Deus Ex: Mankind Divided © Eidos Montreal/Square Enix

OK class, take your seats. There's a trailer for a new Deus Ex game out, and we're going to tear into it like family-sized packet of conspiracy-flavoured crisps, except for five of the chips, which we are going to discuss. As a class. This analogy broke down a while ago, but there really is a new Deus Ex trailer and we've got five burning questions about it.

Warning: Major Deus Ex spoilers ahead, obviously.

1. Who is Adam Jensen working for?

The trailer released this month is actually pretty ambiguous about protagonist Adam Jensen's employment status – maybe because the more people Jensen isn't aligned with, the more people he can duff up with all his cool new robot body parts.

We know from the recent Game Informer preview that he's been drafted into a new anti–terror outfit called Task Force 29, which looks like it's been formed to fight augmented terrorists. But that doesn't explain the trailer's Ivan Berk, the yellow–hoodied bomber who blows up a train station in the video's opening scenes.

In the earlier parts of the trailer, Jensen's coming to his rescue, knocking police goons around like an angry Swiss Army Knife as Berk cowers on the floor. Later, however, it's Berk's terror cell that Jensen so rudely interrupts with his new teleport-punch ability.

Maybe that's alluding to a standard video game sequel allegiance switcheroo (you're the good guy. No, wait, the good guys are the bad guys!) The thing is, that's not just a narrative cliché, but a narrative cliché that the series has already done: the-goodies-are-the-baddies plot twist was key to the original Deus Ex's storyline. But there is another possibility: that Mankind Divided is going deeper with its RPG-i-ness and letting you choose who to fight for. Pick your side and then punch the other side through a wall.

And while we're paddling around the subject: where exactly are Jensen's new augmentations coming from? For all the anti-augmentation sentiment, someone's gone and grafted a non–lethal PEPS Gun onto his arm (1:12) and given him a shield of magic triangles that can deflect fragmentation grenades to the face (2:59). So, either someone is making a special exception to keep Jensen tuned-up (predictable, bland), or the game is going the route of Invisible War and giving us access to black market augmentations (less likely, but obviously much cooler).

2. Just who are the baddies?

The new trailer throws up so many questions © Eidos Montreal/Square Enix

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided takes place two years after Human Revolution (2029), but still 23-years before the original Deus Ex (2052, maths fans). That means we've got a clear-ish idea of the timeline, and the sorts of things that need to happen between now and then for the newer games to link up with the old.

Many of DX1's baddies got veiled introductions in Human Revolution. First, there's Bob Page, who by 2052 has become the head of the Illuminati and the richest man on Earth. He's the guy you see making an awfully sinister-sounding job offer to kidnapped scientist Megan Reed (Princess Peach to Jensen's Mario) in the hidden video at the end of Human Revolution. He also pops up in the trailer when his anonymizing conference call software goes temporarily on the blink. His company, Page Industries, also owns VersaLife, the logo for which crops up later in the trailer (but we'll get to that).

That ending video also references Morgan Everett, another Illuminatus who briefly hosts DX1's protagonist, JC Denton, as a house guest. He's still working with Page at this point (they have a falling out when Page decides he'd rather be AI-integrated God of Mankind than Everett's equal in the first game).

Finally, there's Joseph Manderley, fusty bureaucrat by day, evil black ops coordinator by night. He's head of UNATCO – the 'United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition' (remember earlier when we mentioned the goodies-into-baddies conceit?) in the first game, and gets a name-check in Human Revolution.

None of these people can die in Mankind Divided without tearing a hole in spacetime – but by now they must be pulling at least some of the strings that jerk humanity around. Are these our main villains?

3. Who are the terrorists?

The making of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided © Eidos Montreal/Square Enix

We've known that there was a clash coming between the augmented and non–augmented citizens in Deus Ex for a while. It was foreshadowed in Human Revolution, particularly in its opposing live action trailers ( here and here ), but that resentment was also boiling away in the first game, in which your invisible nano-augmentations consistently rub up 'mechs' (with their Jensen-style disfiguring cybernetics) the wrong way.

Now, that bubbling pot of hydraulic fluid appears to have boiled over, spilling terrorist attacks and police brutality all over the countertops. At 0:18, there's a poster in the background advertising 'The Vote', with one normal and one cybernetic arm underneath it. Later, we see a Sarif Industries logo, which suggests that the West's biggest purveyor of augmentations is still in business (we really are coming to this part, promise). The human enhancement conflict is clearly coming to a head in Mankind Divided.

But the trailer goes to some lengths to show that its terrorists aren't just convenient cannon fodder for Jensen to slow-mo kick-punch his way through. The leader, for instance, uses some pretty evocative language in his speech: "We will not allow our rights to be eroded out of fear and ignorance. We will not be herded into ghettos." There's also a lovely call back in the shot where Berk is being brutalized, when the camera pulls up to his bionic eye to show a reflection of a police officer about to wallop him with his crackling space-truncheon. Look familiar? That's because it's the same shot as in the pro-augmentation Sarif Industries trailer from Human Revolution ( Here's the relevant part). That's a pretty clear message of how the view of augmentations has changed since Hugh Darrow (anti-aug villain in Human Revolution) sent every augmented person temporarily crazy at the end of the last game: two years ago, you took holiday snaps. Today, you record police beating you up.

One last thing to note is that Jensen's attack on the terrorist base (well, the terrorist's theatre – maybe this is all just an am-dram production that Jensen has tragically misinterpreted) shows both lethal and non-lethal attacks. Whoever these terrorists are, they're a more complex organisation than the trailer's media broadcasts would have us believe.

4. Where are we going?

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided © Eidos Montreal / Square Enix

After quite a lot of pausing, zooming and squinting at things in Photoshop, we quite cleverly deduced that a chunk of the game takes place in Prague. The police have 'Policie' written on their armor, and Berk's profile flashes up briefly in the scene at 1:31, showing there's a warrant for his arrest for blowing up a Prague train station. We're sure you'll agree these were tremendously impressive feats of detective work, diminished in no way by the subsequent Game Informer interview in which the developers just up and told the interviewer that, yes, Jensen goes to Prague in this game.

Deus Ex made a reputation for itself with the first game, sending you off round the world to tug at the threads of its conspiracy – so it's a given that Mankind Divided will do the same sort of Dystopian globetrotting. And the trailer provides some tasty hints as to other possible, non-Prague destinations.

First, there's that conference call between Definitely-Not-Bob-Page and his Illuminati associates. Before his screenname glitches out to 'B*B P–*&' (that's why you always pay for the premium version, Bob), the text under his dot-mapped 3D head reads Hong Kong. His partners' screens read Paris, Montreal, New York and another one we can't see. Each of those places has an established history in the Deus Ex canon: Hong Kong and Paris you visit in DX1, New York is the same game's starting location, and Montreal is the home of Human Revolution's Picus TV – itself a front for the machinations of the Illuminati (because everything is).

Of the four, Montreal is the most interesting to us for one simple reason: it was supposed to be much bigger than it ended up in Human Revolution. Originally, Montreal was going to be a hub the same size as Detroit or Hengsha, but was cut down due to time constraints. That means that somewhere in Eidos' office (its Montreal office, incidentally) there's probably a big box with 'Stuff They Wouldn't Let Us Use' scribbled on the lid full of Montreal locations, characters and quests that tie directly into Human Revolution and Mankind Divided's stories. Think of it as really, really late DLC.

There's also a shot of a map at 1:28, marking four locations with (what else?) glowing yellow triangles. The one on the top left is London, top right is Minsk in Belarus, bottom left is the Swiss-Italian border and bottom right looks like Plovdiv, Bulgaria (thanks, Google Maps). Of those, only the UK has any history in the Deus Ex Universe (none of it major – various people are born or have meetings there, and it's the HQ of the Belltower PMC from Human Revolution). Now, this might be straw-clutching – every good global conspiracy has to feature a 3D holomap at some point – but potentially, potentially, that's four new locations for Jensen to explore (or at least in which something important and conspiratorial might happen).

5. What about the Illuminati?

Who are the Illuminati? © Eidos Montreal/Square Enix

We've addressed who the baddies might be. But if they're the power behind the throne, what does the throne look like? Who's sitting on it? Is there a physical throne you can sit on at all? Probably not. Or maybe that's just what they want us to think.

Megacorporations acting as Illuminati puppets have always been a Deus Ex staple, and judging by the screen at 1:25, nothing's changing there in Mankind Divided – all the factions we know about have their logos floating around a giant Illuminati hand with the world in its palm, suggesting that (gasp!) everything is somehow connected in the complex web of a glowing yellow conspiracy spider. Let's run through them now.

Top left you've got... something. We don't know what that logo is – a T? An F? A T and F? We don't know. Anyone?

But underneath that, there's the VersaLife logo. VersaLife is a corporation in Bob Page's megaconglomerate, Page Industries, and was the manufacturer of Neuropozyne in Human Revolution (the drug that stops people's bodies from rejecting their augmentations). In the original game, it's into all sorts of evil sidelines, including manufacturing the Gray Death, a nanite plague that's killing off millions of people around the world. That's a secret, of course – publicly, VersaLife is responsible for making the plague's cure, Ambrosia, which is how Page and Co. are trying to control the world in 2052.

Picus Group owns Human Revolution's Picus TV, which is an Illuminati propaganda channel fronted by Eliza Cassan – an AI with a holographic body that spins the news to suit its controllers' interests. Eliza seemingly sides with Jensen in Human Revolution, though it's her you see 0:47 in the new trailer reporting on the "increase in the number of terrorist attacks." Whatever's happened in the interim, Cassan seems to be towing the party line again (or playing a dangerous double bluff).

A.R.C. (top right) is the acronym for Augmented Rights Coalition, and seems to be the public face of the organisation responsible for the terror attacks that Cassan is talking about.

Santeau Group is another newcomer about which we know nothing. Well, almost nothing: its logo can actually be seen much earlier in the trailer at 0:15, top right corner, on a billboard that reads: 'Chain, Outsider, Shackle, Oppress, Crush'. We don't know what that means, either.

Finally, there's the logo for Sarif Industries – Jensen's former employer and the people who gave him his augmentations in the first place. In Human Revolution they were one of the biggest augmentation manufacturers in the world – how they're weathering Mankind Divided's anti-aug sentiments could be a major plot point (although given its lack of presence in DX1, odds are they don't weather them all that well). Phew. There you go: a few things we know, lots of things we might know, and five things we definitely don't but would like to. Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments below.