Deus Ex: MD - Interview @ Rocket Chainsaw

Rocket Chainsaw interviewed lead writer Mary Demarle about Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

Jarrod: With something like Deus Ex you have so much narrative written, constructed, like Adam Jensen as a character who has relationships and is taken through scenarios. But Deus Ex, as a video game, is a series built where there’s a lot agency in how you act and behave. As a writer is it difficult to reconcile constructing narrative that is deeply focused, with the reality that players can do whatever they want?

Mary: There’s definitely challenges inherent in it. When we created the character of Adam Jensen…within the game industry there’s always the debate “Should the main hero be an avatar, blank slate that the player decides? Or should they be a fully fledged character who is your friend, that you’re guiding on a journey?” And for us, when we started, we looked at that and we said we’d like to see if we could do a little bit of both. We’d like to have a character who has a strong background, strong character traits, strong history, strong personality. Somewhat rooted in the world. And yet has something happen to them in the beginning, and when that happens they become a blank slate and it’s the player who gets to guide them. So we can use the personality traits that we decided for him to keep him on a focus, but allow him to do whatever the hell the player wants. And you can take that character and you can make him a serial killer.

Jarrod: Yeah, the serial killer…as you’re playing Adam Jensen, you’re embodying this character, and through a mission you could be somebody who is very patient, chooses not to kill, careful and methodical. Or you could be a total nutbag, punching and killing your way through. I imagine that’s quite difficult to balance from a narrative perspective?

Mary: It is, but it isn’t. Because we’re really looking at it as…you have to look at it less as the authorial vision, like you get in film and television. And it’s really more about, let’s look at storytelling in terms of; we know our plot, we know our beats you have to get through, we know the character has to get there. And we let the player do it. Then we use the rest of the world to reflect on what the player is doing in a non-judgemental way. We don’t want to judge you, we want to show the consequences of what you’ve done. So we can have things like, for instance, you go through and you kill everybody. And then you have a newspaper pop-up, or you’ll have people who know you respond. It’s recognising your behaviour, calling it back to you. And some of the people might judge you for it. Like a character in the game might sit there and say “I can’t believe you killed everyone, that’s terrible”, then maybe there’s another character who’ll say “You killed them all? They deserved it.”

Thanks Eye.