Deus Ex: Human Revolution Interview

Warp Zoned managed to corner Deus Ex: Human Revolution game director Jean-Francois Dugas during last weekend’s PAX East for a two-page Q&A about the game’s influences, storyline, multiple endings, and more.

WZ Mike: I was wondering, how’s the variation going to be in the story, can you give us a ballpark, how many different endings or paths there might be?

Dugas: It’s a story, it’s a game, that if you’re on the critical path, it’s 20-25 hours of storytelling, gameplay, it’s all blended in together and everything. If you explore it more, it’s maybe 30-40 hours. So there are a lot of things to discover on the critical path, but you can go on some sidequests and this covers more about certain characters, certain themes that you explore through the story. And also, definitely, we track what you do during the game and eventually you’ll have to make an important choice to have one ending out of X endings. (laughing)

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WZ Mike: Gotcha! That’s a very good answer! What about you, personally, what’s your favorite part of the game? What makes you smile the most like (yeahhh, we did that!)

Dugas: Me, I play more stealthy, I really like to go around the characters. Hearing them talking, they feel they’re smart and they don’t know what happened, and they’re on the ground like three seconds after that. I really love it.

I’m really happy about our social boss fights, some of them can be really, really gripping. They have powerful teams, and it’s not just about brawl and stuff like that, it can go in more psychological realms and stuff like that. I think it’s interesting, and it brings a bit of fresh air, in terms of I like to stay away from everything being black or white. We tried to go into shades of grey, and even the evil characters, we tried hard to make them not look that evil, you understand their reasoning. I’d say that’s what I’m most proud of, it’s this immersive world, and trying to avoid the black or white.