Deus Ex: Human Revolution Developer Blog Update

Deus Ex: Human Revolution level designer Steven Ciciola writes on the PlayStation.Blog about the multi-path, multi-solution nature of the Deus Ex prequel’s level design.

The biggest rule for us level designers, by far, was to always keep in mind the idea of (Multi-Path, Multi-Solution) for practically every challenge we wanted to lay down for the player. Basically what that entails is for every obstacle we set, there is always a variety of ways to progress past it; with some methods being more obvious than others. This is very reminiscent of the design philosophy found in the original Deus Ex . a design which promotes emergent game play.

One of the reveals from gamescom was showing the Police Station level and how there were four different ways (Combat, Hacking, Stealth, and Social) to play through it. The truth of the matter is that there are far more than just four different ways to progress through that level. There are so many different ways to progress through that I couldn’t possibly list them all; and chances are there are even methods to progress through that we haven’t even thought of! While at first glance that seems like a nightmare for a level designer, what ends up happening is our level designs promote multiple playthroughs in order to try out many different styles of play. All we have to ensure is that we’ve provided the tools and the environment for the player to just explore, imagine, and act-out their creative solutions.