There are lots of contenders – Command and Conquer, Fallout, Doom – but on balance, I’m certain that the original Deus Ex is the greatest PC game of all time. Sadly, however, the Deus Ex prequels, Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, never caught up to the plot of DX1 – as of 2024, the series’ owner Embracer seems to have resigned Deus Ex to the shelf, after laying off almost 100 staff at developer Eidos. But that’s not the end of the story. One Deus Ex writer, whose credits also include Watch Dogs Legion, now shares details on the Mankind Divided sequel that never was.
Released in 2016, Deus Ex Mankind Divided ends on a semi cliffhanger. Though he defeats the terrorist Marchenko, our hero Adam Jensen fails to capture Bob Page and Joseph Manderley, two prominent members of the all-powerful Illuminati. The Illuminati itself vows to spy on Jensen in the hope he will lead them to Janus, a mysterious figure who wants to bring the organization down. An RPG, stealth, and FPS game, mechanically speaking, Mankind Divided has plenty in common with its 2000 ancestor. Its sequel would have eventually tied the two games together.
Mark Cecere served as a writer on both Human Revolution and Mankind Divided. Speaking to the podcast series From Script To Life, Cecere explains that the canceled sequel would have taken place in Rabi’ah, the all-aug city hinted at in the 2016 game. However, given the group’s prominent role in the original Deus Ex, Jensen would never have fully eradicated the Illuminati.
“He can never catch up to the Illuminati,” Cecere explains. “We know this. We know the Illuminati keeps going until 2050. So, what can happen? That was the question we were trying to answer at some point. We did have one name that we could get rid of, and that was the one that Jensen would have caught up with. But by Jensen doing this, it causes Deus Ex. And that’s the tragedy of Jensen, is that he causes what happens after – he causes Bob Page to become Bob Page.”
Though he would have been the star of the canceled sequel, during the development of Mankind Divided, there were questions about bringing Jensen back at all – after the ending of Human Revolution, when the Panacea base is flooded and destroyed, Deus Ex’s writers considered that Jensen’s story might already have been told.
“It [Mankind Divided] wasn’t meant to be a Jensen story,” Cecere continues. “It became a Jensen story after a while when they decided to do a second one, but Jensen’s story was meant to be over, like, ‘okay, we go onto a Deus Ex: Somebody Else.’ But because Jensen was so popular, we said ‘bring him back from the dead.”
Cecere also agrees that the ending of Mankind Divided, as it stands, is less than perfect.
“We had to chop the game up a lot because of studio problems and funding. I agree with a lot of the criticism, especially when it comes to that ending and that cliffhanger that kind of makes no sense. Nothing is resolved.”
As for a new Deus Ex game, Cecere says the majority of developers that worked on Human Revolution and Mankind Divided have departed Eidos already. Given that Embracer announced in 2024 that the in-development Deus Ex had been shelved, it seems unlikely that a fresh project is currently in the works.
“I can’t guarantee that they’re not working on it,” Cecere says, “but I’m pretty sure if they took that decision [to discontinue the series] that they’re probably working on other things right now, although all the work that had been done is just sitting there.”
Nevertheless, the original creator of Deus Ex, Warren Spector, is working on a new immersive sim and stealth game, and spoke directly to PCGamesN about how it’s inspired by his earlier works.
If you miss the glory days of classic Deus Ex, check out some of the other best old games. You should also try the best story games on PC.
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