One of the more high profile developers we got to interview at PAX East 2011 was Jean-Francois Dugas, Game Director on Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Eidos Montreal hopes the upcoming sequel will establish the franchise as a dominant force in gaming, but it’s been a long journey for Dugas and his team in their attempt to accomplish that. Throughout the interview we talk about the challenges of reviving an older franchise, their unique relationship with their Japanese publisher, Warren Spector’s feedback, and influences from movies to anime to Metal Gear to… Professor Layton?
The Development
Michael Gutierrez, Warp Zoned News Editor: So when did you guys begin development on Deus Ex?
Jean-Francois Dugas: 2007, four years ago. Actually, it started in May 2007.
WZ – Mike: Have you switched engines over that time?
Dugas: No, it was not about changing, switching engines – Duke Nukem style or what not… (laughing)
No, no, it was just that we were building a new studio, we had to hire the teams, start to work together, get used to the engine. Making a Deus Ex game, it’s quite challenging, it’s a very complex game. So, with all those factors together, you try to build a Triple-A game from the ground up, and today the standard is about 3-5 years, really.
WZ – Mike: So you haven’t changed engines, but has the gameplay or game design radically changed over those four years? Because a lot has happened in gaming…
Dugas: Actually, it’s the first project in my career that the original vision, that we established in 2007, the game today is 90% close to it. We kept the same speech for four years we didn’t change anything. And we delivered what we said we were going to deliver except a few little things, and I’m saying little things, really little things.
Bringing Deus Ex Into 2011
WZ – Mike: Do you think it was hard to adapt Deus Ex to a new generation of gamers or at least a new generation of gaming?
Dugas: What is challenging is just making the game itself, it’s trying to recapture the sense of the original game, try to give it a new flavor, try to give it a life on its own. I think that has been the most challenging part, as opposed to “oh my God, will gamers, will they get it or not?” It was more like, with the advent of games like BioShock, Fallout, people are more and more comfortable with games. There’s a big trend about casual gaming and everything, so I can play bowling with my mom and things like that, but she’ll never play Deus Ex. But people are really into games, now. I think more and more people are ready for compelling, really engaging games, and I think Deus Ex is going to fall into that category, and I’m not afraid they are averse to something like that.
WZ – Mike: So what is some of that new flavor that you put on top of the old formula?
Dugas: A lot of things. Like the visuals, definitely. We put a lot of effort, it took us about two years to get the visuals where we wanted them to be, and not in terms of technology, but in terms of the art direction itself. We wanted to go with something that’s unique, so that you don’t confuse it with another game, and that took us two years. Also, we wanted to make the augmentations more spectacular, give them more ‘oomph’ when you use them.
So I don’t know if you’ve seen some of the trailers with the blades and all the explosions that go 360 around the character and things like that. It seems kind of obvious, but when you’re in the middle of trying to figure those things out, it’s really, really hard. Like, “are we going too far or not far enough?” Or, “how is this going to play out?” I think we recaptured the essence of the original one in terms of you’re in this world that’s very immersive, you feel that don’t know who you can trust, there’s a conspiracy going on, you have the same gameplay pillars.
They play differently than ten years ago, but you have the same kind of recipe. And yeah, I think that’s how we infused the game with brand new visuals, a lot of augmentations we pushed for, and I would say even the storytelling, it’s more engaging than it was before.
WZ – Mike: Could you think of what the most important aspect of the older games you had to preserve was? Like, “we need to make sure this is still in here.”
Dugas: Um…
WZ – Mike: I know there was a lot… (laughing)
Dugas: Definitely, it needed to be a conspiracy kind of game. It needed to have stealth, combat, hacking, social. It needed compelling characters that you can relate to. We needed to have an immersive world. It’s all very high-level stuff that I’m saying, but those were our goals, we needed to hit them at some point, and that took a lot of time, because even with the main character Adam Jensen we knew we wanted a character that would be more compelling like JC Denton was over Alex Denton. So just JC for us we thought he was more interesting than Alex in the second game. And we really wanted to go back to those kinds of roots and everything, and Adam Jensen, he went through several iterations before he got to where he is today. Like at first he looked like Inspector Gadget or what not! (laughing)
And eventually, one of our artists had a very nice idea about it being this guy, the jacket, the thing without the jacket, and things started to happen, but it’s been a very long road.
The Influences Part I
WZ – Mike: Yeah, he’s very well designed, it’s very impressive. You mentioned BioShock and Fallout, were there any modern RPGs you guys took cues from?
Dugas: I mean, we started to work on the game even before the first Bioshock. Even Mass Effect wasn’t out. Definitely we looked at those games when they came out, but we were already on our own track. It was interesting to see what others do sometimes, some have a good idea about how to present something to the player as a tutorial and what not. But as far as a specific cue, “oh, they have that, we need that,” not really. I think our main inspiration was the first Deus Ex.
WZ – Mike: Well one thing that’s definitely changed over the course of the development was Square Enix coming in. Has anything changed with that, or could you talk about what they’re like as a publisher?
Dugas: When they bought us out, the game was fairly advanced in production. Therefore, it was really too late to change whatsoever. But they didn’t come in and say “let’s change this or that.” They came in, we presented the game, they got really excited about it, and they just got behind us and started to support us and give us what we need to make it a good game. Our biggest collaboration together has been on the CGI trailers.
Nicole Kline, Warp Zoned Senior Editor: Those trailers have been unbelievable.
Dugas: They’re crazy, right?
WZ – Nicole: They’re amazing.
Dugas: And it’s been a collaboration between Goldtooth, which is a company in Vancouver, us in Montreal, and Visual Works in Japan, which are the guys who are making the cutscenes for the Final Fantasy games and things like that. So it’s been a collaboration between the three studios to produce that. It took us ten months to get those trailers out. Ten months of work, and working late, and a lot of efforts.
WZ – Nicole: Well, it’s paying off, because all my friends are like “what can you tell me about this Deus Ex game!? These trailers are amazing!!!”
WZ – Mike: Yeah, even people who never even heard of Deus Ex before, they want to know everything about it.
Dugas: And plus it was strategic, because we knew that a lot of people today really don’t know about Dues Ex at all, most people are like “huh, what?” Or, “oh, yes, my older brother might have it in his library,” but not much more than that. And we wanted to go more with ‘mainstream’ in bracket, it’s still a first person game, so not everybody that can play those kind of games. But we really wanted to make sure that Deus Ex was out and people know about it, and with this trailer that’s really compelling, it attracts certain people who don’t care about those kinds of games usually. And that was our goal, because we knew we were not an established franchise. Hardcore fans think it’s an established franchise, but that’s not so.
Deus Ex Goes to Japan
WZ – Mike: Do you know if Square Enix is trying to make a push with this in Japan, with the name that they have? I know they picked up Call of Duty and I feel like they’re trying to bring a lot more Western games over there.
Dugas: I don’t know exactly, but I know that they’re definitely being very supportive of us in Japan. They’re really pushing for this game. We’ve been there, we presented it to the journalists over there and everything. We went to TGS, and few developers go there. Us, we went.
WZ – Nicole: Was it fun?
Dugas: It was really, really fun. I got to present the game to the Japanese audience, so it was really, really neat. Yes, they definitely have a strong plan to release this game to support it in Japan, not only in the rest of the world, but in Japan as well, and it’s kind of cool.
WZ – Mike: How were the reactions at TGS? Was it a good crowd reaction to the things they saw?
Dugas: Actually, yeah. Usually Western games are not that popular in Japan. And before the show started, a lot of the people I was working with in Japan were telling me, they were warning me, like, “don’t worry if this morning there’s not too many people, it’s not because your game isn’t good.” And they were really cautious, and they told me that several times before the show started. And the first presentation, it was packed. And more than just like all the seats, it was all around, for all the presentations, so it has never been empty. It’s excellent. So… I was really… relieved! (laughing)
Because speaking alone, it’s not that interesting.
The End Game
WZ – Mike: I was wondering, how’s the variation going to be in the story, can you give us a ballpark, how many different endings or paths there might be?
Dugas: It’s a story, it’s a game, that if you’re on the critical path, it’s 20-25 hours of storytelling, gameplay, it’s all blended in together and everything. If you explore it more, it’s maybe 30-40 hours. So there are a lot of things to discover on the critical path, but you can go on some sidequests and this covers more about certain characters, certain themes that you explore through the story. And also, definitely, we track what you do during the game and eventually you’ll have to make an important choice to have one ending out of X endings… (laughing)
WZ – Mike: I know you don’t want to say what the “X” is, but is it going to be a lot, or are there a couple, can you give us any…
Dugas: It’s more than one!
WZ – Nicole: And less than one hundred!
Dugas: No, we’re not going there! I think Fallout went that route, we don’t have the crazy number like them, but you definitely have more than one. And when I say more than one, it’s not necessarily only two!
WZ – Mike: Gotcha! That’s a very good answer! What about you, personally, what’s your favorite part of the game? What makes you smile the most like “yeahhh, we did that!”
Dugas: Me, I play more stealthy, I really like to go around the characters. Hearing them talking, they feel they’re smart and they don’t know what happened, and they’re on the ground like three seconds after that. I really love it.
I’m really happy about our social boss fights, some of them can be really, really gripping. They have powerful teams, and it’s not just about brawl and stuff like that, it can go in more psychological realms and stuff like that. I think it’s interesting, and it brings a bit of fresh air, in terms of I like to stay away from everything being black or white. We tried to go into shades of grey, and even the evil characters, we tried hard to make them not look that evil, you understand their reasoning. I’d say that’s what I’m most proud of, it’s this immersive world, and trying to avoid the black or white.
WZ – Mike: Have you gotten any input or feedback from Warren Spector on the game?
Dugas: Actually, he’s seen the game already, and it was fun, because there are some tie-ins with the original game. And since he created that, when he saw the game he could spot them right away, he was smiling and nodding, and he said that it feels like a real Deus Ex game.
The Story
WZ – Nicole: I wanted to hear more about the game, I was at E3 and I saw the demo you guys put on, I’d like to know a little more about the story.
Dugas: I don’t want to spoil too much. Obviously it’s going to be hard for me to tell you more than you’re Jensen, you work for Seraph Industries, and you’re tasked with protecting the scientists and the technologies they’re developing. And early on in the game you’re attacked by mysterious people, you get injured, and you’re forced to get augmented, because before that, you’re fully human.
And now when you come back from the dead, your quest starts, and you start to understand what’s really going on. Those attacks were not random. It was not a bunch of anti-augmentation people, it was specialists, they know what they’re doing, and as you move forward, you understand that the people who attacked you are just a symptom of something bigger. Like, people have a plan somewhere, and as you move forward, you discover a bit more of that plan, and eventually you have to play a role in that. So I can’t really… I could!
But I think that we say too much. It’s like movies, you’ve already seen everything. Like, “ok, I’ll see if the movie is exactly as it’s been told to me so far.” And I like Inception, I didn’t know anything about it, so when I went to the theatre, I was like “that’s awesome!” So without doing it as radically as they did, because we can’t afford that, I really want to tell as less as I can, because the fun part is to discover.
WZ – Nicole: I really like how in the trailers you guys released, it feels almost like Blade Runner quality, it’s awesome.
The Influences Part II
WZ – Mike: Speaking of that stuff, I was going to ask, outside of the first two games, are there any sci-fi influences from books or movies that really inspired you guys for this?
Dugas: Yes, I mean we look at everything around. Of course, we looked at Blade Runner, we went back even to RoboCop. We even watched Johnny Mnemonic again.
WZ – Nicole: Ohhh no!
Dugas: Haha, yeah, but there are good ideas in that, even though it’s not a great movie, so you really need to have an open mind. And even the not so good stuff might be interesting anyway. We also went into Japanese anime like Ghost in the Shell, but also things like Solty Rei. I don’t know if you heard of that, it’s more obscure.
We also went into books about transhumanism, real stuff that’s non-fiction. Watched a lot of documentaries about a lot of things. So our sources of inspiration weren’t necessarily sci-fi driven, they were about everything that relates to our game. Like anticipation of the future, transhumanism, how to create good cyber punk setting, it was all over the place.
WZ – Nicole: That’s great!
Dugas: Even Professor Layton inspires me! (laughing) I love that game!
WZ – Nicole: Yeah, I just finished Radiant Historia. I finished it, and then the other day I was like “I wanna play it again!” and those are the best games and that’s why games like Deus Ex interest me, because you can play it a completely different way the second time.
Dugas: Absolutely.
WZ – Nicole: Do you like science fiction books?
Dugas: I love it, but I’m not necessarily a big buff, reading everything. I’ve read things like Snow Crash, Diamond Age, that kind of stuff, but I don’t read necessarily everything. Right now, actually, I’m reading The Lost Symbol.
WZ – Nicole: Yea, I got Mike into the Dune books.
Dugas: Yeah, plans within plans within plans within plans… (laughing)
WZ – Nicole: How do you feel in the giant river of video games, how do you feel you guys stand out?
Dugas: Seriously, when I play our game at the office, it’s hard to describe it, but it feels like no other game around. It has so many aspects about other games, but it has a layer on top of that, it just makes it feel very epic. There’s a lot of gameplay possibilities, it’s very flexible, it’s not telling you, “now it’s time to be stealthy, now it’s time to be about combat,” it’s really letting you play the game the way you want. So I think that gives kind of an empowerment. You feel empowered, in a way few games make me feel. But that’s personal to me when I play, and after four years, I’m still not bored with it, so that’s a good sign!
WZ – Nicole: Well, I know when Mike and I play it, he’s a big Metal Gear fan, so he’ll probably be like super stealth. And I’m more aggressive, so I’m gonna go in guns blazing…
Dugas: Be warned, you’re going to have a rough time.
WZ – Nicole: I’m going to get my ass kicked?
Dugas: Uh, yes! Take cover, think. You can go shooting, but it’s not like a headless chicken because you won’t last a long time. But if you’re well equipped and prepare yourself for combat, you’ll have a blast. And If you love stealth, you’ll recognize some inspiration from Metal Gear, because that’s one of the big games we love. We love it, and John [Jacques-Belletete] the Art Director, he’s crazy about Metal Gear as well.
Warp Zoned: Jean-Francois, thanks so much for talking to us. It was great.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution will be available for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on August 23.
