Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Interview, DLC Previews

I have a very early work gig today, so this will be a shorter news update than most. Rock, Paper, Shotgun has a post-release interview with Deus Ex: HR lead Jean-François Dugas, discussing their view now that the game has shipped, those boss battles and a little on the DLC:

RPS: Why do you think the boss battles didn’t work?

Dugas: 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.

Moving on to The Missing Link, Bluesnews points out a walkthrough trailer and screens, as well as a number of previews on the 'net:

• Ars Technica
• Joystiq
• G4tv
• PC Gamer
• Shacknews
• Eurogamer

Here's a snip from the latter:

Towards the end of the DLC is a boss fight, which fans won't find as frustrating as those in the main game, Eidos Montreal told Eurogamer.

"We have a boss battle at the end, but it's different from the main game boss battles," producer of The Missing Link Marc-Andre Dufort said.

"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."

"Everything was done in Montreal at Eidos," he continued. "It's a lot less frustrating. But it depends on the way you play. If you played more combat in the main game, you probably didn't have any trouble dealing with the boss fights. So we allow the adaptation of the way you play for that particular boss fight."