Deus Ex: Human Revolution - On Boss Fights and Earnings

Dhruin

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A couple of minor items for Deus Ex: Human Revolution, with producer David Anfossi admitting they knew the boss fights would be a "weakness". We've heard it before, of course, but it seems development was difficult. From Edge:
"We knew that it would be a weakness for the game, that we had to make a compromise to deliver it [on] two levels. First, the boss fights were forced, which is not the Deus Ex experience. Second, there is no mix [of] solutions to tackle the boss fights, which is not Deus Ex either.
"We knew that before the release of the game, but there had to be some compromise. It [was] our decision."
If that gives the impression of a difficult project, what follows rather rams the point home. "It has been a nightmare, to be honest," Anfossi said. "We started from scratch. From recruitment to release date, it's been a nightmare."
Still, the result has been good with Gamasutra reporting Square Enix' sales financial forecasts have been lifted because of the success:
Square Enix has revised its financial forecast for the first half of the current fiscal year, more than doubling its originally estimated profits.

The publisher put this alteration down to the success of recently-released Deus Ex: Human Revolution, as well as increased revenue from web content.
More information.
 
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"This sucks be let's add it anyway" *boggle*
 
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"This sucks be let's add it anyway" *boggle*

Keep in mind that this may not have been the choice of the developer, but rather a decision forced upon them by the publisher. It still sucks either way that silly, out of place boss fights made it into the final product, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was a demand from a higher-up on the publishing side.
 
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He is the publisher, they did force the decision. They told everyone No Kill game play was in, because they KNEW fans wanted it. How hard is it to let us run from them?
Their deaths did nothing for the game, it was the player that mattered.

If they were running so short on time, why was there dlc so quick?
 
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I have pretty much quit at the second boss fight. I enjoyed it up till then but I have better things to do than play that over and over till I beat that chick.

If cheats come out so I can skip the boss fights then I'll keep playing as I kind of want to see it through to the end.
 
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Yeah I think we need some cheat codes or something. I love hard games ( dark souls current fave) but time is premium and we know what happenend here. They contracted with another studio and plopped the boss fights in.
Anyone know the cheats?:-/
 
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Boss fights were the weakness in the game but I don't imagine that they could have just not included them once they had gone down the path of integrating them into the game. It is refreshing to see the developers acknowledge the problem and not just gloss over it, that is encouraging news for part 2+.
 
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Let me be the one to say the boss fight didn't bother me in the least. Cant understand the outcry over them.

Its a game and I rather have a challenge then just snipe a boss in the head. Keep realism to real life.
 
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Let me be the one to say the boss fight didn't bother me in the least. Cant understand the outcry over them.

Its a game and I rather have a challenge then just snipe a boss in the head. Keep realism to real life.

Well, for some of us, the boss fights changed the whole Deus Ex dynamic from a game that" invited" multiple solutions to a boss fight that was basically only resolved with a shooter solution. And BTW, a snipe to the boss in the head would have been my preferred way of ending those boss fights.
 
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you do realize the prior deus ex games had boss fights which you also could not do single take downs. the first game forced you to kill the mech-augs and in a similar fashion there was no way to take down the mech-templars in deus-ex 2. i do agree the boss fights should have had more options, but to say they are out of the realm of deus-ex is pushing it. leaving main openents alive in an rpg mean consequences and in some way i think they are blaming the publisher, though i do suppose they could have written in consequences for leaving them alive but surely with this game being a prequel leaving a whole lot of possible endgame paths/outcomes would really be meaningless since unless they plan on making a bunch of prequel games there's only so many liberties they can afford.
 
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curious we called out Ion too for those Templars. There's also a difference between being left alive and conscious. The implication ingame of unconscious is taken out of the game/arrested. at least this is how I play my games. Same as every other NPC Enemy in the game.

It didn't have to be single hit taken down. if they wanted to make it challenging maybe we should have had to knock them down to 50% health first before a knock out. I'm sure there were other possible solutions. Personally I don't believe them, they constantly changed their story and one factor they always lied about was PC versus console.

So if extrapolate here, does adding these forced boss fights help or hurt the console sales?

My bet what happened is they found out they sold more PC (becasue of Steam) than console. Now they are crapping in their pants, we're going to find out. :)
 
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you do realize the prior deus ex games had boss fights which you also could not do single take downs. the first game forced you to kill the mech-augs and in a similar fashion there was no way to take down the mech-templars in deus-ex 2. i do agree the boss fights should have had more options, but to say they are out of the realm of deus-ex is pushing it. . . ..

well, I don't consider Deus Ex 2 as part of the franchise. Curiously, I do consider Human Revoltion as part of the ongoing saga (and yes I know DXHR is a prequel).
 
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well, I don't consider Deus Ex 2 as part of the franchise. Curiously, I do consider Human Revoltion as part of the ongoing saga (and yes I know DXHR is a prequel).

The fact is Deus Ex 2 is part of the series. Just because you and others didn't like the changes doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I enjoyed all three and the changes and differences don't bother me.
 
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The way that I see it is that the weakness of a game highlighted by the developer (and exaggurated by players) in interviews are just one way for the developer to show that they 'care' about the views of the players, and enable them to boast medicore features (fixes) in their next iteration.
 
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Those boss fights take about 2% of overall play time. Probably less. Sure they suck, but the outcry is overblown. The game has much worse problems than few boss fights.

(I liked it a lot still, but DX1 is lot more superior, design wise)
 
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I did not like the boss fights either but the ending was the worst part of the game imo.
 
boss fights didn't bother me though more options is always nice, but i will agree the ending was the worst part of the game--i didn't really like any of the options, so i chose the tabula rasa option. the zombies part could have possibly worked but it felt totally out of place in deus ex and the sheer amount of insane people walking/running around stripped the game of humanity for me--a place of death, but no desolation, a sense of utter destruction with no sense of tragedy of loss.
afterwards i had no desire to replay the game. thankfully the brief foray of missing link ended on a sense of home and mystery despite it taking place in the middle of human revolutions story.
 
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Yes, I didn't like that I picked an ending rather than the sum of my actions adding up to an ending. Also it killed replay value as you could save then select different endings. Anyone else stick around for the short movie clips after the credits?
 
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