STACK #142 Aug 2016

GAMES FEATURE

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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. reality 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.

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

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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

To do Human Revolution we had to be naïve, and to do Mankind Divided we had to have courage

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

"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

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