Producer calls Deus Ex: Human Revolution a “nightmare”

By Brenna Hillier

Eidos Montreal seems to have had a hell of a time reviving one of the most venerated PC franchises of all time.

“It has been a nightmare, to be honest. We started from scratch. From recruitment to release date, it’s been a nightmare,” producer David Anfossi told EDGE.

Anfossi reiterated this message in a panel delivered at the Montreal International games Summit, as reported by Gamasutra.

“It was the most challenging project I’ve ever had to manage,” he said, before adding that while not perfect, Human Revolution achieved its goals.

“It was a solid game, with areas of improvements. I’m very proud of the team. I think we answered the mandate.”

One of Human Revolution’s most criticised “areas of improvement” is its boss fights, and Anfossi admitted to EDGE that he woudn’t do it again if given the chance.

“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.”

The team went forward in this knowledge, because “there had to be some compromise”. While not defending the decision, Anfossi was very clear that Eidos Montreal takes responsibility for the boss fights, and that no blame should be attached to Grip Entertainment, which developed them.

“The problem was not the supplier, it was what we did with them,” he said.

“The boss fights were too much for the team to do internally in the time we had. We totally underestimated the effort to do that correctly. We had to work with an external supplier with that, but the design and everything is from the team at Eidos Montreal.”

Deus Ex: Human Revolution currently holds an 89 Metacritic average on consoles, and 90 on PC.

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