Note: thanks to Álvaro Perera for his collaboration in the preparation of this text.
Human Revolution always gave off the feeling that it was a game walking on a cable over an abyss, in which it would rush to the first change. And playing it seemed quite evident that the title was a “unique function” without great aspirations of a future ahead of it.
But the game shattered all expectations, garnered rave reviews, fell in love with the fans and sold very well, which earned him his pass to become a “franchise” in
that international framework that Square Enix has become. There is something unexpected about everything that surrounds Mankind Divided, starting with a protagonist that we took for sadly disappeared after the first game, but who has returned with all the strength of his peculiar charisma.
For all this it is also a sequel that has a curious nature. On the one hand is clearly a continuation of the ideas of Human Revolution in terms of mechanics,
design and style, those who come from that game will find something very familiar in every way and the key is that if they enjoyed the previous one, they also go to do it with this. The formula was a good compromise to bring the open and multi-path nature of the original
Deus Ex to a more controlled environment suitable for a multiplatform title of our day, without falling into the limitations of Invisible War, and that formula has created a game of very attractive action and that both in one style and another is very satisfactory, so no wonder at all that they have relied on it to shape Mankind Divided.
But on the other hand, it is curious that at the same time it does not seem like a sequel to how the plot is presented. Without going deep to avoid destry, it gives the feeling that more than a sequel, it is a beginning, more the beginning of a story based on what
happened in the previous one, than a continuation of it. It’s as if the studio was sending the message that since they liked their previous game, it is now when they are going to start building a saga around it, elaborating the intricate geopolitical situation and the power games
between the shadows that characterize the series . In fact, this aspect that was a little more covered in Human Revolution, has been expanded in Mankind Divided to give more space to conspiracies and power games between different world actors,
History puts us back in the role of Jensen after the events of the first game. Those same events have generated a divided world (in case the title casts some doubt), with the non-augmented population increasingly frightened of the augmented humans and demanding their governments put a barrier between them, while panicking at an increase of terrorist actions both from one
extreme and from the other. The prevailing and “justified” racism is noticeable particularly in places like the Czech Republic, in which the government decides to lead at its own risk an initiative to forcefully segregate both populations. His example is seen by the world as the precedent of a law that is being debated at the headquarters of the United Nations
n the middle of this powder magazine, our protagonist is now a member of the renewed Interpol, an organization formed by 29 countries with firm
agreements to share all information and develop a joint security, something essential to avoid humiliation as a coordinated attack between dozens of terrorist units that detonated bombs at the same time in several cities around the globe.
