Deus Ex: Human Revolution is, by today’s standards at least, a pretty big game. It took me around 35 hours to finish it. But did you know at the planning stage it was meant to be even bigger?
Much of your time spent with the game is running around its two “hub” worlds, the streets of Detroit and Lower Heng Sha. The game’s art director, Jonathan Jacques-Belletête, told Edge that there were plans to add at least two more hubs.
One of these was to be Montreal, the city the game’s developers are based, and a location you visit briefly during one of DE:HR’s “missions”.
“There were outdoor locations set in one of the most famous neighbourhoods of Montreal, called Plateau”, Jacques-Belletête said. “It’s got very specific architecture, called tri-plexes, with twirling exterior staircases made of this old metal.”
The other location was to be Upper Heng Sha, again an area you visit briefly, but which was originally planned to be much more extensive. Turns out this part of the game was actually built for inclusion in the game, but “never finished”.
Why? As with rough plans for a fifthhub, this time in India, it was found that “as we constructed the city hubs, and understood the amount of work it took, we had to pare it down”.
Good idea. I’d rather have two hubs of a decent size than visit five “cities” that consist of a couple of blocks!
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