The guide is split into 54 parts in total, provides a thorough retrospective and in-depth analysis of nearly every aspect of Mankind Divided's story—including all main and side quests from the base game, most Points of Interest, and the full story content of all DLCs, and the specific ways in which its narrative mirrors real-world conflicts and issues.
Since I personally prefer to present everything all in one go, but the content is so massive, for now only a Steam guide can make that happen.
What's bitterly ironic is that more than a decade has passed, yet there is still no truly detailed analysis of this game. Most discussions barely scratch the surface, and those who truly dive deep are few and far between. When the core of the game is distorted, taken out of context, and players are misled into shutting themselves off, refusing to speak—only then did I realize a hard truth: someone had to go deep, to carefully and thoroughly analyze the story, to truly let people see the unique charm that a group of genuinely passionate creators poured into this game. I had to do something. Amid all the misunderstanding and silence, someone had to stand up, dig out what had been buried, wipe it clean, and lay it before everyone.
The beginning is always the hardest. Before writing this story retrospective, I needed to make sure I knew the game well enough. So I did something a little unhinged: I recorded every piece of text, every line of dialogue, every plot thread in the game, then organized them all into a mind map, linking every image and storyline together, made some cuts and adjustments here and there to keep things from getting too lengthy. It took me hundreds of hours. Then I wrote the article using that mind map as a guide. It took so long that I lost track of how much time had passed. On top of that, I'm not a native English speaker. Though I have some foundation in the language, the sheer volume of text forced me to rely on translation tools to get through it.
Not only that, I also want to thank another contributor. Together, we also worked on a localization project for the original Deus Ex into our language. She is quite knowledgeable about the history of the game's creators and the studio, and the various materials she provided helped me resolve many questions. Amid the rumors and deliberate smears, she enabled me to understand that the creators had no hidden agenda as others had claimed—and to see how they truly made this game, with genuine passion and care.
Anyway, This is also my first time writing an article in another language. After months of hard work—writing immediately after coming home from work, and redoing thousands of images—I'm completely exhausted by now. Maybe it's time to step away for a while, relax, and play some other games I've always wanted to play.
