Today Square-Enix announced that Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will hit shelves in only a few shorts months on Feb. 23. That’s great news, but what’s really catching people’s attention is the game’s quirky, Kickstarter-inspired approach to pre-order bonuses.
Basically, Square-Enix’s “Augment Your Pre-Order” scheme allows you to choose your pre-order rewards, and the more people pre-order, the more bonuses you’ll get to choose from. It’s a system clearly inspired by the reward tiers you typically see on Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites, except of course Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was fully-funded by Square-Enix.
You can check out a video explanation of the Augment Your Pre-Order system at the top of this post, but basically, at Tier 1 you can choose one of three special load outs; Tier 2 gives you a choice of a digital art book or soundtrack sampler; Tier 3 will unlock a bonus mission; Tier 4 lets you choose between a comic book or novella; and Tier 5 being unlocked means the game will come out four days earlier on Feb. 19.
Here’s a quick trailer for that extra mission you can unlock…
Now, I realize this is all for fun, but still, this whole Augment Your Pre-Order raises a lot of questions. Like, how many people have to pre-order to reach the various tiers? They never specify. Also, I’m guessing all these rewards are already made or in the works, so why make people work for them? Also, what happens if a tier isn’t reached? Are all the Deus Ex comics and novellas thrown in the incinerator? If this were a real crowdfunding campaign, it’d be laughed off Kickstarter.
(via Polygon)