Deus Ex Diaries Part Seventy-Six (Mankind Divided)

This is my ongoing exploration of the Deus Ex Universe, in release order. Whether you’re a newcomer or an old-goer, I hope to make this something you can read along with and enjoy. This time I continue Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

While looking for the security chief at Nathaniel Brown’s party, I had discovered hints that something bad had gone down…

Slipping out of the office into the hallway, I went into a maintenance room and punched through a grate, then in the area behind the room, smashed open another one to access a ventilation shaft. It let out inside an office with several corpses and a lone guard, with at least one more patrolling outside who I had to cloak to avoid being spotted by.

Calling Jim Miller and Duncan MacReady to give an update on the guards being compromised, I hit the button to turn the windows black and knocked the guard out. An email on a pocket secretary talked about a new guy from Eastern Europe transferring in on Wednesday. Their name was Maxim, which was the same name I’d found on a pocket secretary in the conference room earlier! Even if I was inclined to give the benefit of the doubt, I’d have found this suspect.

Sneaking out of the office, I stunned a guard when he was out of sight of the others and snuck past a security camera, nipping into a room which had more corpses in after hacking it open. There was a ventilation shaft, but it only took me back the way I had come, so I went out and cloaked, going up the stairs to my left. At the top, I took a left and moved into hiding while two guards gloated about how easy this operation had been so far. When they split up, I hacked into the room that they were standing in front of and hacked the security terminal.

Now that I knew for certain that these were, most likely, all enemy agents, I told a turret to target them and deactivated the cameras and laser grids. To my annoyance, the turret only shot one of them, requiring me to stun the guy who found the corpse in front of the main security office. I went inside and looked at a computer with security chief Liam Slater’s emails on, getting the code 5359 off of it. As luck would have it, that code allowed me to access the main security computer!

The monitors started rebooting, beginning with the livestream of Nathaniel Brown’s speech. While probably inspiring, I was distracted by the view of Gold Masks in the catering area, so I reported it to Miller and MacReady. Miller was going to get to Brown but ordered me to find a keycard that one of the terrorists probably had to get me through a guarded security door. That would require me to incapacitate every guard, even potential friendlies, but Miller had their patrol routes and was uploading it to me.

After I emptied the ammo and loot from the room, I exited back almost the way that I had come to get to the conference room. Now that the “safe” area was red, I needed a distraction so that I could call the elevator without burning through biocells. So, I activated the security bot and, while that did its job, I got into the elevator, heading for the party.

There were 11 guards as I exited into the reception hall. I took a look around, trying to find guards without cameras or civilians present, eventually finding one on the lowest level standing next to the restrooms. I stunned him and dragged his body behind the sofa he was in front of, not finding a keycard on him. The next one was inside the restroom, so I stunned him and hid him inside the disabled stall. As luck would have it, he had the keycard, but unfortunately, I still had nine other guards to subdue.

MacReady reported that his team had almost been blown up, thanks to explosives in the stairwells, so it would take them a bit longer than planned to reach me. I found a guard patrolling around a big Safe Harbour sign, so I knocked him out and pulled him around the sign to hide him. He had a pocket secretary on him with the code for the mezzanine: 1515.

Next up, I realised that the guard near the elevator was out of sight of everyone, and the camera (which looked at him) was slow-moving. So, I stunned him and hacked the door he was guarding, dragging him inside and turning the windows black with a button. As luck would have it, there was a security room inside, and I hacked it to disable the cameras and make my job a little easier.

Beneath the desk was a ventilation shaft, which let out exactly where another guard was, so I waited for his back to turn, knocked him out, and dragged him into the shaft. The shaft also branched out, and following that led me to some doors, behind which was another guard who I stunned. However, someone heard this and came to investigate, but I stunned them as well with no issue. Dragging them upstairs to hide them, I was just in time to surprise another guard as he reached the exact same place.

Remaining on the upper level, I went through some doors and used the code I had found earlier to access the mezzanine. My silent leg augmentation let me drop down to surprise one guard, but it wasn’t the one I wanted. Instead, that guy went downstairs, leaving me alone with one guard instead of two, so I stunned him. Then I just followed the other guy downstairs and stunned him, too! Then, while working out how to get rid of the final guard, he came upstairs for me to knock out.

Going back upstairs, I used the card on a door reader and went into the catering area. MacReady asked if I had heard from Miller, and since neither of us had, that was clearly a bad thing… Luckily there were only two men in the hallway, so I cloaked and knocked out one guard, hiding him in the room he was guarding, then stunned the other. My mini-map showed a third guard, so I followed the hallway around and stunned him in the room at the end, too. As it turned out, he was just reading an email from Viktor Marchenko confirming that he would be there in 12 hours, though I had no idea how old the email was.

Going through a door into the kitchen, I found Miller unconscious and bleeding from the head. He woke and told me to find Brown; the champagne was dosed with Orchid and had been sent to the meeting rooms. Miller had tried to stop them and been beaten. Suddenly, my comms were hacked by Marchenko, who was annoyed that I wasn’t dead. He had rigged a nearby block of flats with explosives and told me to face him in the exhibition hall or he would detonate them!

Given the option, I chose to stop Marchenko. Sure, the UN delegates would die, but better that than the headline “Augmented Terrorist Kills Naturals in London”. I spoke to Miller again, and he revealed that he had been forced to drink champagne. The pain he was in clearly wasn’t from the beating he endured… Despite his protestations, I made him drink the Orchid antidote that I had grabbed from the Versalife vault. He lamented that he hadn’t gone with his gut and trusted me more, but I had to go.

Hurrying out of the catering area, I jumped over the edge and landed with my Icarus Landing System. Hurrying through the double doors, I was called by Janus. He argued that the UN delegates were a priority, as without Brown, augmented kind were doomed. Ignoring him, I continued down to the exhibition hall and entered unseen, though Marchenko knew that I was there. He removed his cloak, which also somehow turned his natural-looking arm into a laser cannon, and attacked!

Ducking inside a ventilation shaft, I followed it to the end and cloaked as I exited, heading upstairs past a laser grid. Moving some crates, I entered an observation room which would at least keep me out of sight of the turrets and cameras. However, he had a drone flying around the place looking for me too. As I was relatively safe and I had 12 Praxis points to spend, I took the opportunity to upgrade myself.

These are what I went for: Chaff to delay explosives, Flash Suppressant in case of mines & grenades, Remote Hacking and its upgrades to get rid of the drone and turrets, and the Nanoblade and its upgrade. I spent the rest of my points on Titan, an experimental augmentation that would ignore all damage until I ran out of bio energy. So, I also grabbed its two upgrades because the energy drain was massive.

Cloaking and downing a biocell, I stood at the security terminal and hacked it with a multi-tool. It allowed me to deactivate the camera, open a security door, and activate two security bots! However, I knew that they wouldn’t last long against the turret and drone; they could at least offer me some bullet shields. Luckily, thanks to my interference with remote hacking, they not only managed to survive, they actually killed Marchenko! Okay, I helped by shooting him with EMP ammo just a bit, but I honestly did intend on stunning him or knocking him out; I just didn’t get there in time.

I hightailed it back through the reception hall, where the guests were none the wiser, and upstairs through the catering area. In the hallway past the kitchen, some Gold Masks patrolled, with a turret watching them. I cloaked and stunned one from cover, but as I moved him, we were spotted by the turret. With the Gold Masks at alert, I managed to stay hidden in cloak and hack a security terminal, turning the turret friendly. Using the distraction, I went upstairs and remotely hacked some EMP mines but was forced into combat, using EMP rounds and my stun gun to neutralise them and cloak to escape others.

Inside a conference room at the opposite end of the level was a grate which I punched through and used the ventilation system to access the elevator shaft, just a couple of floors above my destination! However, as I dropped down, aiming to stop there, I fell straight past, landing on the elevator a few stories further down. Entering through the roof hatch, I hit the button for the meeting rooms without noticing the VIP room button right below it and got into a fight with the gold masks keeping an eye on the elevator. Using my stun gun and nanoblades, I fought off a bunch of them before realising that the objective marker told me to go to the elevator, where I headed to the VIP room.

As the door opened, I ran down the hallway and hacked the door, opening it roughly eight minutes after Marchenko’s death. Brown was raising a toast, but the moment I told him that it was drugged, he threw it on the floor. I told him to get his guests to the helipad on the roof, and he agreed but asked about the other attendees. Once he knew that TF29 was on the case, he left.

An epilogue took place one week later in Prague, where Jensen and Vega were watching Picus news. Brown had publicly praised Interpol for thwarting a major terror attack, which had been linked to the Augmented Rights Coalition. The pair discussed recent events and how now we knew that Joseph Manderley and Bob Page were two of the people behind the Illuminati. Jensen said that he wanted to meet Janus, not via a screen but in person, and if they refused, then Jensen would come looking for them…

Newsreader Eliza Cassan finished things off by talking about: the Palisade heist I pulled off quietly, Talos Rucker’s death being related to alcohol, a soundbite from Tibor Sokol about his arrest for being an ARC terrorist, Radich Nikoladze and the Dvali’s involvement in the London terror attack, a Samizdat copycat running in Paris under the name Silhouette, and a bit about the Neon drug being researched for possible good applications.

During the credits, Bob Page, Volkard Rand, Morgan Everett, Lucius DeBeers, and Elizabeth DuClare, AKA the Illuminati, appeared in a conference some angered that the London attack was a bust and blamed Adam Jensen for it. DeBeers dismissed everyone, saying that they would look into a possible connection to the Juggernaut Collective next time. Everyone except for DeBeers and DuClare logged off before DuClare’s avatar changed to show Dr. Delara Auzenne! She clearly had permission to be there and gave DuClare an update on Jensen, saying that he’s well-adjusted and his memories are “consistent with the program”. Moreover, he was very close to making contact with Janus…

Final Thoughts

A bit shorter than Human Revolution at about 25 hours, I actually reviewed this for the site back in 2016. I remembered the broad strokes, but I know that I got a different ending. I remember the game just kind of ending when I defeated Marchenko, whereas this time, I at least got a cutscene when I reached Brown and stopped him from drinking. I’m sure that the block of flats was destroyed, too.

The world presented in Prague, the Utulek Complex, and London is simply fascinating to me. As a cisgender caucasian male, I’ve never encountered prejudice aimed directly at me, so it’s really eye-opening to see how augmented people are treated because of the narrative being pushed by the media. Angry radio hosts, manipulative news shows, all for what? The Illuminati’s plan isn’t clearly explained, so I’m still none the wiser as to why they want augmented people to be targeted. Maybe it’s explained better in the three books by James Swallow? Don’t worry, I’m not going to write diaries about those next.

It’s been almost eight years since I started writing about the first game in this fantastic series. While I did take a break due to Windows 10 not liking Deus Ex Invisible War, I’ve still been at this a long time. 76 parts! And I’m not finished yet!

Yeah, you thought this was the finale, didn’t you? Well, there are three Jensen’s Stories that I wouldn’t feel right ignoring: the DLC was included as part of the game in Human Revolution, while these are standalone. So come back next time to see what happens in Desperate Measures, a formerly pre-order exclusive mission that I’ve never played!