Deus Ex - Series Hiatus?

@Eurogamer they report that the Deus Ex series may go into hiatus due to disappointing sales from Mankind Divided.

Square Enix's shift in focus to its recently-announced multi-game Marvel project, combined with underwhelming sales of last year's Mankind Divided, mean the Deus Ex franchise has been placed on hiatus, Eurogamer understands.

This, despite Mankind Divided leaving the series with a number of hanging story threads. These plot points were intended to be resolved in a third game, which would also complete the trilogy of Deus Ex titles begun by predecessor Human Revolution.

Much of this remaining story was once intended for Mankind Divided, Eurogamer has heard, until the game grew too large in scope and had to be curtailed. (Even with this, Mankind Divided's development took five years). It's unclear if this untold story will now be left unresolved - or tied up in another medium, such as a graphic novel.

Mankind Divided's DLC, meanwhile, focuses on standalone stories. One final pack from the game's season pass - A Criminal Past - is set for launch on 23rd February and acts as a prequel to the main game.

Click to expand...

More information.

Sad for Deus Ex fans.

I loooved human revolution. I was to pick this up during the sales but all reviews seemed a bit lackluster, admittedly those were from the generic sites + metacritic. So I went with tw3 first, maybe I'll come back to MD later

Funny, the news I read this morning was that it was put in hiatus because Edios Montréal was working on the next Tomb Raider game, not the Marvel ones.

It still sucks though, but not unsurprising by how DX:MD under-performed despite being a great game.

Aditya spotted this on IGN:

Deus Ex Sequel Was Originally Going to Be Made by Obsidian — IGN Unfiltered

Too bad, I finished DX:HR twice but wasn't able to last through MD even once. Not sure why though, I don't really remember disliking anything. Just lost interest and played other games.

HiddenX said:

Aditya spotted this on IGN:

Deus Ex Sequel Was Originally Going to Be Made by Obsidian — IGN Unfiltered

Click to expand...

Since Eidos is now under possibly a billion of $ worth contract, now DX:MD2 can be made by Obsidian.

So they fuck up the series with their bullshit pay to win bullshit, make a sub-par game to milk the masses and then wonder how it doesn't do well.

This is the studio that brought you the Tomb Raider reboot, and the Thief reboot. Great credentials.

The Deus Ex reboots did some great things no doubt.With that said,Mankind Divided beared two deadly sins for me :
1)It was an unfinished game that was clearly intented to be have closure on future dlcs
2)Both Mankind Devided and Human Revolution lacked in scope in comparison to the original Deus Ex.
I felt that in the original i had more freedom,more places to go,less recycled enviroments etc.

As a bonus,the reboots had some serious identity crisis in my opinion when it came to marketing at least.Best example is the Icarus imagery on one hand and the "I never asked for this" quote,which directly contradict each other.

So after all that ,Squenix determines the sales are not good enough and the game remains unfinished essentialy.
Yet another great franchise falls victim to AAA ambitions.
Would it be too ironic if i said : "i never asked for this" ? Or maybe even better : "What a shame"

A pity. Well, that helps me trim down my wish list a little.

Curse of Deus Ex sequels continues. I doubt when they bring it back, it will have Jensen in the lead.

Just deserts. I'm glad that people spotted that they are being taken for a ride and stayed away.

DX: MD was a severely underwhelming game and this was largely in parts due to Square Enix's needless meddling in almost every aspect of the game.

1. Pre-order bonus fiasco
2. Forcing devs to include the Breach game mode
3. Then delaying the game for developing this mode, slowing the hype considerably by the time of actual game release
4. Inclusion of micro-transactions as an additional source of income in both Breach and single player game, causing backlash from players and too many negative reviews on Steam
5. Due to time and resources devoted to Breach, devs needed to cut the game length and MD was only "first half" of the overall story. Hence the abrupt ending, with multiple story threads remaining unresolved.

And after all this, they blame the game for under-performing?! lol. They botched one of their most celebrated franchise by themselves.

However, the devs are also guilt of the following:

1. The story is a mess, too slow paced, forgettable characters
2. Too much "augs vs non-augs" conversations EVERYWHERE. It became grating after a while and felt shoehorned ("Augs lives matter!!")
3. Only one city hub, which got repetitive fast
4. The Aug ghetto is one of the most boring and needlessly stretched out level in any game
5. The game lost its unique visual identity established in Human Revolution
6. Technical problems on PC
7. In general the game is just too easy even on hardest difficulty.

Perhaps this hiatus would do good for the next instalment, if and when that happens.

There is no need for Obsidian to do Deus Ex, just revive Alpha Protocol.

crpgnut said:

There is no need for Obsidian to do Deus Ex, just revive Alpha Protocol.

Click to expand...

You'll have to ask Sega for that...

Checkpoints galore take two? Absolutely not. It needs to die most horrible death.

crpgnut said:

There is no need for Obsidian to do Deus Ex, just revive Alpha Protocol.

Click to expand...

Please!

With all of its shortcomings, its still one of the most memorable games I've played.
Adored it!

Crilloan said:

Please!

With all of its shortcomings, its still one of the most memorable games I've played.
Adored it!

Click to expand...

Agreed ... flawed but great & unique game

Unfortunate. With all the pros and cons, I still think it was a good game. Not great, but better than most and I'd love to return to that universe. I hope they only give it a hiatus to revitalize their concept.

Morbus said:

So they fuck up the series with their bullshit pay to win bullshit, make a sub-par game to milk the masses and then wonder how it doesn't do well.

Click to expand...

And let's not forget how they fucked up Human Revolution as well. The Director's Cut was not free for existing customers, saves were not compatible with the base game, and to add insult to injury, it was based on a non-final vanilla version, i.e. it did not even incorporate all the fixes that the base game had. Still, they dared charge money for that abortion!

They have absolutely no right to wonder why Mankind Divided underperformed. They only have themselves to blame.
I'm not buying it mostly because I don't like the main character but their publishing shenanigans are making it even easier to stay far away from the franchise. I welcome the hiatus. Maybe Square Enix can sell it off to someone more decent in the meantime.