Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Aug lives matter!
Like Human Revolution, this game sucked me in and held me hostage. The world here is so rich and vividly realised that it was hard to not get enraptured in it until I felt like a natural part of it. I can't remember the last time my minute-to-minute gameplay choices were so heavily influenced by the narrative theme and context of a game. I intended to play this the same way I had Human Revolution, i.e. kind of stealthy but not shying away from armed conflict, and taking a lethal approach to anyone who wasn't innocent or "just doing their job" (PMCs who weren't actively shooting at me). Instead, I went through Mankind Divided killing very few people, and even going out of my way to not incapacitate them, regardless of whether they were civilians, police, PMCs, or accused terrorists. I got so wrapped up in the game's setting that I quickly started to instinctively think that my actions would have consequences on how the other augmented ciitizens of Prague would be viewed by non-augmented, or "natural", people. I didn't want to be the metaphoric 'bad apple' that made everyone else's lives harder.
That went the other way, too, to some extent. I've never wanted to punch and shoot generic NPCs so much as in this game. Walking through town and having someone turn to me, apropos of nothing, and saying something like "Urgh, another one," or "****ing clanks," was easy to shrug off at first, but wore on me as the game went on until all I wanted to do was ram a dude's face through his own skull. Hearing people casually talk about how the city would be better off without augs, automatically assuming augs were responsible for everything bad in the city, and noticably recoiling when I was near was harder and harder to take as the game progressed and I had been doing objectively good things for the sake of those same people. The urge to retaliate dogged me throughout the game and the experience was all the richer for it.
It'd be a stretch to say Mankind Divided taught me what it's like to be oppressed in society, but the game does a very, very good job of putting you in that headspace and gives you the room to react to it. I adored this game. It was an experience unlike any I've had with anything else.
Would recommend.