Deus Ex: MD - About Gameplay Paths @ Polygon

Polygon talked with Deus Ex: Mankind Divided's gameplay director Patrick Fortier at E3 and processed their interview in two articles about the different gameplay paths that make Deus Ex games what they are.

The first one primarily deals with the action / stealth duality in Deus Ex: MD:

In Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, players' options are in service of what Fortier calls "flow." And it's not just a philosophy. It's also a reflection of how he likes to play games.

He's making the game. He doesn't have the luxury of just playing angrily or stealthily. He has to do it all. And that's sort of a reflection of what most players do. As far as he can tell, most play a mix of stealth and action. His responsibility, he says, is to make both choices satisfying. For a developer to choose one over the other is a "trap" he refers to constantly.

Personally, he might prefer stealth in the abstract, but he's not the kind of player who gets spotted, pauses and reloads a checkpoint. He likes to see how it plays out. If he gets into a station where stealth is no longer an option, he'll bring out the guns. In the best games, he thinks, these things flow into one another, like a narrative wire weaving its way throughout the game.

The second article is about the four pillars that make a Deus Ex game, which are combat, stealth, hacking and social interaction.

"Those are fundamental things to the game experience," Fortier told Polygon at E3 2015. (..)

There may be four pillars, but as fans of Deus Ex should expect, they're all set against he backdrop of an unfolding story whose outcome you, as the player, will determine.

"Overall," he said, "they're all wrapped up into this tight rope of freedom and choice and consequences." (..)

Player choice, in other words, is the molten core of a Deus Ex game. Everything else, from the toolbox of weapons and superhuman powers to the unfurling narrative set in a cyberpunk future, serves that master. They're more than arbitrary augments. They are the tools players use to construct personalized outcomes in a world developers create.

They are, as Fortier says, links on a chain.