Can’t Kill Progress is a Twitch channel that went live yesterday morning, an alternate reality game leading up to the reveal, tomorrow morning, of a new videogame from developer Square Enix. We’re thinking it’s a new game in the Deus Ex series of futuristic action role playing games. Here’s why.
The story began with a hooded man held captive in a sparse prison cell, our view into the situation provided via the eight security cameras positioned around his cell. Over the first day, we have discovered that his name is Thomas, that he needs some sort of medication, and that he is (or is pretending to be) unaware as to why he is being held.
Threads on Reddit, NeoGAF, and 4chan have gone into much greater detail digging into the minutiae of the ARG, but here’s the important stuff you need to know:
Square Enix has come out and said that the game being teased is in development at one of its Western studios. Square Enix currently has three major western studios and intellectual properties in motion: Eidos Montreal, which developed the 2011 cyberpunk hit Deus Ex: Human Revolution; Crystal Dynamics, which has control of the rebooted Tomb Raider franchise; and IO Interactive, which is probably developing a new Hitman game.
We know for sure that Crystal Dynamics is hard at work on the next Tomb Raider, which was announced at last year’s E3. It’s also highly unlikely that this is an entirely new game franchise, because three days of buildup only to announce a totally unknown game wouldn’t be much of a payoff.
Between Deus Ex and Hitman, Deus Ex is the logical assumption, based on what’s gone on in the live teaser so far.
For one, the general aesthetic. The scene our multi-camera view peers in on is definitely futuristic. We’ve seen Thomas get electrocuted by touching the walls, and be fitted with quick-locking sci-fi-looking handcuffs. And the guards who berate, beat, and interrogate him are sporting some arm-armor that looks an awful lot like an augmented arm from Human Revolution.
Another small tidbit: the Twitch “camera feed” will sometimes fake a “crash and reboot.” Analysis of that reboot page shows the line “C:\Users\Cobaalt” and @cobaalt is the Twitter account of Eidos Montreal UI artist Damien Belleville.
There’s also the name of this whole thing: Can’t Kill Progress. It’s a sentiment extremely reminiscent of the futurist ideals presented by biotechnology and augmentation pioneer David Sarif (a major character in Human Revolution) as well as the augmented-humanity concept of the Deus Ex games as a whole.
But so far, nothing has been confirmed, and there’s no smoking gun. The interactive livestream continues for another day, with pivotal “voting” moments at which where the Twitch chatroom community can influence the story taking place at 10:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m., and 5:00 p.m. Pacific time today. This will culminate in the final vote, and game reveal, at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday.
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