Deus Ex: Human Revolution PC Q&A

The folks at GameSpy have conducted a Q&A with Julien Bouvrais, director of technology at Eidos Montreal and Jurjen Katsman, founder and president of Nixxes Software on the PC version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, in which they explain to us why, despite being outsourced, it’s “the version you should play”. Here’s an excerpt:

GameSpy: Let’s get into the nuts and bolts of the PC version of the game. What specific features set it apart from its console counterparts and make it a game that’s truly designed for PC gaming?

Julien Bouvrais: First off, Nixxes developed a DX11 renderer that is used on the PC, when available. We did leverage this by adding several features you will see when you have DX11 hardware on your PC: real-time tessellation, improved Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, improved blurs and depth of field. We also added custom support for AMD’s Eyefinity (multiple monitors), and 3DHD. On another note, the user interface has been tailored for the keyboard, and mouse controls can be fully customized for your gaming habits.

Jurjen Katsman: We did quite a lot of work on anti-aliasing as well. We offer various anti-aliasing options to gamers to choose from depending on how powerful their hardware is. They really help smooth out rough edges that you can see more easily on a PC monitor.

Technically, little details that we believe PC gamers will appreciate are additional options to customize the gameplay, like adjusting the FOV, and disabling the reticle.

GameSpy: Any features you wanted to work into the PC version that didn’t make the cut? And of those features that did make it, which do you think will impress PC gamers the most?

Jurjen Katsman: As for something that didn’t make the cut, after we had been quite successful in using tessellation on characters, we also spent quite some time trying to use it on the environment as well. With the type of cityscape environments that we see in Deus Ex: Human Revolution it ultimately wasn’t a good fit.

Julien Bouvrais: My favorite feature on PC would be the ability to extend your view with Eyefinity as it really adds depth to the experience… this is really something everyone needs to try.