On Deus Ex: Human Revolution DLC and Boss Battles

On Deus Ex: Human Revolution DLC and Boss Battles
[Sep 23, 2011, 1:41 pm ET] – Share – Viewing Comments

A new walkthrough trailer and three new screenshots are now available for The Missing Link, the upcoming DLC for Deus Ex: Human Revolution. There are also previews of the DLC on Ars Technica, Joystiq, G4tv, PC Gamer, and Shacknews, and an article on Eurogamer focusing on how it will include a new boss battle which was created in-house at Eidos Montreal, since it was recently revealed that the boss battles in the action/RPG prequel were outsourced. "We have a boss battle at the end, but it's different from the main game boss battles," Marc-Andre Dufort, producer of The Missing Link told them. "You can actually not kill the boss. You can do a non lethal takedown on him. And you can kill him from afar. You can even kill him without him seeing you. It's more of a bigger challenge than a standard boss fight like we have in many games."

On that subject, there's also an interview with Jean-François Dugas of Eidos Montreal on Rock, Paper, Shotgun where the project lead on Deus Ex: Human Revolution answers questions about the the upcoming DLC, endings, the PC version, transhumanism themes, ideas they cut from the design, and more where he also offers his take on those outsourced boss fights:

When we started the goal was to have those boss fights with the same design and rules as the rest of the game. We had our pillars of stealth, of non-lethal actions, and everything else, and we wanted to make sure that was reflected in the bosses, but in the end it was not. It’s the place where people were surprised because they would equip themselves in a certain way and then they got their and everything they’d fought for disappeared. You have to change your mindset, which can be upsetting. I think the biggest weakness there wasn’t the concept of having boss fights, it’s just that our boss fights are not Deus Ex boss fights and that’s why people are complaining about them. I guess we live and learn.

Should we have cut them? It’s a decision we made, we said “well at least they will be entertaining in some fashion”. The biggest surprise, actually, was having released the game and finding that people thought they were frustrating. Not just that they weren’t that interesting, but that they were frustrating. The playtesters internally gave us a lot of good feedback for the game, and on the bosses they felt that the fights were entertaining and making you use what you had learned. They didn’t say they were frustrating. We knew it was not in step with the rest of the game, but the surprise for us was that the playtesting was correct everywhere but the bossfights. So lesson learned.

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22.

Re: On Deus Ex: Human Revolution DLC and Boss Battles
Sep 23, 2011, 17:21

theyarecomingforyou

22.

Re: On Deus Ex: Human Revolution DLC and Boss Battles Sep 23, 2011, 17:21

Sep 23, 2011, 17:21

theyarecomingforyou

I think it's a mistake for them to lay all the blame on the boss fights. The cutscenes in Deus Ex were also terrible. I personally opted to play the game stealthily and yet opening an arbitrary door would trigger a cutscenes showing Jensen blundering into a room like a moron. And there wasn't even any consistent with the checkpoints, as one boss fight it saved before you opened the door and the next would spawn you in front of the boss.

They should have opted for cutscenes using the in-game dialogue system, like Alpha Protocol. All the promotional material promoted the freedom of choice and yet the cutscenes and boss fights run completely contrary to that. You only have to look at a game like The Witcher 2 where you can choose whether you want to fight the final boss or walk away. Same with Alpha Protocol.

I also found the game got a bit side-tracked towards the end. It started incredibly well, yet as you got further it was just one massive warehouse / open yard filled with soldiers after another. That's in comparison to the atmospheric, conspiracy based earlier part in Detroit and Shanghai. They just followed the typical FPS route where the further you get the more enemies you face, the stronger they are, the more weapons you need to fight them and you need massive robots or bosses and an increased difficulty to increase the tension. And anyone that wanted to learn more about the story would want to hack every computer and open ever storage cabinet, which completely through off the pacing.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a great game but I feel it would have been a lot better if they had really challenged the conventions of the genre instead of just incorporating them without any consideration. Cutscenes and boss fights are a dated concept, as is expecting 'hardcore' gamers to read every email, PDA, magazine, etc. And in terms of pacing I don't think any developer compares to Valve with the Half-Life series.

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."