Do the Revolution
"It has never been our goal to transform Deus Ex into a shooter."
The time for CGI is over. With the next instalment in the Deus Ex series nearer to its "early 2011" release, the time for gameplay has arrived. And Eurogamer has it: Deus Ex: Human Revolution's first gameplay trailer, below, for your viewing pleasure.
But that's not all. Here, we chat with lead designer Jean-François Dugas about his inspiration, the action RPG split and, of course, Mr Warren Spector.
It was an influence. It was not the only one.
Of course, this cult movie that defined the cyber-punk archetypes, we definitely looked at it. Everything that has to do with cluttering and fog and smoke – it builds a strong archetype of the Blade Runner movie.
We didn't try to reproduce them as is, but we took a page from their book.
We looked at other influences, like Ghost in the Shell, some Japanese anime, even some not so good movies.
Johnny Mnemonic. But also good old movies like Robocop - that was fun to watch again.
We also dug into some of the books, Ray Kurzweil and other authors that are big into transhumanism. We looked at pretty much everything we could. Greek mythology as well. It was all over the place.
The challenge was, okay, a lot of cool ideas from a lot of different places, but how do you mix it up into one current thing that is going to work on itself and is not going to feel like a rip-off of something else?
It's the same blend of first-person shooter slash RPG that the first game was.
Honestly, I know when we said it's going to have auto-regen and a cover system and shooting is not going to be stat-based anymore, a lot of people went, "oh my God! Now they're doing just an action game and it's all about running around and shooting."
It's a fair concern when you just hear that this way. I totally understand it. But it has never been our goal to transform Deus Ex into a shooter game.
We wanted to make sure that the components like stealth and combat, and all the possibilities of being able to upgrade yourself to be better in those areas, the RPG aspect of that, it stays all in place.
Yes we did do some things differently from the first game, or even the second game. But in the end it's still the same experience.
You have a challenge that's not necessarily easy. It's not the case that because the shooting is more straightforward and you have regen that you're going to be invincible.
You'll have to think. You'll have to look around you and maybe find other ways than just shoot and see what happens.
We're balancing the game right now, and I can tell you when there are a few characters on screen that are after you, if you don't take care, a few bullets and you're dead.
Where Deus Ex stands out from other shooter games, that's when Deus Ex is encouraging you to do other things than shooting.
It's where it gets its angle and where it gets exciting and rewarding. This is what we're working at: to make sure that if you want to be a combatant you can be one, but you still have to think and plan and see how you want to upgrade your character and play your fantasy.
The RPG element of that is, you need to build a character for how you want to play. You have to interact with a lot of people. And you have to make decisions that will have some effect on some aspects of the story.
It's not going to be more of an action game than the other ones. It's just when you're in an action segment it's going to be more straightforward.