'No Bullsh*t': The Management Style Behind Deus Ex: HR's Success

For Stéphane D'Astous, the general manager of Eidos Montreal, a lot has changed in the last five years. Gamasutra toured the studio in 2007 after its founding, and spoke to D'Astous about his undertaking.

In this interview, D'Astous talks about growing the studio, revitalizing old franchises, working with management, the Montreal development scene, and how he hopes to tackle the next generation of consoles head-on.

[Redempteur]

"We totally respected the franchise. If you don't respect the franchise to start with, and you say, "No, no, we'll do it with our flavor," and all that... The guys really took time to understand what worked well in the first and second."

heard that ninja theory ..respect your franchise !!! the best way to generate hype and respect

Anyway nice interview

[rdgneoz3]

But if they respected the franchise, why did they hand the boss battles off to some other company? They were the worst part of an otherwise great game.

[PirateThom]

I can only assume someone higher up in management decided the game needed more conclusive "end points" for some reason, so threw in random boss battles.... I got to a boss battle and stopped playing, they really break the game if you opt for stealth. Needs to be patched to either remove them or make them optional.

[Redempteur]

Respecting the franchise doesn't mean that you can't add your own flavor to the mix.

After all they aren't supposed to copy what was done before ...this isn't a HD release but a new game..

Having an idea for specific sections of the game doesn't mean that the whole game doesn't respect pre established values.

As you said ..the rest of the game is pretty much perfect ..

[rdgneoz3]

@Redempteur You don't have to copy and paste, but as PirateThom said, the boss battles were a kick in the nuts for that didn't just spec to run and gun. There was no strategy involved in the fights, unlike the rest of the game, which is why it was the worst part of an otherwise great game.

THis explains it pretty well... http://www.penny-arcade.com...

[Voxelman]

Ninja Theory said that the first build was exactly like the original games but Capcom told them to make something totally different as if they wanted the same they would do it themselves.

[Redempteur]

Missing the point ... That information was about dante design.
I'm not talking about dante design ..for the X100000th time i don't care.

The respect here is the franchise itself , the established canon that was trampled upon and the team designer going as far as insulting the previous games.

Look at deus ex .. respect of the timeline, respect of the established canon AND THEN they added their own ideas

Look at this Ugly dmc , they ignore everything we got in the previous games ( dante background, familly and even habilities ) and replace by their own ideas

See the difference ? Are you trying to argue this isn't their fault again ?
How hard would have been for them to create something within that world without pissing on 4 games of story ..yeah i know it would have been easy ..so easy they couldn't do it.

[Voxelman]

actually it was the entire design

“Capcom said something which they’ve said to us often, which is: ‘If it was going to be the same as the old DMC, why would we give this project to you guys? The reason is to surprise us, to come up with a reinvention. To create something we couldn’t have conceived in Japan.’”

See where he says that Capcom has told them often to change their game to be different to the original?

So the difference between Dues Ex and DMC is that the original creators wanted DMC to be totally different. And Ninja Theory was originally planning to stick close to the source materiel but were "forced" to change it.

So yea they could have made a game that fit in with the others, but that is not what Capcom wanted so no people shouldn't blame Ninja Theory all the blame should go to CAPCOM the people who decided that they wanted a totally different DMC game. Not the people that are just doing what they were payed to do, if they had insisted on sticking to the original DMC CAPCOM would have likely given it to a different developer. When you are a work for hire studio you have to follow orders and do what the money wants.

[MasterA]

Managing game-projects must be really tough. Especially games like Deus Ex and ME.

[rezzah]

Sounds great, cant wait to experience the game. Just bought the UK LE edition.