Deus Ex: Human Revolution Interview

A new three-page interview with Deus Ex: Human Revolution director Jean-Francois Dugas and producer David Anfossi has been slapped up over at Gamasutra, with most of the Q&A focusing on how the team is setting up the prequel’s overall structure.

There are different various to player choice. Games do it differently. One way is branching, like the scene you showed in the demo — you guys have decided on a number of different discretely authored options, like convincing the guy to let you through the bar, or finding a particular keycode. Then you have the approach of just populating the world with a bunch of systems and saying, “Whatever happens, happens.” Are you falling more in the former category?

JFD: In that sense, since we’re going with a very detailed art direction, and we push the envelope in terms of the world art, there are not as many physics objects as in the first game. In the first game, basically everything was a physics object. But we do still have those, and you still can play with them, and figure out ways to use them as weapons or whatever you want.

There are some funny things we found. We have sticky mine bombs, and during a play test back in March, one player was struggling with an enemy, and at some point, he threw a sticky mine, but then he moved forward with his gun and the sticky mine got stuck to the gun, and then he was pinned. He was moving around and going, “Ahh!” and then, boom! It exploded. [laughs] We never thought about those things; it was not part of our plan. The day that happened was the first time I knew it was possible.

So, we still have that kind of spirit, but we put a lot of effort into the maps themselves in terms of how you can express yourself through the themes and possibilities. It’s not just, “Hey, you have to choose to do this or that.” It’s more subtle than that. You just play, and you have certain situations to deal with. Maybe if you tried something else, it would have been a different experience. We’re trying to keep that alive in all aspects. Even though the physics system aspect is a little bit toned down compared to the old games, it’s not to the point that it’s non-existent.