murderer. As a result, there are many people who believe that augmentations need to be outlawed and now augmented people are being treated like second-class citizens. Mankind Divided follows Jensen’s story with the international police organization Interpol. Jensen uncovers a plot that the Illuminati is attempting to frame the Augmented Rights Coalition with terrorist actions to make sure a law passes segregating natural people and augmented people. Make of that obvious history lesson what you will.

As the missions play out the conspiracy and story become more clear. It’s rather disconcerting that Mankind Divided is so straightforward after Human Revolution was so layered and overcomplicated. Mankind Divided also offers some side missions, one involving a fascinating murder mystery that was one of the highlights of the game. What Mankind Divided continually does is raise your expectations for the ball to drop and a big swerve to hit, and then the game just ends-

from Polygon

Just like that. There is only one boss fight. I saved up so much ammo and resources expecting the game to send me into a gauntlet of even more difficult missions progressing to more strenuous boss fights. Mankind Divided has you fight a refrigerator-sized baddie named Viktor Marchenko who might as well have been the first refrigerator-sized boss from Human Revolution. Marchenko had puppet-stringed underboss written all over him. To be the final boss of the game is madly disappointing.

The sequence directly after the ending of the final boss fight is Eliza Cassan, the AI news girl talking in Fox News speak about some of the events you altered in the game and about its effect on the relations between augmented and natural people. This scene should’ve been played during the credits.

I don’t mind video games being short, as long as I felt like I got a fulfilling experience. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is like getting to page 200 in a 400-page book and discovering the second half of the book is blank pages until you see page 300 says, but wait, there’ll be more if the series continues.

I hope there’ll be another Deus Ex game down the line, but I pray that Square Enix will once again see the error in their ways. It’s fine and all that you understood a more focused condensed story is easier to follow but you don’t get credit for shorting the experience just when it’s getting to its peak.