So there’s certainly a complex dynamic at work here. Jensen appears to save Berk, endowed with ski-like prosthetic legs, from the brutality of a police state that’s stigmatised augmentations – only for Berk to blow up innocents in a later attack. A monitor informs us that he’s 27, “augmented and dangerous”, and evading arrest for the bombing of Ruzicka Station in Prague. The hooded figure in the announcement trailer is Ivan Berk. There’s a clear candidate for a similarly uncomfortable mirror image in Mankind Divided. Though undoubtedly mad, it was nice to meet another augmented superman on a mission – a little like one of those Doctor Who episodes when you see the Time Lord from the perspective of the normals. But he was no meathead merc: preaching convincingly about the privatisation of war in between quoting chunks of the Good Book (“Everything in it is so… evocative”). A Belltower operative gone rogue, Zelazny had given himself one final order – to hunt down the corrupt officials he’d been tricked into killing for. One of Human Revolution’s most compelling side quests was the brief chase for Michael Zelazny. After all, there’s always been an element of Bond in Deus Ex – at some point, we’re going to be taking a chopper to another metropolis on another continent. Let’s hope, too, they can continue that philosophy in Mankind Divided’s other hubs. If Eidos can contrast that new Prague with the splendour and space of the old one, they’ll have a truly memorable level or seven on their hands. We’re told to expect a choking atmosphere and temporary housing units stacked high. One of Jensen’s missions takes him to Utulek train station, now ‘Golem City’ – a ghetto for the augmented based on Hong Kong’s Howloon Walled City. And early signs are good for a Prague 14 years from now in Mankind Divided. It’s the perfect opportunity.Įidos showed an eagerness to exploit location in Human Revolution, drawing on Detroit’s proud reputation for engineering, as well as its struggle not to slip sideways into economic and social dilapidation. And Mankind Divided is going to 1,100 year old Prague, where it has access to enough Gothic flavour to evoke Thief 2, and the symmetrical palaces to match Human Revolution’s Renaissance ruffs. They’ve all been layered places – with one culture built atop another. And there’s the way that, in the border towns of Bethesda’s Cyrodiil, the cultural influence of Skyrim seeps into the roofing. Remember Viktor Antonov’s City 17, where Eastern Bloc solemnity was squeezed by alien architecture – and Dunwall, where electrified totalitarian checkpoints met Victorian chimney stacks. Think of some of the most compelling locales in games. Deus Ex is going to Europe! That ancient collection of lands with a history George-Ah-Rah could have written.
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