Deus Ex: Human Revolution Interview

The Deus Ex: Human Revolution questions that IGN recently rounded up from the community have been answered by Eidos Montreal game director Jean-Francois Dugas. Here’s a little something to get you started:

I remember the first game being completely open ended, If I wanted to try and kill an important character, I could do so, even if the character would probably be too powerful and kill me first. It made me feel like I had choices even when in reality I didn’t. Is the game going to pursue these open ended decision making elements of the first game? If so does this mean it will be a game with multiple paths to follow such as a game like heavy rain? – TheB-Rad-G

Jean-Francois Dugas : I’m currently playing Heavy Rain and I must say this is a fantastic experience. Even though Deus Ex: Human Revolution shares similarities in terms of “choices & consequences”, we offer a totally different game experience. But, yes, we want players to make choices that will affect some outcomes (story-wise and gameplay-wise).

Like the first game, our game world is designed around a multi-path, multi-solution approach so any objective can be approached in different ways. Whether you like action, stealth, hacking, or interacting with characters, you can complete objectives in different ways.

The two primary gameplay styles are combat and stealth. You can basically play the entire game by going “frontal” or by going “sneaky” and/or back and forth as you please. For us, it’s really about letting players express themselves the way they want. You can decide to play the game without killing anyone (minus some critical encounters), for example.

The two supporting gameplay styles are hacking and social interactions. You can expand your possibilities through these means in order to open up new paths, find new solutions to problems, acquire useful goodies or information, etc.

Open-ended gameplay allows the player to take advantage of multipath/multi-solutions to accomplish their objectives and explore the game world for side quests, hidden treasures, etc. Some RPG dialogs will be mandatory but most will be available to players in an optional form. Obviously there are benefits from a story and gameplay standpoint to talk to other characters but it’s not forced. If your play style is more centered on shooting, then so be it.

This method also rewards multiple play-throughs since by choosing one method over another, you may miss some interesting things that are accessible only by attempting specific things!