This degree of choice is usually more than supported by the level design. I will admit to being extremely down on Mankind Divided’s level design on my first stealthy runthrough; the hub area of Prague had a fair amount of hidden areas in it but it all seemed to be small, inconsequential standalone stuff whose presence didn’t really bolster the game at all. As you progress through the plot you explore most of the map (but by no means all of it) and you see the various set-piece areas it has to offer, most notable of which are a theatre and a bank. I thought that these areas didn’t fully unlock until you triggered the relevant piece of plot that required you to go there, but before suplexing Mankind Divided through a table I thought it’d be a good idea to do a second anything-goes run where I deliberately tested the game’s limits – and I was very pleasantly surprised, because it turns out you can go pretty much everywhere in Prague from the moment you get out of the tutorial as long as you have the right augs. You can also kill a lot of plot-relevant people and the game will adapt: on my first runthrough I got a hint as to the next location for the plot by eavesdropping on a conversation between a mob boss and his lieutenant. This was towards the end of the story, so one of the first things I did on playthrough two was to shoot my way into the mob boss’s compound and shove a nanoblade through his chest. I was impressed that the game let me do this at all — I thought he’d be some sort of special NPC that’d only spawn when I had the relevant mission active — and when I had to go there for plot later he remained dead and I instead got the information out of his computer. It’s a comparatively small adjustment, true, but I like the fact that it’s so organic; I’m so used to games making it very explicit what I can and cannot do that even this relatively minor side-character existing in the game long before the story required him to without the protection of the bulletproof glass so beloved of most AAA titles was still a very refreshing experience.