Deus Ex Breach offers an arcade-like mode for stealing corporate secrets

If you need a break from the massive campaign in the upcoming console and PC game, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, you can turn to a quasi-multiplayer mode that will come with the game called Deus Ex Breach.

Deus Ex Breach will be packaged with the main game as an arcade-like experience that lets you play short missions where your goal is to break into a corporate server and escape from the guards — while on a timer. If you escape quickly, you can challenge your friends to beat your time. The experience mirrors the gameplay of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, but it’s shorter, and the art is much more abstract.

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It’s a very innovative take on the same universe that makes the experience more social, as your goal is to climb to the top of the leaderboard by getting the best mission times. I talked about Deus Ex Breach with Fleur Marty, producer at Eidos Montreal, the studio that is making the game for publisher Square Enix.

Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: Can you describe Breach for us?

Fleur Marty: Breach is an arcade interpretation of the pillars of Deus Ex gameplay in bite-sized levels.

GamesBeat: Was it always conceived the way it is, as purely single-player with some multiplayer feeling to it?

Marty: From the beginning, we wanted to give that experience on top of single-player, but we didn’t want to go full multiplayer. It didn’t make sense to us. It wasn’t just about checking a box and saying we’d done it. We wanted to make something that made sense in the franchise and the game we’re making.

We still wanted to give it an online component. That’s why we went toward the challenge and leaderboard aspect. But it was about exploring the pillars, twisting them, having fun with them, and making something very light in comparison to the very meaningful, gritty story.

GamesBeat: You have the single-player game, Breach, and the Deus Ex Go mobile game as well. What distinguishes, say, Breach and Go?

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Marty: Go is really a puzzle game. It’s perfect for mobile. It’s very good at what it does in the sense that it’s not trying to take how Deus Ex works and put it on a device it’s not made for. Breach, though, is very much about Deus Ex gameplay. It’s the same kind of gameplay you’ll find in Mankind Divided, plus a few twists and specific augmentations and specific weapons. It gives you the same freedom. If you want to be stealthy or combat or anything in the middle — it’s the same gameplay in a very different setting.

GamesBeat: How does the leaderboard add a social component to it?

Marty: As I was saying, there’s a lighter turn to it. It’s very arcade. We embraced that aspect. When you shoot the [A.I. enemies], damage appears in the air. The HUD feels very much like an arcade game. The leaderboard element, I hope the players will enjoy it as much as we did on the floor because we spent hours challenging each other, trying to beat each other.

We have two leaderboards. One is for score. Your main objective in a map, 90 percent of the time, is to find some data. You rack up your score for finding the data, but also for all the actions you perform inside the map, like finishing undetected or killing [A.I. enemies]. The other leaderboard is the time leaderboard. The quicker you finish, the higher you’ll rank on the leaderboard. What I love about having both is that if you want to be the best at both, you have to find completely different ways to play the map. Obviously, if you want to get a lot of points, that takes time.

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GamesBeat: How much time do you think people will spend with this? Is it something they’ll do after they finish the game or something they’ll do in between?

Marty: I expect the majority of players will go into Breach after they finish the main game. But maybe some of them will want to just take a breath. It’s a very intense experience, playing a Deus Ex game. Maybe you’re inside the main story for three or four hours at a stretch, and you want something different. We didn’t design it purely as endgame content. It’s available from the get-go. Players can explore whenever they want.

When you launch it, though, if you haven’t played Dubai, we do tell you that you can get started in Breach if you want, but we recommend that you play Dubai first to get used to the mechanics of Mankind Divided.

As far as playtime, there’s a lot. Even if people just want to go through every level once and see all the conspiracies and stuff, it’s hours and hours. For those who’ll want to find the best and fastest ways to play through maps, we have a three-star system, a bit like Mario. To get all the stars, you have to grab all the data and be under a par time and stuff like that. For completists, it could take days. And we’re going to ship additional content and features on a regular basis for free.

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