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

While we don’t know what the Eidos Montreal’s team in charge of Deus Ex: Human Revolution and The Missing Link DLC is working on right now, we know that they’ve been answering fan questions on their Tumblr account and have rounded up a few of the latest ones for you to read, in case you aren’t already following the blog autonomously.

I’ve got a simple question, was Bob Page being involved in the story an idea from the start, or was he worked into the equation later in development?

Lead narrative designer Mary DeMarle says:

(Yes and no. At the start of conception, we weren’t sure what characters from the original game would play into our story. We only knew that: 1) we wanted to make a prequel; 2) the plot should involve an Illuminati-driven conspiracy aimed at controlling mankind’s evolution (aka transhumanism); and 3) our hero and main villain should be completely new characters. As we developed the conspiracy itself, two more elements became clear: 1) each aspect of the Illuminati’s plan needed someone to be in charge of it (this is why we ended up creating Taggart and Zhao, for example), and 2) that the Council would not have trusted any of these new characters with overseeing their ENTIRE plan. At that point, it was pretty clear that Bob Page would be involved in the story.

So yes, we knew he would be involved long before the entire plot was figured out, but no, we didn’t know immediately how or why. J

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I’m wondering; how do you connect the dots? When creating stories as intricate as DE:HR (or various others), how do you stay on top with respect to what results in what happening? Do you lay out all possible choices/paths first and then construct the story around it or do you first build the world, the characters (with a general idea of what you want to do) and then let the specifics materialize from there on out?

Lead narrative designer Mary DeMarle says:

(My approach to story creation is to build the world, characters, and underlying conspiracy plan with all involved conspiracy groups (ie, corporations and the like) first, then start working out the actual plot. I know other writers who work in the complete opposite direction, but I personally need to feel grounded in the motives, desires, intentions, and backstories of characters first before trying to work out plot details. When I work in this way, it becomes easier down the road to both come up with and keep track of all the possible choices and paths that might arise.)

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There’s a part about Adam only needing to have his chest and an arm replaced, did you ever consider putting the decision for additional augmentations into the player’s hand instead of Sarif’s? Like having to augment the legs to jump higher for example?

Game director Jean-Francois Dugas said:

(Actually, Jensen is fully augmented from the get go (legs included), he needs to get accustomed to his new parts before being able to unleash their full potential. But it wasn’t always like that; early in development, player had to decide to go under surgery for new augs but it made the (leveling up) system rigid. You could only built up your character in certain places, moments. We wanted to give players more flexibility, hence the change to the system you know today.)