Deus Ex: Human Revolution Fan-powered Q&A, Continued

Even in the busy period that follows their title’s release, the folks at Eidos Montreal keep answering fan questions on their Tumblr account, sharing interesting insights on the reasoning behind the game’s design and random lore trivia. Here’s a couple of interesting questions and answers:

When playing this awesome game (and you truly did an outstanding job), one aspect of the game is still niggling me: The optimal way (in terms of XP and bonuses) of playing Human Revolution is to play non-lethal (amongst other things). Why did you decided to “punish” people who would choose another playstyle, and by doing so encourage the player to pick a way instead of another ?

Frank says:

(Our aim was not to punish.

While researching how stealth was done in other games, we realized people often resorted to a combat-oriented approach because stealth is often more demanding, especially in the long run. (DX1 suffered from that too)

We just wanted to reward those that stick with it and maybe convince others to do so.

Had combat been more demanding it would’ve garnered more XP.)

(…)

Was there a reason that you made a prequel and not a sequel?

Frank says:

Yes, flexibility.

The five main points we considered:

1) With a prequel, playing the previous games is not a requirement. It gave us a lot more freedom about how we connect to the established cannon.

2) We didn’t have to deal with DX1’s or Invisible War’s multiple endings.

3) Being a true sequel would put us after Invisible War and a bit too far into the future.

4) There was a lot of untapped material in the timeline before DX1.

5) Exploring the time surrounding the introduction of mech augs just struck a chord with us.