April Fools: Eidos Montreal takes Deus Ex to the 8-bit past with Human Defiance

In one of the more elaborate fake announcements of April Fools' Day, developers at Eidos Montreal posted a landing page and video announcement for Deus Ex: Human Defiance, an 8-bit re-imagining of the studio's augmented action game.

The fake game, which Square Enix began teasing yesterday afternoon, features what you'd expect from a Deus Ex title — bodily augmentation, moral decisions, international conspiracies — all wrapped in a much more pixelated exterior. The video's hosts, executive director Jean-Francois Dugas and production designer Jonathan Jacques-Belletete, also reveal how unpopular the project has been among Eidos' managers, leading them to raise the funds for its non-existent development themselves. As such, the landing page features a Kickstarter-like pledge tracker.

The video also picks fun at Human Revolution's boss fights — the biggest sticking point critics had with the title — showing an "improved" encounter in which the player must drop a cage on the boss' head. Check out the game's landing page to watch the video; just don't get your hopes up for an actual release.