PCG: It's interesting that you pick up on that, because one of the things that surprised me watching the demonstration was that the guy failed the conversation. And I know Deus Ex had moments like that, where you could fail to get what you wanted, but it's very rare in games for a social path to be closed by you saying the wrong thing. Even in BioWare games, you get a good ending and a bad ending, but it's not a dead end. So is that a conscious focus for the game?
DeMerle: Well, certainly in the conversation gameplay. So we have different types of conversations in the game. The one we were showing you there was the conversation gameplay, which has that gameplay component about it. So yes, it was very much a decision that you could fail the conversations. I actually would like to see a lot more of that kind of thing, because I feel that it was such a strong moment for me in Deus Ex to know that my path got closed because of my decision.
PCG: How much of that character is determined by the game, and how much do you get to make up?
DeMerle: That's a very good question. I think when you're writing a story for a game and when you're dealing with a hero character, you have that conundrum. That's a debate in the industry that goes on: do you give a character a personality, or do you let the player do it? I think the philosophy we took - which I think is the right one, but, you know, we'll see – you're playing a player fantasy, so you want to embody a personality.
And that's why we developed an Adam Jensen who has a rich back story and has things that happened to him. But that's the past, and as a player you are becoming that person, and once you become that person you're the one who's deciding how he will develop and evolve.
I always laugh about the time when we played some of our first demos. I know who Adam Jensen is, okay, he's my Adam Jensen. And then I'm playing him, and then I thought, okay, I'm sneaking up on these guys, and I wanna see what that lethal takedown is like. And I did it, and I was like, "OH MY GOD!"
PCG: "Adam! How could you?"
DeMerle: Exactly! That was the reaction I had. I was like, "Oh my God, that was so violent! My Adam Jensen can't be that violent." But it was a really key moment to me, because I realised he can be that violent, and that other people might make him that violent.
So the personality can adapt and change. And in developing him as a character, that was one of the first challenges I had. The way that I do it is I always define a character by three or four key personality traits, and hopefully you come up with some that are in conflict with each other, because that's really interesting.
And then I sit there and say, "Okay, that's the trait. How does it manifest itself?" So, for instance, if a character is a very curious person, he might be the kind who's always in your face. But he might be the kind who sits at the back of the bus and just watches people.
So I defined an outline, and I presented it to the team, and I said, "Okay, so this is Adam Jensen, and here's his traits, and here's how they manifest." And it was really cool, because you're in a room with, like, 30 people, and you know they're all different, but every single one of them was like, "Wow, that's me, and yet better – I mean, I'm not quite the superhero yet." So I hope that we succeeded in creating a character who feels very alive and can be embodied and take on the traits of others.
PCG: What were the three or four traits?
DeMerle: Oh, I can't tell you. First of all because I can't quite remember, they've become so part of it. But all of that comes out in playing it.
