Moments like this are the pinnacle of the game's political representation. Many in this world see the augmented as weapons, bombs waiting to go off. The augmented, in this way, are a threat that many want to find a way to get rid of once and for all. So they let you pass, gruffly, looking for an excuse to shoot you in the back. You're faster, stronger, and smarter than they are due to the machines inside of you. Often, you can sense the hate radiating off of the armored police, the abiding sense that they'd be more than happy to beat the crap out of you. Traveling through Prague, the game's hub city, to investigate a bombing, you are regularly stopped by cops at checkpoints. Playing as Adam Jensen, the heavily augmented ex-cop from the previous installment who's taken a job with an Interpol-run anti-terror agency, you are living that contradiction. It was offered by tech barons as a new means of human evolution, but now that public opinion has turned against the technology, those same barons have turned against it as well, and the augmented have become second-class citizens. The early game tries and usually succeeds to draw a delicate line here: Augmentation is not intended to necessarily stand in for any one matrix of oppression or form of prejudice instead, the game attempts to weave it into extrapolated forms of existing social crises.Īugmentation is a technological divide turned biological, one that intersects with race and class. In the mid-21st century, the human race has become divided into two strata: those with augmentations, and those without. It takes place in a world in the midst of crisis. But like I said, a political tentpole videogame is, within the current market, a contradiction in terms: a violation of the mission statement of such games, which is to make as much money as possible and cater comfortably to the core demographic who would prefer their games entertain and not challenge. It is, without a doubt, a political tentpole videogame. It's critical of violence, but even more critical of power brokers who play marginalized groups against each other for their own gain. I find it hard not to read this as a conflict between those who control the brand and those who make the game.ĭeus Ex: Mankind Divided is interested in power, in the ways a fictional form of oppression intersects with real ones, and about the way oppression works in general. Contrast that with the response of André Vu, Deus Ex's brand director, who called the resemblance to Black Lives Matter "an unfortunate coincidence," and the echoing sentiment from an early Square Enix press release insisting that the game's depiction was "neutral."
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