STACK NZ August 2016 Issue 76

go on a 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.tv

stream 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

, 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

•

Deus Ex:

Mankind

Divided

is out

August 23

of the

best

hacks

history

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.

FEATURE

GAMES