Deus Ex: Mankind Divided encourages you to play how you want even more so than its predecessor - but don’t expect your enemies to pull punches, or your friends to not suffer the consequences.

I’ve always enjoyed games that give you freedom of choice in how you dispose of your adversaries, and in titles like Thief, Dishonored, and previous iterations of Deus Ex, finding a solution that didn’t end in bloodshed always made me feel clever. However, sometimes the line between violence and peace is only separated by what kind of ammo you’re packing. You can check out my nonlethal playthrough in the video above.

While some situations in Mankind Divided are sure to follow such a path, the Dubai mission I played during a hands-on demo at E3 last week threw me an unexpected curveball. Adam Jensen’s task seemed pretty straightforward: infiltrate a crumbling hotel amidst a sandstorm and neutralize a group of cartel members to ensure they couldn’t show up to an arms deal happening nearby, so that the rest of Jensen’s task force could apprehend the dealer, with the help of an undercover informant. From there I was free to assassinate, knock out, or straight up sneak past the cartel reinforcements and disable the door leading to the arms deal. It was when the deal went south that I was truly tested.

With a group of unknown assailants mowing down everyone in sight, my main objective was to disable a helicopter to prevent our targets from fleeing, but I also had to worry about our informant, who was pinned down in the middle of the firefight. From Jensen’s vantage point above the fight, my first instinct was to jump down and let the Icarus Landing System plant me in the thick of the battle - but I hesitated. Doing so would turn attention to me for sure, but with only a tranquilizer rifle and my fists, I’d quickly be cut down. So instead I stuck to my nonlethal virtues and opted for the slow elevator down, and used the cover of the approaching sandstorm to knock out enemies without drawing attention. However, that attention was centered squarely on the informant, who was cut down before I could knock out all the assassins.

Here's 17 more minutes of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. For the no-kill playthrough, see the video at the top of the page.

I don’t know if there will be far-reaching effects to my failure in Dubai (apart from being called a “f---ing bellend”), but I was still happy to find that Mankind Divided was eager to push me out of my non-lethal comfort zone and throw some heavy dilemmas at me. Would it have been easier and more effective to drop in guns blazing to save my teammate? Probably, but that’s what makes roleplaying games such a rich experience. When push come to shove, will you stick the ideal’s you’ve set for your version of Adam Jensen, or will you toss them aside in the heat of the moment? I’m eager to return to that Dubai mission when Mankind Divided launches in a few months, so I can face the challenge again (hopefully with better results), and hope it won’t be the only tough choice I get to make.

Brendan Graeber is an Editor at IGN who can't wait to write the guide for Mankind Divided. You can ask if he never asked for this at @Ragga_Fragga.