‘Deus Ex: Mankind Divided’ Viral Campaign Teases May 26 Reveal

Matthew Hadick
Games
Games

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With the release of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided just a few months away, fans are in store for another paranoia-stoking viral marketing campaign, similar to the one that preceded the 2011 release of Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Following security-camera footage of an augmented man destroying $20,000 worth of wine, fans got another taste of digital subversion today via a short video showing a man in an alley beating another man with his own augmented leg. The description of the video on YouTube reads as follows:

The fear over the augmented community has boiled over into the streets, as evidenced by this video footage which shows an argument turning into a brutal fight. Unlike the Panchaea Aug Incident, the humans took this round, as a beast of a man ripped off an Aug’s leg and used it to beat him. “There is reason to be concerned,” says AugAware.org, the organization responsible for releasing the footage. The AugAware.org website seems to indicate that their anti-Aug awareness campaign is just beginning – check the site on May 26th to see what’s next.

The clip has already spread across the Internet, with links to the YouTube video popping up on Reddit and elsewhere.

Navigating to the AugAware.org website only thickens the plot. The anti-augmentation site’s content — a series of posts detailing the dangers of augmented humans, complete with propaganda that harkens back to the good ol’ days — seems to have been hacked by the Augmented Rights Coalition, or ARC. Jumbles of encrypted text obscure most of the news stories while a countdown timer ominously ticks down to May 26, the date of the planned announcement. Who will actually be making the announcement — AugAware or the ARC — and what will it be?

We’ll find out Thursday.

Matthew Hadick