I never asked for this.. wait no, I am! Make the third game!!!

What were your favorite parts of Mankind Divided? Or what didn't work? Looking forward to hearing your experience. Also if you enjoyed the video, leave a like, it helps out immensely, thank you! Until the future : ).

All the best,
Dog Dad

Not having the conclusion to such an amazing game is a crime against gaming.

The game has separate metro lanes and train carriages for aug and natural humans. The police will frequently stop you and demand your papers if you use the non-augmented lane or carriages coz Jensen is heavily aug. The cutsence you get when you use the train is different too depending on which train carriage you use. I missed it the first time but after I noticed it in my later playthroughs I was so blown away by the details Devs put in the game.

IMO, Miller fits squarely into the "old guy who quite doesn't understand the world he finds himself in, but tries his best to keep it safe and fair anyways" trope. And that's a da*m fine trope to have for a character like him.

My Jensen pillow is a full body pillow with a text blurb saying “I didn’t ask for this.”

I really mean this when I say Mankind Divided is probably the best game in the franchise to me. The writing can be a bit iffy in some places as it tries its hardest to connect to Deus Ex, but the gameplay, visuals and exploration really make up for it.

The extra DLC missions too were also fun additions to the narrative.

Finally. A new underrated, small, extremely high quality, youtube channel, that makes overly long and drawn out retrospective videos on games I haven't played since i was a teenager. I love when i get these once every few month, gems of a recommendation amongst all the slop YouTube usually tries to push on me. I will he binge background watching all of these videos the next week or so. I appreciate the hard work and effort in advance!

Thing about this game is that the "real story" of this game isn't so much in the main campaign as it is in the side missions or it happens in the background, in the case of the opening quite literally. Waking up on the train, Jensen is seated next to the shrink. Walking on the train platform you are face to face with the bomber. Inside the station Madame Photographe is already there spying on you as she will again in another cinematic.
The cult living in the sewers is about hypnotic states, suggestion and augmentation. The corrupt police and checkpoint ID stuff leads you to the forger, I think you can figure out what identity and forgeries have to do with Jensen in this game.
Eliza shows up in a manner and doesn't recognize you as Adam at all and that whole serial killer murder mystery thing that starts in act 2 and finishes in act 3 comes down to a personality chip.
In a way I wish they hadn't done the post credit scene, but I think they wanted an incentive (next to NG+) to start up the game again which would've led people to see the shrink during the intro and then have player question everything. The post credit is an overt finger point and perhaps the only time when the game isn't being subtle at all (while not being purposefully hammy for a little comedic relief).

Yes I think Adam is a replica, I think his mind is a copy on a chip but he still takes constant suggestion to keep him on the mission of putting a face to Janus, I think where the story would've been going is a confrontation about if his real intent could win out, if a man could be copied wholesale and still be a man. Clearly Adam remained Adam when he was put back together, more machine than man, but a man. Now he's a full blown forgery and I think he would still be himself.

Also there is a vault in the bank that has possibly the real Jensen, or maybe another copy, but at least a Jensen shaped torso stuck in a cryo chamber.

The real tragedy of this is that if a sequel ever manages to come together despite the horrible odds, it will have something missing. The art director (JJB) has since moved on, gamedev isn't a one pony show and the talent at this studio is obviously incredible, but I do think his vision will be missed.
Parent company fuckery brought us to this, fuck corpo's.

There's a cool easter egg you can find in Jensen's apartment, specifically in his kitchen. It's a cereal box that you can interact with, and in doing so a short cutscene plays. Adam goes to pour out some cereal and a toy replica of the VTOL from HR falls out, with "Flyboy" handwritten on the bottom. Unless there's contradictory evidence, it is canon that you saved Malik in HR.

I love how this game still look fresh. I love Mankind Divided even more than Human Revolution. Awesome game.

The best moment in the game for me is right at the beginning, when Adam's trying to save the kids mother and realises she's dead, before we can see his emotions he flips the aug glasses on, his character is deeply conflicted whether he's human enough to care or a cold machine who kills people.

I can't believe it's been 9 years.

I think that there is two possibilities at this point. 1) The original Adam is dead, and this one is just a replica that was sent after Janus to begin with, and will likely be killed trying to reach Janus. Or 2) This Adam is the real deal and will try to reach Janus on is own accord, but he might have a control chip embedded within him, and as soon as he meets Janus, he'll be ordered to kill, possibly dying in the process. After all, these games are prequels to Deus Ex, and in that game, Bob Page is still out there doing what he did for years unimpeded , and Manderly moved from Interpol to being the head of UNATCO, which means only that whatever happened to Adam, he was unsuccessful at what he wanted to do.

Can't wait for the third part Deus Ex: Kind Men Invited

1:23:50 The end of the serial killer sidequest is strange, but it’s meant to be another smoking gun for what really happened to Adam.  See, when you were investigating the GARM facility in Alaska, you might’ve noticed that the GARM operatives had a very particular set of augmentations, including the ability to cover themselves in a black-glass “second skin” to become invulnerable. Jensen has these same augments - the black-glass shield is called the TITAN shield, and it’s one of the “core overclock” augments Koller accidentally activated at the beginning of the game. One of the experimental augs created by Victor Orlov.

If you do an extra part the serial killer sidequest involving a TYM doctor, this comes together with the full truth about Daria: She was a subject in a “personality transplant” experiment, which was meant to use neural augmentations to help people with social disorders by overriding parts of their personalities with personality elements from mentally-healthy individuals. Daria, unfortunately, was given neural augments from a former serial killer, which ultimately led her to adopt his killing habits.

Combining this information about Daria’s neural implants with the fact that she has TITAN augments like the black-glass shield, as well as the note in her pocket about Orlov, reveals that Orlov (and his Illuminati backers) was both the creator of GARM’s augments and a participant in the research on Daria… meaning Orlov could have combined the two.

In short, it’s more evidence/groundwork for the idea that Adam in Mankind Divided isn’t just a sleeper agent for the Illuminati, he’s a clone of the original Adam (who died at the end of Human Revolution), grown from scratch over a few months, given new augmentations that included Orlov’s signature toolkit, implanted with the original Adam’s memories using the same tech that was tested on Daria.

Jensen probably has my favorite character design in terms of tacticool aesthetic he’s so cool and distinct he’s also an interesting character

If you feel like being stopped at the Metro is tedious and frustrating, imagine how Jensen feels. That's fantastic immersive game design.

It's pretty cool how my ending played out differently to yours.  I was able to solve the mystery of the serial killer's origin and a friend from HR aided my entry into Davali territory.  Chikain also has a side hustle that makes him hard to trust. But I didn't pick up on the fact that Orlov may have been there to watch her since she survived in my game and there wasn't a body to loot a pocket sec from.

The ending boss fight has a lot more nuance if you really search the vaults during the heist mission and the GARM facility in Switzerland.  Big J doesn't have to die either, he's got another card to play.

The after credits scene is also a payoff to a ton of dialogue heard and email read around TF20 HQ. Chikain may also be involved but he may not have a choice.

Not knowing if you're the OG Jensen!!!! Best moment in the game. I love how these games give the player room to figure things out. Once you realize that everyone has their own motivation, things fall into place much more easily. They really are well written games in that regard.

Great video, thanks! If a 3rd Jensen game ever comes out, I'll have my recap video bookmarked.

A cool thing about the Victor boss fight is that you can find a kill switch in a random suitcase and flip it during the dialogue scene, killing him instantly. I haven't tried to beat him diplomatically.

I don't know how to explain it but the game's cutscenes and conversations, it's got such ungodly aura that is unmatched by any other game, it feels just so elevated by its precise tone, have played Human Revolution and Mankind Divided like 10 times, it's so good