Deus Ex: Human Revolution Interview

VG247 has kicked up a brief interview they recently conducted with Deus Ex: Human Revolution producer David Anfossi about the game’s premise, RPG elemnts, and development schedule. An excerpt:

You’ve got your shooter side and your RPG side. How do you make sure the two don’t end up stepping on each other’s cybernetically-enhanced toes? Is this going to be one of those games were a headshot can hit someone dead-on, yet the game still considers it a (miss)?

We cannot be a Gears of War on the gun side, or a Sam Fisher on the stealth, or an [inaudible] on the RPG. We have to deal with all these mechanics in the same game, so what we tried to do is work as a whole so that the player is able to do what he wants to do when [he wants to do it].

Usually, people say we’re a competitor to Mass Effect and Fallout and that kind of game. This is about action-RPG, and so that’s true. We’re in the same category. But if you look at Mass Effect, which is a space opera with an action component, and it’s a great game. But there are things that are in Mass Effect that are not in Fallout and vice versa. So every game has its specific things specific mechanics. In terms of visuals, this is also very different. Every game has a signature.

Another sort of old-school PC gaming classic recently got the Frankenstein treatment. Unlike Deus Ex, however, XCOM is going in a completely different direction than its series progenitor. Do you think that’s a bad idea? Is it generally best to stick with the source material?

Good question. I would say it really depends on the team. Because, you know, it’s their baby. They could do something different with what they had at the beginning. And maybe this is the way we see this franchise now. This is the way the player wants to play it. I don’t know if it’s a good decision or not.

We just decided to respect the source material because we think of that when we think of Deus Ex fans. We replayed the original games to make sure we didn’t miss anything. It’s not a question of strategy or marketing or anything.