Tecman Sep 11, 2003

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quote: How did your team get started with Deus Ex: Human Revolution?

Jonathan Jacques-Belletête: It was late spring 2007, so you know; a bunch of guys from Ubisoft Montreal created a new studio in Montreal for Eidos. We were approached by the powers to be about this project and it was really, really hard to refuse. The challenge was huge; putting together a new studio and bring back Deus Ex. It didnt really scare us as much and we understood that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. We all kind of jumped in during a stressful summer. We played the first two games along with buying books on trans-humanism, conspiracies and watching all the movies out there to gauge where to go. That is really how it started. Understanding what made the first game successful was the number one goal.



We knew that we wanted to bring our own flavor to it. Before bringing in our own flavor to the game, we needed to know what made the first one so great and that we could reproduce it. I think the first main homework that we gave ourselves was to nail why people fell so passionately in love with the first game. Once we thought we had it then we started making our game.

quote: How much of a modern day shooter is this? What's the action RPG blend?

Jean-François Dugas: 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.

quote: ...cyberpunk as a genre has kind of fallen out of fashion, with the Internet becoming a mundane, everyday thing

Jonathan Jacques-Belletête: My feeling is that cyberpunk is what we live today.



How do you try to make it feel relevant today?

Jonathan Jacques-Belletête: The way that we thought about it starting mostly, for mewe asked ourselves the question as artists: can we reproduce the visuals of Blade Runner on todays consoles? The answer would probably be yes. But then, what would it say about the studios capacity for creativity? So, we wanted to bring something new. As you say, its not that fashionable; its kind of dormant, so thats when this whole idea of the cyber-renaissance thing, which is not something that you saw much of in todays demo, but its such a big game with so many areas that sometimes you feel it, sometimes you dont, sometimes its omnipresent. Thats part of the idea to bring back cyberpunk, but with a twist to it.



The other thing is, when we started the first focus group for the game, kind of early on, maybe within the first year, testing out the early ideas and everything, we realized that here in the States, and in Europe, because we tested in both continents: kids nowadays? They dont even know what cyberpunk is. Really, we could not believe it. You never would have thought, if you take a random chunk of 20 kids who all play gameseven the hardcore onestheyre like Cyber what? We thought, we cannot use that word! Nobody knows what it is. And, you know, were using it, but it really was a huge eye-opener for us.

quote: Something that comes up when we talk about Deus Ex is that if Invisible War hadnt had the Deus Ex name attached, it might not have been judged so harshly. But it was also the point at which that kind of game was being attempted for consoles, which makes it interesting, and possibly relevant to you?

Jean-François Dugas: Before we really started designed Deus Ex: Human Revolution we went back to the first two games and played them again. Even though the second one hadnt been so well received, it was important to go back and see what they had done. We also had to go back to the original game, because you might not have played a game like that for years and you end up with souvenir memories of everything. Playing it again now enables you to step back and look at what is strong and what is not as strong. For me it was essential to go back to those games and try to understand what were the pillars of the franchise, what were the core values. We had to make sure that we designed within the confine of those values. It doesnt mean that its the same as DX1 or DX2, but the same ideals and values are portrayed in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. That said, our game is based more on Deus Ex 1 because the more RPG aspect is stronger. The way things are used, the feature list, that is stronger. But overall it was about understanding the values across both games. We wanted to revive it for a third game, understanding the franchise through both earlier games was the best way to do that.

quote: If theres a lot of purple in Deus Ex 2: Invisible War, theres a lot of gold in Deus Ex 3. Is there symbolism to that?

Jonathan Jacques-Belletête: Absolutely. The palette of the game is black and gold. Thats really what were using. The way that it started is that I really wanted to have a color scheme that people could identify with and recognize and say this is Deus Ex, Deus Ex 3: Human Revolution or whatever. Its like when you think about Assassins Creed, the first one, everything was white and blue. All of the marketing stuff was like that and the in-game was a lot like that too. Its a bit of what I wanted to do. A lot of my good friends in Montreals industry worked on Assassins Creed and they did a really great job with the color palette. I wanted to do the same thing. One day I saw the black and gold thing, I think it was an image, maybe and ad or something. Then I said lets do this.



The gold represents, you know, the Golden Era, the Renaissance, the cybernetics, the human side. Gold is an earthy tone, like gold is from the earth, right. The black is the dystopic side. Also, put together its a really rich palette that games havent really used yet. In-game, there are some games that have a bit of those colors in certain environments, when its a little brownish or whatever it kind of gets close to it. In terms of marketing and presentation it hasnt been used.



I really want people that every time they see black with like gold or oak in front of it theyll think oh man, thats the palette of Deus Ex. And yes, in terms of symbolism the gold is the Renaissance and the black is the cyberpunk, dystopic stuff.

quote: The costumes in the game seem inspired by the Renaissance. Theyre very stylish, out there, and someone who may not have realized youve been working on Deus Ex 3 for awhile may even think they are Final Fantasy-like. Were you at all looking, being part of the Square Enix Group, other Square Enix titles?

Jonathan Jacques-Belletête: It has nothing to do with that at all. You have to understand, we started working on this three years ago. Into my first month I had my concept of the cyber-Renaissance already. It wasnt as figured out at that point as it was today, but that was way before the acquisition of Square Enix.



The entire aesthetics of the game, I want to make this really clear, and Ill get back to the teaser afterwards because I have to give major props to Square Enix and Goldtooth. All of the ideas, the aesthetics of the game, the light and stylization, the cyber-Renaissance is entirely us. It was way before Square Enix arrived.



What happens is that a lot of at Eidos, me included, Im a huge fan of the Asian aesthetics in games and everything. Not everything, but there is some stuff they do very, very well. In my own vision of what great video game art is, there are some variables of what the Japanese do. From the get go that is already how I work, some of the stuff I design. Maybe it had that feel already even though Square Enix was not even in the picture. In terms of the costumes, I think that the Japanese tend to blend a lot of eras in their characters and everything. Maybe thats where the relation and resemblance is from, but there was no connection between me and them.

quote: This being an all encompassing, worldly story, how do you make it succinct through all the different environments?

Jonathan Jacques-Belletête: The game is very stylistic; it is not fully photo realistic. It has a language that is mostly built through how the textures were created. No photos were used to create the textures, everything is hand created through very advanced shaders. Everything is procedurally made and that gives the game a theme that runs through its entire creation. Again, if you are in Shanghai, the Asian themes are very present, but also, it was important for us not to fall into clichés. The music and dress is not stereotypical. If you were to go there now, people dress like us. It was just weird; we have those reflexes to do that. The first concept art showed the pedestrians dressed in ancient clothes. People just dont look like that, let alone in thirty years when the game takes place. They wear jeans and t-shirts, just like us. This being said, the themes are heavily transformed and adapted to the locations, but the art direction stays very, very constant. In terms of the world, textures, and models. We used very few ninety degree edges, beveling is constant as well. It gives the environments a slick, gummy berry feel [laughs]. Everything looks rounded and looks almost like a graphic novel. You can see that we werent striving for photo realism.

quote: Why did you step back and go for more of stylized look instead of photorealistic characters?

Jonathan Jacques-Belletête: Its a subject thats a bit cliché nowadays. Like, its been spoken about a lot, like in the past years there was that whole uncanny valley thing and everything. But, it is still something I strongly believe in. I gave a talk two years ago at the MIGS, the Montreal International Game Summit, just about that. Im a strong believe that you need to reduce the information in your artificial characters faces to be able to concentrate on the message. If the message are the emotions, thats what you want to see.



If you have too much information that are all into trying to do that photorealism stuff, and dont get me wrong some of what those guys do, the work, the artistic and technical work, behind Heavy Rain is insane. Some of this stuff I have no idea how they did it. Im in total awe. But, at the end of the day, to me, thats noise in front of trying to read the characters facial expressions and who they are because it gets very, kind of, uncomfortable of how they act. Sometimes it works really, really well. If you look at Uncharted 2 where they have really good facial expressions and everything, even it has a bit of stylization in their character. Its not that uber, uber photorealism stuff and I find it works a little better.



In that theory, by reducing the information you boost the message, we decided to try to make our characters a little more stylized and a little more simplified, in terms of anatomy. And very credible, the way the game works, without getting into details, sometimes you really have to try read characters emotions and stuff like that to base their choices on that. I think it works rather well. Like everything, its not perfect. Some characters look better than others. Im going to be honest, its like any game. Also, I think it makes the world more complete because everything is based on those parameters and thats something Im driving for.

quote: Something else we complained about in Invisible War was that the levels were a little too small. I know the levels we saw today had open areas where you can go wherever you like, but do you have anything on the same scale of Liberty Island from Deus Ex 1?

Jean-François Dugas: Actually we have its a mix of both. We have maps that are more compounds, that feel more like Area 51, its slightly open outside but you go inside in the facility and there are secret areas. Theres multi-path but youre in corridors and rooms and things like that. But also we have big cities, like Detroit and Shanghai. What youve seen today was just two corners of a street. The city of that map is really bigger than what youve seen today. Today was just a small part for the purpose of the demo. And yes, youre going to be able to explore every corner of those cities.



Also, we try to when it makes sense to broaden the flexibility of the objectives. For instance in Detroit, without revealing too much of the missions, you have Objective A, when its done you do Objective B, when its done you do Objective C. But when you start with Objective A, if you decide, Okay, I could go and do it, but I want to explore in that direction. You can go explore that direction. And at some point you see a terminal or something and you can hack it, you can shut it down. And one of your guys says,



Hey Jensen, what did you just do?

I dont know, there was this switch and it just what did I do?

Ill come back to you later.



Your character, and you yourself as a player, dont know what you just did, but the game acknowledges it, and as you complete the objectives what you discover is that was [Objective C]. And basically, since you already did it, then your mission is done. You can go to extraction point and just leave, or go wherever you want to go.



So were trying to keep the game as flexible as possible when it makes sense for those things. If you explore and you discover some items, I dont know what Im going to do with it, but then at some point you meet characters that, for them, its important. And if you already have it, your character will be allowed to choose, I think I already have what you needed. So even though the story is linear, as you play, what you do is going to be flexible enough to accommodate other play styles.

quote: Deus Ex 2 seemed to have more of an artistic direction than Deus Ex 1. Its a very clear vision of the future, but people seemed to react really badly to it. How do you feel about that?

Jonathan Jacques-Belletête: Yeah, this has definitely worried me more than how much are we following the first one?, because yeah, we are taking some liberties and some aesthetic choices. [long pause] I mean, theres no purple! You know, with technology, we read so many books  all the Ray Kurzweil books, and all the technological curve books  about where things are going. You just look at display technology. Today is already where way more advanced than most of the things we see in Deus Ex 1. Theres that, the technology is more advanced, but it already is more advanced in a lot of parts than in Deus Ex 1. You just look at web 2.0 and that kind of stuff and its way beyond what you say in Deus Ex 1. The game came out in 2000 so they were probably designing it in 1998, 99, so theres that.



That doesnt worry me all that much, I mean hey, what the hell? Obviously were doing everything to please the fans, but we need to get a lot of people other than the fans, its just the nature of the games industry. This game needs to make money, right? Im not going to make screens that are 4:3 ratio just because thats what they had in the first one. It makes no sense, were already way beyond that today, so I need to follow suit.



Now, as far as the Cyber Renaissance, well, its somewhat of a reboot of the franchise. Notice that the number 3 is not in the title. A lot of people have no idea what Deus Ex is. The fans think that the whole universe knows what that game is, but its just not true. And trust me, I was one of those people. The first focus test was a big eye opener, so hopefully the aesthetic choices that we made is also to try to have a very tangible flavour thatll attract a lot of people also.

quote: Whats been the relationship with Sheldon Pacotti and the other Deus Ex 1 guys?

Mary DeMarle: Well, with Sheldon, it was pretty interesting, because  I have to admit, this is my little fan thing. I remember when Deus Ex first came out, I was working in San Diego at Presto Studios, the game company. And at the time that it came out, no one had really read too much about it, and then all of a sudden everybody fell in love with it.



So I remember everyone in the office playing it, talking about it. And then that year, I think, I went to GDC, and Sheldon gave a talk, and I went to hear his talk, and he just was amazing as a speaker. I was like, Wow, this guy is so smart and so good at story and everything. And I remember meeting him and introducing myself briefly at one point. But that was it. And then we started working on this project, and when I started working on it, and I knew that we needed to get some more writers on, I thought, I wonder if we could contact Sheldon. But Id heard through the grapevine that he was still involved and working for someone else. I didnt think he would. And then all of a sudden we got an email from Sheldon, and he actually sent it  believe it or not  he sent it to our Human Resources people, in which he basically introduced himself and said, I heard you guys were doing Deus Ex, and its obviously something very dear to my heart. And hes like, Im not asking for a job, because I actually have a job, and I cant, but Id be very curious. And the day we got that email, we were like, Oh my God, lets call him, you know? So we called him and we brought him in. At the time that we got the email, we kind of had the story figured out, but we still had a bunch of approval to go through on it and stuff. So we said, Lets see if we can get Sheldon here, and well tell him our story, and see what he thinks.



So we flew him in. It was really, really great. And from that point we communicated with him. We took him to dinner and we were telling him stories about how we started on this project, and how our big concern was that this is Deus Ex  Dont gently caress it up, you know? And we tell him this, and he laughs along with us. And then when were saying goodnight to him, after this night of talking and stuff, hes like, Okay. Well, guys, it was really, really nice meeting you. I just wanna say one thing: Dont gently caress it up! And we were like Oh God, now we really cant. You know, we were planning to, totally, until you said that, and now were screwed. But no, it was pretty fun.



Not only have we heard about the Deus Ex bible -- it was also required reading before we began work on the story concept for Human Revolution. After reading it, we spent several months filling in some of the blanks in its timeline and history in order to create the characters, companies, cities, and world events that exist in 2027. Whenever we had questions about specific details, we conferred with Sheldon Pacotti to make sure that our new concepts could be as accurate as possible.

quote: If you talk to different people at different studios about formatting the seating arrangements, the production pods, cabals, whatever you want to call them... If you look at every studio in the world, every studio has a different way of doing things, right? How did you arrive at yours?

Stéphane D'Astous: Well, first of all, when I recruited the team, most of them had worked together. We did start from scratch, but we had experienced people that had managed to deliver several triple A games in the past, so it wasn't their first run at this. It was certainly a challenge because the whole studio started from scratch, and it's quite an important IP.



I think how we function, it's very collaborative. I think the producer, the game director, and the art director is certainly a triangle that takes a lot of decisions. There is not one prima donna. At our studio, you could be the most talented, respected, but if you have a large ego, unfortunately you won't fit in our culture. We have refused some candidates because we think that the culture that we're trying to put in our studio is really important, and people with big egos won't function as well in our studio than other team members. Everybody has to put the shoulder to the wheel, pretty much.



My art director once said, "Stéphane, I hope that you realize Deus Ex has a soul." He says, "I hope that consumers will see that it's a labor of love of a whole team, and it's not necessarily a vision that I had two years ago with the art direction", let's say for example. He really hit an interesting point because it's true that I hope people will sense that it's a labor of love of the whole team, and it's not a one-man show. Somebody can have great ideas, great direction, and a great vision, but to make this reality, it's a team push, a team effort, and that makes the difference between an excellent game and an average game. To what extent are you able to push the idea? It has to go on the screen. You need to have your consumers be able to play with it. So, the ideas are very often good at the start. It's how it ends.

quote: The series has always been played through a first person perspective. Human Revolution is going to have instances where you see Jensen from a third person perspective. Warren Spector and Harvey Smith have said in the past that the first person view was to make the game more immersive. Does adding a third-person element destroy that element of immersion somewhat?

Jonathan Jacques-Belletête: No, I don't think it does. I've been immersed in all sorts of games, be it first-person or not, and sometimes I've not been immersed at all in games that exclusively play in a first-person perspective. So it's not a given to assume that, I don't think. Immersion is the output of so many variables, that amount to much more than just being in first-person.



What was important to us was... Eidos is a company with strong main characters. You have Lara Croft, Kane and Lynch and Hitman, and we wanted to have the same thing with Human Revolution. We wanted to put the augmentations at the forefront of the game, but we also wanted to do the same for the character. If the game is always in first-person, you never get to see the main character unless it's in a cutscene. We wanted to have the player look at him for a second or two every now and then.



Does that break the immersion? I don't know, I can't really be the judge of that. People will tell us, but it's never really been brought up during playtests. Because of the world we created, the music and all those cool places we explore and how we present them, I think there's so much that can immerse you in this game regardless.



And it's still a first-person game at the end of the day. It's not that you can choose whether to go into third-person. You'd never say that Rainbow Six is a third-person game, even though you see your character when you're taking cover. It's the same thing, what we're doing here. In Human Revolution, you only go into third-person when you take cover and when you perform takedowns (and, from the vids, when you climb ladders -Tec).

quote: Speaking of the fans, what was your reaction to the community backlash? There was some uproar to the news that you'd have regenerating health in the game.

Jonathan Jacques-Belletête: (Laughs) The same reaction I had just now (Laughs)! No, but I can totally understand when there's something you hold so dearly and it gets updated or handled by others.



It's like Blade Runner, right? I hope that nobody ever remakes that film, or makes a sequel. I think it should stay as it is, because I would be afraid that whoever's doing it would mess up this masterpiece. And there are books that act as a sequel to Blade Runner, and they're great books, but I don't think they should make them into movies.



So I understand the fans' concerns. But I don't think people really understand how complex it is to make a game. The video game industry and video game culture is broad in that a lot of people have ideas and want to put that to gameplay, but actually making a game is more than just I think it should be this, or I think it should be that.



It doesn't work like that when you work in a team of more than 160 people. There are compromises and ways of getting your ideas heard and put to the team for a start, and then it's about those ideas getting coded and drawn up by programmers and artists. It takes a lot of time.



My point is, that it's so much more than just adding a feature, or making a mechanic an on/off thing. Even so, the idea of whether you should pick up health packs or not isn't really the core of Deus Ex, it can be argued.



There's things the fans say that are important, which we listen to, and there are others that we have to just kind of say that's the decision we took.

quote: Presumably therell be sequels to this prequel. Does that mean that at some point youre going to end up remaking the first game?

Jean-François Dugas: Its natural to come to the idea of a remake, but our game takes place in 2027  thats like 25 years before the first game. So it leaves us enough room to build a new series.



Jonathan Jacques-Belletête: If you look at the history depicted in the franchise, you realise there are many great moments that have yet to be exploited. Reading Deus Exs in-game writing, you find a huge amount of background. When you get into the 2030s, you could make many games exploiting all the events happening in that period. You have the secession of states, a huge earthquake, a massive financial crash, Mexico regaining control over the southern states of the US. Theres so much material to exploit. This doesnt mean we are going to use these elements, but I just want to point out that theres no problem building a new series inside the franchise without touching those two existing games.

quote: This is hard for me formulate into a question but it's a thought I had. This is a prequel, which takes place 25 years before the first Deus Ex. There's this idea that, if you watch the first three Star Wars films from the 70s-80s and then you watch the new trilogy it seems that the past is more futuristic than the future.

Jean-François Dugas: (laughs) Right, right.



It's a technology thing, right? Computers make the process much cleaner nowadays. I know that a big part of it in Human Revolution is that the augmentations are in their infancy and are very mechanical, but is that something you considered when designing this game. Was there a feeling of, "This is as far as this world can go because we can't surpass the other titles in the series"?

Jean-François Dugas: When you look at the first Deus Ex, obviously they had technological limitations that made the world very basic. And things that they did were with the knowledge of the time. In ten years, in terms of technology, things move so fast that some things in our real life are almost more advanced than the hypothetical future of Deus Ex in the year 2052. We didn't want to force or constrain ourselves with the idea that, "They didn't do something or go this far in Deus Ex, therefore we cannot do that type of thing."



We wanted to reinvent the world--to base it on what we know today and try to anticipate twenty years from now. By doing that, the chances that it's going to speak to people more easily today are better than thinking, "Well, they didn't have this or didn't do that in the first games." At some point, because we were thinking about those things in the beginning, we decided that we had to re-imagine and reinvent the world because there's no point in trying to stay "one-for-one" with the original.



Would following that original path automatically add limitations to the design of Human Revolution?

Jean-François Dugas: The augmentations for instance--when you look at the mechanical augmented characters like Gunther in the original--it was designed ten or eleven years ago. Today, we design it with an idea of what is happening with technology. Everything is more slick--like when you look at the iPod, it looks really well designed. We approached the augmentations in the same spirit, as opposed to going with the Terminator style type of influence. You know? Like a piece of metal here and there and you're done. We wanted something more, if I can say, sexy and slicker. Something that is more in line with the trends that we know today in terms of technology and how we try to make things blend together nicely.

quote: What inspired you in coming up with Deus Ex's story?

Mary DeMarle: I came onto the game about four months into it. There were few things that were determined. They determined already they would do a prequel to the first game, they would set it in 2027, and it would deal with mechanical augmentations rather than nano ones. And a couple of other things that gave me the initial direction for my research to take.



I started then researching into everything from where is biotechnology today and where will it be in 18 years to possible conspiracy groups. So a lot of my inspiration, believe it or not, came from non-fiction and writings about transhumanism, the singularity and where will we go, and is technology going to lead us to heaven or hell? Even reading about Howard Hughes and Bill Gates to see what kind of people they are.



A lot of that fed the initial idea. I'm a drama junkie, as I like to say. I can never get enough of story because I'm very curious about characters and interpersonal things. So everything I've ever read both in science-fiction and fiction and every TV show I've ever seen feeds into it. It's difficult to pinpoint anything in particular. This project, the focus was on the non-fiction at first.

quote: Player choice is important in Deus Ex, but from your point of view it must be difficult to accommodate that. How do you achieve it with writing?

Mary DeMarle: From a broad picture of just story, and all the different branchings on that, overall our story from a very high level is linear. You go from A to B to C. But we identify early on moments of choice and consequence where you can make a decision that will change and affect the lives of the people around you and the world around you.



Before we started writing the story we knew what the story, basically, was, but then we worked to say, 'How do we manifest that story in the game through the level design, and where are those key moments where their lives would be changed? And then, if so, how can they be changed, and where do we see the repercussions of those changes?'



So from that standpoint, it wasn't just me alone. It was working with a bunch of people to spur those ideas and to get it all down on paper before so we had something we could always refer to that we wouldn't forget three years later.

quote: What other characters (not necessarily cyberpunk) influenced the creation of Adam?

Mary DeMarle: This question is not an easy one to answer because when creating characters, I don't look to ANY existing models and try to shape new ones after them. (At least, not consciously.) My process is to start at the ground up and choose three or four traits that I think really define this new person. I try to pick traits that both complement AND oppose each other because, let's face it, people are complex beings. Having character traits that pose contradictions within ourselves makes for far more realistic and interesting characters.



Once I have the defining traits, I try to find examples of how each one manifests itself. For instance, if a character is CURIOUS, he or she might be very extroverted -- satisfying that curiosity by constantly talking to people and finding out more about them. Or, he or she could be more introverted, and satisfy curiosity by sitting at the back of the bus and just watching people. I try to pick very concrete examples, because the more concrete I get, the more the image of that character starts to form in my head. I soon find myself imagining the 'defining moments' in this person's life in which these traits came out. From there, it's pretty easy to fill in all the back-story details in the character's life -- from childhood on up!



So, I can't say what characters influenced Adam's creation. In a way, every person and every character I've ever met has had some influence on him!

quote: Deus Ex, the original game, had conspiracies connected to the real world with the Illuminati, Trilateral Commission, and so forth. Can you tell us about Deus Ex: Human Revolutions conspiracy elements and what events theyre inspired from?

Mary DeMarle: Well, I dont want to give away too much but, yes, the foundation of the whole license is the whole conspiracy theory element. When you play Deus Ex 1 it seems like every conspiracy theory in the world was somehow thrown into there. So, we do have a few. We do hint at a few conspiracy theories people might recognize if theyre really into it. But, I dont want to go into details about what they are.



In terms of researching, when we starting on this project it was kind of fun because we had a narrative team that consists of myself, one of the level designers, and J.F. (Jean-François Dugas, Lead Game Designer). The level designer involved is one of the biggest conspiracy buffs I ever met. Hes into the Masons, the Illuminati, hes into everything from who shot JFK on down. It was really funny to sit in the meetings and these theories and say "well, thats interesting."



Even now, my family looks at me differently because theyre always talking things out like "unless its one big massive conspiracy, like Wikileaks could just be a conspiracy."

quote: Ive heard a lot of talk about Human Revolution having themes of humanity, asking what makes us human and so forth, which I imagine would require a cast that seems quite human in the first place. What steps have you taken to make the cast believable?

Mary DeMarle: Well, we didnt want to go black and white with anything, we wanted to have shades of grey in everybody and everything in the story. So when I approach character development I usually do it by starting with deciding what each characters core personality traits are. I usually come up with 3 or 4, and try to pick traits which compliment each other, but also contradict each other, which I think makes for a more realistic character. Because we all have those inner conflicts, and sometimes certain traits take over.



So I start with that, and then I think about how those traits might manifest in real actions. So if you have a curious character, you might have a curious character whos also quiet, so he sits in the background or the back seat of the bus and watches everybody. I think this way you create a character with a more realistic bent to them.



Its also realising that even evil characters arent evil because of their intentions, but only their actions. You have to think about that person is motivated to do what hes doing and build a backstory around that.

quote: I noticed that reading through some of the e-books even grants you experience, though not all of them do.

Mary DeMarle: Yes. Okay, that's what we call  behind the scenes  the "e-books" and the "XP books." XP books are also e-books, but the difference is that there are certain books in the world that give you experience points, that can be applied to your augmentations. Those are called the "XP books." Eventually, if you start collecting them and reading them, there are the ones that tell you all about augmentation, and they tell you about how the augmentations came to be  the theory behind the development of them, et cetera. So they're more scientific than the rest of them. All the other e-books in the game are just fun to read, but these particular ones are there to give you experience points.

quote: The overall tone of the game appears very serious. Is humor used at all to defuse this tension?

Jonathan Jacques-Belletête: I had this question at a Q&A recently and was asked if Adam ever cracks jokes. He doesnt really. Its cyberpunk. Its very film noir. Its very Deckard  Blade Runner and what not. Like I said hes a bit of a tortured soul, but hes very cynical, which is in a way a form of humor some times. I think an actual real joke  he cracks one joke at one point in the end of the entire game to one of the main characters. He has a relationship with the main techie-IT guy [Pritchard] of the corporation Adam works for as a security specialist. They dont like each other. At all. But he is the main guy you are in contact with all the time during your missions  look for this, look for that. They have this banter. Through that, there are definitely some funny things, but theyre not jokes per se.



Are there humorous situations?

Jonathan Jacques-Belletête: Yeah. Adam may ask a question and [Pritchard] may reply in a manner like duh, are you serious? Youre really asking me this? And Adam may reply with a kind of ironic, kind of like shut the gently caress up  You understand what I mean? They have this relationship that in itself is the humor that we have in the game. (laughter) It probably ends there. You know, its Deus Ex. It takes itself rather seriously.



Sure. The reason I ask is because, even in serious action or film noir films, humorous moments are often inserted to lighten the mood.

Jonathan Jacques-Belletête: True. Maybe through the visuals, you may have some composition in the scenery, a little object or something that, I wouldnt say lightens up the atmosphere, but maybe the artists were funnier than the scriptwriters. (laughter). Not taken anything away from the scriptwriters. All my friends are actually quite funny. Maybe we are trying to lighten up the mood sometimes more on the art side than on the story side (laughter).

Jonathan Jacques-Belletête, art director posted: Hi guys!



I find this super sweet that I actually get to respond like this! I think we should do this more often. I read the forum quite often, so I'm fairly aware of what goes on up in here.



Ok, here's what I'd like to clarify today: There is absolutely zero officially released screenshots that are in fact concept art. They are all 100% genuine real time in-game screen captures. You can trust me 100%. The amount of work it would take for a concept artist to make up an entire image looking convincingly like it is from the "running" game is staggering and definitely counter-productive. Consequently, it would serve no practical purpose (especially if the games doesn't in fact share the same visual attributes. And if it did share those same attributes, then why create a faux-screen when you just could've snapped it in-game?).



This being said though, I think it'd be simply awesome that a concept artist or illustrator would have as a personal style (or as an imposed aesthetic exercise) an utterly convincing "in-game" style to the art he creates, and this to the point where it would confuse the viewer's eye (be the piece rendered digitally or traditionally (the latter being much tougher of course for the achieved goal I am talking about here)). But this would only serve the intentions of the plastic arts. For a commercial game production (which is what we are talking about here), to make a concept art with all the trappings of in-game graphics makes no sense. This would be equivalent to making pixel art style concepts for the visual research of an 8bit or 16bit game (which was not the case obviously. Concept art in the 80's and 90's were still real drawings or paintings even though they were created for a very pixelated and lo-fi final output).



If you look at our in-game screenshot you can see that all the contemporary real time in-game visual quirks are present: The dithering on Adam's hair strands due to alpha test blending, the way Adam's wrist bends which is due to the skinning and weighting of the character and its rig, as well as the animation applied to it (and believe me when I say that none of the concept artists I know would dare draw a wrist like that . Continuing with the observations, the contact shadows between all the objects is clearly "shining" with the limitations of SSAO (screen space ambient occlusion). As happy as I am with the style and look our SSAO gives to the game, here again, a concept artist or illustrator would not render his contact shadows with such a lack of precision (and by lack of precision I mean it not in a pejorative way, but merely because that's just what it is with the limitations we were working for: compared to real-life ambient occlusion, I'd be foolish to say it does not lack precision!).



When we started developing the visual direction for DX:HR 3 1/2 years ago, we knew that we wanted a certain level of stylization to the global feeling of the visuals. We were not aiming for photorealism, but instead, for a strong credibility and homogeneity within the game's pseudoreality. I think that we truly have achieved this goal, to the point where some places in the game look almost exactly like the concept art. We wanted a graphic novel visual approach to the game and that's what we worked very hard at creating. True story: sometimes people would pass by some artist's computer here at work and say: "Hey! That's a sweet concept art you got there for your wallpaper." And then this "concept art" would start moving FPS style and the person would go "Woah! It's the actual game hahahLOLbrbBbq!!". My point here is the following: Even artists on DX:HR's production floor were sometimes fooled. And this is due to the stylized nature of the visuals, and the often extreme faithfulness between the concept art piece and it's in-game materialization.

Jonathan Jacques-Belletête, art director posted: Props to my good friend Jim Murray, for his great work on #DXHR, including this famous image!







Its been about a month now that a good friend of mine, and one of the best artists I have ever known and had the chance to work with, left Montréal and the Eidos studio to go pursue his prolific career at Valve Sofwares.



Jim Murray got on board to design Deus Ex: Human Revolution with me straight from the beginning during the summer of 2007. Weve been through a lot together on this project. The design vision we set out to create was not an easy one and we had to go through a lot of trials and errors to finally get what we both wanted. But eventually it all started to make sense, and the creative flow truly sparked up!



Believe me when I say that DX:HR would not be what it is today if Jim had not been part of the design team. The least I can say is that the game owes him a lot. Amongst all the creations and influence Jim brought to the aesthetics of DX:HR, I believe the most important are Adam Jensens design and most of the weapons.



Jim is a genius at creating marvelously credible mechanical designs as well as generating an unbelievable amount of details; two skills that are necessary in creating very high quality weapons (be it for a videogame or any other form of entertainment media). He continuously wowed the team with each new weapon he would create. I can personally say that I am very enthusiastic and pleased with our in-game offensive arsenal.



As for Adam Jensen, it obviously was a huge team effort. More than one concept artist from the art design team participated. It took us over two years to finally get him right. We had a fairly clear vision of the character we wanted to create, and this, even from the very beginning. However, to have this lucid, high-level vision did not make it easier to eventually achieve the final design that we all love and appreciate today. The idea of mixing cyberpunk with the Renaissance aesthetic while keeping a contemporary feel to Adam was not a simple task. To make this even harder, our Game Director was adamant about having Adams cybernetic arms shown at all time. And this, while sporting the look of an agent that could both be dropped behind enemy lines to kick butt and walk into an upper class establishment to interrogate someone. All these variables made designing Adam a real artistic headache. We had our work cut out for ourselves!



We went through countless iterations, and each time Adam would get a little better. But something always felt awkward. The ingredients were all there, but somehow the mix never worked quite right. This all changed the day that Jim approached me with a plan that seemed so obvious I couldnt believe we hadnt thought about it before. What if Adam had two outfits? he said. One would be for his behind enemy lines situations, in which we would fully see his cyber arms; and another outfit for his urban/social activities. We quickly set-up to discuss this idea with the Game Director and the Narrative Director, since such a decision has much bigger implications than just modeling two different versions of Adam. Eventually, we all agreed to go ahead with it.



At this point, Jim took full control of Adams visual design and went ahead with a ton of ideas. And this is when the magic finally started to happen. We could now all breathe a bit better. What we knew was to ultimately be the real final Adam Jensen design was finally being born.



So anyway, all this to say that having Jim on the Deus Ex: Human Revolution team was a great privilege and pleasure. Its been one of the best collaborations of my career.



I wish him all the best in his new endeavor at Valve studio. Keep your eyes opened folks, the games made at Valve are about to get even more kick rear end! ;D



Thanks for everything Jim.



JJB



Go visit his website: jimmurrayart.com

Tecman fucked around with this message at 09:17 on Jul 19, 2011