Late last night, Eidos Montreal announced via their Facebook page (currently defunct), that Deus Ex: Human Defiance would be revealed today. Since I’ve been alive for more than three days and I’m wary of what April the 1st means on the internet, I was dubious about the timing of this announcement.
Nevertheless, fans of the Deus Ex franchise held out hope for something–anything–tangible. Rumors of a book circulated in the Facebook comments amid hopeful longings for a film. One commenter demanded it “better be a game and not a movie,” to the positive reply of “oh, it is!”
Turns out, Eidos Montreal wasn’t quite telling the truth. Deus Ex: Human Defiance was revealed in the above video this morning to my own choked screaming. Not because it was an excellently-played April Fool’s prank, but because… I kind of want it.
8-bit Deus Ex? Co-op play where you hurl Jensen into approaching enemies? The (very highbrow) trailer explains that the 8-bit choice for Human Defiance would be able to deliver things like “more augmentations, more travel to… places we thought [were] impossible to play these into past games.” One of the pieces from the trailer that sucked me in was the promise of even more conspiratorial action. “If there’s one thing the pixels allows us to do… it’s deeper conspiracies.”
Eidos Montreal explained the spark of the Human Defiance joke to Kotaku via Twitter:
@kotaku When it was decided “Human Defiance” wouldn’t be used we took the opportunity to have a little fun. Hope you guys had a laugh 🙂
No, Eidos Montreal. I didn’t have a good laugh. It turns out when you make something neat, even if it’s in 8-bit, people still want to play it. You’ve sparked a strange passion in me, and I can’t quite tell what it is. But it’s certainly made with pixels.
