Deus Ex: Human Revolution Interview

Siliconera managed to conduct an interview with Deus Ex: Human Revolution narrative game designer Mary DeMarle during Eidos Montreal’s recent press event, quizzing her about the game’s ties to its predecessors, multiple endings, and more.

Deus Ex, the original game, had conspiracies connected to the real world with the Illuminati, Trilateral Commission, and so forth. Can you tell us about Deus Ex: Human Revolution’s conspiracy elements and what events they’re inspired from?

Mary DeMarle, Narrative Game Designer: Well, I don’t want to give away too much. but, yes, the foundation of the whole license is the whole conspiracy theory element. When you play Deus Ex 1 it seems like every conspiracy theory in the world was somehow thrown into there. So, we do have a few. We do hint at a few conspiracy theories people might recognize if they’re really into it. But, I don’t want to go into details about what they are.

In terms of researching, when we starting on this project it was kind of fun because we had a narrative team that consists of myself, one of the level designers, and J.F. (Jean-François Dugas, Lead Game Designer). The level designer involved is one of the biggest conspiracy buffs I ever met. He’s into the Masons, the Illuminati, he’s into everything from who shot JFK on down. It was really funny to sit in the meetings and these theories and say “well, that’s interesting.”

Even now, my family looks at me differently because they’re always talking things out like “unless its one big massive conspiracy, like Wikileaks could just be a conspiracy.”