FEATURE
GAMES
GAMES
lot about that, because we had so much
great coverage from the fans.” Rodney says
that his efforts influenced others around
the globe, too. “A well-known brand called
Old Spice in the UK ran a similar story
a week or two after us," he laughs. "We
thought ‘wow, we inspired them’.”
As much as MD is about choice, Mary
ensures that the devs can only let you have
so much leeway. “When we started with
HR we always had a rule that there were
story characters that you can’t kill - we
would write it as ‘they wore the ring of
invincibility x1000’, until their role in the
story is over and then it’s fair game.
"So then we had to very carefully
designate ‘When is their role in the story
over? Will they return to the narrative at
any point?’ It's fantastic knowing that you
can create a character who might not mean
much early on, but can be impactful later
in the story if you happen to come across
them again. Sure, you can kill
them, but it’s interesting for
us to know that if you
don’t,
there’s so much more fun
that you can have.”
through the game there’s a choice, and you
cannot do both, you can
only
do one, and
then your story will change because of that.
This way, by the time you get to the end,
decisions you made early in the game really
will change what your ending is.”
The lore of the Deus Ex games is always
carefully manicured, and MD is no exception.
DeMarle elaborates: “One of the things
when you’re working on a game like MD is
that you have to be mindful that people may
not have played the first one. We have to
be particularly careful and make sure that
anything you need to know, you get, and it’s
understood. Some of it might be implied, but
you get the general gist of what's happened
so far. And that’s a real challenge, to actually
do that. We can't take it for granted that
everyone is across the franchise - we always
have to be aware of that.”
Additionally, MD had a unique marketing
angle. A
Twitch.tvstream was created, and
Eidos Montreal brand manager Rodney
Lelu tells us that it was heavily inspired by
Konami. “On August 12, 2015, something in
the video game industry rocked my world, in
terms of marketing and video games.
Project
PT
, you remember that - from Konami? I
thought it was the most brilliant thing ever
made, in terms of teasing, because the best
in the marketing fields aligned with the best
in terms of passion in video games.
"We thought about it, and we said 'why
don’t we try to do something, not similar
but somehow inspired by that?' At the end
of the day, the marketing team at Eidos
Montreal did a lot of brainstorming, and we
came up with that idea. We wanted to use
Twitch because no one did it before, and
the interaction that you can have with your
audience is so interesting. So we decided to
do that live action mini-movie, with different
possibilities, done over three days.
Lelu continues: "To be honest, we had a
lot of followers and views; we managed to
get around two million views in less than 48
hours. It was a mix of marketing and passion
about what we were doing. I could go on a
•
Deus Ex:
Mankind
Divided
is out
August 23
65
of the
best
hacks
in
history
5
SONY'S PSN HACK
Back in 2011, the PlayStation
Network came under attack,
leading to the exposure of account
information of around 77 million
users. The network was disabled
for 20 days.
VLADAMIR HACKS
CITIBANK
One of the first financially-motivated
hacks was conducted by Russian
crime ring leader Vladamir Levin. He
managed to gain access to millions
of dollars from the Citibank network
in 1995 over a period of two weeks.
US MILITARY COMES
UNDER FIRE
Scottish hacker Solo, otherwise
known as Gary McKinnon, allegedly
hacked several US military
computers in the early 2000s in
search of their UFO knowledge. The
truth is out there.
KEVIN POULSEN HACKS
COMPETITIONS
AKA Dark Dante, not only did the
young man hack LA phone networks
to ensure he won a radio show
prize, but he also made a habit
of hacking celeb's phones and
eavesdropping on their calls.
SONY PICTURES GOES
DOWN
Sony Pictures was the target of
an allegedly North Korean-based
attack, in which the hackers
attempted to exact revenge on the
company for the production of
The
Interview
by releasing internal
details.