Deus Ex: Mankind Divided's pre-order scheme could change everything
Square Enix recently revealed the official release date for sci-fi wonder Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, but the celebration was dampened with a strange pre-order scheme that could have a huge impact on the future of the games industry.
The studio's neo-noir augmented dystopian sci-fantasy Deus Ex: Mankind Divided looks to be one of the best games in recent memory, and it now has a release date of February 23, 2016. Unless enough people pre-order the game--then it'll release four days earlier on February 19, 2016. To get the game early a good portion of gamers will have to pay up front and everyone gets the game early...this time.
In the future might be different. What if there are actually two release dates for games: the early pre-orderers who acted like early adopters in a weird sort of Early Access for AAA games, and the regular joes who get access to the game later. If this kind of disparity is created it'll likely eschew an exodus towards pre-buying as the mainstream public will probably want to get their game as soon as possible--it's the same price, right, so what's the big deal?
The new face of pre-orders
The studio is effectively attempting a Kickstarter-esque round of funding without the structured environment of a fundraiser, but this isn't new--studios have been using pre-orders to fund games for quite some time now. In theory Deus Ex: Mankind Divided's "augment your pre-order" initiative sounds harmless; it just lets gamers get little extras if certain stretch goals are met. But if this trend catches on, it could create a very skewed base where gamers are pressured even more to gamble on a game they've never played. An early launch pre-order bonus is much more persuasive that small DLC skins from GameStop.
Here's how it works: when you pre-order the game, you get to pick a reward for every tier is unlocked. More tiers are unlocked as more gamers pre-buy the game. There are four tiers, each of which offers incremental goodies:
Tier 1
Intruder pack
Enforcer pack
Classic pack
Tier 2
Digital artbook
Digital OST sampler
Tier 3
Extra in-game mission
Tier 4
Digital comic book
Novella
Tier 5 (available for everyone)
3-day early game launch
The whole thing seems like an interesting and appealing mechanic, especially if you planned to pre-order the game anyway. But for the wary gamers out there, these kinds of schemes set off a red flag, especially since you have to lay down the full $59.99 and pre-buy to get access to the "augment your pre-order" extras.
This sort of thing isn't new; we've seen it in Call of Duty: Advance Warfare's Day Zero edition, and in massive failures like Driveclub, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Assassin's Creed: Unity, and the Watch Dogs fiasco. The reason to stop pre-ordering games goes on and on.
Old tricks made new
Pre-orders have been described as a "free loan", and rightly so, as the territory has become distinctly high-risk. Even games that were seen as safe bets like the PC port of Batman: Arkham Knight turned out to be huge mistakes. As a result of these disasters, the gaming community largely distrusts pre-orders and makes conscious initiatives to "vote with their wallets" to hit the companies where it hurts.
Now the publishers have to step up their game. We've seen these companies try all kinds of tricks like microtransaction-laden freemium games, pay-to-win schemes, the dreaded season passes, platform-exclusive content, etc. Most of these things remain lucrative money-making schemes that power the industry, but now that pre-orders might be compromised, it's time to think of something new.
For the most part the retailer-specific pre-order bonuses of the past are negligible and honestly don't offer any real incentive, but Square Enix hopes to ramp this concept up with a strange Kickstarter-like fundraiser that takes the risk to a global level. And if the studio is successful, this tiered pre-buy scheme could become the new norm for studios and publishers everywhere. Companies are always looking to copy any sort of scheme as long as it rakes in money.
One of the more troubling trends is the patented pre-order-and-delay maneuver that that's been perfected by big-name studios. First open up pre-orders instantly after a game is announced--we're talking the second a reveal trailer is live--so people can shell out big bucks after being sold on the bullshots. Build up hype for a few months with more teasers, screenshots, interviews etc, and then issue a delay. This way the devs buy themselves more time to not only raise excitement but also collect even more pre-orders. Don't have enough cash? Simple. Just delay the game again.
No one knows if Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will be good or not--hell we don't even know if each platform will even be able to play it on launch--and that's really the gamble that gamers face in this situation. No one knows for sure, but despite that, we're supposed to watch a few trailers and check out screenshots and drop down $59.99 in good faith.
Square Enix makes great games, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution was one of my personal favorite games in the last generation, so it's almost a given that Mankind Divided will continue this legacy. But there's always that chance it could crash, and that spectre of uncertainty isn't the fault of gamers, but of the hard lessons the industry has taught us.
With any luck, this global pre-order scheme will die out on the vine. If it's successful it could mutate into something truly ridiculous like an extra tax to receive the game early--pre-order and cough up $69.99 to get a game 10 days before its launch, or maybe even a month early. It might be a stretch to speculate so deeply, but then again it really isn't.
Remember Evolve's insane price-gouging DLC? For a more current example, look at Destiny's new $40 The Taken King expansion, or even the previous underwhelming expansions; these games feel like simple experiments run by publishers to see what makes money and what doesn't. We all know that the industry will continue to find more creative and persuasive ways to get our money, and we'll continue to see even more experiments before the big new moneymakers stick.
This new fundraiser model may not be as daunting as it seems, and the initial run isn't really anything to be worried about. What's worrisome is the precedent it could create and what it could lead to. Hopefully I'm wrong. But if the past (and present) are any indicator, the world of pre-orders is about to get a whole lot more coercive.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Getting DirectX 12 Support From Day One
Tweaktown was able to have a very enlightening chat with AMD’s Richard Huddy about DX12 and some of their game partnerships that they’ve entered into. Specifically they wanted to know how Asynchronous Shaders would affect the performance of some future games that are on the horizon. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will have full support DirectX 12 along with TressFX 3.0 at launch.
Perhaps this isn’t necessarily unexpected news. The Dawn engine is a very capable technological marvel, and it would make sense for AMD to at least assist in leveraging their expertise in order to use it as a proper showcase, especially considering it’s being touted in their internal press materials as being a perfect fit for their Fiji architecture. We’re also fast approaching nearly 90 Million devices with Windows 10, meaning that DirectX 12 is a valid option for a vast amount of gamers.
What does this mean for NVIDIA, however? Depending on whether or not the software Async scheduler is able to be implemented, and I have no doubt that by the time that Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is released that at least a patch in their drivers to enable some sort of software functionality until a true fix can be implemented. But it remains to be seen how that’s going to be dealt with within the engine itself.
Then the question remains, what of consoles? If DirectX 12 will inevitably be an inherent part of the underlying engine, then will consoles thus be able to take advantage of that? So far the implementation within the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 are unknown, and we’re not entirely sure how they’ll be able to take advantage of those features, or indeed when. The great thing, however, is that at least the GPU, being GCN based, has Asynchronous Shaders and a not insubstantial performance boost should occur. Will TressFX 3.0 be running on consoles? Probably not, I don’t think they could handle the extra rendering overhead.
Also, Huddy let us know that there will indeed be a benchmark tool included in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, so that we may have a good DirectX 12 benchmark to compare hardware against.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is coming out sometime in 2016 and the original Deus Ex creator has has told us that they’re very excited and happy about the game thus far.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided – Adam Jensen 2.0 Trailer
Square Enix and Eidos have released a new trailer for the upcoming Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. The trailer showcases the game’s iconic hero Adam Jensen, and how far he has come since he was last seen in Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
“Adam Jensen is the next step in human evolution. In Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, he is now an experienced covert operative, forced to operate in a world that has grown to despise his kind. Armed with a new arsenal of state-of-the-art weapons and augmentations, he must choose the right approach, along with who to trust, in order to unravel a vast worldwide conspiracy. This new in-game trailer highlights the Titan shield, as well as his new gun-arm augmentations: the Tesla, the Nanoblade and the PEPS”
Mankind Divided was announced earlier this year and is set in 2029, two years after the events of Human Revolution and the infamous ‘Aug Incident’ in Panchaea, that resulted in the death of millions at the hands of those who had installed augmentations. This event has created a huge divide between those who have augmentations, and those who do not. Amongst this emotional turmoil are various factions looking to manipulate the public by twisting public opinion of augmentation to further their own agenda and hide the truth of what really happened. “Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will also mark a new era in Eidos-Montréal’s technology, utilizing the advanced visual and immersive capabilities of the Dawn Engine, specifically built for the recent generation of consoles and PC. Under the umbrella of the Gaming Evolved program, AMD and Eidos-Montréal have been collaborating on Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and the game will feature Microsoft’s DX 12 support as well as AMD’s TressFX”, according an Eidos spokesman. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will officially launch globally on February 23, 2016 for the PS4, Xbox One and PC.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Runs At Locked 30FPS On Xbox One & PS4
The upcoming Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will run on a locked framerate of 30 frames per second on both Xbox One and PS4. This doesn’t apply to the PC port, which is being handled by Dutch developer Nixxes.
The locked framerate was recently confirmed by game director Jean-François Dugas, who answered a fan question. Dugas was later asked whether this also applied to the PC version of the game, after which the game director replied that the locked framerate only applies to the console versions of the game.
As said, the PC version of the game is being handled by Dutch developer Nixxes, who is already doing the Rise of the Tomb Raider port for the Xbox 360.
The fact that the upcoming Deus EX is being locked at 30FPS , might well indicate tearing and judder on both consoles when running on rates above 30FPS. In general, locking a framerate to a certain value, produces a more consistent experience, but this isn’t always the case on consoles
For an interesting comparison between unlocked fps and 30fps gaming, I suggest you check out this article from Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry from last year.
Set in 2029
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was announced back in April of this year and takes place in 2029, two years after the events of Human Revolution and the infamous ‘Aug Incident’ in Panchaea that resulted in the death of millions at the hands of those who had installed augmentations.
“For 15 years, Deus Ex has been a point of conversation across the games industry and beyond, whether the topic is the franchise’s unique gameplay or topical narrative focused on advanced biotechnology and human augmentation,” said David Anfossi, Head of Studio, Eidos-Montréal. “What began with Deus Ex: Human Revolution goes to a whole new level in Deus Ex:Mankind Divided, diving even deeper into this discussion and, in turn, offering fans an all-encompassing experience, one which will challenge their skills as players and emphasize decision-making based on real world topics.”
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is scheduled for a release on PC, PS4 and Xbox One on February 23, 2016.
This year, Square Enix and Eidos Montreal finally unveiled Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, a direct sequel to 2011’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The game was supposed to release on the 23rd of February next year and a now cancelled pre-order scheme even offered five days early access to the title. Now though, it seems we won’t be getting the game until much later.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will now launch on the 23rd of August 2016, exactly five years after the launch of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. This big delay will give Eidos more time to ‘exceed expectations’.
In the announcement, Eidos Montreal studio head, David Anfossi, said: “As you may have already seen by reading and watching the many previews for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, our aim is for it to be a worthy successor to Human Revolution, and to improve upon that game in every way possible. I know that expectations are extremely high, and we not only want to meet those expectations, but exceed them.”
“We’re confident and proud of the game so far. However, as we are now playing through the game in full we can see that it will require more time in post-production for tuning, iterations, and refinement to meet our high standards. In order to achieve this, we need to move the release of the game to August 23rd, 2016.”
Deus Ex Mankind Divided Uses A Lot Of Static Lights; Static Geometry Visibility Cached
Deus Ex Mankind Divided will make use a of a lot static lights, and a cached static geometry visibility is used to improve performance. The game runs on the newly developed Dawn Engine, and uses Umbra tech.
The next-generation Dawn Engine was presented by Square Enix and Eidos back in December of 2014, and is based on a heavily modified version of IO Interactive’s Glacier 2 engine. The engine features new technology that allows for improved rendering capabilities, real-time physics, and advanced artificial intelligence programming. According Square Enix and Eidos, the Dawn Engine was specifically built for the recent generation of consoles and PC.
A tech demo, displaying the graphical prowess that is possible for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, was published back in June last year.
During the upcoming Gamers Developers Conference in March of this year, Eidos and Umbra will be talking about how Umbra is used in Deus Ex Mankind Divided. Deus Ex Mankind Divided to feature a lot of very rich environments
Interestingly, the description of the session mentions that Deus Ex Mankind Divided use a lot of static lights. While these lights have limited usability due to not being movable or adjustable at runtime, they have impact on performance once processed.
Since many lights in the game are static, the geometry visibility has been cached to speedup the umbra query.
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We will go into the details of how Umbra was used for the main camera, but also the generation of the shadow maps. Since many of our lights are static, we cached the static geometry visibility to speedup the umbra query.
Note that shadows of static lights are not created during runtime, but are generated before gameplay. Basically this means that static lighting can’t create shadows for moving objects. On the other hand, when certain objects for lighting have also been made static, they can still produce contact shadows at low performance cost.
Deus Ex Mankind Divided will feature a lot of very rich environments, and because of this, the development team needed an efficient geometry culling solution.
In order to support the very rich environments our artists envision, we needed a very efficient geometry culling solution without the associated manual labour. We will give a general overview of the Dawn engine and show how Umbra was integrated from the edition and offline building to the low level rendering engine to achieve this goal.
Attendees will see the choices that were made for improving geometry culling performances, while maintaining an environment production pipeline that is efficient.
The tech demo above, already was impressive, and we wonder how the final product will look and perform.
Deus Ex Mankind Divided is slated for a release in August 2016 for PC, Xbox One, and PS4.
Quando li a descrição pensei que seria um verde. Depois de ver o jogo, fiquei com a sensação de ser mais red. E no fim confirma-se o red.
Aparenta vir a puxar bastante pela vram e ram.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Will Have Huge, Dense Maps – Graphics Technology and Techniques Revealed
Deus Ex: Mankind Deivided, the next triple A installment in Eidos’ cyberpunk-themed first-person action role-playing video game series, is currently in development with an aim to deliver truly improved gameplay as well as graphics on all current-gen platforms, using a new game engine. Latest details from the development team reveal that thanks to the new technology and techniques that the developer is using to handle graphics, the upcoming game offers massive level sizes and locations that are both huge and stuffed with new content. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Will Use Temporal AA, Improved TressFX Technology, and More – Biggest Level is “One Square Kilometer in Size”
Eidos Montréal Graphics Programmer Nicolas Trudel recently hosted a panel at Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, talking about the technology and the graphic techniques that the development team is pressing into service to deliver the best of everything with Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. A report from DualShockers offers more details on how Eidos Montreal is applying new methods to deal with anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion, and lighting. It also reveals how big and dense locations the game will have to offer.
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Talking about the technology, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided d is making use of the new Dawn Engine, which is “a heavily modified version of IO Interactive’s proprietary Glacier 2 game engine”, along with a range of middleware “including Umbra, PhysX, APEX, Blink, Scaleform, FMOD, and Nav Power.” The game uses “Tiled Lighting, with Deferred rending for opaque surfaces and forward lighting for transparent surfaces.” The anti-aliasing solution that the game uses is based on a temporal algorithm, and a temporal solution is also being used for ambient occlusion. The developer is also using an improved version of AMD’s TressFX as hair technology. READ Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Runs At Locked 30FPS On Xbox One & PS4
The improvements in technology have enabled the development team to new introduce indoor and outdoor locations that players will be able to explore as they progress through the game. While not comparable to true open world games, the game’s maps will still be both great in size and packed with a variety of new content. The biggest level in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided comes in at “one square kilometer in size,” and featuring as many as 300 million polygons that are used for “10,000 to 80,000 objects” that will be present at any given time. But of course, not all of them will be rendered at the same time save for only the visible ones.
Full list of locations that Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will feature hasn’t been announced yet, but the Czech capital of Prague has already been revealed as one of the main cities that players will be able to explore. The game, which takes place two years after the event’s of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, is set to launch on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One this year on August 23.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is set to become one of the biggest games of 2016, and during this year's Game Developers Conference, some details were revealed on the graphics engine powering it; the Dawn Engine.
It was revealed that Mankind Divided will be using a heavily modified version of IO Interactive's Glacier 2 engine, with global illumination that will use hundreds of thousands of lighting probes, and much more. Here's what to expect from Deus Ex: Mankind Divided:
Eidos Montreal has a Labs department that focuses on research and development of technology for multiple Square Enix studios and games.
The Dawn Engine is a heavily modified version of IO Interactive's Glacier 2 engine.
The following middlewares are being used for Deus Ex: Manking Divided*]Umbra
PhysX
APEX
Bink
Scaleform
FMOD
Nav Power
Deus Ex: Manking Divided uses Tiled Lighting, with Deferred randing for opaque surfaces and forwad lighting for transparent surfaces.
The team developed an anti-aliasing solution using a temporal algorithm. It fixes a lot of the specular flickering and smooths out the small details in objects.
A temporal solution was also used for ambient occlusion. The ambient occlusion is computed at half resolution and then upsampled over multiple frames.
For reflective surfaces the team used screen space reflections with a fallback on localized cubemaps.
Global illumination for indirect lighting used spherical harmonix baked offline. Opaque surfaces use per pixel lighting, and the probes are placed with variable density over multiple levels.
The technology for hair has been developed by the studio's Labs department, and it's an improved version of AMD's TressFX.
The game will include both indoor and outdoor locations. The maps are pretty big, but not as big as in open world games. Yet, they're very dense. The biggest level is one square kilometer in size, and includes 300 million polygons.
There are a lot of dynamic objects, and between 10,000 and 80,000 objects at any given time. Not all of them are rendered at the same time, only the visible ones.
Global illumination, which is baked offline, uses hundreds of thousands of lighting probes.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Will Have a Really Good Story & Amazing Replay Value, Says Main Actor
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is easily one of this year’s most anticipated games. Five years after the successful Human Revolution entry, Adam Jensen is about to come back in yet another cyberpunk themed action RPG full of stealth, shooting and conspiracy.
Originally slated for a release on February 23, it was delayed to August 23, which makes it about four months and a half away now. YouTube channel Video Game Sophistry managed to interview Canadian actor Elias Toufexis, who voiced main character Adam Jensen in Human Revolution and will reprise the role in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided; Toufexis also recently voiced Takkar in Far Cry: Primal and starred as Kenzo in The Expanse TV series.
He had many interesting things to say about Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. He confirmed that all his work is now done and then proceeded to talk about the game:
We’re officially done. We had a few performance capture pickups last week, actually. I drove to Montreal a lot this year and last year, but we’re done. The game looks incredible, I love the story, I love where they’re taking the story.
I’m really, really happy with the story in particular. It’s really good this time.
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The endings – I’m not going to give them away, but they’re definitely different than the last time. The choices that you are offered are game-changers, in the literal sense of the word. In the last game, there were I think six or seven endings that you could get with some very minor changes, depending on how you played. In this game, the way you play affects the story, less the character. We know our character now.
So the way you play affects exactly the people you meet, the sidequests you complete, it could change an entire arc of the story. This game is going to have, I think, amazing replay value. Even I’ll go through it and be ‘How did I get here?” and they would explain to me ‘Because you did this, this and this, because of this character’.
The game is so dense, so thick in terms of plot and the world. The world is so vast now, in terms of all the people you meet and the different things they’re going through. I hope people play it twice, or even three times, to experience the entire thing.
Toufexis also mentioned that Eidos Montreal actually added a sidequest to the game thanks to the delay, even though everything else was complete (the main reason for the delay itself was polishing it all to higher quality).
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is powered by the new Dawn Engine. It will feature DirectX 12 support and several technical advancements detailed in our recent report; the game will launch simultaneously on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
New Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Gameplay Showcases The Game’s Dark Environments & Some 1st Person Shooting
Some new gameplay for the upcoming Deus Ex: Mankind Divided has surfaced online that shows a glimpse of the game’s dark environments, some 1st-person shooting, and more.
The gameplay is part of a new video published by Autodesk, who recently visited Eidos Montreal for a studio tour. While the video also showcases development tools, the video also gave provided a short peak at some Mankind Divided gameplay.
Check out Autodesk’s studio tour down below:
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was officially announced back in April of last year. The game is in development for PC/PS4/XO, and is set in 2029, two years after the events of Human Revolution and the infamous ‘Aug Incident’ in Panchaea that resulted in the death of millions at the hands of those who had installed augmentations.
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“For 15 years, Deus Ex has been a point of conversation across the games industry and beyond, whether the topic is the franchise’s unique gameplay or topical narrative focused on advanced biotechnology and human augmentation,” said David Anfossi, Head of Studio, Eidos-Montréal. “What began with Deus Ex: Human Revolution goes to a whole new level in Deus Ex:Mankind Divided, diving even deeper into this discussion and, in turn, offering fans an all-encompassing experience, one which will challenge their skills as players and emphasize decision-making based on real world topics.”
Mankind Divided was initially slated for a release this February, but was later delayed to August 23rd, 2016.
“I know that expectations are extremely high and we not only want to meet those expectations but exceed them”, said studio head, David Anfossi, following the delay back in November 2015.
“We’re confident and proud of the game so far. However, as we are now playing through the game in full we can see that it will require more time in post-production for tuning, iterations and refinement to meet our high standards. In order to achieve this we need to move the release of the game to August 23rd, 2016”, Anfossi added.
Mankind Divided will make use of Eidos Montreal’s new ‘Dawn’ engine, and will feature DX12 support from day one.
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