Many regard Deus Ex as a window into the future, but that window became a door this week with the Human by Design conference, hosted by Square Enix and CNN’s Courageous Studio at the Paley Center for Media in New York City. Inspired by the Deus Ex video game franchise, the convention featured panelists who spoke about futuristic themes that include cybernetics and the ethics of human augmentation. Not coincidentally, these are themes that are addressed in the Deus Ex series, with the highly anticipated Mankind Divided (the sequel to Human Revolution) releasing later this month.

The Deus Ex designers pride themselves on creating a science fiction world that is fantastic yet seemingly plausible. There’s no greater evidence of this than with some of the promotional trailers for Human Revolution, which showcased cybernetic limbs from a fictional company. The ads were so convincing that people began calling Eidos Montreal to ask about purchasing the prosthetics. That’s what led to a partnership between Square Enix and Open Bionics to develop a prosthetic arm inspired by the game’s main character, Adam Jensen. A prototype of the arm, controlled using the Razer Stargazer camera, was on display at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the San Diego Comic Con and at Human by Design to promote the game. Additionally, the co-founders of Open Bionics (Joel Gibbard and  Samantha Payne) presented at the convention with Cathrine Disney (pictured above), who wore a working model of the prosthetic.

Human by Design was livestreamed on Twitch, and the convention inspired an Amazon Prime documentary that discusses the themes of cybernetics and human augmentation. Combined with other cross branding, such as the Deus Ex clothing line from Musterbrand, books and other media, and the franchise could go from providing a glimpse of the future to helping to shape it.

Jon Grant, senior manager of product marketing at Square Enix, and Jonathan Jacques-Belletête, executive art director on Deus Ex franchise and presenter at Human by Design, spoke to [a]listdaily from the convention about bridging the gap between video games and reality. Jacques-Belletête worked with Open Bionics to design the real life arm, and both he and Grant enthusiastically look forward to our Deus Ex-inspired transhuman future.

What led to the partnership to host Human by Design?

Grant: Everyone who is working on Deus Ex at Eidos Montreal and Square Enix—we’ve always been trying to bring the themes of the game to live in the most unique ways possible. Keeping that in mind, we had an opportunity to work with CNN [Courageous Studio] to bring together this conference and talk about things in a way we knew our fans would love. For people who weren’t aware of the game, we knew that they would also find it interesting.

How important is it for the Deus Ex franchise to be translated from video games to the real-world?

Grant: I don’t know how important it is for video games as a whole, but for Deus Ex, it certainly is. We have a game that many have credited for predicting the future. Although that may not be entirely the case, we certainly have a game that touches on real life technology and asks real life ethical questions. For us, it was critical, when putting together a marketing plan, to make sure we tapped into the conversation of what’s happening now in the area of technology, augmentation and bionics, and we’re happy we did.

Jacques-Belletête: Funnily enough, I don’t think it’s important for the game. We never thought this would happen. It’s amazing that it has happened, and as I said on stage, this is surreal. For games, it rationally isn’t important. Creating video games that have real meaning and deal with real issues [that] start bleeding off into reality—I think this could be very important and it could move certain things forward, like what we’re doing with Open Bionics.

Many regard Deus Ex as a window to the future. How will Mankind Divided continue to push that perception forward?

Grant: Human Revolution is about the golden era of augmentation, and Mankind Divided picks up the pieces from where Human Revolution ends. If you look at what we’re doing here with this conference, we’re here to say, “Hey, this technology exists. It’s time that we come together and bring it to the mainstream conversation because there will come a point when we do need to discuss the ethics of bionics and human augmentation.” That’s what Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is about.

How does it feel, with the partnership with Open Bionics, to have Deus Ex be part of the first video game-inspired prosthetic device?

Grant: It feels incredibly rewarding to see our platform, our game, in the real-world and to see how much the people who have had the opportunity to wear these arms benefit from it and how it makes them feel.

Do you think future Deus Ex games will be designed with elements that translate more easily into real life?

Grant: I don’t know that we’d go out of our way, when designing the game, to do that. But I do believe that as long as Deus Ex exists, we will always bring the key themes to life in any way we can. We strongly feel that people who play our game and people that play video games as a whole are opening their imaginations, and they’re seeing things that maybe can’t be done in the real-world. But as a result, they’re becoming the future innovators and thinkers. They’re getting their ideas from popular culture, superheroes and video games, and they’re becoming many of the people we’re seeing here today at the Human by Design conference.

How would you describe the aesthetics of Deus Ex?

Jacques-Belletête: I like to say that it’s like a graphic novel, in terms of its overall signature. It doesn’t look like photorealism, and we never aim for that. It was to create a highly credible world that looks like there’s something artificial about it.

I think that in sci-fi, especially in Hollywood, you watch movies like Star Trek and look at how they’re showing a sci-fi city—and it looks like sci-fi from the ’80s or early ’90s. Current day contemporary architecture are already way beyond that. I think sometimes we’re not informed by the proper stuff. You don’t need to imagine what the future of architecture is going to be. The craziest projects of today already look like unbelievable science fiction stuff.

The cybernetics are inspired by a lot of real life stuff. We get informed by how things are manufactured in real life and how industrial design functions.

Human X Design Conference, August 3, 2016.
Photo credit: Courageous

Deus Ex has a number of different real-world brands, including clothing, books and now a prosthetic arm. Do you expect this kind of cross branding to grow?

Grant: Because of our relationship with Open Bionics, we’ve done the designs for these arms, but they’re open source. Anyone with a 3D printer can download those files and print an arm. So, yes. Not only do I expect it to continue to grow, it’s already out there.

How does it feel to see the Deus Ex world come to life with the clothing line and prosthetic arm?

Jacques-Belletête: It’s pretty surreal. The clothing line is a little more run-of-the-mill, and I don’t mean that what Musterbrand (the company that made the clothes) did is run-of-the-mill. What I mean is that we’re used to making developer team t-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies and stuff like that. Even though what we did with Musterbrand is eons ahead of doing dev t-shirts, it was not a huge stretch of the imagination that some the garments that we had in the game could be made quite closely in real life.

The real prosthetics that work and function—to be in cooperation with a company that does these things and see them for real for Adam’s arm—it’s crazy to be part of that. To work with them, and understand their process, is already crazy. Add the fact that they’re making them based on our creations—that’s when it starts being very surreal, and something I never thought would happen.

Any thoughts on making Deus Ex into a VR game?

Jacques-Belletête: Sure, I think about it all the time, but that doesn’t mean anything. Any AAA development studio that tells you that they don’t have VR dev kits is blatantly lying to you. Yes, we have them, and we’ve played with them and tried a few things. We already announced that we’re providing—with the benchmark tool for the PC version of Mankind Divided—a little VR museum. You’re going to be able to walk into some of the environments of Mankind Divided. There’s no gameplay; it’s going to be a view mode with walking and looking.

Deus Ex may end up shaping the future of cybernetic augmentation. What are your thoughts on that?

Grant: Just sitting here today and listening to all these experts at Human by Design, and working with Deus Ex as long as I have, I can imagine that future. Especially with prosthetics and the work the Open Bionics is doing. That future is closer than we think, and it might actually be here. If Deus Ex has a role in inspiring it, then I guess what they say about the franchise is true. We do have a way of predicting the future.

What do you think it is about the Deus Ex franchise that wins over so many fans around the world?

Jacques-Belletête: I think that good science fiction is a tool to speak about human subjects and themes that are happening now or in the past. They [fans] relate to this. You’re in an artificial world, but you’re experiencing something that you kind of know is plausible or is true, and there’s something attractive about that. I also think that the visuals help, and so does the character. I think the team has developed, in Adam Jensen, an iconic character, which is a hard thing to do. There’s no magic recipe for that.

It’s a game with a great story, and it’s one where you can experiment, try different things, and get different outcomes. You can play a scene, and I can play the same scene, and we’ll have two different experiences. That when you start realizing, when you play, that it’s pretty powerful.