Square Enix announced today that Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, the sequel to 2011's Deus Ex: Human Revolution, is scheduled for release on February 23, 2016. Like its predecessor, Mankind Divided comes with irksome pre-order exclusives including an extra mission and equipment packs. Actually, it's even more complex than that this time. Behold the "Augment Your Pre-Order" campaign:



I guess it's evidence of Kickstarter's cultural impact that its mechanics are being copied so transparently. The more people pre-order, the more exclusives they can pre-order! And if there are enough pre-orders, the game will actually come out four days earlier! It's all very silly, and the commenters on YouTube seem to be reacting accordingly.

But yeah, that's the release date. There haven't been any new Deus Ex: Mankind Divided gameplay trailers since E3, but the Eidos Montreal devs have released some Q&A featurettes and other stuff, which you can watch over at the game's YouTube channel. From what I can tell, it seems like it's going to improve on some of Human Revolution's shortcomings, with more tools to use and better level design, but I'm afraid we're stuck with some of the new series' modern-styled signature elements, such as takedowns and ubiquitous experience point rewards (the latter of which they're now attempting to rebalance to make combat a more attractive option).