Deus Ex: Human Revolution was a masterpiece which was only sullied by a number of poorly-designed, ill-fitting boss battles. The bad news is that the game's upcoming DLC will also include a boss battle. The good news?

Deus Ex developers Eidos Montreal will actually be developing them. A big problem with those found in the main game is that they were actually handled off-site then dropped into the game, which at least partly explains by they felt so off.

"We have a boss battle at the end, but it's different from the main game boss battles," Eidos Montreal's Marc-Andre told Eurogamer in an interview.

"You can actually not kill the boss. You can do a non lethal takedown on him. And you can kill him from afar. You can even kill him without him seeing you. It's more of a bigger challenge than a standard boss fight like we have in many games."

"Everything was done in Montreal at Eidos. It's a lot less frustrating. But it depends on the way you play. If you played more combat in the main game, you probably didn't have any trouble dealing with the boss fights. So we allow the adaptation of the way you play for that particular boss fight."

Exactly how it should have been in the main game. Ah well, better late than never! Deus Ex's new DLC, Missing Link, will be out next month.

Deus Ex DLC includes new boss battle [Eurogamer]

Deus Ex: Human Revolution's "gold" filter may be a visual trademark, but it also affects the way you see the game world. A new mod for the PC version removes this (and makes a few other changes), and boy, do things look different.

The ENBSeries mod for the game, made by the same community responsible for Grand Theft Auto IV's stunning visual overhaul, is only for Nvidia cards, but if that's you, you're in for a treat.

Not only is the gold filter removed, letting you see everything in its own, natural colour, but the lighting has been improved, smoke effects have been tweaked and the game just generally looks better.

Be warned, though, the improvements come at a cost in performance, so only those with powerful PCs should apply. In the gallery above you'll see some comparison shots; for more, head to PC Gamer.

Deus Ex / ENBSeries [ENBSeries, via PC Gamer]

A month after release, popular opinion holds firm that Deus Ex: Human Revolution was a well-made game. And yet one niggling flaw stands out, an issue that has been highlighted in countless blog posts, tweets, and video game forums. Those accursed boss battles.

They were, in a word, bad. As I played the game for the first time, I was surprised at their inclusion—not because boss battles are inherently problematic (that's a topic for another day), but because they just… didn't fit. Unlike the rest of the game, there was no nuance to them—just Adam Jensen vs. one of a number of pissed-off, charging bullet-sponges.

I figured out how to beat all of the first three easily enough (in order: Grenades, Wall-Vision, Wall-Vision), but still their presence lingers on in my memory of the game. Why were they in there at all? And why did they feel so totally different from the pleasurable sneaking, exploring, and conversation that made up the rest of Human Revolution?

As it turns out, those boss battles weren't designed at Eidos Montreal, they were outsourced to a studio called Grip Entertainment. In the video above, Grip's head Paul Kruszewski talks about the process of crafting the boss encounters, from gun-arm Barrett to silent robo stealth-chick to the "boss conversation" at the end of the game's first level.

It certainly sounds from the interview as though Kruszewski took their contribution to the game seriously, despite being a "shooter guy" without a ton of knowledge of the Deus Ex series.

The boss battles really weren't a huge problem for me; they were over quickly enough that I really didn't mind. But I remain surprised that Kruszewski, for all his talk of staying true to the freedom at the heart of Deus Ex, would create such inflexible encounters. There was no way to sneak up on Barrett, or talk him out of trying to kill me, or nonlethally take him out. It was just me, him, and a bunch of explosives.

Making a AAA game has never required more manpower than it does now, and it's not a surprise that Eidos would need to get some outside help to get Deus Ex: Human Revolution completed and shipped.

But while Grip's boss battles are indeed a bummer, at least Eidos didn't outsource something more vital. I mean, can you imagine what would have happened if they'd had a separate studio handle the air-ducts? Yikes.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution's Terrible Boss Fights Were Outsourced [Gameranx]

I played Deus Ex on PC. It was...OK, but didn't run as nicely as I thought it would, and didn't give me as much control over things as I would have liked. Know what it was missing? A debug mode. Know what we've got now?

A debug mode! How'd you guess?

A mod has been released for the game that gives the PC gamer access to all kinds of tweaks for the title, from the important (like skipping those unskippable intro splash screens) to the enjoyable (cheats like infinite energy) to the cosmetic (turning off the HUD).

You can even pick a level to skip straight to from the main menu of the game. All of which is perfect for my impending second playthrough, where I'm going to use double takedowns on every single character in the game until I'm Adam Jensen, the last half-man-half-elbow-knives on Earth.

Debug Menu Enabled [Eidos]

If you think the kind of people who say "games were better in the good old days" are bad, they're even worse when they're talking about PC games. Except, on rare occasions like this, they actually make a decent gag out of it.

This clip blends the original Deus Ex, which is eleven years old, with the sensibilities (and corporate realities) of its more recent prequel Human Revolution.

The point is made a little too bluntly in parts, but on the whole, funny stuff.

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 fifth hub, 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!

Eidos Montreal planned on more Deus Ex hubs [Edge]

It's the flavour of the week here at Kotaku, and to echo Kirk's glowing review, every second I've been awake and not working I've been walking up to people and saying hello there have yo-ELBOW KNIVES.

So now is as good a time as any to look at some of the gorgeous concept art for Deus Ex: Human Revolution, no?

The following character concepts and environment pieces were drawn by various artists and at various stages of the game's production.

Artists responsible include Jim Murray, Brian Dugan, Theirry Doizon (who we've featured here before), Trong Nguyen and Sébastien Larroudé, while the lion's share of pieces in this gallery were drawn by Richard Dumont and Eric Gagnon.

To see the larger pics in all their glory, either click the "expand" icon on the gallery screen or right click and "open link in new tab".

Earlier today, GameStop pulled all PC copies of Deus Ex: Human Revolution from shelves after it was caught opening boxes, removing a promotional code then selling these games as "new".

People were quick to blame GameStop, as is often the case, and while the retailer still shoulders some blame in this (if only for the practice of opening then re-selling games), the game's publisher Square Enix appears willing to fall on a sword and accept a little responsibility, saying it respects Gamestop's "right" to mess with the game and that it didn't tell the retail giant it was including free coupons for a direct competitor.

"As part of Deus Ex: Human Revolution's boxed offering on PC, Square Enix included a third party coupon", says a statement released by the publisher. "GameStop was not made aware of this inclusion and Square Enix respects the right of GameStop to have final say over the contents of products it sells and to adjust them where they see fit in accordance with their policies."

It's funny that GameStop would take such drastic action over a game that, Onlive coupon or not, was still being bought in its stores. What's it going to do next, yank every game that has a mandatory Steam installation?

Never having ordered from Greenman Gaming before, I can't tell you if you'll have to pay shipping (or if that shipping will get you release-day delivery), but for $34 you can probably stand to wait a day or two after launch. Just be sure to use coupon code "20SUM-MERSA-VINGS".

Update: It uses Steam somehow?! This future is amazing. They're putting futures in my futures.

Order Deus Ex: Human Revolution [GreenmanGaming.com via Dealnews]

Earlier this year, games journalist-about-town (and Kotaku columnist) Leigh Alexander and I did a little experiment—I had never played the classic JRPG Final Fantasy VII, a game that she counts among her very favorites. The idea was that I would play the game for the first time, and as I went through it, we'd write letters talking about it and publish them. We had a lot of fun with it—so much fun, in fact, that we've decided to start doing the same thing to other games, each time choosing a classic that one of us knows well and one of us doesn't.

For our second series, we'll be tackling the classic PC Game Deus Ex. It's a game which I am very familiar, but Leigh has never really played. Given the pending release of Human Revolution (which, by the way, is looking pretty snappy), our timing couldn't be better. We'll be posting a letter a week for the next few weeks. We hope you enjoy them.

—

Leigh,

So here we are again, our letter-writing skills at the ready, set to tackle another classic video game. Last time out, we took on Final Fantasy VII, a game with which you are quite familiar and which I had never played. This time, the tables are turned, and we'll be playing Deus Ex, a game that I played a hell of a lot back in the height of my PC-gaming days.

As ahead of its time as the game was in many respects, a lot has changed since it was released back in 2000. I'm so interested to hear what you think of it, and to talk about it with you. Though thankfully not talk talk, since I have a hard time saying the name of this game in ordinary conversation without kinda sounding like a goof.

When I booted Deus Ex up for the first time, I remember not being quite sure what to make of it. I'd played (and loved) many of the best PC action games of that era, games like Half Life and Unreal Tournament and Max Payne. All of them offered dazzling visuals and action-packed gameplay, so what to make of this strange, lumbering game? Was it a first-person shooter, an RPG, or a simulation?

I mean, can you imagine a current-day video game opening with a level like Liberty Island? I shudder at the thought of how many people have lost interest in Deus Ex over the years just because of that level. (I hope you'll soldier through). The first time I played it, I expected to go in guns blazing, but all I managed to accomplish was a couple of pathetic shots from my pea-shooter pistol before a handful of angry NSF soldiers led me to an ignoble death.

And yet ultimately, I think the opening level is well-designed, engaging and fun—at least, once you figure out that in Deus Ex, stealth is the name of the game.  I hope you came to a similar conclusion pretty early on.

I can already tell that my own J.C. Denton (named, of course, "DentArthur Denton") is destined to play through the game as a sneaky n'er do well, leaving heaps of bodies in his wake. If you play similarly, get ready to have your superiors give you crap for it.

Deus Ex was billed as being all about player choice, which seemed like a new selling point at the time. What's always struck me about the game is how organic the choices felt, how easy it was to go down a path without even realizing that there were multiple alternatives. It's a far cry from the black-and-white "Press A to save child, Press B to execute child's pet" choices we see so often in the Mass Effects and the Fables of the world.

Even on the second time through, I felt a bit paralyzed by the choices on offer-a familiar sort of paralysis, that moment at the start of the big, stat-driven RPG where I have to choose which attributes my character will take. It always flummoxes me. What if I choose the wrong one? What if I specialize in something that's worthless, or miss the best ability? Will I spend hours playing an inferior version of the game?

So many other things struck me as I got started-the wildly uneven voice-acting, how much I'd missed having a dedicated "lean" button in a first-person game, and the bad-even-for-the-time graphics (as tempted as I am to try out the cool-looking new High-Def Mod, I think that our archival purposes decree that we should play the game as it was originally released).

And of course, the text! Text upon text, mountains of books, newspapers, computer journals, emails, all filled with weird political stuff and conspiracy theories. Even with the in-game note-taking system, I often find myself writing down keycodes and passwords on an actual piece of paper. Like, on my actual desk. Unthinkable!

I'm anxious about how you're finding all of that. Are you bored by the slow beginning and the unwelcoming PC-gamishness of it all? Are the political overtones interesting you at all? Do you already think you know where this whole story is going? Did you go into the ladies' room at UNATCO headquarters?

Can't wait to hear your thoughts.

~K

Kirk,

"Our letter-writing skills at the ready?" Man, you already sound like a goof!

...Sorry, I'm just surly. It's been a long time since I played this type of game on PC, and I am very unused to it. I'm not about to go Wikipedia-ing dates or anything, but if I remember correctly, this is about the time that PC gaming lost me.

I remember Deus Ex. I don't mean playing it, since this is my very first time, but I remember when it launched, and the hostility I felt toward it. Wait, let me back up.

Being my friend, you know how particular I am about the types of media I do and don't like these days; this thing's too nerdy, that one's too dumb, this one reminds me of someone I don't like, and so on and so on. I'm a pain in the ass, I know.

But I wasn't like that as a kid. I was a PC-exclusive gamer and I played everything. Dad would have a shelf full of PC game boxes, none of which ever communicated much about the experience therein, so I'd just open stuff up and try it, and if it tickled my imagination or my reflexes, I'd let myself be pulled in, from blunt text-based adventures to jousting games with horrible controls, to the dorky alien worlds of Space Quest. When I got a bit older I learned it was adventure games I liked best, but I could play some Prince of Persia, lemme tell you.

When people ask me how someone with such a strong PC heritage came to be a nearly-exclusive console gamer—since that's what I am these days—I usually blame the Windows PC's rapid rise to power. My Apple IIe adventure gaming took me into the Mac Quadra and Centris era, and I could have played clicky Hypercard adventures and freeware games and stuff like Myst on them for the rest of my life. But then they put PCs in my school when I was in fifth grade or so and I had to learn to use them.

It was culture shock, having been cousins with computers since birth. It felt horribly ugly and backward. When we got them at home, it got worse. Suddenly, things I never had to think of: Drivers, resolutions, sound cards, compatibility issues. I would buy games and half the difficulty would be figuring out how to get them to run. I had to memorize specifications. I didn't like fighting the machines for my entertainment. I turned to the Sega Genesis and the TurboGrafx-16.

Of course, everyone went on playing PC games without me. In the school's computer lab, mute, hostile boys with thick glasses and greasy hands were losing themselves in mazes of muddy corridors, firing guns. They worshiped at the altars of faceless spacemen, of aliens spewing blocky blood. I was not invited to join.

I was mad at Doom, and at what it made the People on TV think that games were about. There were no more bumbling astronauts, funny pirates and friendly princesses, no more dreamlike, thoughtful journeys. And then there was some box all over the shelves with this sterile two-toned man, bathed in light like some nerd messiah. The box said DEUS EX and I didn't want to play it. By the time that game launched I had virtually married my PlayStation.

Time passes, of course, and it's taken me some time to unclench the fists of prejudice in the ways I need to if I'm to be any good at my job, but I've mostly done it. The first thing I did in Deus Ex actually wasn't Liberty Island: It was the tutorial, because there are basic things that all PC gamers know how to do that I've forgotten. And even in the tutorial, they tell you to crouch without telling you it's X you should press. You should have seen me fumble to figure it out, jumping up and down, inexplicably swinging a crowbar, under the watchful eye of these hilarious glaring scientists wearing trench coats. I flail at them helplessly; they stare impassively, legs, arms akimbo.

I mean, everyone in this game has a trenchcoat. And doesn't have a neck. The music is the kind of thing I'd expect to hear someone make as a joke at the expense of "dark, futuristic" video games. And the graphics! Good god damn, is this game ugly. People are discussing things I haven't yet learned to care about, looking like male sex dolls with their pupil-less eyes and gawping fish-lips. In the opening sequence, when they zoomed into that one dude's reddish, pointille eye, I literally vocalized my laughter.

But I like it so far, actually, even though I haven't made it to the DEFCON or the UNIQLO or whatever (kid you not: The game crashed on me). I do like it! I've missed something intangible about "real" PC gaming that playing The Colonel's Bequest lately in my DOSBox thinger doesn't scratch, some old memory that pings the fringes of my awareness when I am using a chunky arrow cursor in chunky menus and using the escape key for things.

And when I catch the luminous city skyline or I hear the ebb and sigh of the ocean I feel like maybe I could get into this.

~L

PS: My character is named ‘Army Space Man.'

Coming up next week in Part 2: inventory and passwords, the hidden depth of Deus Ex, Leigh gets a lesson in stealth-based frustration, and DentArthur Denton kills a few too many people.

Biding your time waiting for the release of Human Revolution? By all means, pick up Deus Ex (it's $9.99 on Steam) and join in!