Just in time for Christmas, Eidos Montreal has released two new pieces of concept art for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided showing our hero's living quarters for the new game. In Human Revolution, the apartment was packed with little environmental details that hinted at Jensen's lifestyle and mental state. Secrets included a hidden weapons cache and a heartbreaking story about his dog, Kubrick. 

"The core of Adam's apartment is once again inspired by the cyber renaissance theme, although darker than what it was in Human Revolution" explains EM on the Deus Ex site. "These two concepts are only the tip of the iceberg and there will be a lot more details to find".

Here's the first image of Jensen's living room. This one shows Jensen's bedroom.

Who would live in a flat like this?

Ah, the entirely healthy sight of two empty bottles of Jack Daniels within couch reaching distance. There's another bottle and a half-filled tumbler by the bed in the second piece of concept art. Jensen always has whiskey within arm's reach, which means his lifestyle hasn't come far from this piece of early Human Revolution art.

The cereal box (Magic Gnome: Suspiciously Delicious!), toilet paper, empty dish and sleep-crumpled blanket hint at Jensen's entire day-night cycle. The pale glow emanating from the left hints at a television screen, but I like to think that Jensen simply spends his hours staring deep into a blank wall brooding and flicking his shades on and off for fun.

Half a bottle into JD stupor, Jensen stumbled to his feet to fling a few arm chisels at this target sheet. The scars on the paper suggest a <50% hit rate. That's surely the booze.

The coat stand is empty, even though Jensen owns approximately 3,000 coats. They're strewn all over the apartment. Jensen sharpens up well when he's out, but this is the apartment of a messy bachelor who still hasn't completely unpacked his stuff, and never will.

You can see form the angle of the telescope that this is definitely for spying on others outside his building, not stargazing. As an enemy of the illuminati, Jensen has reason to be paranoid. This telescope can actually be found in the corner of his Human Revolution apartment, to the right of his television. In Human Revolution, it was folded away. The fact it's set up here suggests Jensen's more wary. It's always within reach of his little workstation at the dining table.

This is a sign of progress at least—an unbroken mirror! In Jensen's last apartment his toilet mirror was smashed by, presumably, the punch of one of Jensen's big metal arms. Jensen is at least able to look at himself without flying into a despairing age.

It's hard to tell what the ball on the left is at this distance, but it's probably a golden globe, as seen on this cover of an issue of the Deus Ex Universe comic in which Jensen squats, Atlas-like, under the pressing palm of the Illuminati—symbolism! I bet we'll see the globe imagery appear a few times in Mankind Divided. The globe-in-a-fist imagery has been part of Deus Ex since the first game.

On the right, a reading light. We see that Jensen is a big reader, even if he can't put up a bookshelf.

The book titles are illegible in this piece of concept art, but they'll surely be clear in the final game. Jensen's Human Revolution apartment was full of books, including encyclopedias, "Cars of Detroit", "Narcotics" and "CHILD AND VIOLENCE". 

Jensen is man of diverse interests and eclectic taste, but his obsession with watchmaking and tinkering in the last game has given way to a fondness for art. As well as the gold globe in the last picture, the bedroom also features a this piece, and the living room has a nice horse. In Human Revolution Jensen's obsession with the internal working of gadgets allowed him to work through his cybernetic body issues, that seems to have faded as he's come to terms with himself, and he's moved on to different forms of expression. That, or the paintings were there when Jensen bought the apartment, and actually he's taken them down to replace them with target practice sheets.

Human Revolution's aesthetic was built around the idea of a cyber-renaissance, and Jensen's clearly intended to embody the ideal of the Renaissance Man—a figure of eclectic tastes, who excels physically and intellectually. You explore Jensen's physical capabilities through play, so it's up to environmental details like these to fill in the rest of Adam's personality.

However, I have no idea what this is, below the lightsaber candelabrum, to the left of the half-finished bottle of whisky. Alarm clock? Rubbish origami swan?

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided has been pushed back to August 23 next year, meaning it will release exactly five years after the launch of Human Revolution. It was formerly due out next February.

The statement was made by Eidos Mondreal studio head David Anfossi on the Deus Ex site, who writes that "expectations are extremely high, and we not only want to meet those expectations, but exceed them."

"We're confident and proud of the game so far. However, as we are now playing through the game in full we can see that it will require more time in post-production for tuning, iterations, and refinement to meet our high standards."

The section we played recently was very promising, and the footage shown so far has been similarly encouraging. Better late and great, though. Time to close the slats and brood, Jensen style for the coming months.

FOV (field of view) sliders give players the ability to adjust how much of a game world they can see on their monitor at one time. Some players will widen their view to gain a tactical edge—the more you can see, the more you can kill—while others make adjustments to combat the effects of motion sickness. (This Quake video does a good job of illustrating the benefits and drawbacks of messing with FOV.) They have value, in other words, but their implementation is far from universal. Evolve, as an example, launched without an FOV slider and then patched one in later.

Fortunately, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will offer an adjustable FOV right out of the gate, on the PC at least. "PC version will have it," Executive Game Director Jean-Fran ois Dugas said in response to an inquiry on Twitter. That question, interestingly enough, followed a Dugas tweet from a couple of weeks ago in which he clarified a November 1 statement that Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will be locked at 30 fps:

No no and no. 30fps is consoles. We all breathe, thanks. https://t.co/uUqFQMOqkW

— Jean-Fran ois Dugas (@Jeffachoo) November 3, 2015

Good news, that. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will be out on February 23, 2016. It's looking very promising.

At PAX Australia I had the opportunity to talk with Mary DeMarle, lead writer on Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. DeMarle also wrote Human Revolution, and had some interesting insights into how Mankind Divided will expand on the oppressive, dystopian Deus Ex vision. She also discussed how the studio is dealing with the last game's awkward, branching ending.

Warning: there are huge spoilers for Human Revolution in this interview.

The cities in Human Revolution Detroit, Hengsha are pretty typical sci-fi settings. What s the motive for setting part of Mankind Divided in Prague?

There s a couple of reasons. When we started working on the game we were aware of the fact that, okay, Human Revolution was basically North America and Asia, and we re really missing Europe. We thought we had to have a European country in this one. That was one of the reasons, and there were a lot of things in terms of the Czech Republic that were enticing to us. Some of it was history, although we have departed from it quite a bit for the future. Knowing about the velvet revolution [was part of it], but there s also the Golem myth there, which is a very important segment of the country s history. We were looking at the idea of the segregation of the augmented people, so the myth of the golem of Prague fit in there thematically.

Will the hub city layout carry over from Human Revolution?

On a production level, we still speak about things in terms of hubs and compounds, so there is a bit of that you ll be into a city hub and then you ll go to a different location. But one of the things we also wanted to do was put compounds more into the city hubs themselves, so that it s a mix of both. So, yes, we ll still have some of that, and hopefully we ve pushed it a bit further.

There was a huge morally ambiguous decision at the end of Human Revolution, with several different outcomes that dramatically affected the story's close. Where does Mankind Divided pick up? Which of those endings is true ?

A lot of people ask which ending we settled on to grow from, and the answer I give is which one did you choose? Everyone chose their ending and it was a big decision. We had people write to us and say they had half hour discussions with their partner about what they were going to do. We don t want to rob that from anybody. We realised that there are three people in the world who know what decision was made: Adam Jensen, Eliza, and you, the player.

So you guys know, but the rest of the world [in the Deus Ex universe] only knows that the aug incident caused millions of augmented people to go crazy all over the world. When you re swept up in tragedy your focus is only on that. It s only in the aftermath of [the tragedy], when you re finally able to step away, that you re able to hear the noise. By the time that happens, the message has gotten out but by the time anyone is ready to hear it, there are a lot of competing messages. People will, in the face of tragedy, try to make sense on their own, so there are plenty of messages, plenty of false reports and rumours.

So in that way all the endings are true and none of them are true.

Exactly. The thing that is true, that everyone knows, is that millions of augs went crazy and hundreds of millions of people died, and the Panchaea installation got so damaged that it collapsed and people died in it, and then there are rumours.

What are your feelings regarding transhumanism?

I get this question a lot and every time it changes slightly. In general I would say where technology is leading mankind, and where we re able to experiment, there s great potential. It s great what can happen. There are people whose lives have been changed. People who are born unable to hear suddenly can. I remember listening to a woman who was born without legs speak, and she s a great athlete and model now, and she gets to change her height because she has artificial legs. There s a part of me that embraces all that and there s a part of me that is a bit of a technophobe. I hate it when my computer doesn t work and I don t want to deal with it. Would I go and cut off my arm and get a new one? Probably not, because I already have a hard time making a doctor s appointment!

Is it difficult to deal in themes as weighty and morally ambiguous as Deus Ex in a video game?

I ve never thought about that, but it s always difficult to tackle it in any medium. In games it might be difficult in terms of the fact that when you re dealing with weighty, heavy issues you really need to have… we don t like to deal in black and white. We like to have the shades of grey. But people have a tendency to latch onto something simple, and when you re working with a game you re working in a team. So there s a challenge in the fact it s not a single creator, it s a bunch of people bringing that vision together. And then I think there s the challenge that the audience. Why do you play a game? Sometimes you want an escape, something simple, but at other times you want to explore something deeper.

Augmentations weren t unanimously frowned upon in Human Revolution, but from what I ve read about Mankind Divided, they kinda are. How has that affected the tone and aesthetic of the game?

We re definitely going for a much darker vision. Not everyone is against the augments, and there are many people still on the fringes. Adam Jensen isn t the only one who didn t ask for it. There s various people out there who needed these things to stay alive. There are a lot of people who still believe in the potential of augs, as David Serif has always believed. What their struggle in this one is, hey guys, remember we were victims . We ve definitely gone, as I ve said, for a darker tone. It s a much more somber game. We re starting to move a little bit away [from the HR aesthetic], into blue-ish tones, like the original, as we head into that era.

You guys used the phrase mechanical apartheid in your marketing, and that caused some controversy. What is your personal response to that, as a writer?

We know that it is a charged word, we definitely know that. Yet it s so perfectly suited to what we re doing, that the use of it was appropriate in that context. I certainly understand why people would be upset and offended, and yet at the same time if we re not able to explore these complex issues then what are we able to do? Not every story is rosy, not every story is black and white, and one of the things about science fiction is that we re trying to show a mirror to the world. We need to be able to examine these things or else we ll never be able to grow and change. That s my philosophy, but having said that I never want to offend anyone who has lived through those struggles, and the most I can hope for is that if I approach it with sensitivity then hopefully something better will come of it.

You told GamesRadar that there won t be a multiple choice ending in Mankind Divided. Why?

For Human Revolution we actually didn t want [the ending to be dictated by] a press of a button, [but we had to] for production reasons and timeline and schedule. We actually wanted to have the player do things, and we believed that if you really believed in your ending you d have to work for it. Really what we wanted to do from the get go was, can we really push the narrative in ways where choices you make early on can impact later ? Now we re embracing the idea of choice and consequence.

So it ll be influenced by the whole playthrough and not a choice at the end.

Yes.

A vent. Spacious, breezy, and filled with giant grates through which to look. A flash of movement? Who's in there. It's Tom Senior, crawling into Square Enix's heavily guarded office. Throwing a flashbang to stun a patrol of accountants he jumped out and over a stairwell, landing smoothly on the floor below in a glorious flash of yellow light. Through a door was his target: a playable build of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Tom's report can be found as the cover feature of this month's PC Gamer.

Also this issue, Tom Hatfield rounds up the best of the best of GTA 5 mods, and Samuel wonders if Star Wars Battlefront is the FPS that Star Wars fans deserve. We've got free gifts, too. This month, you can get a Steam key for Epigenesis, and unlock Ares and the Destroyer skins for Smite. The issue, which is in shops now, can be ordered through My Favourite Magazines. Digitally, you'll find it on the App Store, Google Play, and Zinio, and you can subscribe to get issues delivered directly to your door. Below you can gaze upon the luminous subscriber's cover, and find a round-up of the contents of this issue's perspicacious pages.

This month we...

• Spend four hours playing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, then tell you about it.
• Ask if it's a problem that Battlefront is too simple for Battlefield fans.
• Round up the best, strangest, most enjoyable GTA 5 mods.
• Catch up with Total War: Warhammer, Endless Space 2, Homefront: The Revolution, Mount & Blade 2, Hearts of Iron 4, Need for Speed and Shardlight.
• Review Soma, Dropsy, else Heart.Break(), Fifa 16, Blood Bowl 2, World of Warships, Skyshine's Bedlam, Big Pharma, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, Undertale, Cities: Skylines After Dark and Dragon Age: Inquisition Trespasser.
• Group test Skylake compatible motherboards.
• Tell tales of our latest PC gaming adventures in Now Playing.
• Collect up the best free games and mods of the last month.
• Return to the Capital Wasteland in Reinstall.
• Recollect our epic GTA Online heist in our new feature, After Action Report.
• Tour the streets of LA Noire in Why I Love.

And more! Until next month.

Today is the day that video game men get their own trailers. First Assassin's Creed Syndicate's Jacob Frye, and now Deus Ex: Mankind Divided's Adam Jensen.

Sorry, I mean Adam Jensen 2.0.

"I used to know what tomorrow looked like," he begins, which is a way more impressive skill than the "gun-arm augmentations" and the rest so it's a shame he doesn't have that precognition anymore. You can watch the trailer to find out what he does have, however, which includes lots of different ways to kill people.

Look, basically all this trailer will give you is close-up shots of Jensen's gun-arm and some action-movie quips, but if you want to know what it's actually like to play Mankind Divided then Tom has an extensive hands-on that you should definitely check out.