STACK August 2016 Issue 142

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Having suffered from multiple delays, we can finally get our
augmented hands on
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
when it launches
this month. STACK caught up with the game’s lead writer Mary
DeMarle and brand manager Rodney Lelu.
M ankind Divided is the follow up to
2011’s Human Revolution, which
saw the reinvigoration and
reintroduction of protagonist, Adam Jensen.
Jensen is now a member of the covert
international counter-terrorism group, Task
Force 29, and must hunt terrorists and shut
down the mysterious organisation known
only as the Illuminati. It’s no small order.
Set in a dystopian future where folk with
bodily augmentations are shunned from
society and forced to live underground,
Mankind Divided perhaps isn’t that far-
fetched an idea. “I do think [this future]
might happen someday. I mean it already did
happen, right?” laughs Mary DeMarle, lead
writer on the project.
“The one thing I like to
say is, that history is set in
stone, but the future itself is
uncertain. It gives us a lot of
freedom to be able to create a
future that hasn't necessarily
happened yet, but we think
could definitely be possible.”
Of course, coming off the
back of Human Revolution,
there were some aspects of
the first game that were not-
so-well received. The MD team
at Eidos Montreal took this in their stride
and made the necessary improvements to
ensure the next instalment was the best
it could possibly be. “I’ll start with what
creative director Jean-François Dugas told
us when we started on Mankind Divided :
"To do Human Revolution we had to be
naïve, and to do Mankind Divided we had
Augmented
to have courage" because we learned a lot.”
DeMarle explains that while they were still
working details out when making HR, they
knew exactly where they wanted to go by
the time MD came around. “A lot of times
with HR we were feeling it out as we went,
trying to figure it out, and there was a lot
that worked out really, really well, and there
was a lot that we were like ‘okay, we need to
improve on that’.”
“Obviously we wanted to fix boss fights,
and change the way they were done in the
second game; we knew as we were doing
them we wanted to improve them.”
It wasn’t just gameplay that was improved
– the team made sure to look at story as
well. “This is a game about choice and
consequences, and in HR we did have
moments in the game on the 'critical' path,
that you would make a decision
and it would maybe impact
something later," says DeMarle.
"But it really was something
tightly controlled. In this one
we really wanted to push that
more; we wanted to have a
narrative that [meant] some of
the choices you make at the
beginning of the game would
really have an impact and send
the story in different directions.
We also wanted to include
things like maybe midway
To do Human Revolution we
had to be naïve, and to do
Mankind Divided we had to
have courage
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