Today during their Pre-E3 livestream, Square Enix showed off an 18 minute gameplay demo of Adam Jensen in Prague. Starting at his apartment, we accept a mission to rescue one of Jensen’s friends from his bookstore that was overrun by a local gang.
Here’s a synopsis of the video’s showcase.
Jensen wakes up in his apartment, a little over a day after a train bombing happened. Many of his augmentations and abilities are damaged. He gets in touch with Alexandra Vega, who made it out of the situation unscratched. Jensen offers to meet up with her, but she declines, saying that Adam needs to fix his malfunctions first. David Sarif tries to call Adam, leaving a message offering to meet up with him again, since they haven’t talked in two years.
It’s 2029, and after Human Revolution many of the mainstream augmentation companies went backrupt, forcing Jensen to rely on underground resources for help. The demo shows us around his apartment some more, saying that the Deus Ex world has a wide variety of things to interact with and collect. They showed off different possibilities, like reading some emails or watching the news, or managing some of the items you have in your inventory. While they didn’t show it off in the video, the narrator mentions that you could call David Sarif back and go on an optional side-mission with him too.
Adam calls Vaclav Koller, requesting that he fixes up some of Jensen’s augmentations. Koller is relieved to hear from Jensen, saying that he needs Adam’s help dealing with gangsters in his shop. Since Adam lives in an Augmented Persons neighborhood, police forces patrolling the area stop him and ask for his identification papers. Further along, they show off another location with different options involved – Prague Subway. You could enter via the Augmented line and have no problem, or you could try and go by the Naturals line and having the police get angry with you.
Finally arriving at the bookshop, Jensen is stopped at the front door by the Gangsters that Vaclav was talking about. While you could rush in, guns blazing, the demo decided to take a different route. The demo shows us that we could reach the area by going through an upper floor apartment with a window open. They then show off the return of the hacking mini-game, a staple of the Deus Ex series. You’ll have more boobytraps to worry about as you navigate to the section of data that you desire.
Adam crawls into an apartment airvent, and ends up on an adjacent rooftop, able to bypass the blockade. He gets to a vantage point, and we see a group of thugs patrolling the areas below. Then the demo shows us the skills wheel, assigning four different stealth related abilities to the directional pad for quick access. The Smart Vision ability shows enemies in the area, along with their weapons and what loot they have on them. Opting to avoid a direct confrontation, Jensen cloaks himself to be invisible and stealthily makes his way over to the entry point. Along the way, we see the return of lethal and non-lethal takedowns, now possible to perform from cover.
The front door is locked, but Jensen gets in via a window on the roof. They show off a new tazer gun that can neutralize enemies without killing them. But this non-lethal approach gives way to demonstrating the lethal options, like a nanoblade and silenced pistol. Which allows Adam to finish off the goons, save his doctor friend, and thus ending the demo.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided comes out this year on August 23rd to PC, PS4 and Xbox One. For updates in the meantime, their website and Twitter are the best places to check out.
