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Deus Ex: Invisible War Interview, Part 1
Obviously, Deus Ex: Invisible War faces a sizable challenge in living up to the high standard established by its predecessor, which accumulated some 30 game of the year honors including our own. The new title takes place nearly a generation later. The depression has reached disastrous proportions. More than ever, corporations, governments and other organizations use coercion, force and terrorism as the primary tools to advance their self-serving and often destructive agendas. Indeed, Chicago has just been obliterated by a terrorist nanotech attack. With the game slated to ship early next month, the level of anticipation is spiking, making this a great time for us to pick the brains of Project Director Harvey Smith, Studio Director Warren Spector, Programmer Matt Baer, Lead Designer Ricardo Bare, Lead Writer Sheldon Pacotti, Writer Sarah Paetsch and Designer Steve Powers for information.
Jonric: How would you summarize Deus Ex: Invisible War and the kind of game you set out to make? Aside from the original, what are they main influences reflected in this one? And to what does the "Invisible War" in the title refer? Harvey Smith: Deus Ex: Invisible War is the sequel to Deus Ex. The game picks up 15 years later and completes the arc started by the first game. Invisible War is a hybrid game, with shooter and RPG elements (just like the first game). From a gameplay standpoint, our influences (over a lot of time) were things like Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Dungeon Master and Thief. From a fictional standpoint, we drew from numerous conspiracy theory, spy and science fiction sources. Invisible War refers to the constant power struggle taking place around us, as well as those being fought within us. Jonric: When did Invisible War actually get the green light, and is it reasonable to assume the team was ready and eager to make a sequel? Jonric: What are the main lessons you learned in making Deus Ex and also in making a console version that have help you most in the creation of Invisible War? Matt Baer: Well, Deus Ex was conceived as a PC game with no intention of heading to a console. But we decided to do a PS2 version of the game, and it was obvious that this was going to be no small task. For one thing, PCs generally have much more memory than consoles. So, we had to optimize our systems and content to fit in a very small memory footprint. Then, we had performance problems. We had to do a lot of custom coding in order to really tap into the power of the console. And finally, the interface was a huge issue. Consoles really force you to think about your interface and make it as streamlined as possible, otherwise your game suffers dramatically. We pretty much had to throw out the PC interface and come up with something entirely new. So, when we started working on Invisible War, we targeted the console from day one. This time it wasn't an afterthought. Every decision we made along the way considered that we would be running on a console. And I think you'll notice the difference. Ricardo Bare: I think accessibility is something really important that we've been trying to get better and better at. How do we provide a great Deus Ex gameplay experience and at the same time make it easier for the user to get into? Working on a console imposes some interesting constraints that force you to think about these things - and the benefits of that thought process make for a better PC game as well, I think.
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