Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Played this on console in the middle of 2018, along with all of its DLC. Something didn't sit right with me then, so I gave it another playthrough on PC to find out what it was. Mechanically, [i]Mankind Divided[/i] is a sound shooter that integrates stealth elements in rewarding ways: sneaking around and taking out enemies in a non-lethal manner gives the player more experience points to earn separate points that allow them to access more branches of their skill tree. All of that is fine and can entice players to try to solve problems and clear rooms in creative ways, encouraging exploration of the main city hub as well. One gripe I had with that main city hub, however, is that not much changes in between main story missions and return trips to it, other than the time of day and the dialogue NPCs use when interacted with. Furthermore, most of the side missions in the city hub (with the exception of a few semi-compelling ones carried heavily by the film noir backdrop the time of day & weather provide) serve simply as a way to give the player more experience points to get that next branch in the skill tree. Thematically, whether taken as a standalone game or in the context of its 2011 predecessor [i]Human Revolution[/i], it falls flat. Attempting to portray people with (likely expensive) technological augmentations/body mods as an oppressed underclass simply does not work from a logical standpoint. Picture homeless people with bionic arms worth hundreds of thousands of dollars claiming that they are oppressed in a video game world which is written as being ruled by oligarchs who provide those same augmentations. One would assume the oligarchy is in freefall since they appear to be wasting money, but no; the gap between the rich and the poor is apparently increasing as it always has been. There were numerous parts of my playthrough where I thought to myself, "wow, I could not care less about this allegorical 'mechanical apartheid', because it makes no sense". As a [i]Deus Ex[/i] game, this game's story reads like poor fan-fiction with a mid-2010s tint. The 2000 original is a classic because it makes the player question things while offering a compelling story about a shadowy cabal controlling world events. It never tells the player [i]what[/i] to think so much as it encourages them to think in the first place. Also, it cannot go without saying that augmentations were very much a feature in the original that a player could get by without ever using. This feature somehow became the foundation on which both [i]Human Revolution[/i] and [i]Mankind Divided[/i] would build their [url=https://www.polygon.com/2016/8/3/12368210/deus-ex-mankind-divided-augs-lives-matter-controversy/]flawed social commentary[/url]. I give it a 4/10. The mechanical skeleton that is its gameplay does much to save this game from a [i]3/10[/i].