Prague itself I have mixed feelings about. It’s a very depressing hub area in which to set a game compared to the glowing streets of Detroit, and it doesn’t do itself any favours by apparently ripping off Half Life 2’s City 17 in terms of both look and feel. I get that this is intentional: the golden age of Human Revolution is over and Prague is the game’s main method of communicating that, with constant evidence of discrimination against the augmented and an ever-increasing police presence. In a way it captures the prevailing cultural zeitgeist just as well as HR or the original Deus Ex did, it’s just that the current zeitgeist is “Everything’s a bit shit, really” and that’s hardly a compelling atmospheric hook on which to hang your environment design. There’s certain bits and pieces — like the bank and everything surrounding it — that really stand out, but they only do so when you take a step back and consider how it all fits together, and that’s something that very much went over my head the during my first playthrough as I had the tunnel vision common to all players exploring an environment for the first time. Most games use this to their advantage to make their environments seem larger and more detailed than they really are, but Mankind Divided has the opposite problem: if you don’t have the post facto perspective granted by hours of exploration then Prague initially comes across as a collection of recycled apartments, recycled tiny shops with tiny basements, and recycled storage containers with secret entrances. They’re not particularly fun to visit on their own, and it’s only when you understand how they tie into the wider environment that their point becomes clear.