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Vive la Revolution: A Look at Deus Ex's Unlikely Comeback

Deus Ex: Human Revolution's game director talks about reinventing a classic and the future's obsession with vents and ladders.

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"It's always [a set of] complex feelings when you finish a project," said Deus Ex: Human Revolution game director Jean Francois Dugas, speaking to me on the phone last week, as the Internet furiously debated his game's boss encounters.

Games have to ship eventually, even phantoms like Duke Nukem Forever. It doesn't always work out. And like virtually any other game developer, Dugas wanted more time to tweak his game. Human Revolution was a risk. Much was on the line..

To say Dugas and his team of Eidos Montreal were facing tough odds is an understatement.

In terms of open-ended game design, there are few games more cherished than Ion Storm's Deus Ex, a sentiment that's only engrained itself with time. You don't have to look far to see a designer citing Deus Ex as an influence, but the series came to a crashing halt after the disappointing Deus Ex: Invisible War. That Ion Storm imploded certainly didn't help matters, either.

Human Revolution walks a fine line of coaxing nostalgia and establishing its own identity.
Human Revolution walks a fine line of coaxing nostalgia and establishing its own identity.

Eidos Interactive tried to revive the franchise. Crystal Dynamics was working on a third entry, Deus Ex: Clan Wars, which was eventually released without the Deus Ex narrative hooks as Project: Snowblind. The combat attempted to harness Deus Ex's revered sense of player agency.

For the past four years, Dugas has been working on what was once Deus Ex 3 and became Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a sequel that's actually a prequel. A prequel gave him leeway to play within the Deus Ex universe without having to push forward story implications of Invisible War.

Invisible War was released in late 2003. It's been almost eight years since the last Deus Ex game. Anticipation for the game was all over the place.

The response has been hugely positive. It's probably my favorite game this year, praise I do not give easily, as I'd written the series off after Invisible War. I begrudgingly accepted the idea of a non-Warren Spector lead Deus Ex, but many hours later, I was in love.

"Where I'm the most at peace...often times, people have super high expectations, it's easy to fall short of those expectations," said Dugas. "Globally, it seems like, for the most part, we have met or surprised those expectations. For me, it was a huge relief and I was super happy because we spent a lot of time on that game and we were really dedicated and we put a lot of energy and effort in that, so getting that kind of feedback is really exciting. I'm in a good place in my head right now."

Part of what makes Human Revolution feel so different is how old school it feels. In some respects, it feels like an active rejection of modern, focused tested game design, which often struggles to offer true choices and consequence. If a player isn't having fun every second, is the game doing its job correctly? This has stamped out much of gaming's biggest taking too many risks, streamlining adventures to the point where the term "rollercoaster" probably means "scripted, linear experience."

That's not Deus Ex.

"I always wanted it to lower the level of intimidation as much as possible," he said, "whether it's in the control department or trying to evolve the mechanics and things like that, but I always said that I never wanted to compromise the depth and layers of what the Deus Ex experience was."

Deus Ex was never about amazing combat, but Human Revolution went a long way to making it work.
Deus Ex was never about amazing combat, but Human Revolution went a long way to making it work.

"It's always been our vision, so with the publisher [Square Enix], early on, that's what we were saying," he continued. "We wanted to respect the intelligence of the players. People are not that stupid, and we need to respect that."

You make choices all the time in Human Revolution, whether it's to clear a room with tranquilizer darts, spamming grenades, sneaking through via augmentations or blazing in with a shotgun in hand. And that's just what's happening in the combat; there's a surprisingly deep conversation system, too. One thing the game doesn't do until the very end, however, is make a judgement call on your actions. Your decisions are simply decisions, they don't inform a morality meter on a status screen.

The team did throw around the idea of having a visible morality meter but it didn't last very long.

"I'm more attracted to choices where it's more about your own ethics, your own morality and your response to that," said Dugas. "The [idea of] clear-cut morality [is something] we threw it out of the window very early on of the development cycle. We just moved forward with what we thought would be more engaging on an experience level, as opposed to a gameplay level."

Saving or not saving the Little Sisters had an emotional punch, as well as a practical one.
Saving or not saving the Little Sisters had an emotional punch, as well as a practical one.

By "on a gameplay level," Dugas pointed towards games where players make decisions based on how they influence character progression, weapons and status. In BioShock, for example, players are asked to sacrifice or save the Little Sisters. If you sacrifice them, you gain more points to allocate towards powers than if you chose to save them. When Dugas plays games like this, he tends to make his decisions based on what will benefit him most as a player, not what he would do as a person.

There's a reason these feelings are swirling around. Soon, Dugas will be turning 40-years-old.

"As I get older," he said, "I'm more compelled to more meaningful stuff, than just the purely entertaining stuff."

You know...like ladders. And vents. Or vents and ladders.

Climbing ladders and crawling through vents remains the most common way of getting around--a Deus Ex staple. It's pretty ridiculous. Find a stack of boxes, there's gonna be a vent. Not sure how to scale a building? Look for the friendly, nearby ladder! When I asked Dugas how his team determined the future of mankind would deal with so many vents and ladders, he burst into laughter.

"Good question!" he coughed, as he worked to compose himself.

"One aspect where we kind of didn't have the time to spend more time in thinking it more through were those alternate paths with vents and ladders and stuff like that," he admitted. "It's something that if we were to revisit making that kind of game, it's something that would be different."

He alluded to the frankenstein nature of game development as a stumbling block, where systems and tech are constantly evolving and you suddenly have to make the best out of what you have. Here, ladders and vents helped stitch things together.

When in doubt, climb a ladder. Or climb in a vent. Because nobody thinks that's weird in the future, apparently.
When in doubt, climb a ladder. Or climb in a vent. Because nobody thinks that's weird in the future, apparently.

In response to that comment, cue complaints about the game's controversial boss battles. Dugas adopted a very serious tone when I asked about the fan reaction to the inconsistent nature of the boss battles. The one-on-one confrontations shifted the game to a very action-oriented style of gameplay that didn't work for every character type (read: my stealth dude).

The situation flared up even hotter when the Internet discovered Eidos Montreal had not created the boss battles themselves; they were outsourced to another development studio named Grip Entertainment. Our interview was conducted as fans were reacting to the news about Grip, so this was fresh in his mind.

"The last few days we've seen a lot of people flacking the company Grip that worked with us on the boss fights and 'Ohhhh, now we understand why those boss fights aren't on par with the rest of the game, it's because they outsourced it.' The truth is that it has nothing to do with that," said Dugas. "We worked with Grip. and Grip did an excellent job in the confines of what they were asked to do."

Dugas did not excuse the boss fights. Rather, he acknowledged the issue, and said his team realized the problem too late in development to make any sweeping changes. Eidos Montreal had built key plot points into the fights, so ripping them out of the game was out of the question, so the primary objective became to make sure the boss fights weren't frustrating.

If you weren't a combat-heavy character, the game's boss battles were a jarring change.
If you weren't a combat-heavy character, the game's boss battles were a jarring change.

"At some point, we were wrestling kind of bit with some of the features and the right amount of time and right amount of resources to work on those systems," he said.

The confused reaction is not what surprised Dugas but the outright frustration. Dugas claimed internal playtesting, which he credits improving many aspects of Human Revolution, didn't raise a red flag here.

"With the boss fights, this is the place where there was a disconnect where what we experienced during the playtest and what we experienced with the game being released," he said.

Dugas has chalked the response as a lesson learned.

Where Dugas will apply those lessons is a good question, too, though one we didn't mull over much during our conversation. Not long after Human Revolution shipped, Square Enix's said it's doubling the size of Eidos Montreal, signaling the publisher's happy. Combined with a sneaky epilogue, a sequel is all but assured, even if Dugas is unsurprisingly noncommittal.

Eidos Montreal is also making Thief 4, which finds the studio again resurrecting another beloved but dormant franchise.

"It [was] our goal to revive a Deus Ex experience, and that's what we did," he said.

I had to ask one last question before hanging up, though. As per tradition, Human Revolution offers a variety of options for how the game can end during a critical moment. If given a single option, I wondered which one Dugas would have picked.

You'll have to click below to find out.

"I would go with sinking the place because I don't think it should be one individual who makes the decision for mankind," he said. "But since like in real-life, maybe I wouldn't care or not ballsy enough to sacrifice myself--I would go with either Sarif or Taggart.
Patrick Klepek on Google+

124 Comments

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McDunkin

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Edited By McDunkin

Not sure where all the whining about the bosses in the game come from. You can beat the first two easily with gas grenades and the stun gun. The third boss was really easy with just the 10mm pistol with the armor piercing upgrade (this made it pretty much the best weapon in the game).

GOTY

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Kregan

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Edited By Kregan

Great read, thanks.

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amigocesar

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Edited By amigocesar

@Enigma777 said:

I, for one, loved the boss battles. Not sure why people were complaining about them...

Me too! and I played a stealth guy, I didn't kill anyone else in the game except for the bosses. Loved the boss fights anyway.

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evilrazer

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Edited By evilrazer

Great article, hope the sequel will be as great as HR

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Santa_8aby

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Edited By Santa_8aby

@Jimbo said:

I haven't played enough of it to pass judgement on the whole game (lost my save, not feeling much urge to rush back to it and start over), but I found how heavily it leans on you to go stealth to be really off-putting. I felt like I was playing that way because the game obviously wanted me to play that way, rather than because I was choosing to play that way. Given how important player agency was to DX, I found that disappointing.

Exactly my thoughts. This game reminded me so much of Splinter Cell with cyberpunk trappings. Not a bad game, but certainly not what I expected from all the hype.

Perhaps my biggest disappointment was that you learned most of the interesting things about the world through exposition and ebooks. I found some of that stuff fascinating, and felt that the scope of the game was initially much larger than the finished product. Maybe this is due to a tight schedule, budget constraints, etc. At any rate, I enjoyed the game, but was slightly disappointed in, what I felt could have been so much more. They had a great recipe, but just didn't quite put it all together.

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SHADOWINFINITE

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Edited By SHADOWINFINITE

Good stuff

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rynbeed

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Edited By rynbeed

I'm going to have to replay this game, or see how I feel about the DLC. I really enjoyed it while playing - just looking back on the experience I guess it wasn't quite what I wanted it to be. Not the games fault, it was just less "open-worldy" then I had thought it was going to be.

I still can't get past how different the cut-scenes look then the game. The game on it's own looks well enough, why have some fuzzy re-renders when I would guess that the game engine could have taken care of the cut scene by itself.

I have only played through once, and I will agree that there are about a dozen ways to get from one end of a level to the next, the game is still heavily scripted and linear. That the "choice" was limited to how one progressed through the environment, not through the story.

I have high hopes for the second prequel of the DX series, or whatever comes next after DX:HR.

As always, great interview Patrick!

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oneki

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Edited By oneki

Nice interview. Thanks. Could have been longer though. Hope to see full post-mortem somewhere on Gamasutra soon.

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WatanabeKazuma

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Edited By WatanabeKazuma

The Moral boss fights or whatever they coined it as where one of the most interesting parts of the game for me. You can easily game it if you re-try them but I felt like they were dynamic the first time you experienced these encounters. It could have benefited from some improved animation, but that might just be La-Noire spoiling us.

The atmosphere was great though and really cemented my interest in the game.I had my issues with the latter part of the game in both gameplay and story but overall it was one of my favorite games this year.

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Lind_L_Taylor

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Edited By Lind_L_Taylor

Interesting.  I'm getting this game as a birthday present on Friday so
I'm very eager to get started with it after all I've heard.  I hope they 
can keep the franchise going but from the article, it sounds like 
nobody has figured out how to get past the Invisible War part. I
wonder why it sucked so?

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Sooty

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Edited By Sooty

That screenshot of Adam climbing a ladder in Human Revolution looks like it's from a PS2 game.

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kollay

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Edited By kollay

Just finished HR, and y'know, it was pretty good. Picked the one that was... a little off to the side.

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hoossy

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Edited By hoossy

really enjoyed the game... couldn't stand the final boss fight. I don't think they properly explained what was going on in the story. There was really no direction into what you were supposed to do.

It ended up being wayyy too easy for me after I figured out

that you could just hack middle tower, avoid the electrical floor, and shoot Zhao through the glass. Completely avoiding all robots or crazy guys. And I just got lucky...avoiding all robots or crazy guys. And I just got lucky...

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Porkellain

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Edited By Porkellain

I dunno folks, still have to decide between this, Skyrim and Rage...

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Earthborn

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Edited By Earthborn

Haven't finished it yet and didn't read the spoiler, but Great article.

DXHR is so awesome in the non-boss fight parts that it's difficult to really hold it against the game. The boss fights (so far for me) are fine, if somewhat uneven. I think I took out Barret with four rockets to the face. I wasn't planning on using non-lethal takedown for that asshole. But from what I've read, a stealth character can use non-lethal means to get through boss fights, and the only problem are the cutscenes that seem to imply that you used lethal force. I guess that bothers me at the core of my being, but I don't mind it. The game can be gamey at times. Big deal.

DXHR's problems and limitations reminds me of old System Shock 2 - at one point I got stuck with just a wrench and two bullets for my pistol in a hall with about five or six abominations. This is, those of you who have played it, nearly impossible to deal with. I eventually worked around it, a combination of stealth and well-placed wrenches to the head. People will figure out work-arounds to game limitations when given the chance. I suppose I could have used tranq darts for Barret, but I didn't really want to. It does not behoove Adam to leave him alive from ANY perspective.

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siaynoq

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Edited By siaynoq

This was a really great article. You guys should do even more interviews with game developers. It's such a fascinating process and I love hearing the insights into the people that made the game.

I'm also confused at people's frustration at boss fights. If it was because they weren't building their character to fight enemies so directly, well it's not like there's one perfect build to get you through every possible situation. Just like at times a gun blazing character should try sneaking every once in awhile as should a stealthy player have to apply a nice shotgun to the face if needed. The last boss fight though I gotta admit was pretty disappointing. Both on a gameplay and story level. There was nothing really satisfying about the fight itself and I hated that character who just kept trying to seduce me and make me look stupid. I thought, "Why her? Why is she the last boss fight, seriously..."

My issues with the game were minor, but numerous. One I still have trouble getting over though is the whole teeder-todder(?) style of FPS movement where they try to realistically simulate walking. I hate FPS games that do this. It feels so choppy and slow that it makes me dread sometimes having to walk around anywhere, especially larger areas. In confined buildings it didn't bug me as much though.

So much about this game though, its rich atmosphere, its beautiful music, its attention to aesthetic detail, it all combines so well together with what I think is extremely fun and accessible gameplay. I love also the surprising amount of freedom in the game. I loved how I could upgrade my arm strength to stack dumpsters in order to get to the roof of that gun dealer's store and get a sniper rifle early on in the game. Little things like that, that you can even be allowed to do that is so great because maybe you're not expected to do that at all, but I could still do it!

The length of the game felt really long too, yet not too long. Granted maybe some of it felt like padding and needlessly going back and forth to places, but there was plenty of fun stuff to do that was fun and interesting that kept the game going for a long time. I can't wait for the new DLC coming out this month as well.

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siaynoq

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Edited By siaynoq

@Earthborn:

Can you tranquilize him? I'll have to try that next time. My first playthrough against him I was with very little to work with. Took me about eight tries before I finally took him down. I thought if I used my stun gun on him it would let me do a take down on him or at least hit him with my take down blades for dmg or something but no.

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AhmadMetallic

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Edited By AhmadMetallic

Great read

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fishinwithguns

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Edited By fishinwithguns

You know, I played through the game twice, at first I was a stealthy guy. The boss battles were hard, but it just forced me to find smarter ways to kill them. They were more intense. The second playthrough, I was all run-and-gun and set the game at its hardest difficulty. The bosses were hella hard, but how could I complain...I like a challenge...it's why I play videogames. Okay maybe the final fight was odd and underwhelming, but I still say it's the best game of the year SO FAR (it won't be in the coming months, I'm sure of that). But what do I know, as I seem to be the only person who actually enjoyed Invisible War. I honestly don't know why people shit on that game so much. The first was amazing of course, but there were annoying things about it, plenty of annoying things. Invisible War streamlined a lot of that stuff, which the PC gaming crowd would probably call "dumbing down," but as far as I'm concerned, PC gaming is dead, or should be by now...but I'd certainly never play the original Deus Ex on a console...it was meant for PC.

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TheDudeOfGaming

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Edited By TheDudeOfGaming

Great interview, and the boss battles weren't that big of a deal right? Leave it to some people to blow things waaay out of proportion.

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odourousjoe

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Edited By odourousjoe

Awesome game!!!

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Goodfeelings

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Edited By Goodfeelings

Okay, first off the new Deus Ex is amazing. Second...Theif 4? I love lamp!

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xantar

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Edited By xantar

Will they learn this lesson and not repeat it with thief 4 and deus ex: HR 2?

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mewarmo990

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Edited By mewarmo990

Thanks for this article, Patrick. I had been looking forward to seeing developers' thoughts on some common complaints.

I too went through the experience of running into a frustrating wall during the unavoidable boss fights because I had specced a hacking-oriented character in an attempt to read everything in the game to satisfy my cyberpunk hunger. Like Patrick said, it's jarring but not a total game-breaker. Still, to me it seemed that certain devices were built into those fights late in development, for players to end them quickly, and the whole affair felt like lazy game design compared to how engrossing most of the game was.

For all the flaws, I still loved the game, so I hope the team learned their lessons if there is to be a sequel.