The History of the Stealth Game by Kirk McKeand

Author:Kirk McKeand
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: GAMES & ACTIVITIES / Video & Mobile
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books
Published: 2022-07-08T00:00:00+00:00

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Eidos-Montréal opened in November 2007 with just five employees. Without a single title to its name, its first game was to be Deus Ex 3, which would later become known as Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

‘A lot of people said, “Guys, are you sure you want to start with that project? You’re gonna hit a wall, you’re gonna have a bloody nose,”’ former Eidos-Montréal general manager Stephane D’Astous explains: ‘The core team were people that were super talented, not afraid of challenges, super passionate. My role was to put the people, the environment, the spirit, and the passion in place.’

Even though he didn’t leave the studio on the best of terms, D’Astous still holds onto that passion. I’m talking to him over video conference and he’s wearing a Deus Ex 3 T-shirt that predates the project’s name change to Human Revolution. It still fits like a glove. Partway through our chat, he pulls out a Game Informer magazine with the studio’s second project, Thief, on its cover.

Deciding what game Eidos-Montréal wanted to do first wasn’t easy. Three options were on the table: Deus Ex, Thief, and Legacy of Kain. Ultimately, the team decided to take on Deus Ex and Thief because they felt like they were more viable for reinterpretation. Legacy of Kain would have been easier, but it wasn’t as exciting. They decided to start with Deus Ex.

Tasked with creating a sequel to one of the most beloved, mechanically complex games of all time, creative director Jean-François Dugas had another thing to tick off first: Turn this empty room into a game studio.

‘The first guy I worked with on this project was Jonathan-Jacques Belletête, the art director,’ Dugas explains. ‘We were in this temporary office. We didn’t have our desks, and we had to go into a storage unit, take some of the unscrewed tables, and put them together to put our computers on. It was a start-up kind of feel.’

There was just one problem: They couldn’t figure out how to build the tables. “Why did I jump into this crazy endeavor with two guys who can’t put tables together properly?” Dugas remembers his colleague David Anfossi saying. ‘We laughed about that. We were like, “Yeah, I think we’re better at making games.”’

Perhaps it would have been easier to smash the desks to pieces and build new desks from scratch. That’s essentially the approach the team had with Deus Ex. They wanted to retain the essence of Deus Ex while pushing the series forward. If we’re going to get lost in my shitty table analogy, they wanted to destroy the desks and turn them into hybrid standing desks. You see, while the original game had the benefit of launching at a time when developers were still figuring games out, Eidos-Montréal’s project was releasing in a different world.

In an interview with Jeremy Peel at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, game designer Ricardo Bare spoke briefly about showing his brother-in-law a build of the original Deus Ex. ‘Making the game accessible was not something we were good at,’ he said.

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