Deus Ex: Human Revolution Interview

There’s a new two-page interview with Deus Ex: Human Revolution lead designer Jean-Francois Dugas over at MEGamers, presumably conducted during last week’s GamesCom. The usual excerpts:

Why did you chose to set Human Revolution as a prequel? Will there be any story elements that will contradict with the previous two Deus Ex games?

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a prequel for several reasons. First, we wanted to bring a fresh start to the franchise and make this new game unique and a stand-alone title. Meaning, we wanted to make sure that players don’t have to be old DX fans to appreciate the game we have a new main character and a supporting cast that you’ll encounter and get to know during this journey.

Second, in the original timeline of DX, there was a time where mechanically-augmented people began to proliferate in society, which happened before the arrival of nano-augmented people. The distinction lies in the fact that nano-augmentations are invisible and the mechanical augmentations are not. We thought it would be an interesting thematic to explore from both a gameplay perspective (seeing how your character evolves) and from an ethical/moral perspective (the benefits & dangers of a world where some can afford to get augmented while others can’t).

Beyond than that, setting the game as a prequel enables us to create a story that gets to dig into more complicated human motivations and beliefs but we’re not ready to unveil all the specifics of the story just yet!

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Deus Ex was always about player choices and the freedom of adopting different play styles. How much of that has been retained?

We think people will enjoy a gaming experience that hasn’t been recreated in recent years. Although some recent games have aspects of Deus Ex: Human Revolution in them, our combination of different play styles, multiple approaches to problems and their solutions, and being able to see the consequences of your actions makes for a really great and unique game experience. Almost every objective and challenge in DX:HR has a different way of completing it, plus you get to customize your character (and weapons) and then choose the paths you take. The gameplay choices are exposed in a non-linear fashion, so different people will end up having a different experience depending on where they go, who they talk to, how many sub-plots they get involved in, etc.

Whether you like action, stealth, hacking, or social, you can complete missions in different ways. In Deus Ex: Human Revolution there are two primary gameplay styles (combat and stealth) and two supporting gameplay styles (hacking and social interactions). You can basically play the entire game by going (frontal) or by going (sneaky) and/or by switching back and forth as you please. You can also expand your possibilities through these means in order to open up new paths, find new solutions to problems, acquire useful goodies or information, etc.