Deus Ex Art Director: Distinctive Art Key To Sequel

Author: by Staff

In Gamasutra's latest feature, Deus Ex: Human Revolution art director Jonathan Jacques Belletete says that developing a unique art style for the game, which he terms "Cyber-Renaissance", was crucial to establishing the game for the team. While noting that it's not true that "the entire game feels like Cyber-Renaissance" -- as there are other visual styles used for different parts of the upcoming title, currently under development at Eidos Montreal, Belletete said that the decision to go with that style was based on ideas born from research and is important to establishing the sequel in light of the popularity of the 10-year-old original. Said Belletete, "The Renaissance, it was the golden era, it was an age of discovery, and age of enlightenment... The phrase that we use in the game is 'It's not the end of the world yet, but you can see it from here.' So, it's almost as if it's like the end of that golden era." "That's the kind of brushstroke we want to have for those areas," said Belletete; in addition to marking this game creatively for the new team tackling the franchise, different styles also help differentiate the factions in the game. Devising a convincing appearance for a game set in the 2030s is difficult enough, but since the original game was released in 2000, some of its technology -- despite being far-future -- looks archaic now. Designs in Human Revolution are based on research. Said Belletete, "we really do our homework. We really bought a whole bunch of books on the technological curve and where things are going... we took some real stuff that's happening now and some real projections of the technological curve for the next 20 to 30 years, so we feel really confident about that." The full feature, Past And Future Tension: The Visual Design Of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, is live today on Gamasutra.