One of the things that really left gamers talking a lot about Deus Ex: Human Revolution were the game's endings. A lot of gamers instantly questioned whether or not Deus Ex: Mankind Divided would have multiple choice endings as well. The answer? No.
I suppose this is partial spoiler territory but PC Gamer managed to get in some talk time with the lead writer on Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Mary DeMarle. One of the topics of discussion was the comparison between the multiple choice endings in Human Revolution and what's being planned for Mankind Divided when it comes to the endings.
According to DeMarle, the multiple choice factors at the end of Human Revolution that determined the outcome of the story wasn't what was originally planned but it's what they had to go with, telling PC Gamer...
For Human Revolution we actually didn’t want [the ending to be dictated by] a press of a button, [but we had to] for production reasons and timeline and schedule. We actually wanted to have the player do things, and we believed that if you really believed in your ending you’d have to work for it. Really what we wanted to do from the get go was, “can we really push the narrative in ways where choices you make early on can impact later”? Now we’re embracing the idea of choice and consequence.
So no, there won't be multiple choice endings in Mankind Divided because that's in some regards, a cop out.
What are they doing instead? Instead of having players pick an 'A', 'B', or 'C' scenario to determine the endings, the ending that you end up with will be determined wholly by the choices and consequences made throughout the game.
So instead of trudging through the game and making some plot-defining choices only for it to not matter, this game does the complete opposite. There's no arbitrary multiple choice ending at the end of Mankind Divided that erases away everything else you did beforehand. Instead, the ending reflects everything else you did beforehand.
Now that's something that should have fans very excited.
In most games it's really hard to go through, make a bunch of decisions and then actually have those decisions affect the final outcome of the gameplay experience.
In the case of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided they're actually putting in the time to have an ending that's fine-tuned to the experience of the player.
I'm now really interested to find out exactly what sort of outcomes we could see in Deus Ex: Mankind Divded.
For a long time a lot of AAA games have been stuck in a rut and going in circles when it comes to narratives, but it looks like Eidos Montreal is going to focus on pushing both narrative choices and narrative design to the limits with their upcoming game. Now, the only question is will the game live up to the standards and expectations of fans?
You can look for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided when it launches on February 23rd, 2016 for the Xbox One, PS4 and PC.
