I never played Deus Ex: Mankind Divided at launch. I’d just gotten a PC that could handle this 2016 GPU punisher (I’ll always love you, GTX 1080) when it first came out, but something stayed my hand. Some combination of Square Enix’s bombastic marketing, Eidos Montreal’s ham-fisted use of robot arms as an allegory for racism, and the creeping sense of doom at seeing a largely divergent, self-contained story presented as a ‘prequel’ start to butt against its fictional timeline constraints totally gave me the ick.
In the years since, it’s become apparent that Eidos Montreal’s planned trilogy will likely never be concluded—we’re entering full reboot territory now, almost eight years later—and that’s only further discouraged me from diving back into the developer’s vision of the 2020s.
After falling in love with all over again, despite its flawed and self-serious sci-fi (check out the Reinstall feature in a previous PC Gamer for more on that!), I knew it was the old college try on my trusty Steam Deck.
