Dugas has been very vocal about his assessment of Deus Ex and what made the game so endearing, immersive, and downright evolutionary. According to Dugas, the secret ingredients are, “Options.” Players in Human Revolution will not be limited to one path, and will be presented with options for advancement that are separated into four categories; combat, hacking, social, and stealth. Dugas may have already missed the point.

Warren Spector said it best in his post-mortem at GamaSutra, “It’s all about how you interact with a relatively complex environment in ways that you find interesting (rather than in ways the developers think are interesting), and in ways that move you closer to accomplishing your goals (not the developers’ goals).”

When dissecting the formula of Deus Ex, options are part of the equation, but not the solution. The solution is the creativity of the player. I recall a time in Hell’s Kitchen when I stacked debris to hop over a fence and ended up in a dead-end alley and no way back. I had to load a previous save, but I wasn’t mad. I was awestruck. I had been given a mix of tools and freedom so powerful that not even the developer could predict every outcome. On a side note, that alley was modified into a full-fledged path in the console edition.
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