Stephane D'Anstous is a very humble man who has achieved some very impressive things. When he started at Eidos Montreal, he was the only employee: from there he built the studio, and put together the team that turned a ten-year-old franchise into one of the best games of 2011, Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Now they've got to do it all over again with Thief 4.
We sat down to find out how it happened, and why they're going to pay more attention to boss fights this time round.
When did you start at the studio, were you there from the beginning?
When did Deus Ex become a part of it? Was that what you started with?
Yes, it was part of the initial business plan, which was to build a studio of about 350 people working on three projects. The few first projects were identified straight away as Deus Ex and Thief. Eidos has a great portfolio, but at that time didn't have the sufficient capacity in production to take care of their franchises. We really wanted to concentrate on these two franchises at the start.
Who are the rising stars of the studio?
I think the team on Deus Ex had a lot of odds against them at first. The community of the original Deus Ex was still extremely vocal, even though the last game came in 2005 and the original in 2000. For their first game to receive a Metacritic score of 89 on 360, I think it was mission accomplished. I think the core team, including my art director and game director are both considered rising stars of the industry.
If you were advising somebody else in your position on how to start a studio, what advice would you give?
You need to concentrate on the mission of the studio. To find the correct values and DNA. We identified four pillars, the first of which was we only make triple-A. We didn't want to concentrate on anything but the hard stuff, the console. We didn't want to do mobile, and the Wii wasn't in our plans either. Secondly we wanted to have the right tools for that, so we needed advanced technology for our artists and programmers.
Also, identify what you want to do. Be precise in what the DNA of your studio needs to be and align your objectives with the headquarters. When things aren't going so well, you say so, don't hide. We try to be very transparent and have a good relationship with everyone.
9 comments so far...
fes2011 on 9 Jul '12 said:
There was nothing award winning about Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
Clanger67 on 9 Jul '12 said:
Reading that has really cheered me up on the safety off the thief series.Glad he believes in a small,more focused dev. team,like he says not the trend nowadays.Also the fact that they aren't trying to make thief another Deus Ex,despite the fact i love that game.If they do a good a job on Thief as to giving you a feeling of the previous in the series like they did with HR should be fantastic.Good interview really liked some of the things he has to say and believes in,refreshing i would say.
CunningSmile on 9 Jul '12 said:
Firstly were does it describe DE as award winning? Never saw that mentioned. It was certainly nominated for a fair few.
Secondly why do you say that? I know a few people who didn't like it (Sid being one) but an equally large number of people, including me, thought it was one of the games of the year, with a range of player choice and plotting that isn't seen very often. Back up your arguements and create debate, don't be a drive by troll.
OXM Jonty on 9 Jul '12 said:
There were some award-winning elements. Not the boss fights, certainly.
Alaric14 on 9 Jul '12 said:
Not sure I'd agree with the idea that taking an existing IP and making a non-canon sequel is "risk taking", as you already have your potential fanbase intrigued and the hardcore demographic will get debates going about whether or not this 'new' vision of their much loved games will work.
Example:
There's something about the way this guy talked about the new Thief game that makes my gamer dick shrivel. "I can't say whether there are any boss fights or not..." (Please, no. Just no.) "In Deus Ex, we really wanted to give different options in how to play, and we will want to bring a certain level of that to Thief." (Don't you dare think about catering to the cover-shooting f**kwit fraternity, Stephane.)
Thief aside, it was interesting hearing about where Deus Ex came from and a great interview piece. Kudos, good sirs.
Spiderless on 9 Jul '12 said:
I consider Human Revolution to be one of the best games I've ever played, the only let down for me was the ending. I really don't understand the negativity towards it.
*Edit: Just read the other comments in defence of DE:HR makes mine a little pointless.
sonicmark on 9 Jul '12 said:
I completely agree, there's nothing award winning about the massive array of choices you could make to reflect your character, nothing award winning about the fantastic scripting, subtlties and relationships between the key characters, nothing award winning about the fantastically dark and moody setting of locations *sarcasm*.
While the boss fights were overly easy to defeat, the rest of the game was just a masterpiece of 2011, it gave people so many choices and directions and yet people still complained that it gave so little.
SidTheSloth on 9 Jul '12 said:
If you enjoyed the game and remain a fan, why should it bother you if others don't like it?
As cunning alluded too i'm not a fan, as i've discussed with many of the regs on here in the past, doesn't mean i hate the game, doesn't mean i think people who like it are wrong, everyone has their own opinion of course. If i read about Deus Ex again, everything on paper means it should be one of my top five games ever, but nope, just no spark there, not going into any more detail as i'm bored of defending my right not to like a game. Unhelpful posts like #1 of course are never going to help, to effectively say a game that has won so many plaudits is terrible just appears deliberately inflammatory.
Wrote this just yesterday in another thread about the same subject, last i'll write about it for sure as it's dull now:
sonicmark on 10 Jul '12 said:
I'm not sure who your post was aimed at but I'll this.
I'm not bothered whether somebody likes Deus Ex: HR or not, in fact I have a friend I keep teasing about it because I (more or less) idolise the game and my friend protests that it's "shit" and says "you buy all the shit games"
, but what I don't like is when people slate a game with no real reason as to why, or even try to criticise it constructively (except for my friend because it's all in good banter and fun).
If somebody were to say to me something like "I don't like XXXXX because I just couldn't get to grips with the controls or the story line was a bit mediocre for me", that's fine, but it's when people just slate it because it's something different or unique, that really does irritate the shiska out of me.