Postmortem: Ion Storm's Deus Ex
What
I'm Not Sure About
Given the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, it's easy to identify some
things
as having gone "right" and other things as having gone "wrong."
However, some of the most interesting things to consider are the ones that
aren't so easily pinned down. Here are some questions that are
still
very much open in my mind. (If any of you have answers, feel free to share
them!):
- Is it better to start the design process with fiction and
high-level gameplay goals or to dive right into game systems? We did
a much better job, I think, of the former than the latter. Too much of
our system stuff had to be rethought relatively late in the project.
Only the conversation and inventory systems are largely untouched from
where we started. We remained true to our high-level goals, but I can't
shake the feeling we could have done a better job early in the project
on the system design front.
- Is
iconic/abstract representation of characters, power-ups, player rewards,
tools, objects, and so on better than realistic/specific
representation? In other words, are instantly identifiable floating
crosses better as healing items than a med-bot, something the player may
or may not be able to identify? Is it compelling to wonder if that guy
over there is a good guy or a bad guy? Or is it better to know just by
looking at him, so you can plan accordingly? As in so many things, we
went with a hybrid approach -- nothing as extreme as floating health
restorers, but instantly recognizable good guys, bad guys, rewards, and
objects.
- Is it
better to stop the action while the player is in interface screens or to
keep the action going à la System Shock 2? We chose to stop
the action because, for us, the tactical decisions this allows
outweighed the artificiality and the loss of immersion. Was that the
right decision? Probably, but there's no way to assess the road not
taken in this case.
- Should
you get to name your character or not? A holy war almost broke out
on the Deus Ex team about this. "If you can't name your
character, it's not an RPG," said some. "If we don't name the character,
how do we write and record compelling conversations and create a cool
story?" said others. "Story isn't the point…" "Yes, it is…" and on and
on and on. We compromised: we gave the player character a code name and
back-story but let the player select his real name, which came into play
in various ways (though never in speech).
- Is it
better to worry about graphics and art direction and cinematics early or
late? We did zero flic work until the very end of the project, and
though the game looks good, we left it to the end to go back and make a
pass at consistency (getting the lighting and texturing just right, and
so on). I decided it was more important to get the gameplay under
control than to get the game looking good. We did make our art direction
pass and we did make the game look better -- really good, in fact, in my
totally prejudiced opinion. But it's unclear to me whether the game
could have looked even better if we'd gone the other way and dealt with
art issues sooner rather than later.
The Bottom
Line
Part of the challenge of game development is making the tough
decisions along the way, leading to many difficult junctures when you have
to determine that something that can't be done right in the game shouldn't
be done at all. Notice the complete lack of references to multiplayer
action in this Postmortem. We wanted to provide multiplayer support but
didn't have the time to do the job we knew we needed to do, and so it got
cut.
Now, generalize from that point: It's all well and good to have
design goals and an ideal game pictured in your head when you start, but
you have to be open to change and realistic about what can and can't be
done in a reasonable time frame, for a reasonable amount of money, with
the personnel and technology available to you. And if you don't have time
to do something right, cut it and do everything that's left so well that
no one notices the stuff that isn't there.
I'm not saying we did that perfectly on Deus Ex. We
certainly didn't ship a perfect game. But if we hadn't gone into
development with the attitude that we'd do things right or not at all, we
would have fallen far shorter of perfection than we did. How close we did
get is something all of you can decide for yourselves. All I know is we're
going to get closer next time.
Game
Data |

Deus Ex
Publisher: Eidos
Interactive
Number of Full-Time Developers: Approx.
20: 1 of me, 3 programmers, 6 designers, 7 artists, 1 writer, 1
associate producer, 1 tech
Number of Contractors:
Approx. 6: 2 writers, 4 testers
Development Time: 6 months of preproduction and 28
months of production
Release Date: June 23,
2000
Target Platform: Windows 95/98/NT/2000 plus
third-party Macintosh and Linux ports
Critical Development
Hardware: Ranged from dual Pentium Pro 200s with 8GB hard
drives, to Athlon 800s with 9GB fast SCSI, and everything in
between. More than 100 video cards were cycled through during
development.
Software Used: Visual Studio, Lightwave,
Lotus Notes
Notable Technologies: Unreal engine and
associated tools such as UnrealEd and ConEdit (our proprietary
conversation editor) |
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Ion
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