With a well-timed pull of a fire alarm lever and the maintenance crew in our back pocket, we were able to question Jacques-Belletête for the next 30 minutes without interruption, and to our surprise, he politely responded to our inquiries.
For those who may not know, Jacques-Belletête is the Art Director of this highly anticipated prequel to the original Deus Ex, which was developed by the now defunct Ion Storm, Inc. During our discussion, Jacques-Belletête spoke about how the delay of the release of Deux Ex: Human Revolution will help the final product, how cutscenes are utilized to enhance the story, what kind of DLC can be expected in the future, whether a Deus Ex sequel is already in the works, and why the city of Detroit was chosen as the future home of the cybernetic industry.
Game Rant: Now that the official release date has been announced for August 23, 2011, for North America, will you be able to make any changes to the final game?
GR: Really?
So if you add to that [time] all the snooping around, if you’re a completionist and you do all the side quests, acquiring all the stuff that you can acquire, the time…I don’t want to say a number because for that we don’t have hard data as to how long. Is it 30 or 35 hours, 40? I have no idea. But it is 20-25 hours for the main quest.
My point is when a game is that big, you realize to stabilize properly and debug it properly and balance it properly — all the economies of the game such as the experience points economy or the money economy or how you upgrade [Adam Jensen] throughout the game - it is quite a bit of work. That kind of experience did not exist in the Montreal game industry even though it’s known to be a city where great games come [from]. An RPG had never been done in Montreal ever.
GR: Seems like Square Enix is heavily invested and wants to make sure Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a triple AAA title.
GR: When news of a Deus Ex sequel was announced, a lot of fans of the original were certainly curious about the title. But then the pre-E3 video trailer released and both fans and those without any familiarity with Deus Ex came away impressed. Do you feel any additional pressure now that newcomers to the franchise may have such high expectations?
GR: But now they’re expecting almost perfection at this point.
Continue to Page 2 for more on Adam Jensen and Deux Ex: Human Revolution’s graphics!
GR: We’ve seen cutscene footage of the various takedowns that Jensen can perform. Are cutscenes utilized to convey the in-game story as well?
GR: The game itself seems almost like a motion picture because of the quality of the CGI.
GR: Exactly.
GR: Is there anything done to bring empathy to the character of Adam Jensen? Is he sympathetic character?
GR: (laughter)
Like a lot of people what they want [is] control over their lives, or depending on the echelon that they are at, it may be even control of the economy or control of the truth and lies. So we treat that theme at a very different level in the game and we treat it with Adam in the sense that, “why does he do the things that he does?” First of all, he was augmented against his will. Adam is not a character that we say is either for transhumanism or against transhumanism. He says that he wanted to eventually get augmented on his own terms and choose what he could be augmented with. Maybe it would have been just a brain implant or a retinal implant. Then he ends up becoming this war machine.
So then there’s different things he ends up needing to settle in the game. Again going back to why does he do the things he does. And there’s different things, right? At first, it’s like what happened to [Jensen’s] company. That’s kind of how the game starts. We need to fix that…the bad shit that happened to your company. But then it opens up and that was just the needlehead of a huge international conspiracy. Through that, Adam also finds his own quest, which is not losing an important personal choice again - which is what happened to him by losing a choice of when and how to get augmented. I think through that there is something very human about him. There’s something very kind of sensitive almost. You get really into his psyche of how he has been affected by this and how he wants to make sure that this is never going to happen. I think it’s good for girls too. I think girls like that.
GR: (laughter)
GR: The overall tone of the game appears very serious. Is humor used at all to defuse this tension?
GR: Are there humorous situations?
GR: Sure. The reason I ask is because, even in serious action or film noir films, humorous moments are often inserted to lighten the mood.
Continue to Page 3 for DLC and potential Deus Ex: Human Revolution sequels!
GR: Without giving any spoilers, can we expect Adam Jensen to fundamentally change over the course of story?
GR: One thing that is controversial nowadays is DLC. There’s been primarily three kinds of DLC. One is basically the “horse armor” type.
The way that we explain it — and a lot is from the books we’ve read on cybernetic prosthetics and the specialists that we consulted — it’s kind of like the brain-machine connection takes time and improves. It’s like if you’re learning guitar or piano, there may be a chord that you are having a really hard time with for two weeks, then you stop for another week, and you go back and suddenly it’s like, “wow” it’s easy…like your brain is forming new neurons or connections for that specific chord. Or when a child is born, he’s already got a head, two arms, two legs, but yet he can’t walk, he can’t talk. The eyes don’t even function for the first couple of weeks. It’s like the brain needs to form those connections.
Adam has everything already, but he doesn’t know how to use most of it yet and that connection needs to happen. As you gain experience points through main quest missions, [side quest] missions, killing people, not killing people — we also reward for not killing — exploration, you can spend those points in unlocking those abilities. So in terms of transformation, in terms of physical transformation, there’s not all that much that happens because in the story everything was implanted at the beginning. He won’t be operated on later in the game so he’ll have a pair of wings on his back. Everything is already there.
GR: (Laughter)
GR: The other types you see are the mission-based kind. Some are those you would play during the main game as a side quest, and others end up being more like an epilogue to continue the game. A lot of gamers often complain that they buy a title and there isn’t really an ending and they have to buy new DLC…
GR: In designing Deus Ex, was there any thought about making a series of Deus Ex games with Adam Jensen as your protagonist, where it may even lead into the time period of the original Deus Ex?
GR: With what BioWare did with the Mass Effect series, they were obviously thinking ahead since they were able to integrate choices [from the first game] into the sequel. Will we see this in Deus Ex?
Obviously, this one is 30 years before the first one. It’s part of the exact same time line. There will probably be cameos in this one or at least events that are predicting what happens in the first one. So there would be ways to do other stuff that totally leads to the Deus Ex 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and then finally goes to the first [Deus Ex]. It’s totally doable. Whether we do or not, I’m not worried that we won’t find great ideas and have great games. And like I said, there would be times where Jeff [Game Director Jean-François Dugas] would say, “man, I was thinking about this the other day and if we made another one, it would be so awesome.” And then I’m pitching something else. This being said, is it going to happen or not, I have no idea.
GR: Success here will allow you do to multiple sequels in the future.
GR: Since Mass Effect was a new property, gamers may have been willing to give the titles a little more leeway, but with Deus Ex and its fan base, you probably don’t have that kind of leeway…
Continue to Page 4 for more on Deux Ex continuity and locations!
GR: I’m sure you get asked a lot about Invisible War.
GR: I know it’s a popular topic. As much as people complain about that game, if you look at Metacritic, it received a score in the 80’s.
GR: The main complaint from fans of the original Deus Ex was that Invisible War was designed with the consoles in mind. It was simplified. Is DX:HR going to be too streamlined because it’s on the consoles?
GR: (laughter)
GR: Ken Levine of Irrational Games…
It’s also really big in the sense that the second one [Invisible War] was really confined. That’s one the things that I really did not like when I bought the second one. Somehow they did not manage to make it as open as the first one. It’s definitely not what we did. The city hubs are huge. The streets, the alleyways, going on the rooftops, it just really never ends. It’s not Grand Theft Auto [though].
At GDC, we had a lot of our peers [play DX:HR], which was so fricking awesome. Tons of people…
GR: You mentioned the size of the cities. The footage shown to date has been very stylized and detailed. Because of this, can we expect that area maps are not reused?
GR: (laughter)
We have an insane amount of props rarely seen in games. There’s over 1300 props in the game. For example, because it’s a conspiracy game, you end up exploring a lot of secret labs, office spaces, where you need to find information. For each of those office spaces, we designed our own sets of furniture. Each one of them will have their own tables, coffee tables, chairs, office desk for different levels of the hierarchy…like the desk for the boss and the desk for the clerks. We could have an IKEA catalog with all the products…
GR: As far as game locations, it’s interesting that Detroit is one. With all the riots in the Deus Ex videos, I kept thinking, “where’s Robocop when you need him?”
GR: Will everything that happens in DX:HR support the events that occurred in Deus Ex and DX: Invisible War? Did you put the story line of Invisible War to the side?
GR: Are you excited about the new release date? The window for competition at that time appears to be pretty good.
GR: The NFL just locked out the players. They may not have a season.
GR: It’s possible. It’s possible.
Also, the real reason we chose that date is because we want to give people their summer. We want people to go out and play. If the game had come out in May, the game is so good, people would just stay inside all summer (laughter). No, I’m just kidding.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution releases for the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 on August 23, 2011.
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Make sure to follow Game Rant on Twitter @GameRant. You can also keep tabs on Jonathan Jacques-Belletête at his Twitter account: @jonatchoo
Source (images of JJB): Tumblr
