Deus Ex: Mankind Divided has some large shoes to fill as the follow-up to the warmly received Human Revolution. However, its developers, Eidos Montreal, are pulling out all the stops to make sure they produce a worthy sequel — and that includes an attempt to address one of the biggest problems fans had with its predecessor.

The game's director, Jean-Francois Dugas, held a Twitter Q&A earlier this week to discuss Mankind Divided. Perhaps the most intriguing piece of information that he was willing to share with fans is that the game will be completely 'ghostable', meaning that players will be able to run a stealth-based playthrough without killing anyone.

Choices like this made the original Deus Ex a classic, and as such were a high priority for inclusion in Human Revolution. Regrettably, that game outsourced its bosses to another studio — a decision that was widely criticized as a significant detractor on the overall quality of the game. As such, bosses had to be killed to progress, preventing players from accomplishing a true pacifist run.

However, that won't be the case this time around. Dugas mentioned specifically that bosses will be ghostable — although he didn't elaborate further on what that means. It could be that there will be other options in regards to how bosses are tackled, or players might be able to skip fights altogether with careful decision-making.

What it does make clear is that the team behind Mankind Divided are well aware of fan reaction to Human Revolution. Deus Ex fans can be a passionate bunch, so it's promising to see that the minds in charge of the series are so in tune with the desires of its fanbase.

Hopefully this will prevent Deus Ex from following the Hitman series' divergence from the gameplay that made it a hit. Stealth-based games have lost some of their luster with the masses in recent years — just look at the increased focus on action gameplay in franchises like Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell since their debuts. Thankfully, it seems that the team at Eidos Montreal are keen to offer both stealth and action.

For now, all we have to go on is the word of Dugas and the early glimpses of the game distributed via last week's bizarre marketing stunt. Mankind Divided is certainly an intriguing prospect — and for fans of the series, all signs point towards it being another excellent game.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is set to release for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. No release date has been announced.

Source: Twitter