Stevivor recently had the opportunity to sit down with Game Producer Olivier Proulx from Eidos Montreal. There, we discussed some of the new features of Deux Ex: Mankind Divided — how VR has been implemented and the possibility of the aug incident being a real event.

Nicholas Simonovski, Stevivor: Can you tell us a bit about the story behind Mankind Divided, and what are some of the new features that fans can expect to see?

Olivier Proulx, Eidos Montreal: Mankind Divided takes place two years after Human Revolution, and we used the big event that took place at the end of that game as the stepping stone for this new one. Now we’re coming in with Adam Jensen who wants to get to the bottom of the conspiracy – what happened to him and what was behind the aug incident. We’re in a world where people are now being segregated (between augs and naturals). With Adam Jensen himself, we felt like we have a lot of room for him to grow, so we’ve continued with him as a character. He’s more comfortable and assertive.

With regards to features, we wanted to make sure that the combat felt more on-par with stealth. We don’t want to make this a combat-based game, but we’ve added in more fluid controls, an improved cover system and more aggressive augmentations, for those players who want to make that choice. With the augmentations, they’re a lot more active and not necessarily passive. You still have the option to upgrade your health and hacking skills, but the active ones like Tesla, Titan and Nano-Plate are all available using your controller and you can use these while you’re playing with stealth or combat. Adding more visceral options for the player was a big focus for us.

One of the other features of the game, however it’s more-so a pillar, is the idea of choices and consequences. Everything you do is tracked and reflected in the world. Sometimes it’s small, but it can also be as significant as the life/death of a character. We also wanted it to be more organic with regards to which ending you arrive to at the end of the game. It’s not simply choosing one of four endings, it’s about how you decide to tackle the challenges of the last map or the decisions you made throughout the game. Even things you have in your inventory from what you’ve picked up throughout the game can have an impact on the story too.

Stevivor: One of the signature features of Deus Ex is the ability to play through using either lethal or non-lethal actions. Is this still the case with Mankind Divided, and can you switch between throughout the game?

Proulx: Absolutely. There’s no morality meter that tells you how you’re doing in the game. What we’ve done is flesh out the characters with depth and layers of complexity, a lot of grey areas. It’s then down the player to decide on how they’d like to tackle these challenges using their own morality, so there’s no right or wrong way to play.

For example, when I’m in Prague and there are cops, even though they’re corrupt, I don’t kill them because I think they have families and friends. *laughs* Nothing in the game tells me not to though. Alternatively, when I’m dealing with Russian mobsters or other shady characters for example, maybe I don’t mind as much. We think a lot of players tackle the game in a similar flavour, and we think that’s a pretty unique aspect to have with Deus Ex. It’s more a morality conflict within the player, than from the game.

Stevivor: Is that the way you’ve always played, or has that changed over time?

Proulx: As a developer, sometimes I’m jealous of the player because they get to experience the game with fresh eyes each time. When you’re working on the game you look at it piece by piece for a few years, so I’ve only had the ‘full’ experience a few times, as I’ve worked across different parts. You try to use a lot of combinations, to make sure it’s a fun experience for our players. So yeah, I’ve tried a lot of different styles.

Stevivor: Mankind Divided serves as a sequel to Human Revolution, yet as a prequel to the original Deus Ex. How you do you introduce newcomers to the story without them being confused, all while ensuring it’s a satisfying experience for existing players?

Proulx: A lot of the lore and characters of the original Deus Ex tie into Human Revolution, but because Mankind Divided is so close to the events of the game before it, we really wanted to cram a lot of the universe from Human Revolution into this game. For those who haven’t played the last game we give players a 12 minute recap to introduce Adam Jensen, the story and the Deus Ex universe.

We also work with the pacing as well. So while the first mission in Dubai is fast-paced, we then take a step back and allow you get to know Adam better and explore his apartment and him as a character – read his emails and books for example. There are small cut-scenes as well and you learn that he’s super introspective. With all these elements combined, I think it allows us to immerse new players into the universe quite quickly.

Stevivor: Is there a VR element in Mankind Divided?

Proulx: We are shipping a VR experience with the benchmark tools for PC, which is essentially a compliment to the experience. It doesn’t really add anything to the story. Since the room and environments are so rich, and because we’ve put so much effort into the storytelling of the environment, we felt that if you put the headset on and you stand in Adam’s apartment looking around that would be a really memorable experience, because of the augmented details that we put into the level design.

So it was just an option to make a few of the rooms in our game shine.

Stevivor: Will this VR functionality feature in the new Breach mode?

Proulx: When you start the Breach mode you actually have a cut-scene that shows the character putting a VR headset on which is quite cool, but basically these happen in what we refer to as the Neural-Subnet-Network (NSN). It’s a virtual reality environment in the game that you need to infiltrate. You do this to uncover shady secrets about the big corporations and it all ties into the main game. It’s all in a light way, it doesn’t impact Adam Jensen and just adds another perspective to what’s happening in our world.

Stevivor: VR itself is a relatively new concept to gaming. Do you see it picking up, or will it remain as gimmick for this generation?

Proulx: I must say, we were so focused on developing Mankind Divided that we’re not really experts at VR. I think we’ll see what happens though. Obviously when you put on the headset you have different experiences where it’s much more visceral, which is great. As for where it goes, I think it depends on what kind of experiences content-creators make with it. I think that’s the key. I think the market is quite fragmented. We need to see which devices truly stand out. Whether it will be mainstream or not will depend on how many developers adapt to it.

From my point of view, VR is such a different media that you can’t just slap it onto existing products like Mankind Divided. You need to create unique experiences with it, and I think that’s where developers/games will succeed if they have that in mind.

Stevivor: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is very much a single-player experience, however we’re seeing that there’s a trend towards always-online multiplayer titles. Do you think there will always be a place for single-player titles, or is multiplayer where games are heading?

Proulx: I think there’s always going to be a place for single-player games, these immersive and interactive experiences that we are putting forward. There are constantly trends in gaming, and people will say things like, “AAA games will die because of mobile gaming and VR” but it’s not a zero-sum game. The way I see it, gaming continues to grow with all these new branches and it becomes this big tree with all these different style of games. I see single-player immersive titles as a branch in that tree, and one that’s never going to go away.

In our studio, that’s what we’re comfortable with – evolving storylines, fleshed-out characters and good gaming mechanics that work well in a single-player context. A lot of us do play multiplayer games, but what we’re good at is those single-player titles. That said, with Breach we’re trying to move towards that social experience with leaderboards, but at its core it’s a single-player experience.

Stevivor: While the universe of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is set in a world much more advanced than where we are today, the time is only 13 years away. When you’re creating games like this, do you ever sit back and think, “this could actually happen”?

Proulx: A bit of both really. In Mankind Divided we’re looking at a dystopian, cyber-punk near-future setting, but because it’s a game we give it these crazy features that are cool to play with. With that in mind though, we try to ground it in some sort of credibility. In Human Revolution, we did a lot of research on transhumanism and body augmentations, and even collaborated with a guy called Will Russellimi who’s an expert in transhumanism. What we’ve been seeing since we created Human Revolution is that some of the ideas we played with are becoming a reality. We had a partnership with a company called Open Bionics who make prosthetic limbs, and they created an arm similar to that of Adam Jensen, which someone then wore around. Things like people wearing prosthetics as a fashion accessory, which might have seemed crazy years ago are becoming real and that’s really interesting and great to work with it.

There are obviously questions about morality that come with the universe that exists in Deus Ex, for example would you cut off your arm to have a bionic one, but it’s really interesting for us to see those discussions and debates happen and be a part of that.

Stevivor: What is your favourite body augmentation, and given the chance, would you ever do it?

Proulx: Right now, my favourite augmentation would be the social one. I could read your emotions, know what your next question was going to be or know how I should answer it depending on your personality type. It would be crazily powerful to have. It makes me think about The Purple Man from Jessica Jones who can just control what people are thinking – but then there’s the whole question of whether we would accept that – would such an augmentation be acceptable in social situations. That or cloaking.

Stevivor: Are there any features that haven’t been highlighted that you’d like to shed light on?

Proulx: The city area of Prague is one feature that I think is so immersive, it’s really a living and breathing world. We’re really proud of how we’ve been able to seamlessly add side missions that offer a lot of depth, where you can speak with so many characters. So yeah, I’d say Prague as a feature of the game is one that we’ve worked on really hard and are quite proud of. I hope players will be immersed with and get lost in everything that it has to offer.

Stevivor: Thanks so much for your time today.

Proulx: Thank you.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will launch on Xbox One, PS4 and Windows PC on 23 August 2016. We previewed it earlier today.