Eidos Montreal says Deus Ex bosses were a 'weakness'

Deus Ex: Human Revolution producer David Anfossi has admitted that the boss sequences in the Eidos Montreal-developed title were a misstep, noting: "We knew that would be a weakness for the game."

Eidos Montreal outsourced the boss battles to crowd AI specialist Grip Entertainment; however, Anfossi says blame for the issues surrounding sequences should be put on Eidos Montreal alone.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

"The problem was not the supplier, it was what we did with them," Anfossi told Edge at this week's Montreal International Game Summit "The boss fights were too much for the team to do internally in the time we had. We totally underestimated the effort to do that correctly. We had to work with an external supplier with that, but the design and everything is from the team at Eidos Montreal.

The producer went on say Eidos Montreal was forced to "make a compromise" in two ways: forcing the fights, which is "not the Deus Ex experience"; and not offering a "mix [of] solutions to tackle the boss fights," another ideal that goes against what Deus Ex is known for.

"It has been a nightmare, to be honest," Anfossi said. "We started from scratch. From recruitment to release date, it's been a nightmare."

Beyond that issue, which we stated was a hindrance to our overall enjoyable experience in the review for Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Anfossi says he is proud of the what his team was able to achieve. "It took us two years to do it," he said. "At the end I'm very proud of that, the stealth, hacking, social and combat within the game--it's well done, I think. I'm very proud of that because it's difficult to do."

If he had to do it all again, Anfossi wouldn't remove the boss sequences from Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but he says the team would do them correctly. "I'm pretty sure that now we have the knowledge to do it correctly," he added.