Errant Signal - Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

I try to look at the fourth in a series of games about people in trench coats finding the same six jerks responsible for Every Bad Thing Ever, then failing to do anything about it because sequels.
Oh, and the Gamasutra piece I mentioned: www.gamasutra.com/view/news/27...
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This episode was made possible by generous support through Patreon!
/ errantsignal
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[@probablythedm1669]

The BLM-angle makes no sense. These aren't people born with augs, they're not a race. They're rich people who either replaced parts of their body with better mechanical ones, disabled people who got full use back thanks to augs, workers who felt forced to augment themselves to compete or they're soldiers made extremely deadly by essentially giving them superpowers. People - in the Deus Ex world - shouldn't fear augs like they're a race. They should fear augs because they can't tell just how crazy dangerous someone's augs makes them. *This isn't some poor, weak minority being oppressed; it's a potentially superpowered minority!* They should fear augs because they can't tell if that's just a replacement arm of if you can shoot swords and concussion blasts from them. If it's the strength of a normal arm of if you can punch through a concrete wall with it like the wall's made of cheap plaster, or unleash a whole room full of directional explosives that could kill a whole crowd in seconds. The angle should be gun ownership with some handicap discrimination, not "we don't like augs because racism". These are potentially freaking superpowered killers walking around armed to the teeth, and you - for the most part - can't tell them apart from the guy who just got a replacement arm. People should also fear them considering these people almost all went nuts and killed millions a few years ago - shattering the illusion that this was all well and fine and making everyone aware just what kind of danger augmented people posed, since even that standard replacement arm can cave your skull in with a single punch. The BLM and racism angle just doesn't work, because this is a "right to bear augs"-problem first. But I recon that's way, way too controversial to tackle compared to some poorly thought out racism that borrows heavily from historical imagery without, apparently, fully understanding the imagery it uses. If you didn't know if your neighbor's kid concealed carried an assault rifle to school or just had a handicap - would you be worried? If the smart kid in class knew the answers because he'd recorded the answers to his eye displays - would that feel fair? How would you feel if you couldn't tell if you just got talked into buying a new car because the dealer persuaded you, or if he influenced you with pheromones and read your replies with his analysis tools to ensure a successful sale? What if your stalker could literally see you through walls? That's the kind of things Deus Ex should be bringing up, not the inept racism comparison shown in its marketing.

[@SpartanWolf222]

It makes more sense if you change the racism angle to a classicism angle. Augmented people, mostly, are not often wealthy entrepreneurs like David Sarif. In HR, it was established that corporations were pushing out Naturals for the preference of augmented people for being more efficient. Literally, it was a case of selling an arm and a leg for a job, and the neuropthyzne injections taxed the laborers even greater for a standard of living. Now, when the Aug Incident occurred, all those employed augmented people were ostracized and many were kicked from their jobs. Hence why they are in a miserable state, and most of the Augs in Prague are unweaponized because of the fear of them. (Jensen is unique because his augs are designed to look like civilian augments, a detail from The Missing Link.) That's how it should have been handled as it ties all the details of the first game in a more logical manner. But I really don't get how "Augs" are a race; are people in wheelchairs another race as a second cousin to people with crutches?

[@ericemigh3869]

Honestly, I think the game is less about an oppression of a minority based purely on prejudice (although that does somewhat factor in) as much as a somewhat Harrison Bergeron-esque (admittedly bordering on Randian) depiction of a society that ostracizes those with talent for the damage they might cause. That's not a bad thing, lots of works have tackled the subject to great acclaim, and I've seen far worse than the depiction presented here, but the game seems worried that this might offend people, and so millstones itself with the "apartheid" metaphors in the hopes that it will obfuscate that topic. Interesting world we live in that criticizing absolute equality is considered more offensive than criticizing fantasy racism. Still, it does make the Aug issue interesting to contrast to the Mage issue from Dragon Age. That said, I think may of the topics Daniel mentions were discussed (to an extent) in DE:HE as part of the ongoing debate about augmentation being right or wrong. Now that the majority of the world has turned against augmentation, it's because less of a "should we sell assault riffles" question as "what should we do to the people who bought assault riffles before the ban"? Transhumanism argues that cybernetic enhancement is inevitable, since the number of countries that will permit free augmentation will inevitably either force other nations to do so as well to keep up or risk becoming obsolete, and that the initial problems of extreme inequality will fade to just the regular inequality a society possesses as time goes on and old augmentations become cheap enough for the general public, but that's a somewhat utopian view. Here, however, every augmented person is considered a radical from the outset, and any desire to limit their spread is undermined by the fact that the world governments are evil and will use any regulation for mass population control. And I like a game that lets me say what my views on the matter are, instead of imposing it on me (even if the game does a cataclysmically poor job of it's surface-level framing of those issues).

[@SpartanWolf222]

Eric Emigh That's an interesting way to look at the situation. Kudos. Speaking of Dragon Age, I wish Mankind Divided had something from the quest-line "monotony" of Dragon Age 2. That was a game where I felt the struggle to maintain my ideals of always siding with the liberal view for mages, and I was aware that by the end of the game my stance of, "Never inhibit mages because it's morally wrong", change to, "Wait, how likely is it going to be another blood mage?" (It also has profound effect on me because of who I romanced with also impacted that gradual change the most.) Frankly it was the best example of prejudices worked into gameplay, even if many people hated it.

[@ericemigh3869]

Brian Colfxire Well, the repeated levels were pretty much the albatros to that game. Going to the same cave twenty times and being told each time that it was a wholly new cave, for instance, was perceived by many gamers as the devs telling them it was raining, if you will. And the fact that almost every single battle had a second wave really started to grind your gears after a while. Basically, it seems like it was a real love-it or hate-it game. Some like to see this issue of gameplay vs. narrative as a purely video game issue, to which I say: there's a lot of people who honestly just like Leni Riefenstahl's cinematography who might have some understanding of the divide. Not to say that DA2's gameplay was tantamount to Nazism, of course; just that a work getting viewed differently by different people by how they value certain elements is hardly a phenomenon original to game reviews, despite what some may argue. Case in point: Some people loved the Star Trek reboot series (well, most of it) for how it brought modern movie magic to the scifi of the series, dispensed with some of the most troublesome aspects (while, admittedly, adding some new ones), and can be enjoyed both without having to put too much thought into them, and with putting a great deal of thought into them; others, however, are outraged that the new movies, in the perspective, dulled down the heady debates of the original to mere sophistry masquerading as philosophy, replaced the characters they loved with pale imitations at best, and is far too marred in the current studio system to be even a quarter of the successor it purports to be. The arguments sounds a bit familiar, don't they?

[@probablythedm1669]

Eric Emigh I enjoyed Dragon Age 2. But man was it flawed! I enjoyed it more when I replayed it a few years later than the first time around. I think that's because I'd experienced more loss (as in deaths of loved ones) in my life since the first time. Which made the story connect more with me on an emotional level. I also found that the combat was actually surprisingly fun, once you figured out the nastiest combos and every combat encounter turned into: *_And then everyone exploded!_* _Pause to wait for the next group of __-enemies-__ redshirts to beam down from the Enterprise._ *_And then everyone exploded!_* But oh my did that same fancy house, mine, sewer, dwarven thaig, wilderness path, or wilderness road get samey the 8th time you saw the damn thing in the past 30 minutes. So that constant recycling of the same 6 goddamn areas all players quickly learned to hate (especially the damn mine), really hurt the game. In the end the game felt like an overpriced, underfunded, rushed out expansion to Origins - with silly over the top combat that went on for way too long (if you didn't know all the best combos to make things explode). The story was pretty linear too. So there wasn't that much replay value, outside of seeing the friendship or rivalry paths of the companions. So, while I enjoyed it and found parts of it engaging enough, the end result was a pretty mediocre game with some dreadfully dull environments. And seriously. *Fuck. That. Mine.* Edit: The DLC chapters were way better than the main game though. They're definitely a big part of why I liked it better the second time around.

[@jesterleafnose798]

[guard knocks over a can] Guard: Pick up the can. [player hands paperwork] Guard: Oh. Nevermind, I guess... Grumble grumble...

[@DStecks]

The wild thing about Mankind Divided dev's saying "hey, Deus Ex doesn't force any ideas on you!" is that the original game, while it absolutely let you interpret your own perspective, it absolutely had a firm stance on the fundamental issues. Deus Ex never gave you an option to say "actually I think late stage capitalism is good", at best you could say "I think it's a better option than technological regression or the loss of human self-determination". Deus Ex absolutely had a defined worldview, and that was that modern technology and democracy are incompatible, but it asked you to resolve the dilemma, to choose which of those things you think is more important to human happiness. There would have been plenty of room for Mankind Divided to examine different perspectives on society and oppression while still saying "bigotry is definitely wrong".

[@HeadsFullOfEyeballs]

I think what most irritates me about the writing of this game and Human Revolution is the way NO-ONE EVER TALKS ABOUT ANYTHING BUT AUGMENTATION. Every conversation you overhear is about augs. Every ad is about augs. Every poster and graffiti is about augs. Every news broadcast, every radio programme is about augs. All politics is about augs. Anything that isn't about augs is about the central conspiracy of the game, which is itself about augs. Nothing else ever seems to happen. It's like being caught in a paranoid fever dream. I think the game forgets that a big part of bigotry is _indifference_. If you disenfranchise people and cart them off to ghettos, that's to make them invisible, to exclude them from everyday life. The problems of the augmented should be treated like a dirty secret, or an annoyance, by mainstream society. Not The Most Important Issue In The World. There's barely any actual world building going on as a result. I know practically nothing about this future they've created other than "it has augmentation, and that's a big deal". It's not thematically deep, it's single-note to a weird, obsessive degree. And of course the solution to the power fantasy issue would have been to make the _unaugmented_ the oppressed class. That way the player can still witness oppression, but there's no weird disconnect. The player is powerful because they're part of a privileged elite, and over the course of the game they get to see what has been done to people in their name, and decide whether they want to be complicit in it or not, whether to risk losing favour with their peers by standing up for the despised underclass. Hell, that would even tie in neatly with the plot of the original Deus Ex, where you are part of an organisation that's _perpetuating_ the conspiracy, and have to decide if and when to betray them.

[@HotaruZoku]

Well put. I did catch a pair of conversations relating to Kalpecky's Puppet shop over the course of the game. Granted, yes, that's a main story location so it could be argued it's not REALLY diverging, but hey. It was still classic to be deciding on a subway destination and hear a conversation behind me end with "To HELL with that place, man. Fucking clowns and dolls are the spawn of SATAN."

[@lugbzurg8987]

I'd thought this about Pokémon. Absolutely everyone in town is just unhealthily-obsessed.

[@GhostofPhoenix]

It makes more sense in Human Revolution, when augmentations are being developed, are big business and the "next big thing" everyone wants to have. It's believable that even if the rest of the world isn't so obsessed, that Detroit and Hengsha are central hubs for the augmentation industry and so would have far more focus on augmentation and thus explain why it's all augs, all the time. But you're absolutely right about Mankind Divided. And it's been said also that the game isn't even about augmentations as a concept; but technology in the abstract. You could replace every reference to augmentation in the game with magic and it'd play out almost exactly the same. One point is that they utterly fail to restate the importance of neuropozene to the class divide, which I seem to remember was an issue discussed in HR. There's a very real story of debt slavery that could have been explored as the supply of neuropozene dwindles and its price skyrockets.

[@hongquiao]

THIS!!! The original Deus Ex tackled a whole bunch of themes, but it never let one overtake the whole game. NPCs would talk about their cats, vectors, sculptures, diseases, sing patriotic hymns, or lament their spilt beverage... Because not everyone is obsessed by the same thing.

[@jabberw0k812]

@@hongquiao This, as well. The major themes and viewpoints in the original game had almost nothing to do with augmentation. There were larger political and philosophical issues to explore. The new games took that one aspect of the original and ran with it, dropping almost everything else in the process.

[@TheGrueHunter]

Quick thought: I recently tried skydiving. I thought it was kind of (ironically) amusing that the brand of the parachute we used was Icarus Canopies. So I guess it's not just Deus Ex that's messing up the myth.

[@RedLoop42069]

You're a brave man (or woman), if you were using Icarus parashute. It's like using medicine named Cianidus Ironicus Deathus.

[@mrstarker]

Not much worse than driving a Volkswagen Phaeton.

[@Bloodhoven]

@@mrstarker whats wrong with phaeton?

[@Medytacjusz]

You remember back in the day, when "awesome deep story" meant that a game had a story at all? And "great music" meant that it had orchestra? Seems like deep down we haven't moved far from that, at least in the world of AAA. The main progress I see is the stylishness of graphics, some stuff in this game looks real good and evokes interesting emotions on pure graphical basis. The narrative? You gotta make one yourself.

[@gordongraham2064]

The developer commentary for Human Revolution suggests how Jensen could originally be seen as a little more Icarian. They were going to have it so that you would need to take him to a clinic to get augmentations added, rather than activating augs that were already in his body. It would be interesting if there were a similar approach here. Augs make sneaking and fighting easier, but could also mark your place on a social spectrum. If you have no augs, or only "invisible" augs that might be less effective or cost more, you can blend more easily, but if you have super visible or even ostentatious augs, you might be considered more "trustworthy" by pro-aug groups - say, if you offer to broker a deal with the cops during a standoff, they'll be able to see that you're necessarily party to their struggles. You'd need a new protagonist, but Adam Jensen wasn't ever the most interesting possible protagonist. It shouldn't be that hard to build a system for - add a "clank score" or something that opens up new options like high or low karma in other RPGs.

[@AceOfROMs]

Warren Spector wrote "Remodeling RPGs for a New Millennium" in 1999. 17 years later and developers still haven't gotten around to addressing a lot of recurrent criticisms.

[@magemagemage]

google searching his name to look for what you had just mentioned and seeing that he directed "epic mickey" after deus ex and getting a massive wave of confusion

[@blackout295]

@@magemagemage lol

[@isletoflangerhans8281]

MD was a good burglary simulator.

[@nsa3679]

Like all other DX 💀

[@LewisRachman]

If you think the Icarus thing is stupid in a video game, there's an _actual_ brand of parachutes called Icarus Canopies. I had to ask if this was a joke when it was given to me for my first jump, but apparently I was the only one whom that shocked ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@docterfantazmo]

That'd go great with my *Titanic* brand sealant.

[@cloak211]

While we're at it, I really wonder who decided to name a car model Odyssey.

[@lugbzurg8987]

I think we should have a conversation about this in person. I'll fly over there in my Hindenburg-brand aircraft!

[@fitandhappy42]

Along similar lines I've never been sure Trojan is a good name for a condom brand. :|

[@Robert399]

Someone used "whom" correctly in an internet comment!

[@yokokuramaful]

"Confuses not taking a position for having a nuanced view of the complexity of real issues." A.K.A. The South Park approach

[@Fewcus]

Not sure that's fair, mainly because I don't think South Park ever really tried to claim it's got a nuanced view. It's a show that has often reveled in its own stupidity, for better or worse.

[@comfyDev]

Sometimes, but South Park takes a genuine position on a lot of issues at the end of the episode. And I'm not even saying I agree/disagree with their positions, but they do take them quite a bit. So it's sometimes inconsistent about how it tackles issues between "lets make fun of everyone" vs "lets make fun of people who don't believe x".

[@challengingshout]

Not true I can think of plenty episodes where they're firmly on one side of the fence not just easy pickings like psychics either. Has to be said they're not doing anything too hardline past couple seasons

[@HotaruZoku]

Admittedly, it probably IS at least a bit of that, avoiding a statement and believing that makes you open minded. BUT. I'll take "no obvious position" over "jamming a moralistic assertion of how I'm supposed to think if I want to be a GOOD person" down my throat ANY day.

[@arsenalagent6675]

+Atticus M. Maybe more like the GTA approach?

[@5310751648]

16:13 "It' doesn't evoke this illusion of depth. It purports to have symbolism. It purports to examine real cultural issues. It purports to tell a grown up story for grown up people. But really it a smarty person symbolism and politic stuff as a theme" Now that right there, is a great sum of this game and so many big budget games and movies these days. Super great vid, Errant!

[@SpoopySquid]

Reminds me of this one comment I saw a while ago that described Christopher Nolan as "Michael Bay for people who know what a good scotch tastes like"

[@WritingOnGames]

The Icarian thing is interesting. You're right, in terms of the character of Jensen it doesn't make any sense (and the myth was already incorporated into the first game, like you say). I think in Human Revolution they just wanted to make a lazy point about humanity reaching beyond its means and the Icarus analogy was an easy way of getting that across, even if it didn't work for that character. At least in HR though, the entire aesthetic design of that game was evocative of the Renaissance - from the architecture to the music to the colour pallette. It was cohesive, and the Icarus thing as a result perhaps fits more in line with the aesthetic of that game rather than the character it's (pardon the unintentional pun) bolted onto. In MD, however, it quite literally makes no sense for them to keep going back to that. You're telling me Jensen just keeps dreaming about himself as an Icarian figure? Why?! It takes the analogy from a wider, more political one about the game as a whole and places it firmly in the personal which, like so many things about MD, just feels tacked on and unpolished.

[@WritingOnGames]

(Also, great video as always man!)

[@tanarisis]

I would call it a simple mind candy. Its basically equal to Jensen being cool cyborg in a coat and wearing shades. You see the Icarus thing, you know the legend behind it, you know its a cool concept and it makes you feel as if the game is deeper than it actually is. Its similar to when people give cool names to stuff to invoke sense of intelligence and knowledge

[@Jd-808]

this would be one of the greatest comments sections around, if i had a stash of percocets, but instead its all just pain

[@ericemigh3869]

I actually see as more of a foreshadowing and question. Will Adam ultimately, like Icarus, come crashing into the see from his hubris in thinking that he could defeat the Illuminati? Or will become an angel of salvation, saving humanity from itself? We know it's the former, since, well, DE1 and all, but for Adam it's still a question. The Icarus imagery is the grim sword of fate telling us, the player, that, despite all our efforts and all his power, there's really only one way for Adam's story to end: with him either dead or a participant in what he hates. So, in short, I actually think the imagery works if you view the symbolism on a less immediate basis.

[@ericemigh3869]

Filip Yttergren As I said in my comment, it's a prediction that Adam WILL fall, eventually, not that he is going to fall within the immediate games. It's like read the first few books in a series about, say, trying to prevent India from being colonized; even if things haven't gone to shit yet, you know that, by the series's finale, they will. It's meant to add a touch of grim fatalism to the admittedly somewhat triumphalist tone of the games. As for the Democles Sword (I assume that's what you meant by Democritus), I didn't really intend to evoke that particular symbol with my "sword of fate" metaphor; perhaps "executioner's axe" would have been more apt. While one could make the argument that Adam's powers draw the attention of the more powerful, meaning that, like Democles, he's a wire's snap away from death, that's independent of the Icarus imagery. All I actually meant was that the Icarus imagery is meant to highlight the futility of Adam's efforts. I'm sorry I accidentally let the two symbols overlap.

[@FooMaster15]

I guess "Anti-Icarus Glow Ball Lightening Lander" wasn't as catchy of a name.

[@phobiandarkmoon]

Yeah but it could also have been called the Daedalus landing system

[@InnuendoXP]

maybe it was named as-in "bet Icarus could've used one of these." way. i.e. save yourself from being like Icarus, with the Icarus landing system

[@Robert399]

The "Suraci" Landing System

[@OmFGCloWn23]

Shame they went with an oppression narrative rather than a French Revolution and Reign of Terror theme, which would have been closer to the progression of events in the game. The augs are like nobility in that their augmentations cost a lot of money and they're - literally - more powerful than the populace, but then the lower classes get angry and throw all augs under the guillotine, even war vets, disabled people and such.

[@Proctor_Conley]

THAT's a nuanced story that is grey but keeps it's mouth shut. Ultimately, the lesson is "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" but because gamers are so commonly narcassistic they'd say the plot was whatever they wanted! It would even pander to the current Anti-Progressive trend, and via micro-aggressions too, which would give the game tons of free PR & advertising (while silencing criticisms)! A good, wholesome, corporate friendly product. Just like Disney.

[@Desi-qw9fc]

Your complaint about how Jensen is never really oppressed even though he's part of an oppressed underclass made me imagine how interesting it would be if the game did take that route, and how they might have done it. Maybe the player approaches a checkpoint, and armoured police with high-caliber weapons (better to pierce aug skeletons) have them enclosed on two or three sides. The police direct the player to stand still, or crouch, or look away, or stand in a designated spot - the rules seem to change randomly every day. The officer takes Jensen's ID, and then the player has to wait for a random amount of time (2 to 10 minutes, let's say) before he gets his papers back and is allowed to continue. Maybe sometimes the cop won't give the papers back straight away, maybe he wants to grill Jensen a bit more just to feel big. Or maybe a group of cops approaches Jensen in the street to do a surprise search. They find a weapon, they all get agitated and point their weapons at him, and the player has to hold down some button combination without letting go until they finish running Jensen's ID and verify who he is.

[@SpartanWolf222]

As someone who has started with Human Revolution, then played Mankind Divided and Deus Ex: GOTY side-by-side, I will never understand the position of people who say, "Instead of solving big problems with tons of approaches and optional objectives ... [MD or HR] asks you to go from A to B, but lets you pick from a few paths as you go." DX:GOTY and Mankind Divided are almost exactly the same style of level design, and there are constraints of your options in every game. However, what makes MD different from all previous games beforehand is how the optional/side-content has added non-linearity to a series that desperately benefits from it. Had that same philosophy been applied to the main missions--letting you visit them in whatever order to shape the larger narrative--MD would have easily 1-uped the amount of options of the original.

[@stefanvalkola4513]

UPDATE: This text was updated once after posting, thank you for reading. I just recently watched the 44 minute documentary about the creation of Human Revolution and I think some things are starting to make sense to me when it comes to that game and this one: 1) Both the Lead artist and writer failed to explain what "cyberpunk" means, the lead writer even going as far as describing it as some obscure genre that people have never heard about ("...but it's like the Matrix"). Likewise, the lead artist differentiated it from other sci-fi by saying it's not like the future in Star Wars "or whatever". The simplest and most on point description of cyberpunk is "High tech, low life", meaning stories centered on the underworld of a high tech future. Instead, these developers were rambling about conspiracies, corporations, rapid and sudden technological changes to society "and stuff". Basically, Squeenix take on Deus Ex is that it is "things and stuff". It's a hipster "Yeah I'm into the classics" position without genuine understanding of the material. You're mimicking bullet points of other works. You remember how the 'Doom' movie was described to the public early in development? "It's about a zombie outbreak on mars, just like the games". That's how they understood Deus Ex: It's about corporations and secret agendas and references to the real world. 2) Much as they keep repeating "we respect the source material (please don't kill us)" in the documentary, an equal amount of time is spent diminishing Deus Ex as just a product of it's time as an excuse to change everything in Human Revolution. I strongly believe that many of the team leads interviewed in the documentary has no history with or have not really researched and analysed the original game. They understood well enough that at it's core a Deus Ex game must have an open leveldesign, but beyond that they made their own game and setting. The lead writer seemed content with dropping hints and references tying it to the first game, but otherwise felt that they had free reigns as it is set 20 years in the past, which is quite a bizarre thing to say but I get what she means. In the end, Human Revolution strayed way far and became it's own universe that can not possibly match up with the original game. Mankind Divided is not even pretending to be a prequel any longer, which just goes to show they never cared from the very beginning with Human Revolution either. The teams behind both games are exceptionally talented and I believe they achieved what they set out to do with each game: Hyper-stylised action games that have lots of "cool" stuff that tick off a lot of items on a check list of things that are marketable. Moving on to Mankind Divided specifically, I want to say I'm deeply, deeply disappointed with "Aug lives matter". By saying Aug Lives Matter and then adding the message (paraphrased) "All human lives matter", the writers responsible either do not understand or has deliberately distorted the meaning of the real world "Black Lives Matter". The use in the game doesn't make sense. The premise of BLM is that we expect the police to try and preserve life where possible, that the decision to kill another human is a serious moral question for police officers. The rise of BLM comes with the anecdotal observation that some American police may not value the lives of black people as highly as others, resulting in shootings that may not have happened if the victim was of another ethnicity. Black Lives Matter and it's in-game equivalent Aug Lives Matter, is not a general statement that one group of people should be treated as equals, it is specifically about one group of people who'se lives are not sacred and they risk being killed like insects rather than humans by uncaring police. That isn't the situation in Mankind Divided. Augs are segregated and subjected to bigotry, but that's something else and something more than just the fear of being shot by police. The reference to Black Lives Matter combined with the message "All Lives Matter" is deplorable. All Lives Matter was formed not as an affirmation of human value, but as a direct tool to put down Black Lives Matter activism by distorting the meaning: "No, black lives are not special/superior, they are equal, because all lives matter". Intellectual dishonesty.

[@chinesemassproduction]

Actually, I would hardly ever call that BLMs message. If ever at some point that was its original intention, then so be it, but as time went on it became clear that BLM became a platform for hatred against white people and a group that actively condemned all police, not just those who showed little to no reverence for the lives of black people. BLM became a racist hate group ironically enough, and it unfortunately helped groups like Antifa, which is a left wing terror organization, gain attention and members because the naive individuals that believe they are doing some good by supporting these groups. These same people are doing nothing more than lashing out at the wrong group of people over a very complex issue they hardly understand, all while spouting meaningless rhetoric and spreading hypocritical messages to anyone willing to listen.

[@Proctor_Conley]

CMP, Stephan Valkola literally mentioned your view & stance as the byproduct of "intellectual dishonesty", a integral aspect of thier statement, and all you did was state it in full. You've swollowed all of the standard propaganda, and no one wants to reconnect your warped perspective to reality. You are so fundamentally ignorant of context, perspective, bias, & so much more that it's clear you've cobbled together your view from hearsay. The only solution would be a exhaustive & comprehensive education, over many years & a dozen subjects, with extensive citation of evidence. Even then, most of it would be lost to your narcassism. Quick examples: The BLM Movement isn't a anti-white hate group (they struggle to be in any way compaired to the Black Panthers or any of the many & influential White Supremacy organizations; equating them is wildly disconnected from reality). Anti-Fa is a small and unpopular group. Compaired to Incels, anti-equal rights groups, Black Block Anarchists, New Age Hippies, & even Terfs they are a tiny, unpopular, & lack influence. Further, their poor behavior & power is blown out of proportion & exacerbated as to distract from & empower a very particular political party that is marred in controversy. You know, the one that controls the Presidency, Senate, Congress, the Supreme Court & has been ousting political opponets all while creating a myth of the "Radical Left" & a "Deep State" justify a long & wild story of "Alternative Facts". Do you even remotely understand how you've been taken for a ride?

[@CayeDaws]

@@chinesemassproduction you sound like an npc

[@Dev-nr4dw]

@@chinesemassproduction This did not age well.

[@remembertotakeshowerspleas355]

15:56 holy shit, did that guy just rip out a demon's stomach and feed it to him? Shit.

[@MightySavagE]

thats doom for ya

[@jamesmason3734]

It was actually the heart, so you know that game em heart burn.

[@infernocop1009]

RIP AND TEAR RIP AND TEAR YOUR GUTS YOU ARE HUGE, THAT MEANS YOU HAVE HUGE GUTS RIP AND TEAR

[@Mafia200100]

+James Mason No, that is the stomach. According to the game's fluff, they eat basically anything, and during digestion it gets turned into a highly toxic and corrosive substance that can only be properly contained by their stomach. If the stomach is pierced, the contents burst out. Something like that, anyway.

[@MrDanielZie]

Hey, I validated Edward's permit and was able to meet Irenka in that Getto thing, so I actually was confronted with my choice again. I guess you did just miss that ;)

[@_Sasha_Sasha]

You know, the real reason the story didn't work well for you is because you probably never went to the bottom of this one elevator shaft where the REAL story is. I can't believe you missed this.

[@titanspirit7238]

Good to see your channel growing. I like your content, for the most part. Keep it up, your doing a great job.

[@MaraK_dialmformara]

I know you've given up on the idea of ludonarrative dissonance, but can we say that Deus Ex: Mankind Divided has ludonarrative apathy? That the story and gameplay don't so much clash as wave at each other from opposite sides of the street.

[@fatimaibrahim9044]

I get what your saying but I don't see what would be gained from saying "it has ludonarrative apathy" vs "it has a oil and water approach to story-telling". And honestly quite a number of people react negative to term like ludonarrative regardless of how appropriate it might be.

[@Rc3651]

We're not using ludonarrative dissonance anymore? I liked it, what was wrong with it? That they're big words, and thus you're pretentious for using them? That's always been irrelevant, in my eyes

[@fatimaibrahim9044]

It was over- and mis- used alot a while back. It's still has negative connotations.. Personally I think the connotation is underserved and I like the term ludonarrative, but is use, where synonyms will do fine, will alienate some segment of viewers.

[@MaraK_dialmformara]

fatima Ibrahim One reason I like "ludonarrative" is that using the fifty-cent word, rather than coming up with a tortured metaphor, makes me sound less like Jim Sterling (thank some god for him).

[@arsenalagent6675]

I think _ES_ did a good job of summarizing why 'ludonarrative dissonance' is such a problematic term in "The Debate That Never Took Place", wherein he likened the idea of talking about "narrative' and 'gameplay' as two independent (and thus, independently meaningful) aspects of a work to the idea of 'cinenarrative disonance'. It's actually the "ludonarrative" part of the term that's very problematic, not the "dissonance" Gameplay in a narrative videogame is a part of the narrative. Take _Uncharted_, for example-the go-to example gamers use when talking about 'gameplay' and 'story' supposedly being in conflict. Drake's a good guy in the cutscenes and a glibly homicidal guy when out of cutscene. Ergo, so it goes, LND. So does _Indiana Jones_(to which _Uncharted_ is so obviously something of an homage) suffer from CND? No? Why, exactly? We intuitively understand _Jones_ as pulpy rah-rah action fun times where the way the character presents on paper vs. on screen still add up to a complete experience that doesn't feel contradictory even though rationally, objectively, it kinda is. We understand photography and dialog in movies as a parts of a single, inseparable gestalt of meaning. And yet Drake, who's basically the same guy, doesn't get the same reception-we think of systems and mechanics in videogames as separate from the rest of the work in a sense. LND damages the discourse around what videogames mean, flattening our perceptions of what our experiences mean and selling the power of videogames' native modes of expression, in free interaction with other modes inherited from older forms, short. We can still talk about how specifically "gamey" parts in a videogame contribute to the total work, but framing them as this separate thing setting next to this separate other thing has lead critics to stumble pretty often.

[@SaddenedSoul]

Personally, I found it interesting how Jensen is "outside" the aug-natural battle. He's an augmented person who never chose to be augmented, and he's powerful enough--and equipped with enough governmental authority--to avoid the explicit (and often violent) abuse all other augmented people experience. In one respect, yes, it's safe. But it was also a means of transplanting me into Jensen's shoes, and I had to decide to what extent I interfered with the world around me. Perhaps the game doesn't provide very much incentive to fight the abusive police you see constantly, but I typically made a point to avoid them, even though the thought always occurred to me: Should I intervene? I have the power and the means, *but I don't want to waste the resources*. And then I was gone, feeling vaguely guilty. The game facilitated me being a spectator and invested me with the choice, but without the system pushing me in a direction, I didn't *want* to participate. That says a lot, at least to me, about myself and probably a lot of people like me. There's one side quest in the middle portion of the game that also did a good job of guilt-tripping me badly. Those of you who have played know the one I'm talking about. What's interesting for me is how the game constantly asks the player to choose between the forest and the trees, if not explicitly, then in the situations it presents to you and in the ways you can respond to those situations. That I chose the forest until the game all but threw a tree at me made me question myself, to say the least.

[@Antiformed]

The BlackLivesMatter thing is just a coincidence. They said that AugsLivesMatter slogan was there years ago before BLM. But that's just what the devs said, who knows. Deus Ex was a series known for predicting the future, not outlandish to think they accidentally predicted BLM as a slogan.

[@MightySavagE]

even if they copied it, I dont see a problem

[@noiryork]

That's a pretty specific. and convenient, thing to predict. Devs tend to say a lot of things that can't be corroborated by the public. And then there are dev who just outright lie about shit, ala Hello Games.

[@stevesan]

+MightySavagE it's just dumb and cheap. like imagine if the game had two towers fall as the inciting incident.

[@Antiformed]

Kitsch Blues You're comparing nobody indie devs to Square Enix.

[@Optiganone]

"like imagine if the game had two towers fall as the inciting incident." Are you talking about first deus ex?

[@Tee-qh5wg]

*offer critiques* "Why did you say this game is garbage and everyone who plays wasted all their money and time?" Every. Damn. Time.

[@Robert399]

About this whole "believing nothing" thing, it's fine, even admirable, for _people_ to avoid strong beliefs on issues they don't understand. But said people don't *create art* about their lack of beliefs. That's the problem with things like Mankind Divided and South Park: it's not that they don't make a point; it's their self-congratulatory exhibitionism of their choice to not make a point.

[@Alucard3362]

If you don't help 1 NPC to get the papers to stay in Prague, you can meet them in Golem city later, so please don't say you will never hear from them again.

[@Mishakeet]

bioshock infinite flashbacks. i reaIIy hate how these games have nothing to say about anything whiIe inserting the issues

[@Selestrielle]

It really has to do with the development process for AAA games. Huge teams mean it's really hard to focus your workers on the core principles of your game. The more people are working on a project, the simpler your message has to be to make it all the way through development

[@TheCrippledHalfling]

I do think that that's only part of the problem and something that can be worked out. Look at the film industry. Nearly every movie released in theaters has at least several hundred people working on all of the aspects of the film. Certainly not all of them are as important to the actual design of the movie but you could argue it's the same for video games. How much does your average programmer actually have a say in the final presentation of the game compared to your average post artist or even technical director have in the final design of a movie? In games as in Film, there's almost always a director and lead design and production team involved with what the final presentation should be. That can certainly be lost in translation when hundreds are involved with correctly translating that vision, but in the Film industry's case, there are usually several big budget films a year that mostly seem to work past this. With the video game industry, I think it's just a case of lazyness or just disinterest in making anything with much philosophical meaning. This is largely due to the whole "Games as a product" view that was talked about on a previous episode that a lot of big publishers still take.

[@matrixfull]

That's why most of AAA story/shooting games get me unsatisfied. They hint to bigger depth than they are actually willing to explore. And more often than not they hint how anything could happen but your choices make story very linear ; you don't feel like your play effects anything other than minor. And since whole hey I'm badass thing don't satisfy me anymore ; it did a little when I was 12 ; but I outgrew it ; since it's not enough ; I need some kind of depth and consideration or interest that would come from feeling mortal. Alien Isolantion was very unique making you fragile; I'm not saying that's only way to go but it's definitely refreshing to think you're not super special by your immortality just because you're the human that plays game rather than some AI.

[@Tsar_NicholasIII]

Pretty sure it's just about marketing. They want games to be consumable for as large an audience as possible... An escapist fantasy is one of the easiest kind of games to sell....

[@bobbinsthethird]

You can react to their bark though. You can punch them in the face.

[@kaystarling7665]

This only underscores his later point that the gameplay only permits actions and events that make you feel like a powerful badass, thus robing the game of it's ability to meaningfully critique the powerful or power structures which make it's surface level-themes of discrimination and segregation happen.

[@ZPM7]

Haven't played the game, but wouldn't that just get you gunned down in the street?

[@bobbinsthethird]

Kay Starling So what are you suggesting, giving a button that lets players start crying after being made fun of? What button would be the crying button, left trigger?

[@jiyangli9779]

No buttons: you just cry. You go home and cry because thousands of people want you dead for something you can't change. You automatically fast travel home and stay there for a few days because just being alive is painful. And then for completely unknown reasons later in the game, you get killed. Because that's what happens to people like you. You die for no good reason.

[@phobiandarkmoon]

If anyone else sees you, yeah. I think that's actually an interesting choice though - constantly being irritated and harassed by a police force you know you could (and shouldn't) subdue/kill with relative ease.

[@IXPrometheusXI]

Dude, I love your videos. Thank you so much for taking the time and effort to make them. I hope you continue.

[@Ribbonnanza]

I agree that the game could have definitely said more and actually taken a stance on the issues it presents, but I'm kind of glad it didn't. It's nice to have a power fantasy with a minority lead character, even if that minority is fictional. I'm a trans woman, so it was really cool to play a game in which I can at least somewhat "fight the oppressive bad guys." Adam Jensen is still a cis, white, straight man but I can still identify more with him than most protagonists for AAA games. If Jensen was a part of a minority, people would have made a huge "SJWs are running video games" stink too. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that it's nice to have something remotely targeted towards me without a bunch of people trying to ruin the fun. And most forms of media with lead minority characters right now take a "oh woe is me, don't you feel bad about this" approach, which makes people outside of that minority group feel good about how they feel bad for that minority, and then nothing really changes. I definitely hope the next game takes some sort of stance, and hopefully can teach people something, but I still really enjoyed Mankind Divided for what it is, story and all. Anyway, there's my rambling and disjointed two cents. Great video!

[@0RecklessAbandon0]

Along with the other things mentioned starting at 4:42 I also found similarities to WW2, with augs being treated like the Japanese or Jews by being forced into camps and Ghettos.

[@Titan360]

Yeaaaah, its more like the "Icarus" analogy is more about the wildest dreams of transhumanism in the Dues Ex world in general, and how they might go wrong, rather than anything about Jensen. If Jensen had a story arc, or was really, really into being a cyborg in a "I can do anything!" kind of way, or had an unattainable personal ambition we get to see him sacrifice more and more for and then watch him crash and burn (or even succeed! And the emotional payoff was from how artfully the writer set up the audience to be blown away by him actually winning)- something that would match the ambiguously ominous/hopeful but apprehensive vibe of the Icarus imagery. Just...something. Maybe the bad guys keep doing bad things with augmentation and other technology, creating a bad rap for cyborgs and science in general, turning the world more and more luddite, and everytime Adam saves the day, the Humanity Institute finds some way to spin things in the most negative light against augmentation. And maybe instead of being kidnapped by terrorists, Adam's girlfriend is in the hospital (or cyrogenically preserved) and needs a cure which society is trying to block or the government is cutting funding for or.... Just, something! MY BRAIN NEEDS A PLOT THAT IS NOT ANAREXIACLY THIN!

[@RiffSlider]

Great video. Seems to me many fans who "get" the original have been pushed further and further away from the franchise with its modern installations due to the really superficial nature of themes and issues represented

[@wusashicat1]

i think the Icarus imagery holds up because Daedelus made Icarus's wings but Icarus took it too far. in parallel, Sarif makes Jensen his augments, but it's Jensen's use of those augments that brings him close to the Illuminati which has lead to Jensen's fall (literally into the ocean after Panchea). it's such a simple allegory that trying to undermine it fails because it can be applied in so many ways

[@bansho7076]

Wasn't it Sarif who got Jensen involved in the conspiracy by ordering Jensen to pursue whoever it was that was trying to steal their secrets? All Jensen did was follow one lead after another.

[@Robert399]

Yeah but just saying "Sarif made Jensen's augmentations so Sarif = Daedalus and Jensen = Icarus" conveys no meaning. He's not driven by pride and it doesn't cause a calamitous fall. That's like saying "grandma made my jumper so she's Daedalus and I'm Icarus and woooh it's all so deep".

[@Robert399]

The only interpretation that I think has any merit (at least in HR, not MD) is that Jensen stands in for humanity as a whole. I don't think that's quite as stupid as Campster was saying because Adam's DNA is the key to fully unlocking augmentation technology (and that's actually a plot point). Whether or not his personality fits, Adam is the progenitor of the new man (hence the name, Adam) and this new augmented mankind _may_ be about to suffer an Icarian fall. I think this works in HR because the whole game has a minute to midnight feel. The inciting incident literally happens the night before the big unveiling of augmentation technology in front of the UN. Even if it had little to say about augmentation, HR did at least convince me that we're on the cusp of something big.

[@StickWithTrigger]

Except you know,like he said Jensen never asked for it meaning he never would've gotten the augs if not for the attack and he only pursued the leads cause it's his job and also he felt guilty of being unable to save his girlfriend

[@bulldog300]

It's funny how we can have a game like This War of Mine that encourages choices and still makes a profound statement, but games Like Watch Dogs or Far Cry 2 where you're funneled down a plot still can't muster a focused message.

[@xananacs]

Hey Errant, maybe your best commentary yet. It's thorough, manages to be insightful without falling in the judgmental, the choice of words is precise. My preferred stays the Beginner's Guide still, coz that was special, but this one is really good. I have nothing constructive to say, I just like to say thanks from time to time!

[@SpaceManSpliffz]

you're slowly becoming one of my top five youtubers sir, yet another badass video!!!

[@christianhansen2569]

So it's Human Revolution again, for better and for worse... Honestly, I really enjoyed HR, and I appreciate the more modal "path" oriented level design and gameplay mechanics. Perhaps it fits better with the way I play games, in 2-3 hour bursts playing around with the different paths, experimenting whether or not I could pull off a tricky gas-grenade-snipe-dual-takedown combo without setting off an alarm or something like that. And honestly, for a game that's style over substance, it's got style to spare. I love the grounded cyberpunk aesthetic, it's what I wish Watch_Dogs actually went for, and I love just walking around taking in the sights and chilling to the synth-y soundtrack. Finally, a question: what is your opinion on recommending games like Deus Ex that are super influential yet antiquated? I feel trying to go back and play DX1, leaving aside the technical hoops to jump through, having gamed in this modern environment would leave me too alienated to actually appreciate it.

[@cloak211]

I'm no Errant Signal, but Deus Ex doesn't have many technical hoops to jump through beyond changing the rendering engine to OpenGL so the game doesn't look pitch black and rebinding some controls to a modern layout (both are pretty simple menu options). Aside from that it feels pretty familiar if you've played any first person games within the past two decades, and it does well to immerse the player with cool level design, music, and ambiance even if the visuals are straight out of the Vodoo GPU era. Heads up though: the voice acting can be downright cheesy in some areas, but it seems like Human Revolution and Mankind Divided lived up to that part of the original's legacy pretty well haha. Simply put, there are much, much worse games to go back to as far as antiquated interfaces and mechanics go.

[@christianhansen2569]

+cloak211 Are there controller options?

[@cloak211]

Christian Hansen I didn't even think to consider that. There's no native support, but there are some workaround configurations. Sadly, Deus Ex is just old enough to be one of those games with more keybindings than usual, so it's best enjoyed with a keyboard and mouse. The PS2 version of the game has good controller settings, but that version of the game is very watered down.

[@HotaruZoku]

A kindred spirit. Here I was worried I'm the only one who finds themselves exploring open world games for the sake of soaking up the atmosphere and getting into open-ended experimentation when the urge strikes. Gas grenade shot take down.....I may have to try that.

[@christianhansen2569]

HotaruZoku I wish you luck!

[@xandermagne2141]

Noah Gervais got me here

[@PeachyFennec]

I Feel like Mankind Divided should've discussed a BLM style movement but I also feel it would've been way too rough to kind of talk about with this style of media, People got up in arms when the ads made references to the phrase so if they didn't get it right it would've been media suicide. I want topics like this talked about in games, I really do, but deep down I just feel we won't do it justice and will just paint a picture of "if you don't agree, you're awful" instead of letting the player decide for themselves

[@chasedespain7109]

+

[@Selestrielle]

Augs are a terrible metaphor for BLM actually. They are meant to be mostly rich people who bought into the augmentation fad, and ended up with kill switches in their heads that they can't control. They weren't born augmented, they don't pass on the augmentations to their kids, and they are a legitimate potential threat regardless of their personal values. It really has nothing to do with the situation of PoC in America.

[@REGTheRipper]

Mostly rich people? HR doesn't portray them as such. Most of the augs you encounter are thugs, soldiers, mercenaries, construction workers or whores. And all of them are neuropozyne junkies which a lot of the times they are dependent on someone else to provide them, ie their employer. Augment life had serious drawbacks for 95% of the enhanced. And while getting augmented is a (more or less economically forced) choice, it's also irreversible without giving up working arms/legs/etc and spending the rest of your life as an invalid cripple. Also, let's not forget that the incident and its aftermath culled 90% of the over 70 million(!) strong augmented population. HR's (and therefore) MD's augs were definitely not "only rich guys".

[@Selestrielle]

ReggX Not "only" rich guys for sure, but even in HR, it made little sense that lower classes were able to afford these body augmentations. In general, the premise misses the mark in terms of commentary about class disparity.

[@HotaruZoku]

Acknowledging that decisions are up to others to make isn't' exactly common for humanity in general. I suspect it's more so in Dev studios, but even then...still a minority regarding mechanical decisions.

[@Warclam]

Adam's beard really needs a trim.

[@NickValiullin]

Б

[@shevek161]

This spoke my thoughts on the game better than I could have. I seriously hope that the devs get to watch this and learn from it. As always, an outstanding video

[@CrimsonSlug]

I am surprised that they didn't go the opposite way with their in game "racisim". They could have easily had the Augmented and Adam) stand in for the white and powerful part of apartheid. That way you can have the power fantasy but get a spec opps style gut punch when you get to see how much privilege you have. Honestly most people playing video games are on the powerful side of social imbalance so it would make sense to start there and then let you feel the other side. Imagine going under-cover later in the game, with the augs turned off, and feeling the weakness in contrast to past power.

[@taiiat0]

sounds like a neat contrasting experience, but Publishers tend to be too afraid of trying to sell a game that strays a single inch off of the road of 'walk forwards and win simulator' power fantasies.

[@maximeteppe7627]

tons of games made the "lose all your powers" thing at the beginning....they ddn't do that in either HR or MD? It would be very appropriate though, even for a short time.

[@taiiat0]

Maxime Teppe meh, if a big budget game features that sort of experience, the game will turn down to 0.1/10 to make sure that even if you're blind you could still complete it. and then after a 30minute max segment, you'll be back to 'the Enemies bow down to your presence' as usual.

[@maximeteppe7627]

***** that is not a matter of difficulty: usually the aim is not to make things difficult, but to make the player want to use the abilities he lost. And it is not a risky thing to pull off: it is a relatively common trope of VG, or at least was, 10 years ago. It happens in Zelda Windwaker, prototype, and the first assassin's creed, to name a few. What i meant was the one level thing, where you have every ability, then lose it and restart from scratch, or the traditional short level where you have no weapon. I specifically talked about established AAA game tropes that would be appropriate in that case.

[@taiiat0]

Maxime Teppe i don't find much to be garnered out of that trope when the games that employ it tend to be about the opposite situation of it. i'm not going to 'respect my power' or whatever else when it's a game and i know that it's going to go the lame route of making sure to never challenge the Player because then someone might not win 100% of the time. meh.

[@BruceWayne-gv9zs]

bioshock infinite is still the worst shit I've played that wants you to feel smart without actually being smart.

[@SuperPiposaru]

Booker, catch!

[@EldritchAugur]

*Groans.*

[@Canama139]

WAIT A MINUTE THAT CARD

[@WHATISUTUBE]

I dont even think the game was TRYING to be deep. I played it and it didn't feel like it was trying to make a point or anything. It's ''journalists'' saying that it's smart. It's like they never heard of Virtues Last Reward, which did Infinite's plot a year earlier and MUCH, MUCH, MUCH better. Why can't I hold all these logical and well thought out twists.

[@EldritchAugur]

WHATISUTUBE Attacking Infinite is the cool and edgy thing to do. Seems like everybody became experts on quantum physics overnight and knows everything about it ever. I agree with you, the game never came off to me as pretentious or trying to be so deep at any moment. The Multiverse aspects of the plot seem to be all anybody can talk about and it's really nothing but a framing device. The game was never interested in being authentic to multiverse theory, it was interested in telling the story of Booker, Elizabeth and Comstock. Why people treat this is as the most heinous crime in the history of video games is completely baffling to me.

[@ferchrissakes]

Great video as usual. I was very much thinking about the DX:HR video when playing DX:MD, and yeah, the same critiques apply. On a storytelling level, what I found the strangest about DX:MD was how the stakes were _not_ raised. The inciting incident is the train station bombing; the grand finale is another (attempted) bombing, by the same perpetrators, using the same bombs even. But while the Prague station had an establishing cutscene, the London threat is completely unseen, and just told to you. Thar's people in them thar skybox buildings, Adam! And then the game is over. It's like if Star Wars IV started _and ended_ with a ship being boarded by Storm Troopers, instead of blowing up the Death Star. Like many others I kept waiting for the story to ramp up and send me to another hub world or something. Instead, credits rolled.

[@Met182]

Really good and thoughtful analysis. You have a new subscriber! Deus Ex on PC back in 2000 was my favourite game and is still one of my favourite video game memories but the newer versions just feel shallow and empty. Like nothing you do really matters. Your Thief AAA video was spot on too. Excellent work.

[@Robert399]

I'm not one to moan about series continuity but it is worth noting that this game takes a big steamy dump on the Deus Ex timeline. Seriously, how do we get from aug apartheid to the setting of the original Deus Ex? Human Revolution implied it wasn't far off with characters like Manderley and Bob Page in the background and the Grey Death already in development.

[@GeeNo_]

Take two writers on opposite sides of the political spectrum, have them talk about their disagreements on certain matters, then have them write two characters (Themselves in the game world basically) the player can interact with. Boom, you'd have more depth in the issues the game talks about from that alone.

[@Selestrielle]

That is until the game designers barge in the room and thrash both characters because they're "not fun" and "we're already over budget", plus "stop trying to make these games deep, the players don't care. All they want is to shoot things" and "we're part of the Square Enix group and it's tricky to present complex commentary about society in our games because according to our very conservative Japanese investors, rocking the boat with political debate is a big no no".

[@HotaruZoku]

While I agree that's how it is for MOST games, Deus Ex feels least of all like that, to me. No matter how far we get into the realm of this years EA sports title or this months CoD self-clone, there'll still be studios that remember the good old days. Hell, the mere point that we have a pair of Deus Ex titles made in the last decade that aren't Dai Katana level garbage is a hopeful sign in and of itself, as far as I'm concerned.

[@middaymeds]

Thanks for the upload! Hope you enjoy your week

[@NoobLord9001]

11:35 “or cool lady” only in Invisible War, sadly. If I had the patience to mod games, though, adding female protags for the other Deus Ex games would be a priority.

[@Theheatseekergaming]

It's sad but it almost seems like there's a formula about how the higher the budget a game (or any piece of media) gets, the less likely it is to have impactful themes or the more shallow its examination of a theme is. Maybe its part of that "design by committee" problem where the more money a game gets, the more people the creative team has to answer to.

[@forcefield6973]

Aaaaaand we're talking about ludonarrative dissonance again.

[@jasonmoyer]

For some reason I was thinking about DXHR and DXMD lately, and I've come to the conclusion that I wish they had just gone full on Cronenberg with the post-humanist stuff instead of having it there as a setting or whatever they were trying to do instead. It would have been cool if upgrading Jensen would have involved getting new biomechanical augs that actually impacted how characters reacted to you, so there would be a tradeoff between becoming more powerful and becoming a grotesque cyborg nightmare. I guess that would have meant setting it in a less fantastical sci-fi world, which is what they should have done anyway given it's a damn Deus Ex prequel.

[@FooMaster15]

Cool, another great video, man.

[@DcIxvi]

Glad you made a new video

[@Bane_questionmark]

I realize from a thematic standpoint it makes more sense to tie the Aug issue to things like racism or similar forms of persecution. But from a purely practical point of view it ought to be more similar to Gun Control.

[@SouravendraKrishnaDeb]

Really great review.

[@Turnoutburndown]

Best video yet!

[@kloakovalimonada]

Brilliant work, thanks!

[@peterfox6159]

It is EXACTLY because the game felt shallow and without meaning, or relavant choices and options to influence ... ANYTHING ... really, that I reconsidered to play through it a second time. Ant this is a title that has a NG+ mode which I love and wish evry game had. Sad but true.

[@mansoorknowssome]

Playing Rise of Iron yesterday, I kept thinking to myself how the the game itself(and Bungie) thinks it is SO COOL for having an epic sci-fi world, by virtue having it, and then doing basically nothing with it. I felt pretentious for having that thought. Bungie probably worked pretty hard to create their world, so it isn't fair to shit on them for it. However, your comment about games taking concepts for their most basic elements makes me feel a little bit better.

[@remyschrader9286]

"We don't tell you what to think. You have to make your own decisions. You live it." Yes, but if there is no way for our decisions to shape our character over the course of the game's narrative, we as the player cannot really live out our own decisions, can we? So the game is deliberately statement-less, and the fixed narrative-track restrains the player from saying anything either. Leaving us with a willfully silent story and muzzled actors, and a game that won't and can't say anything meaningful about anything significant.

[@Robert399]

Agreed, it may as well have had a "shout at the screen" text window that responds to anything you type with "wow that's deep!" and "aren't you clever?"

[@peterfox6159]

PERFECT! You nailed it. Thank you :)

You nail it in the head. Perfect analysis

[@GeraldMMonroe]

It sounds to me like the gist of this is "they should have had Obsidian help them with the NPC dialogue and logic". The Obsidian treatment - assuming it were similar to how they did Fallout New Vegas - would have meant that most guards would discriminate against you and would often falsely arrest you. To even get around town you'd need to get a disguise to hide your augments or bribe someone or something. Your augments would constantly burn neuropozine or spare parts or something and would break down if you don't scavenge for spares and then find an NPC able to install them. Dialogue choices would make a material difference in what an NPC thinks of you and will do for you. Basically the game is missing a whole complex layer of gameplay that FNV had. Not that FNV is perfect, but it did a lot more in a modern game.

[@nhatdminh]

FNV still turns into a power fantasy from the midway point, unless you play on very hard and dont invest in speech.

[@thepetrifiedbard1646]

Nass Lass then make a non power fantasy character. I’ve played through the game as some drug addled hippy trying to unite everyone man. Basically a no kill run where half the game I was fleeing and it was great.

[@theAphelionDT]

best monologue yet, good job

[@innerparty1]

Hey dude, your reviews stand the test of time like no other. I honestly can't wait for you to expose Cyberpunk 2077.

[@siddharthkrishna8463]

The idea of Jensen being analogous to a mixed race person who is treated better than others is extremely interesting. Too bad they don't do anything with it

[@gmckart]

thanks man keep up the good work

[@CaptainBagman]

I think power fantasies and serious moral questions can work together, it's just harder. The original Deus Ex did a fairly decent job at that, it was about someone that's given a lot of power who decides what's the best way to use that power, the player is given that choice in the end and it works. And my favorite part about Infamous 2 was when I picked up a car full of people to throw at a monster and for a split second I doubted myself. Gameplay-wise heroism is just an equation, if I throw the car I lose some karma but defeating the monster also gives me karma. But even making that utilitarian decision wasn't good enough for me, I started to realize that I was caring about those people on a deeper level than just numbers. Of course I threw the car anyway.

[@KayFabeMedia]

I am personally glad the game doesn't have something to say about the state of its universe and rather uses it as a backdrop. The alternative would probably be some ham-fisted allegory to real life events, and end up being preachy and eye rolling. I rather the cyber punk mystery stealth action game we got.

[@maya_gameworks]

Dude I would LOVE to hear your analysis on mechanics and balance in this game, alongside the story. Even more so than on the story :)

[@ericemigh3869]

Putting aside all the bigger levels vs better graphics debates, the arguments of who handled ambivalency better, and all that, and keeping in mind that I actually liked HE more than DE1, I will say that one major advantage that DE1 had over HE is that it wasn't part of a franchise, and was thus allowed to have a genuinely open and conclusive ending. The lackluster efforts of the sequel to combine all those endings into one is a sign of how final DE1 was meant to be. The new series often feels like it's treading water, narratively; now scared of giving the player TOO much power to change the world for fear of contradicting DE1 and/or making a sequel difficult to write. I'd honestly prefer it if the next game had one ending that would lead into DE1, and other endings that would create different, parallel worlds that would finally get the albatross of fear of series contradiction off the franchise's neck. Then again, the last time I saw a AAA game do that was Infamous: Second Son, which was... less that wonderful, so perhaps I should be careful what I wish for.

[@politure]

Great analysis!

[@talideon]

About Icarus: I believe that Adam Jenson in the dream is meant to represent humanity's embracing of augmentation. He's dreaming about where all this is _going_ (not where it _is_) through the lens of his own experience.

[@ThePhilosophersMeme]

ＡＵＧＭＥＮＴＡＴＩＯＮＳ

[@clydethomas6178]

Have you seen the Ross's Game Dungeon episodes on these games on the Accursed Farm channel ? I loved them and think you would appreciate them (especially his episode on the first game)

[@LearntheLore]

Other people could probably articulate this point better than I could, but I'm always going to be more in support of open-ended narrative design in games than a game that just wants to preach its point of view at the player...

[@DreBourbeau]

I thought We Happy Few did a somewhat better job at examining oppression through gameplay than the Eidos Deus Exes - you're starving the whole time, perpetually under surveillance, constantly forced to consume drugs under the threat of violence, and pressured to dress and behave a certain way. The design isn't super profound (there are even perks that let you turn off most of the persecution mechanics) but it's an interesting quasi-treatise about real issues because it's willing to inconvenience you and bully you around.

[@noblebearaw]

I really liked this discussion and think you did a good job with it, Chris. I agree, that there is a way of approaching themes or ideas that don't have to take a side but still explore the issue. For instance, consider books like Corey Doctorow's Little Brother. This being a game, I agree it would be best to explore it through mechanics as it would be a way to experience without telling and of course because mechanics are the form of the medium! At times like this, I'd love to understand better about how a game pipeline works, because here it feels like mechanics and story really were made separately from each other, rather than alternating, like, say starting with character, then deciding core themes, then developing mechanics, then enemies to challenge based on those themes and mechanics, then crafting the a fuller story structure, then making the levels and so on. Anyway, thanks and good stuff!

[@LittleJimmy835]

Christ, just listen to the "gruffness" of Adam Jensen's voice. Is he doing a Space Cop impersonation or something?

[@unclefunkle1034]

I know it's late, but the funny thing is that that's actually just the actors natural voice.

[@micheleiannello5195]

great review chris

[@ImUpsetThatYouStoleMyUsername]

Lol; the diatribe on the icarus thing at the end... you've got a good point.

[@DiscourseElysium]

Loved this video! Been a fan of yours for a long time. Just one thing I disagree on though: The writers have talked about how they specifically DIDN'T want to make a political statement or choice, but rather just lay it all out there and let the player decide. Your criticism is a common one and it's pretty fair I guess, but at the same time it's hard to hold something against them that they were never trying to do in the first place. It's like complaining a Mario game doesn't have enough guns or something. The developers were just straight up not interested in that. It's not a vapid or shallow piece of work just because Jensen doesn't soliloquize every five minutes about the philosophical and existential issues of existence in an augmented world. And games have room to take that approach more so than movies and books I think, because the player is more of an active participant in the game world and is able to make their own choices and judgement calls and choose to ask certain questions, go certain places etc. The world exists in a more passive state that you can explore and discover. That's jut my 2 cents.

[@Nethan2000]

Well, JC Denton certainly likes to preach about freedom and democracy, but the game straight up suggests he might be wrong and leaves to the player to decide if that's the case.

[@RemiStardust]

I wish this quality highbrow video would get millions of views...

[@Yetipfote]

1:16 wowowowowooooooow!!! You just dropped that...? like nothing?? this is mindblowing for me!

[@keydemographics]

Got disagree with you again about the oil-and-water comment about the Last of Us. The violence in that game reflected EXACTLY who Joel was. It felt necessary to him, and to Ellie who was shocked by what he was doing but ultimately reliant on him to keep doing what he is doing. I'll entertain the argument that there was too much third-person stealth murder shooty death, or that the cutscenes were the carrots driving you through the game, but not the inessential nature of the kinasthetics themselves.

[@MurcuryEntertainment]

This is a little weird, but I think one of the few big budget games that used a power trip to do something kind of interesting was Borderlands the Pre-sequel, because it puts you decisively on the side of evil, destruction and power. Even if it doesn't really go too deeply with it.

[@JanPospisilArt]

"The game doesn't tell you what to think , instead it gives you the choice to say what you think. This is bad." ... ... ...

[@DarkenedArc]

This is why I hate most modern day internet game critics. This fucking review eats.

[@noiryork]

Except he didn't say that?

[@FeatherWait]

Cool strawman argument bro.

[@Paradoxarn.]

This was the sense that I got from this video too but I don't think that Errant Signal intended to convey such a simplistic (and wrong) message. I think that he thinks that the game doesn't go into enough depth and isn't educational about the issues it deals with. He says that the game doesn't try to challenge the player about moral and political issues but instead just lets the player to preach mostly unopposed. He does indeed seem to be of the opinion that this is bad. Personally I don't want to play a RPG that is a propaganda game but I do want to play a game that presents persuasive and educated arguments from both sides of an issue. Mankind Divided is neither kind of game.

[@noiryork]

@relo999 and where exactly in the video is that insinuated? You're complaining about something that wasn't actually said.

[@DaeZey]

Imagining a game that explores augmented discrimination and I'm just picturing a survival game about disability. You start out stuck at home with limited access, able to do little, articles about people hating augs, but also stories about how corporate and government are removing accessibility ramps, support pensions and other social technologies, "because people can just get augs". You make the choose to augment, then have to try and get anti-rejection drugs, fuel to run them, ect. So you try and get a job. "People want a human touch" "Can't trust that you're not gonna break something with that steel" A survival game about surviving in society. Something like that might get closer to actually doing something with the idea. You wouldn't be able to do a power fantasy with it without undercutting it tho. Having the augments give you laser eyes or something mixes the metaphor in the same way X-men tends to.

[@LowenStrosst]

Nailed it, Chris!

[@gordongraham2064]

Eeg. Big fan of your work, but I can't help but be dissatisfied with your wish for the game to drop the empowerment fantasy a little to make some room for meaning or outside commentary. I mean, that's a great idea, but why do you wish for that here when you thought the lack of empowering stealth tools in Dishonored was a bad thing? I don't mean to suggest that this is hypocritical, I just wonder how much people - and critics in particular - are willing to forgive in terms of polish and game feel in the name of thematic cohesion. In Dishonored's case, it seemed like people were willing to forgive very little, since the non-lethal mechanics aren't BAD by any stretch. Granted, it probably has something to do with the dialogue and characterization being pretty starched-shirt boring, but I'm still surprised how few people were willing to accept that the passivity of the low chaos mechanics was a deliberate Lord of the Rings style commentary on the dangers of pursuing power. What was this video about again? Mankind divided? Haven't played it yet. Good video!

[@voiceofreason467]

I would suggest you get the game. It's great, plays very well and despite what the pseudo intellectual diatribe about racism, it actually does present you with ideas and themes that allows you to make up your own mind about it. But apparently people like ES here need to have the game take a stance and give a boring hour long lecture MGS style in order for it to be even worth mentioning.

[@ZPM7]

A thing that is in some piece of art has to actually be explored for it to be a theme. Doesn't have to be through tedious cutscenes; the original Deus Ex let you have conversations about power, government, and democracy. It had opinions about how technology and power shape society, and it built the game world on those opinions. It's window dressing VS foundation. My house is still basically the same house if I change the drapes. The foundation on the other hand...

[@voiceofreason467]

ZPM7 "A thing that is in some piece of art has to actually be explored for it to be a theme." That exploration is through the presentation of multiple positions through the use NPC's, overheard conversations, e-mails and even books scattered throughout the game. What constitutes an exploration of themes in a game? Because as far as I'm concerned, offering a number of positions and allowing the play to take a stance of his own accord is in reality, an exploration of ideas/themes/positions. "the original Deus Ex let you have conversations about power, government, and democracy. It had opinions about how technology and power shape society, and it built the game world on those opinions." And this game also does the same thing with side quests littered throughout the game. Just because it doesn't do it to the same level depth as the original, doesn't mean those moments don't happen. Did you even play the game before offering that insightful piece of verbal diarrhea? "It's window dressing VS foundation. My house is still basically the same house if I change the drapes." No, its not. ES has a hard-on for games with serious messages that shit the bed when it comes to the presentation of those messages because the game takes a stand and tells you what to think instead of allowing you to think it yourself. This game didn't jerk itself off, therefore its docked a lot of points for that.

[@gordongraham2064]

See, I don't necessarily agree that this model for discussing topics works. I actually agree with Chris that Human Revolution needed more substantive thought to back up the augmentation theme. the issue isn't that it doesn't spend a long time delivering a lecture on what the designers feel is the right way to talk about human augmentation, it's that the game doesn't use its mechanics to evoke or simulate fears or aspirations of this technology. You've already had all the possible assignments installed in your body, so there's not even a Gunther Hermann style question of being pressured to replace more of your body. none of the enemies or allies use augments in meaningful ways outside of the much maligned boss fights, so you never experience what Wayne Haas hints at, with augmentations being terrifying wildcards. Augmentation as a social concern barely factors into the main plot until Panchaea, and *Spoilers*'s raining isn't even the most compelling argument against augmentation in the game.

[@voiceofreason467]

Gordon Graham "the issue isn't that it doesn't spend a long time delivering a lecture on what the designers feel is the right way to talk about human augmentation, it's that the game doesn't use its mechanics to evoke or simulate fears or aspirations of this technology." That's not the fault of the game, that's a fault of your expectation for which the game was never meant to simulate in the first place. There is a time and place for expectations and that's for the marketing of the game. The game was never marketed in the sense that the mechanics would lend weight to the themes of racism, its stated that the world itself presents the theme of racism and that this is the world you live in. Bitching about how mechanics don't conform to this is nothing more than that... just bitching. It's a complaint that the game didn't live up to an expectation you concocted in your own mind when the game's own developers never gave that any indication of that's what to expect to begin with. The game isn't at fault for living up to your expectation, your at fault for expecting something out of the game in terms of its themes that it was never meant to simulate. Understand the difference. "none of the enemies or allies use augments in meaningful ways outside of the much maligned boss fights, so you never experience what Wayne Haas hints at, with augmentations being terrifying wildcards." You're kidding me right? At the beginning of the game you're confronted and later have to hunt down a mysterious group of augmented people with golden masks that use invisibility, advanced cyber-armaments and use cluster grenades that either choke you out, create cover for their friends to ambush you or are meant to push you back and can track you even through walls if you try to escape... and you're saying that none of the enemies use augments. It's clear you haven't played the game at all.

[@JPLeBreton]

extra thumbs up for the post-credits bit ;]

[@MrTizzay]

Another fantastic episode! I know you don't like doing "angry" videos, but I think it's important work to take these games to task for their themes and execution, especially as you do it in a way I don't see many other people doing. As always I'm passing this along to all the game design students I know, because this is how you learn that what you make reflects more than just its base-level text.

[@B1G_Dave]

This is the best Mankind Divided video on YT.

[@totoro3]

the icarus theme probably is because the later AI will be based on jensen and hlis fall probably will be that he is a sleeper agent and not the same jensen from human revolution. you dont seem to have played more than once the game. most, if not all secondary missions have an impact somehow in the story, like with your example of the passport. If you help one of them, you will find the other one in Golem city, and later on the K for kazdy mission

[@MartianBuddy]

I like the art and music

[@Aggrofool]

Campster, can you do a quick one about The Division?