Eidos Montreal have been telling us about the extra effort that has gone into developing the PC version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. As well as the Montreal team, they have drafted in developers Nixxes to make sure that Deus Ex: Human Revolution will feel like "a true PC game," with its own UI, proper mouse support and advanced graphics options that will take advantage of our gaming machines' superior hardware.
Director of technology on Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Julien Bouvrais explains the daunting task of getting Deus Ex: Human Revolution right on PC. "Certainly the biggest challenge in developing Deus Ex: Human Revolution for PC has been ensuring that the franchise lives up to the expectations of the gamers who have been following the franchise since it started in 2000," he says, adding that "the PC version of the game needed to be a game in itself and not just of port of the console version."
This lead Eidos Montreal to contact Nixxes, who have been working on extra PC features. Nixxes founder and president, Jurjen Katsman explains. “We've been developing Deus Ex: Human Revolution on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 simultaneously since the beginning, with the same level of importance.”
“Nixxes stepped in pretty far along in the project to give us a hand on the PC version because by its very nature it's the version that requires the most platform specific work.”
He goes on to describe a few of the features we can expect from the sequel, saying “Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a true PC game. Yes, you will have a lot of options, no 'Press start' screen, full mouse support - everything we feel a PC game should have.
“Further, with the graphics, there are multiple options for anti-aliasing, shadow quality levels, and the ability to enable or disable various post processing effects. All controls can be fully remapped as expected from a PC game as well.”
Deus Extras
Katsman adds that there will be “additional graphics features and a different weapon selection bar to tailor to the keyboard and mouse. There is a simple drag and drop interface to bind things in your inventory to specific keys on your keyboard, making them quickly accessible, and you can then also cycle through these with your mouse scroll wheel while in-game.
“For graphics, there are some unique features, like smoother shadows, more realistic ambient occlusion effects, stereoscopic 3D-- various things that the extra hardware allows us to do. Our focus has been making sure that the game is built for the PC platform as well as possible.”
There will also be full mouse support for the game's menus, and the team have entirely re-thought the interface for the hacking mini-game. There are also a few extra surprises in store.
“There is a lot of cool stuff in the game, says Katman, “But one thing specific to the PC version that we think is quite cool are some features we have been working on with AMD. I can't talk about these right now, but a video and details will be released on Thursday.”
We'll be bringing you more on Deus Ex: Human Revolution throughout the week. If you haven't already, check out the first Deus Ex: Human Revolution PC screenshots and have a glance over the game's system requirements . Alternatively, check out our huge Deus Ex: Human Revolution preview.
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