Deus Ex: Human Revolution Interview

CVG has published a Deus Ex: Human Revolution interview that originally appeared in last month’s issue of Xbox World 360 magazine. Once again, it’s lead designer Jean-Francois Dugas answering the questions:

Some of those choices revolve around augmentations and weapon upgrades. How do they work?

The final number of augmentations isn’t set yet, but there will be plenty of upgrades in combat aspect, stunt aspect, social aspect and so on. You won’t be able to get everything at max, so you’ll have to decide if you’re a jack of all trades or want to be more of a specialist. If you’re the shooter type of player, you’ll have a series of upgrades that will allow you to boost your reload speed, and we’ll also have some special upgrades that modify the behaviour of certain weapons.

So basically, with the economy of the game, if you spend a lot on guns, you might not have as much money to spend on the augmentations, so it’s always about choice and how you want to play. This is where the real role-playing aspect comes in.

What are the design challenges with a game that has so many choices and so many routes you can take?

Building the levels in ways that feel like they support all those choices, and doing so in such a way that’s not too obvious and not too subtle at the same time, that’s a real challenge.

Balancing out the augmentations is another. We need to make sure that the maps let you explore with the augmentations you have. So it’s all about building the maps. Playing with them, seeing what works and what doesn’t. A process of constant iteration.