“Triple Triad,” “Deus Ex: Mankind Divided” and “Mechanical Apartheid” Registered by Square Enix

Giuseppe Nelva March 30, 2014 1:58 AM EST

Square Enix recently trademarked “Triple Triad” in the US and “Deus Ex: Mankind Divided” and “Mechanical Apartheid” in the UK, as discovered by NeoGAF user Rösti and Exentryk. “Deus Ex: Mankind Divided” was also registered for the European Union.

Triple Triad is the name of the fan favorite card minigame that was featured in Final Fantasy VIII.

“Deus Ex: Mankind Divided” and “Mechanical Apartheid” are maybe even more intriguing. The term “Apartheid” indicates the law-enforced racial segregation system that used to exist in South Africa, and back in October Eidos Montreal Studio Head David Anfossi wrote an official blog post stating that the next Deus Ex games for next gen consoles and PC will have trans-humanism segregation as its backdrop.



I want to leave you with a piece of concept art from our next-gen Deus Ex game that shows trans-humanism segregation, which is a backdrop to our vision for the next Deus Ex. It represents a “ghetto-city’ voluntarily built in order to separate the classes. The people in this segregated class have reshaped their environment, nostalgic for their ideal of Cyber Renaissance. This dark and dystopian vision sets the tone for things to come in Deus Ex.

You can see the piece of concept art mentioned at the bottom of the post. Interestingly enough, an user on the Eurogamer forums mentioned about a month ago that the next Deus Ex game would be titled Deus Ex: Mechanical Apartheid. That’s the only instance I could find in which the same wording was mentioned. Considering how specific the term “Apartheid” is, what are the odds that he was just shooting in the dark?

A possibility is for one of the two marks to be the title of the upcoming game, while the second could indicate a spin-off, or alternate experience linked to it. In any case both Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Mechanical Apartheid sound quite fitting to the Deus Ex universe.

In addition to this, the domain mechanicalapartheid.com was also registered on the same day as the trademark. Even if the registrant name is not disclosed, I’d say it’s very safe to assume that it has been registered by Square Enix itself given the timing.