Deus Ex 3 Director: Getting Team Support For Player Choice Can Be Challenging

Author: by Staff

In Gamasutra's latest feature interview, Deus Ex: Human Revolution director Jean-Francois Dugas says that getting support from team members at Eidos Montreal was more challenging given the game's player agency. Says Dugas, "You're used to thinking that every single bit that you build, players need to see, because it's so expensive to be making a game. I will spend three months on something, but if a player doesn't see it -- 'Oh my God, we cannot do that. We can't afford this.'" However, with Deus Ex, player agency is prioritized -- leading to potential situations where that content might be skipped altogether -- and that was hard for the team to initially accept, he says. "Deus Ex is all about the things you might miss," Dugas says. "At first, to be honest, it was hard to convince the team and say, 'Yeah, you're building this,' because they'd say, 'Yeah, but the player might not see it.'" "It's not about that," he stresses. "What it's about is the consequence of choice, letting them play the fantasy the way they want, letting them explore the maps and find creative ways to achieve their objectives. This is the heart of the experience." However, it worked out in the end -- once the team fully understood the game's aims. "At some point, everybody got on board with it, but at first it was tough to get all the people on properly, because they are not used to making that kind of game," he says. The full interview, which contains more detail about Deus Ex: Human Revolution, including what Dugas and producer David Anfossi think about the previous two games in the series, is live now on Gamasutra.