Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Preview

We totally asked for this.

Adam Jensen, two years after the devastating Aug Incident in 2027 back in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, has felt the brunt of the public's disdain. Hugh Darrow went against the Illuminati's wishes and activated a signal that sent every augmented humans into a murdering rage, killing millions before Adam could disable the signal at Panchaea. Since then, the world no longer trusts transhumans, branding the extremist arm of the self-described peacekeeping organization known as the Augmented Rights Coalition (ARC) a terrorist organization.

And with Adam Jensen now employed by Task Force 29 in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, an Interpol spec ops group that fights augmented terrorists (not far from Section 9 from Ghost in the Shell), he's at the center of the war brewing between augs and non-augs. At the same time, Adam has the sneaking suspicion that Task Force 29, knowingly or not, is likely a pawn of the Illuminati. By working undercover as a double agent, Adam hopes to flush out the Illuminati because, as he would say, he can only fight enemies he can see.

The closed-door hands-off demo I saw at E3 2015 for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided began with Adam getting off a train in Praha, where he has a conversation with a female contact while the audience gets a glimpse of the hyper-security at the station. Highly armored soldiers stand at entrances, blocking seemingly random augs from entering and sternly asking anyone suspicious for documents. But Adam only gets a few steps into the station plaza before he turns around and watches the train behind him explode. This prompts Interpol to send him to the augmented ghetto (or "aughetto") of Golem City, the headquarters for ARC, to infiltrate the organization and extract its leader Talos Rucker.

Landing near the headquarters with the help of Elias Chikane, VTOL pilot and support man, Adam drops into Golem City equipped with enough augmentations to be a one-man wrecking crew. His 10mm pistol and fragmentation grenades don't mean much, when he can fully cloak himself, dash over pits using the Icarus Dash, scan the area using an X-ray augmentation, fall safely from ridiculous heights using the Icarus Strike, and become an almost impenetrable tank by using Titan. Adam has all the tools needed to be a merciful soul and pass through areas stealthily and non-lethally, but he can very easily switch strategies and kill all adversaries in his way. He can pin suckers to a wall with a Nanoblade, or have that Nanoblade  explode like a sticky grenade, and flick from cover to cover with the speed of a cyborg ninja.

Once Adam reaches Talos Rucker, he has a philosophical debate that can sway Rucker, showing him that his pacifist ideals conflict with his armed resistance. Unfortunately, he fails the debate (partially because the demo had Adam kill many of the ARC rebels, and Rucker alerts the guards with a press of a button, but a few seconds later, Rucker surprisingly dies when his augmentations glitch out. Adam then makes a fast escape back through the level, but as he's being extracted by Elias Chikane, he looks back and sees a giant, one-eyed in a red coat who decides to let him go. Is this a friend or a foe? Either way, Adam will likely see more of this mysterious hulk deeper in the story.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided releases in 2016 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.