For the most part, Deus Ex Human Revolution was a great revival and a worthy continuation of a classic series. All except the boss fights, which were outsourced during production and annoyed fans by being forced action - you couldn't stealth or talk your way out. Director Jean-François Dugas has already confirmed you can completely ghost Deus Ex Mankind Divided, now he's spoken more about bosses, past and present.
Talking in the new issue of Edge, the Deus Ex Mankind Divided executive director is quite open about where Human Revolution went wrong. "We weren’t consistent on Human Revolution and we knew it. Production issues prevented us from doing [the boss fights] the way we wanted, so my take was, ‘You know what? We know we’re not consistent, we’re not going to pull it off how we’d like, but at least let’s make them entertaining and not frustrating.’ It’s just that we failed at the frustrating part of the equation [laughs]. Those who were more into combat thought the bosses were really interesting, and it was easy. But a lot of players were playing stealth... Oh my God, that was a slap in the face. We fixed it on the Director’s Cut to a certain degree, but because the cutscenes were already made, the bosses had to die, so we were still forcing you to do that.”
According to Edge, it saw one boss encounter in the new game which was solved with negotiation. That apparently involved options such as "Justify, Patronise and Turn Tables" as they attempted to win over a character called Dr Talos Rucker. He's the leader of an activist group called the Augmented Rights Coalition, based in a location called Golem City - a ghetto for ostracised augmented humans following the fallout from the previous games.
Dugas emphasises that this new layer of interaction finally adds the options fans expect from the Deus Ex experience, and that were missing from Human Revolution. “[This time,] we’re a game that you can play stealthily, or for combat; you can kill, or you can decide not to kill. You can sometimes avoid obstacles altogether, because there might be other opportunities to overcome these things,” he explains. “And we want to make sure our boss fights fully respect those rules from day one.”
You can read the full Deus Ex Mankind Divided feature in the new issue of Edge which is on sale Thursday June the 4th. It's in the shops, you can buy ithereorsubscribeto future issues.
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