Better Boss Battles
Pretty much everyone and their mother agrees that Deus Ex: Human Revolution’s boss fights were the weakest part of the game. For a game that prided itself on letting you play as a silent ninja or gun down everyone who looked at you funny, that certainly didn’t come across when fighting any of the assholes villains in the story. Sure, if you went the latter option you were able to mow them down with your bullets. But if you went the silent route, you were basically boned from minute one and may as well have worn a shirt saying “Shoot Anywhere But the Face, Please”.
To be fair to Eidos Montreal, they have addressed this issue with the Missing Link DLC and the Deus Ex Director’s Cut. They’re fully aware that boss fights seemed to run counter with what the game was saying was possible. Mankind Divided should follow up on that and allow you to pull off non-lethal takedowns or kill enemies from afar. Even rigging the area with explosives to take the enemy out or luring them away from your objective would be ideal for stealth players. Just don’t punish people who decide to take the stealthy approach. No one wants to go to a fight with a stun gun and end up having to fight a dude with three assault rifles on their person, after all.
Gunsmith? More Like Gunmaster
In other action-RPGs, you typically have to put some time toward mastering your skills. You start off crappy and barely able to hold your own, to the point where you may as well just walk up to your enemies and just put the gun to your head yourself. But hopefully after some time has passed and you’ve put some skill points into bettering yourself, you’re starting to improve. By the end of the game, you can stand toe to toe with your enemies and come back as the greatest human being in existence. That’s how it’s been for a while, and that’s how it’ll remain for the foreseeable future.
The last Deus Ex let you grab any gun and fire it with the precision of Hawkeye with a blindfold on. It never felt like you were really challenged in terms of guns mastery, and you could mod your weapon to your heart’s content. Not that every game with shooter elements needs to have you sucking so much that your bullets rebound and get you in the eye, but the point of an action-RPG as mentioned above is to start off crappy and build your skills up. Mankind Divided and future Deus Ex titles onward should allow you to specialize in weapons of different types–rifles, shotguns, pistols, SMGs, and the like. You’re good with some weapons, bad with others. The idea is for you to be a weapons master if you’d like, or use the weapons that’ll ensure you’ll never be caught by your enemies.
A Meaningful End
As anyone who’s ever worked at Bungie or Bioware will tell you, endings are hard to pull off. Harder than you’d think, apparently. You have to tie everything together in a way that makes sense with what’s come beforehand while also providing something new for anything you may want to do in future installments. Most importantly, it can’t suck. Decent, yes, but downright awful is best to avoid. It’s one thing to be remembered for an odd end, and another to have it constantly brought up when being asked questions by press or fans.
The last Deus Ex had an ending that was…a bit on the weird side. Basically what happened was you had four different options to choose from–expose the conspiracy, cover things up, broadcast a confession, or pin the blame on the Humanity Front movement. You chose your ending, and there were some static images while Adam talked about his hopes or fears for the future. While that wasn’t considered as much of a Deus Ex Machina as the ending of another action-RPG title, it didn’t really make everyone jump for joy, either. The upcoming Deus Ex should have an ending that ties things up nicely while providing something for future installments, as any ending should. But it should also be more than just pressing a button and having the character talk like they’re recording their vlog. We didn’t ask for this, after all.
Tell us what you’d like to see added or changed for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and we’ll read ’em all. We asked for that after all.
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