Deus Ex: Human Revolution Interview with Senior Game Designer Frank Lapikas

Author’s Note: This interview was published September 22, 2011 and originally appeared on Examiner.com. Clicking on this link will take you to its original location.

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Deus Ex: Human Revolution is the successful prequel to the classic PC franchise, Deus Ex, that impressed gamers and made an impact as a possible Game Of The Year contender. Frank Lapikas, Senior Game Designer at Eidos Montreal, was kind enough to take the time to answer some questions I had about Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I would like to thank Frank very much not only for answering my questions, but answering them so quickly! The interview follows below.

1.    The writing in Human Revolution is great conspiracy-driven fiction. Where did you draw inspiration for the story — any books, films, etc. you can mention?

Frank Lapikas: As with any other creative endeavor, it’s difficult for us to pinpoint where ideas come from. We’ve read so many books, watched so many movies and played so many games, that it all coalesced into our minds.

The biggest source of inspiration was most probably the timeline for the original game. Once we hit upon the 2020 decade and the introduction of the first mechanical augmentations to the general public, it kinda took off. We had this idea of exploring social unrest, class-warfare and this notion of a deterministic evolution.

2.    How did you balance the FPS and stealth elements of gameplay — enabling the player to switch from stealth to guns-blazing FPS nearly instantly?

FL: We didn’t balance it really. We just created rules for both systems that would allow them to exist side-by-side. Giving them a common game mechanic (the cover system) helped bridge the gap.

3.    Speaking of stealth, the wait time for cool down from hostile to normal state in Human Revolution is 80 seconds in some areas, with delays possible for the A.I.’s discovery of knocked out guards. Why is the wait time so long? In areas like the Detroit police station, players can spend a large amount of time waiting if they have to sneak in — the whole area is packed with personnel.

FL: I believe it was an attempt to remain credible. If a group of guards comes across a dead body, it wouldn’t make sense for them to think the perpetrator has gone away until they’ve spent quite a bit of time looking for him. Having our guards searching around for only 20 seconds would’ve brought its own set of problems, mostly regarding logic and immersion.

4.    Deus Ex: Human Revolution has numerous branching paths and choices. When considering future games, how do you decide which choices or plot developments could be considered canon? Do you focus on major plot developments instead — the plotlines that all players experience, regardless of the choices that they made?

FL: When creating the game, we weren’t designing with a sequel in mind, so we didn’t assign any particular weight to any of the decisions made by the player. Right now, we consider them all canon.

5.    Deus Ex: Human Revolution has multiple hub locations, some of which are packed with a surprising amount of detail and explorable areas. Why have multiple hubs instead of one giant city? What’s the design approach behind the decision: Is one simpler than another? Is variety a concern?

FL: Variety is definitely a concern. Before we started Deus Ex: Human Revolution, we carefully studied the first two games to pick out their strengths and weaknesses.

Travel and exotic locations proved to be a very important ingredient to Deus Ex’s unique flavor, so we felt we needed to incorporate that. That’s the reasoning behind having multiple hubs.

Could we have had a single city instead? Probably. But it was never our intention.

6.    With a game as big as Deus Ex: Human Revolution, although the game is very well polished, patches — for whatever reason — are always a possibility. I wanted to ask how you feel about the more subtle approach to patching/updating, i.e. having a more “open” system that can be easily edited or updated as opposed to traditional patching. Do you have a preference? Is the more open system up for consideration for future Deus Ex titles?

FL: I think having an elegant and robust patching pipeline is important.

I’ve heard people fear in the past that it may turn us into lazy developers that don’t test and fix things properly before shipping, knowing that we can always patch later on.

That’s actually not been my experience. Not only are we just as thorough with testing, but having a proper patching pipeline means we have a way to fix anything that may go wrong regardless. With a game as big as Human Revolution was, stuff is bound to break after release, as it did. So now we can go in and fix it.

7.    Is there any downloadable content coming for Deus Ex: Human Revolution? If so, is the DLC likely to be smaller scale or bigger (towards expansions)?

FL: The Missing Link DLC has been announced for an October release and it expands upon the world and brings in new characters.

Thanks very much in advance for your time.