Today is August 23rd 2021, the 10th anniversary of the release of Deus Ex: Human Revolution – and I though I’d mark the moment with a look back at an amazing project I was fortunate enough to work on…
It was late 2008 when I got a call from Mary DeMarle, narrative lead at the newly-formed Eidos Montreal games studio in Quebec; I had been reccommended to Mary by another of my game writer colleagues Chris Bateman, and she wanted to know if I was interested in joining the team for new iteration in the much-acclaimed Deus Ex series. It was an understatement to say I almost bit her hand off to say yes.
The original Deus Ex was (and still is) a benchmark title in videogames narrative, and while it may look creaky in comparison to the titles out there now, when it hit in 2001 it was, quite literally, a game-changer. A globe-trotting, futuristic cyberpunk action thriller steeped in conspiracy theories, Deus Ex set up a world where a powerful Illuminati controlled the fate of mankind, and only a handful of augmented human agents had the power to oppose them. I loved it, so the chance to take part in shaping a new iteration wasn’t something I could pass up.
So I became part of the EM team on Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a prequel set decades before the original game’s events, working in the role as external game writer on my very first “Triple-A” title – and I have to say that hands down, DXHR remains one of the best projects I have ever worked on.
Not only because it was such a great game, not only because it was the first time as a games writer that I felt I was on a job where narrative truly had a seat at the table, but also because I got to work with some incredible, lovely, talented people – as well as my boss Mary, my fellow writers Teras Stasiuk, Marc Cecere and Lucien Soulban, actor Elias Toufexis (the voice of our craggy hero Adam Jensen), Jean-François Dugas, David Anfossi, Jonathan Jacques-Belletête, Kyle Stallock, Steve Szczepkowski, Martin Dubeau, François Lapikas, Antoine Thisdale and so many more cool folks. (And also working in Montreal for many months cemented my love of poutine. But that’s another story.)
Together, we created a dynamic, action-packed story filled with precient themes, cyberpunk flash and engaging gameplay. We won the Canadian Video Games Award for best narrative, I got a BAFTA nomination for writing along with Mary and Jean-François, we pulled in dozens of accolades across the industry, and I remain fiercely proud of what we achieved.
I helped to build Jensen’s world, writing scripts, developing the plotline and creating detail for the environment surrounding the storyline – and later I got to write Icarus Effect and Fallen Angel, original tie-in fiction that served as a parallel narrative to Human Revolution‘s main plot.
This was just the start of my involvement with the world of Deus Ex; I would come back to work on the mobile game Deus Ex: The Fall, the DLC story The Missing Link, more fiction in the form of Hard Line and Black Light, and of course the next iteration in the series, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.
But a decade on since Human Revolution came out, what strikes me the most is that our game is still being played anew, still being talked about, still generating fan creations, and people are still asking if we will come back and finish off the story in another installment. All I can say is, if they asked me, I would return to the world of Deus Ex without hesitation or reservation. I too feel like Adam Jensen’s story remains incomplete, and I’d love to revisit it…
You can find more details about titles mentioned here by clicking on these links for the games Human Revolution, Mankind Divided, The Fall and The Missing Link, my novels Icarus Effect and Black Light, and the novellas Fallen Angel and Hard Line (both of which can be downloaded from this site for free!)
