If you have played Deus Ex: Human Revolution, then there was an excellent chance that you hated the boss fights. The game was designed to give you the option of how to play, which mainly boiled down to whether you wanted to approach the game through a stealth mentality, or channel your inner-Leroy Jenkins and attack anything that looked at you funny.
The problem—if you can call it that—was that the game, especially in the early levels, put a much heavier emphasis on stealth. Running in and attacking was an easy way to catch a single, lethal bullet. It was unforgiving, and even if you chose to use lethal force, it still behooved you to move with caution and develop your stealth skills at first.
That was all well and good, but then you ran into a boss. Using stealth against bosses was an excellent way to get blown up, so it forced you to play in a way that you may not have been preparing for through your upgrades. It was frustrating to say the least, and has become a fairly common—although still somewhat minor—complaint of what is otherwise an excellent game.
The problem was that Eidos Montreal, the developers of the game, didn’t actually design the boss battles for Deus Ex. That might seem odd, but that is just beause it is very odd. Actually, it isn’t uncommon to bring in developers to help with specific aspects of games, especially on lengthy titles. But Eidos Montreal outsourced the boss fights to Grip Entertainment, then just crammed them in. They felt out of place and a bit at odds with the rest of the game. That won’t be an issue in the upcoming DLC, “Missing Link,” which will continue the main story this October.You can see the full trailer here.
“We have a boss battle at the end, but it’s different from the main game boss battles,” Eidos Montreal production coordinator Marc-Andre Dufort told Eurogamer.
“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,” Dufort continued. “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.”
The upcoming DLC will feature a five-hour story that finds Adam Jensen aboard a freighter, at the mercy of Belltower. With no augmentations or weapons, Adam must move through the ship to reclaim his upgrades and discover why he is there. The add-on will feature plenty of enemies to deal with, including the new boss.
“I was playing more of mixed stealth and combat style, so I had some good weapons in my inventory,” Dufort explained. “I didn’t have a lot of trouble dealing with [the bosses]. No, I didn’t get any big frustrations dealing with them. But I can understand people playing more stealth style having some frustration dealing with those bosses.”
The “Missing Link” DLC will be available in October. Check out the video below for a walk through of the expansion pack.
[Update: To clarify, “Missing Link” will feature a single boss battle, but any future Deus Ex DLC (nothing has been confirmed but it is expected) will be handled in the same manner by Eidos Montreal.]
