Eidos Montreal: Deus Ex: Invisible War a "Cautionary Tale"

While many gamers revere the original Deus Ex as one of the great games of all time, its prequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War is not held in nearly such high regard (in fairness, Invisible War shows a respectable score of 80 on Metacritic, though this pales in comparison with Deus Ex's stellar 90). With Eidos Montreal on the verge of releasing Deus Ex: Human Revolution, some gamers have expressed hopes that this prequel will be closer in execution to the original DX, rather than the follow-up.

It turns out the developer is sympathetic to this sentiment, as nin sends along a post on the Eidos Montreal Tumblr Blog (thanks VG247) where this point is, quite diplomatically, addressed in an answer to the following question: "Did your opinion on DX:IW change through development? It seems most of the fan community hated it. Did you incorporate any ideas at least in part inspired by Invisible War? Or was it entirely ignored?" Here's the reply from "Frank," presumably game designer Frank Lapikas:
My personal opinion of it did not change, no.

Have I played it? Yes. Through the end.

I’m glad to finally have this question.

We’ve tiptoed quite a lot around the issue of Invisible War, but we’ve never fully answered people who wanted to know how much of it we actually used as inspiration.

I shall do this here and now.

My aim is not to start a flame war. But if we’re to peel back the curtain on how this game was designed, I want to be truthful.

And the truth about Invisible War is that I personally did not get as much enjoyment out of it as I did the original Deus Ex.

Looking at Invisible War was a cautionary tale. The game showed us how some apparently simple design decisions such as universal ammo could alter the essence of what Deus Ex is.

When you look at IW, all the staples are there: the future, augs, weapons, a conspiracy, dialogs, stealth, side quests, etc. Yet it doesn’t feel quite right.

It made us realize that it would be very easy for us to screw up Human Revolution. We had a fine line to thread after all.

So in essence we used IW and compared it to DX1 in order to operate a “course correction”; which means we reverted most decisions in IW in favor of what DX1 had done.

From my knowledge (and sometimes defective memory), there is nothing in Human Revolution that comes from invisible War alone.

Doesn’t mean Invisible War was a bad game.

But it’s not the game we were trying to live up to.
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Re: Eidos Montreal: Deus Ex: Invisible War a
Aug 12, 2011, 14:32
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Re: Eidos Montreal: Deus Ex: Invisible War a Aug 12, 2011, 14:32
Aug 12, 2011, 14:32
 
Ratty wrote on Aug 12, 2011, 14:18:
Tanto Edge wrote on Aug 12, 2011, 13:56:
I see a week (at least) off from life and family coming up in my future.
So when is the exact date of release in the US? I want to arrange for some vacation time right now.
Tanto Edge wrote on Aug 12, 2011, 13:56:
@Creston
Harvey and Warren are awesome designer/developers and about the only ones whom I say got some of the best talent and worst luck in the industry.
As hefty components of the Deus Ex, and Thief series', they were willing to try new shit, and that means a lot. Warren boned some as bettered some, but he was forging new territory.
It's nice to hear somebody else say this. I have the same gripes about DX:IW as everybody but I always gave them the benefit of the doubt and looked at it as them pushing the envelope yet again and taking a big risk. They (or at least Harvey) always said they wanted to distill down the essence of what made DX great and really concentrate on that by making it even better and perhaps eliminating some of the peripheral distractions. I mostly hear people blame DX:IW's shortcomings on consolitis and dumbing down for a mass audience and I'm one of the first to jump on that bandwagon for many games, but in the case of DX:IW I take them at their word. They tried something new and failed.


I don't think you can blame the tiny levels and frequent loading on anything else than having to squeeze the game into that Microsoft POS box. Can't really blame the developers for that one.


The rest of the decisions were just wrong. And I do blame them for that ...
"The future's so bright I gotta wear shades!"
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