Deus Ex Boss Battles a “Weakness,” Eidos Montreal had “Nightmares”

3 Nov, 2011

Gamers weren’t happy with the boss battles of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and Eidos Montreal wasn’t either. In fact, they admitted that it was the biggest weakness and nightmare of the whole entire experience.

Deus Ex‘s Producer David Anfossi said that the boss fights were just disastrous from start to finish. Outsourcing the development to Grip Entertainment was just one choice in a line of choice, but Eidos Montreal was (and still is) willing to take the blame entirely. “The problem was not the supplier, it was what we did with them,” said Anfossi in an interview with Edge. “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.”

Grip Entertainment had nothing to do with the design of the battles. It was all Eidos Montreal, and Anfossi admitted that either way, the compromise that had to happen would result in a very un-Deus Ex experience. “We knew that [the boss fights] would be a weakness for the game, that we had to make a compromise to deliver it [on] two levels,” said Anfossi. “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.

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

All mistakes aside though, Anfossi said that the team at Eidos Montreal deserves big kudos for their work. With the multitudes of game mechanics, Anfossi is still proud of the final product. Well, minus the boss fights. “It took us two years to do it,” he said. “At the end I’m very proud of that, the stealth, hacking, social, and combat within the game — it’s well done, I think. I’m very proud of that because it’s difficult to do.”

If given the chance to redo Deus Ex, Anfossi said that yes, there would still be boss fights. Only this time, it would have to be done correctly.

For the full interview, read it here.

Via Edge.