Warren Spector on Immersive Sims

Warren Spector, a veteran developer who worked on such titles like Deus Ex, System Shock, and Ultima Underworld, recently had a chat with PCGamesN, sharing his thoughts on a number of notable immersive sim and role-playing games that he didn’t work on. These games include Dishonored, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Fallout 4, and Bioshock. For example:

DISHONORED

“As far as immersive simulations go, Arkane is right up there among the best practitioners of it. Dishonored is a fairly traditional immersive sim, which is to say that they’re about empowering players. They were clearly inspired by Thief and Deus Ex, which is really cool, and I think they do a great job with empowering players, so no beef there. Their introduction of the way they do magic is also really cool.

“Harvey Smith is over there, who was my lead designer on Deus Ex and the game director on Invisible War. Great pedigree. So it’s no big surprise the that they would make a game that’s closest in spirit and in play to what we do. I’ve got nothing but great things to say about the Dishonored series.”

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DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION

“Honestly, I didn’t play Mankind Divided. I started and got distracted, but it wasn’t a quality thing. When you start making games you find that your time to play other people’s games goes way down. But I did play Human Revolution, and while there were three or four things where I yelled at the screen in frustration, when I got to the end of the game I sat back and took stock and said to myself, ‘I really had a Deus Ex experience’. That’s pretty cool. It felt like the original game, and they honoured what made the franchise interesting. For me, being a little egocentric, they honoured what made the game wonderful. I was very happy with Human Revolution.”