Deus Ex: Human Revolution Preview and Interview Round-up

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Written by BuckGB on November 11th, 2010

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I was really enjoying the look to the new Deus Ex. It was described to us as a (cyber renaissance) type of look where they were trying to focus on illustration over simulation. Eidos Montreal was trying to combine a futuristic look while combining it with a style that was similar to the renaissance era. They seemed to be inspired with what Mirror's Edge did and were definitely shying away to the typical (FPS brown) look that so many other shooters have. We only saw two of the locals that will be in Human Revolution, Detroit and Shanghai, each had their own feel to them and you can easily pick out the cities by just how they look. Detroit has a slightly futuristic look to it while Shanghai is a city that is built on top of another city. Shanghai has a very asian feel to it as well, kind of what you would expect from a future Hong Kong. It's not just the cities that will impress you, the look of the clothing, weapons and inside the city (in the buildings) all have a pretty unique style to it.

In the socially-focused playthrough, Jensen walked over to the desk sergeant on duty in order to negotiage entrance to the restricted area. It turns out that Jensen had a rocky history with this particular character, and entered what the developers call a "social boss battle" for the purpose of negotiation. In a social boss battle, the goal is to pick the correct responses in order to gain the desired information or assistance from a character. A Mass Effect style dialog wheel appears with three possible choices appropriate to the conversation at hand, in this case, "Absolve," "Crush," or "Plead." Another conversation featured "Advise," "Insist", and "Pinpoint." Social boss battles have a failure state, and if the player fails to "win" the battle by choosing appropriate responses, Jensen will need to find another way to progress through the level. For the purposes of demonstration, Jensen worked through his history with the desk sergeant, who then agreed to pull some strings and allowed Jensen into the morgue.

(The moral impact of your actions is not a mechanic. Nothing in the story is black and white,) insists Dugas. (There are all these shades of gray involved.) Weighing the benefits of these scenarios is what the game is all about. Although the impact of these choices will be realized by the player, there is no visual indicator of Adam's (morality level). Instead, the idea evolves throughout the story. You can technically kill your way through the entire game, but Dugas claims that it can also be finished without murdering any non-boss characters. With all of the options at your disposal, you can always adapt to new scenarios on the fly, so you're never stuck pursuing an ill-formed plan. A player who charges into the Detroit Police Station mission with guns blazing won't be penalized, nor will he be privy to some of the details that emerge from the conversation between Jensen and Sgt. Haas.

Creating a wholly unique vision of the future is hard when the likes of Blade Runner and Metropolis are so influential. What are some of the sci-fi visions you used as jumping-off points for Deus Ex?

Well, it's a cyberpunk game, and this cycle of consoles we could probably recreate Blade Runner exactly the way it is in the movie. That would be cool, but it would be BladeRunner.

There's definitely a lot of Blade Runner references and inspiration in the game, because it's cyberpunk archetype, right?

But we wanted to bring our own vision to it, so because we're dealing with transhumanist themes and the human body we went with a more earthy palette.

It's like a visual metaphor to the very humanistic values those themes have, rather than the tradition greys and blues of sci-fi.

If you look at paintings from Vermeer, Rembrandt, they're very black and gold, very earthy. The whole Renaissance thing came into play when I started researching transhumanism; you quickly start seeing stuff about Leonardo Da Vinci's sketches and dissections.

It's intriguing because the Renaissance was like the first era where we were honestly analysing the human machine - how it really works.

And if you wanna upgrade something - which is what cybernetics is about - first you need to understand how the system functions at its base.

It's almost as if the Renaissance was the first stepping stone to a transhumanist world, or at least that's how we decided to see it.

It's a kind of an artistic way to see it, and that's fun.

We infused the Renaissance metaphor visually in some of the fashion and in some of the environment, but in a way that's kind of fresh and not too overwhelming at the same time.

And then that's combined with the technology, which we did our homework on, though we're already huge fans of anime aesthetics in terms of mechanical design...

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