Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Boss Fights Were Outsourced

Here's a fascinating newsbit with a "Behind the Scenes" video originally from Facebook coming to light revealing the boss fights in Deus Ex: Human Revolution were outsourced. GRIP Entertainment President Paul Kruszewski reveals he is "a shooter guy" and didn't know much about the Deus Ex world. He goes on to say after speaking with other people he realised "this is a big franchise!" and describes testing the battles over and over ("this time we'll try with a shotgun and next time we'll go in with a machine gun").
Watch the interview at Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
More information.

This explains a lot. DXHR is a great game in so many ways but the boss battles were mediocre at best in my view.

I wanted to quit playing everytime I fought one. I still have 1 left.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't think this was bizarre. This is the first time I've heard of something as specific as boss-fights being outsourced.

Interestingly… they show several cinematic clips during the interview that I don't recall ever seeing in the game.

Originally Posted by NFLed
This explains a lot. DXHR is a great game in so many ways but the boss battles were mediocre at best in my view.

^this.

Although, it's the first time I hear about outsourced boss fight too. Kind of a strange way of doing things.

As out of place as the boss fights feel after reading this I'm kinda amazed that they actually fit into the game as well as they did. "Fit" isn't the right word I think. Whoever had to incorporate those tacked on boss fights into the real game did a pretty good job of it.

I would like to know the story behind why someone thought they were necessary at all. I'd bet my hat that it was Square Enix folks that forced them in.

It's like someone high up saw the game the main team was making and said "My God! Where's the boss fights!? I must have boss fights!", and the dev team said "Um, no, that's not the game we're making." So they hired someone else entirely to make it and forced it into the game anyway. Just completely bizarre.

I find it completely strange. The main team that did everything else couldn't do boss battles? At any rate, it would have been nice to hear him explain the research into the game style and their understanding of the gameplay instead of an oblivious "I'm a shooter guy". Surely a professional needs to understand the source style.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
I find it completely strange. The main team that did everything else couldn't do boss battles? At any rate, it would have been nice to hear him explain the research into the game style and their understanding of the gameplay instead of an oblivious "I'm a shooter guy". Surely a professional needs to understand the source style.

Yeah, outsourcing them is weird already and outsourcing them to someone like that is even weirder.

I had no gameplay issue with them, I thought they were very easy, but they do stick out terribly from the rest of the game.

I think it makes sense, actually - and I agree with Majnun.

The "boss fights" smell like a suit-decision to me, and - given that Eidos Montreal was a new studio - it makes sense that they would want to make sure the boss fights worked like suits think they should work.

It's absolutely nothing compared with what goes on in Hollywood, when suits are chasing the money. You don't wanna know the kind of script process they sometimes go through trying to conjure up the most efficient money maker.

Originally Posted by sakichop
I wanted to quit playing everytime I fought one. I still have 1 left.

+1. I found them very frustrating too: they could've done these parts much better, but fortunately the rest of the game is very good .
Anyway, I agree that it's strange that boss fights were developed by another studio, I never heard anything similar.

Boss fights in most games take a long time to make, balance, test and polish into "epic moments", They probably thought they would lose less money (read:time) if outsourced a part of their game to more experienced studios as oposed to have parts of the team working just on that, and thus losing valuable developer time that could be spent on other parts of the game.

I strongly disagree with this phylosophy if true (and the bad results show), but hopefuly they've learned their lesson for future DLC and even future games of the studio.

Someone from Eidos Montreal said in an interview that they didn't want to do the boss fights but were forced to add them in by the publisher. I guess since they didn't want to do them and they had to be there that they would give it to another studio to do. They probably would have purposely ruined them if their dislike for them was as much as it read.

Originally Posted by guenthar
Someone from Eidos Montreal said in an interview that they didn't want to do the boss fights but were forced to add them in by the publisher. I guess since they didn't want to do them and they had to be there that they would give it to another studio to do. They probably would have purposely ruined them if their dislike for them was as much as it read.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I thought…

Typical.

I'm just really happy they managed to get the game to be what it is. I'd never have expected a cerebral and relatively deep shooter in the modern AAA market, and DE:HR is almost a miracle when you consider the alternatives out there.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
The "boss fights" smell like a suit-decision to me,

This sounds reasonable, imho. It could be a by-product of the ME franchise : More shooter-oriented action ?

Anyway, this sounds very bizarre to me as well, to put it mildly.

Originally Posted by guenthar
Someone from Eidos Montreal said in an interview that they didn't want to do the boss fights but were forced to add them in by the publisher.

Now, could RPGWatch please conduct an interview with the publisher on that matter ? I'd REALLY like to learn how they are trying to wriggle themselves out of this !

Personally I'm more RPG than shooter so found it quite tricky. After all, we had been told you could finish the game with no deaths. I had concentrated on stealth/hacking so by the time I got to Barret I had no weapons to speak of and no 'experience' of shoot-outs previously in the game. Then suddenly I've got to run around shooting or throwing barrels - so unlike the previous sections of the game and v. annoying. I had no patience with it - and Portal was free on Steam so…

Originally Posted by simonheffer
I had concentrated on stealth/hacking so by the time I got to Barret I had no weapons to speak of and no 'experience' of shoot-outs previously in the game.

You can actually beat Barret quite easily with nothing but the stun gun.

Originally Posted by JDR13
You can actually beat Barret quite easily with nothing but the stun gun.

Using the barrels in the room is much more easier and way faster.

And if you don't have the stun gun? The point isn't the difficulty, it's the change in rules.

We shouldn't forget that the two predecessors had boss fights as well. So having them per se doesn't violate the idea of the franchise IMO. It's just the implementation that hurt, and that there is no way to get around them.

I guess the point is not having boss fights in principle, but how they were carried out.