Deus Ex: Human Revolution Interview

The editors over at GameCareerGuide have gotten around to posting an interview they conducted with Deus Ex: Human Revolution lead writer Mary DeMarle during this year’s E3, which seems to focus primarily on her previous writing credentials, her contributions to the FPS/RPG, and how writing for video games is approached differently than other mediums.

You say it’s challenging. Now, with that challenge does it also come with a kind of increased reward? Increased return?

MD: I think so, personally. The first and biggest challenge I realized was the fact that you are not in charge of your story, the player is, and the player wants choice. So how can you write a story about a hero when you don’t know what your hero is going to do? That’s a huge challenge, but it actually allows you to be more creative.

Like with Deus Ex: Human Revolution not only does the story take account for player actions where they can change the story, but just writing Adam [Jensen’s] dialogue becomes all about choice. Because now you’ve got a character that you’ve created, and you’ve given a personality to, but then you’re handing it over to the player and you want to give the player the option to choose dialogue that’s different. That ends up being such a great thing, you can always explore one path through your dialogue and see where it takes you, then you can turn around and take it in a different direction.

For me it’s a much more exciting challenge because you’re trying to think of all those contingencies. When you succeed, and when you see players going, “Oh, I’m gonna outsmart em, and I’m gonna go try this,” and then they try it and realize, “Oh my God, they thought of that!” That’s very very exciting.

…

Actually, I’ve always been really curious about that. In the Elder Scrolls games for example, you can find full short-stories in these books all over the place. Is there a specialized team of writers who work on just those? Or is that maybe what the writers do when they don’t have other things at the top of their priority list?

MD: I did work with a team of writers on [Deus Ex: HR], and there were certain ones who were a better fit for specific things. There are some who were hired specifically because they’re really good at dialogue, so they might focus on the overheard conversations and things like that. Then there are others who are masters at all things, for example: We spent a lot of time developing the world, and the universe, and one of the writers we worked with helped on that a lot. Then when it came time to create the books, since he had created a lot of the lore it was easy for him to write those.

I think it’s very important for a game writer to be versatile, and be able to write everything from newspaper stories to dialogue. But I think there is also the possibility that you can have short contract jobs and get specialists. Like if you know that newspapers are going to be a major function of your game and you want to be realistic, why not hire a journalist to write those things on a short-term contract?