Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is a game about choices, both in terms of ethics and politics and in actual play style. The first of those choices gets thrown at you very early—indeed, before your first mission. The very first action you take in the game is deciding whether you want to take a lethal path or a non-lethal one. Kill or don’t kill. Luckily for you, the decision you make at that juncture doesn’t matter that much—It just makes the choice you want to pursue easier.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided: Lethal Or Non-Lethal?

Right before you drop into your first mission, your commanding officer will ask you whether you want to go in guns blazing or if you want to take a more nonviolent approach, without killing anybody. As far as I can tell, though, this choice doesn’t commit you to anything. You aren’t going to suddenly kill someone instantly if you choose the lethal path—you’ll simply be given some grenades and a gun (there are a few further choices to determine what kind of gun you’ll get). Likewise, you’ll get a non-lethal weapon if you choose to go that route—either a tranquilizer rifle or a stun gun, depending on whether you request a long-distance weapon or a close-range one.

The game doesn’t lock you into a non-lethal route if you pick that, either. You’ll find guns in the non-lethal route, and you’ll find stun guns and tranq rifles on the lethal route, although in either case, they may cost you a pretty penny and be somewhat rare. Your initial choice only really affects your loadout, so don’t worry too much about the long-term consequences. Decide based on how you like to play: If you’re going stealthy, you may as well go for stun guns and tranq rifles anyway; I’m playing the lethal route and wish I had opted for the stunners, since new weapons generally are in short supply.

Deus Ex is a game about choices, and that’s why the initial choice of lethal vs. non-lethal weapons doesn’t lock you in for the whole game. The choices that matter are your actions: Do you go out of your way to avoid killing anyone, despite the difficulty and the far readier accessibility of deadly guns? Or do you accept convenience and greater ease, and go the fatal route? The non-lethal path is by far the harder one, but Deus Ex: Mankind Divided won’t let you commit to it early on. You have to choose it, over and over again.