Olivier Proulx on building the next Deus Ex entry.
By Lucy O'Brien
We got some hands-on time with Deus Ex: Mankind Divided recently, and also had the chance to sit down with its producer, Eidos' Olivier Proulx. During our chat, Proulx talked about building its game world, the problem with boss fights in Human Revolution, choice and consequence, and more.
Read on for the full transcript.
IGN: Looking back on Human Revolution, what did you do well enough to elaborate on in Mankind Divided, and what did you want to get rid of entirely?
Olivier Proulx: Starting with what was very successful in Human Revolution: the choice and consequence aspect, the impact you have on the game world, and the city hub. So we've built a bigger city hub in Mankind Divided, one with more immersion, more side-missions, more layers to explore. We've improved the cool stealth mechanics, because we feel a good Deus Ex game must provide good stealth gameplay. So all of these things were improved on in many ways. But then we looked at the things we weren’t happy with: primarily the boss fight situation. We didn’t want to have another part of the game where you’re forced to kill someone. We don’t have that in the game anymore. All the challenges are more consistent with your play style.
IGN: Will there be 'boss fights' in the traditional sense at all in Mankind Divided?
Olivier Proulx: We're always thinking 'what does it mean to have boss fights in a Deus Ex game in 2016?' You will have some important encounters, but are they boss fights? I think at this point, it’s semantics. But you'll certainly have some intense encounters with some key characters at different moments in the game.
But going back to your original question - we thought the traversal mechanics were a bit weak in Human Revolution. So we wanted to make sure Mankind Divided feels good when you’re on the controller, and you’re running around the environment. When you start shooting the aim down sights is natural, and we've improved the cover system. From a combat perspective, we wanted to have more depth in weapon customization. We have very aggressive augmentations as well, that you’re activating on your controller. Not that Mankind Divided is a 'combat game' - we want both combat and stealth to be real options for the player. That element of choice is stronger because the game is solid on both sides.
IGN: Do the choices you make in-game affect the makeup of the game-world, or how characters perceive you?
Olivier Proulx: Yes and no. The way you play and some of the decisions you make - either your gameplay style or the way you talk to people, quest and explore - definitely has an impact in the world. Sometimes it has a big impact, like life or death, or sometimes it’s just in the little details, like you might not realize right away, but a character might comment on how you perform, or you’ll read an email that’s customized to what you did in the game. It’s very cool, it’s empowering as a player to have agency. But there’s no preferred way to play. There’s no “you should play stealth” and fail if you play combat. There are no more experience points or rewires if you play stealth over combat, or vice versa. Often players start with stealth. they break stealth, they move to combat. Also There’s no morality system in Mankind Divided. You can decide to kill everyone, and that’s on you. The game doesn’t tell you “you shouldn’t do this”. There’s no morality meter. But what we find is that a lot of players - because the factions are well-thought-out and the characters are well fleshed out, they avoid killing.
IGN: How has the world in Mankind Divided changed from Human Revolution?
Olivier Proulx: We tried to build a lot on top of what we had in terms of art direction. So we came back with many of the same aesthetics - cyber punk, cyber renaissance. When you start Mankind Divided, it’s a much colder setting, with much harsher lines, you’re in the daylight so it exposes everything in a harsh manner, That’s very deliberate, we’re over the dream of the augmented future so we’re moving away from the black and gold palette. The aesthetic to something much more corporate and clean - our art director likes to call it “corporate feudalism" - and that’s really what you see, the cops look like knights. Everything is very harsh, very straight lines, big opressive buildings. That conveys the themes of Mankind Divided: the dream of the augmented future is over.
IGN: From what we've played, the hubs in Mankind Divided seem much more dense and populated then they were in its predecessor.
Olivier Proulx: I think we went much deeper in Mankind Divided. And literally deeper. In Prague, you can go from the sewers to many levels of verticality through the buildings. And everything is at your finger tips, there’s always a door to hack or a secret area to find or a vent to infiltrate. We just put in so many details in terms of storytelling, emails, people to meet, side-missions to unconver, in a very dense sandbox. Compared to Human Revolution I don’t know if we have more square meters but we have a much denser city hub environment. I think ultimately depending on how you play you can spend 20-35 hours on the main mission, but some players spend so much tine reading and exploring everything it can take a lot longer. We also have cool new additions in Mankind Divided like NG+ so if you finish and want to restart the whole game and see different ways the story plays out while decked out with all your augmentations, you can do that. There’s also the “I Never Asked For This” game mode - if you finish on hard you can play on hard mode again, but you only have one life.
IGN: How deep did you go with the dystopian branding/advertising this time around?
Olivier Proulx: It is so much fun to create. It’s also so daunting. Sometimes looking back I think I’d go crazy having to start again! I think it’s part of the fun - all those layers of depth and detail. So you have movie posters that kind of make sense to the themes of the game, and you have news. Say you find some ammo in the game, and it comes in a box. The ammo is produced by a certain corporation, right? So you find the logo on the box. Very late in production our Narrative Director was looking at an asset. And she said “that's not the right logo for the ammo type”. It was a tiny logo! So we realized we had to rewrite a whole bunch of things, and pull out the right corporation logo, and have a team come in late to fix everything. But that’s what we do here.
IGN: Do the side quests in Mankind Divided reflect the themes of the augmented as being "othered" and ostracized?
Olivier Proulx: Absolutely, we explore this theme in the side-quests but on a more personal level. The main story is all about the politics around [augmentation], and the big time players and how they try to steer the lives of millions of people through the main storyline, and that’s cool, but the side-missions are all about maybe a family being torn apart, or someone who doesn't’ want to be pushed into the ghetto, or extortion, people trying to take advantage of the situation. So you have a lot of these more personal stories, where you can explore these themes from another angle. And the backstory of Adam Jensen will be fleshed out a bit, toom and all sorts of things that give personality to Prague.
IGN: How do you maintain balance in a game where you encourage players to essentially "play how they want"?
Olivier Proulx: It’s a very iterative process. It starts with very solid level design, even though we know there are some levels in Mankind Divided that will be more difficult for a combat player, and some levels that will be more difficult for a stealth player. So beyond that, balancing loot, energy cost, weapon power, credits, character progression - there’s a lot to look at. But we have game designers that are experts, coming from HR, who know good 'recipes', how to balance everything. One particular senior designer - he owned that part of the game. And he’s using his own knowledge to give it a good first pass, and then there was a lot of user testing. We have metrics in the game to see what’s being used and what’s not, and then we just iterate and iterate. Our QA department plays so much, and they'll tell us what we need to hear - "this augmentation is way too powerful, you should think about nerfing it". That’s how we iterate. The goal at the end is that the game should be empowering, so you feel like you’re enjoying playing as Adam Jensen, but you'll be challenged as well.
Lucy O'Brien is an editor at IGN’s Sydney office. Follow her ramblings on Twitter.
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