Deus Ex: Mankind Divided’s Free VR Experience is a Beautiful Glimpse at the Future

Deus Ex fans with VR hardware can rejoice as developer Eidos Montreal have launched a new, free VR experience based on their latest title in the series, Mankind Divided, and it’s quite the looker.

Deus Ex has had its problems as a franchise over years. From its incredible, trailblazing debut in 2000, through a questionable sequel in 2003 the first person action RPG has more recently seen a return to form in the hands of developers Eidos Montreal and publishers Square Enix. The latest instalment, Mankind Divided, continues where its predecessor left off – with the human race at war with itself, a rift opening up between those with mechanical and electronic augmentations and those without.

However effective you feel Deus Ex‘s latest episodes have been as games, there’s little argument that Eidos have managed to instil their take on this dystopian future with a unique and at times beautiful production art style. And it’s into these visually sumptuous, oppressive and brooding environments Eidos’ new, free virtual reality experience thrusts you and to impressive effect.

To be clear here, the VR experience does not require you to own any prior Deus Ex title and can be grabbed from Steam for free right here. I stepped into the experience for a brief look around and found – having already played through Mankind Divided’s full campaign – being given the ability to move around a selection of digital sets from the title inside VR to be a real eye opener. This has been written before of course (not least of all by us), but the differences between witnessing these digital creations separated by a monitor and being encompassed is still surprisingly stark.

The experience allows you to walk through a selection of locations from the full game, with exit points in each taking you to the next scene highlighted with white markers. It’s a sort of virtual tourist ‘backstage’ experience if you like, and I really enjoy the format. As you wander through each scene, you’ll use full locomotion to navigate. That is, there’s no teleportation in this experience whether you play with motion controllers or not. Instead, comfort options are provided via yaw snap turns actioned via controller buttons (triggers on the Xbox gamepad for example). I enjoyed the default focus on a more fluid, natural form of movement through the VR world, although some may find the going a little uncomfortable if they ignore the comfort settings.

Speaking of which, Eidos have spent some time giving those who like to tweak their experience the ability to ramp up visual settings as their hardware allows, from Anisotropic filtering through optional FXAA and a selection of visual quality levels. It’s worth ramping everything up if you can, and in my case, running with a NVIDIA GTX 1080, things ran very well on the Oculus Rift. Eidos has thoughtfully included notes for both VR platforms to improve performance too with helpful warnings on comfort before you begin the experience. All in all, the whole thing feels remarkably polished and Eidos should be praised for not just throwing this out the door as a quick, cheap and cynical marketing exercise.

In summary, the Deus Ex: Mankind Divided VR Experience feels like an opportunity to witness the attention to detail lavished upon a world by its talented artists. I lost count of the “Oh wow, I’d not seen that!” moments I had whilst wandering through scenes that, prior to thi, I believed I was extremely familiar with. And on that front, the experience works on different levels for those having played the game and those coming to the world cold. It’s a great example of a VR accompaniment done right and Eidos Montreal should be congratulated for both only bothering with the project but taking the time to do it properly. What’s more, I’d heartily encourage other developers wanting to show off the artistry present in their games look at this digital tourist format as I think they are eminently worthwhile.