Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Interviews @ PC Gamer

PC Gamer has been having a Deus Ex Week which has seen a retrospective on Deus Ex, a screenshot analysis and 3 interviews with developers. Here's Lead Writer Mary DeMerle about the conversation system:

PCG: It’s interesting that you pick up on that, because one of the things that surprised me watching the demonstration was that the guy failed the conversation. And I know Deus Ex had moments like that, where you could fail to get what you wanted, but it’s very rare in games for a social path to be closed by you saying the wrong thing. Even in BioWare games, you get a good ending and a bad ending, but it’s not a dead end. So is that a conscious focus for the game?

DeMerle: Well, certainly in the conversation gameplay. So we have different types of conversations in the game. The one we were showing you there was the conversation gameplay, which has that gameplay component about it. So yes, it was very much a decision that you could fail the conversations. I actually would like to see a lot more of that kind of thing, because I feel that it was such a strong moment for me in Deus Ex to know that my path got closed because of my decision.

I actually don’t like it in a lot of roleplaying games where you get these choices and then it’s like, “Okay well, I followed that path. Let’s go back and do the other thing,” and then you get all the information. To me, that’s fake: it’s not what a real dialogue is like. And so I like moments in the writing of our story where we can do that. Where we can say, “You’ve got to choose this or this.”

There's also interviews with Art Director Jacques Belletete and Game Director
Jean-Francois Degas.