Eidos Montreal's Stephane D'Astous

Their dedication, their work habits and work ethics. These guys are true professionals, they know their business and a they rarely compromise the quality. That's truly what we want to do. It's something we all notice with Japan. It's the unconditional dedication.

Very much. The other studios cottoned on and they've all been knocking at the door. I do know the people at Visual Works, the CGI studio, for them this was something they wanted in their portfolio to show their diversification. We need to identify our strengths and eventually I would hope that it's the goal of all of Eidos to be able to create a project that would hit all territories successfully and the hearts of the Americans, the Europeans and the Japanese. That's a big project, a big challenge. If it was easy everyone would be doing it and a lot of people have tried and failed. With Eidos and Square we must be in a position to succeed eventually. It's a great challenge, that's the long term desire, to be able to finds the formula if there is such a thing.

It's going very well, the team has had a tremendous traction in these past couple of months. I think when they saw the feedback from the fans about the trailer it was very good for them. They've been working with their heads down for two or three years and they need to be motivated with the that feedback. Our demo that we showed at E3 was a pre-alpha build and they're pleased with that because the code is very solid, it came together very well in the two to three months leading up to E3. E3 is good because it gives the team a focus before the final release. Things come together very well and we're very optimistic about the quality.

Every day and every week we're getting more and more confident. The resounding answers is yes. It's certainly going to be respectful to the franchise but the important thing is the fanbase will be very pleased. But our duty is also to introduce it to a larger audience without diluting the content. It's a fine line that we need to walk.

That's the true challenge of the team. At the concept phase they really took the time to replay the previous games and they are all really big fans. To put it in perspective, these games are ten years old and people are still playing them, still talking about them, there's till vibrant blogs and forums. Why? Because it brought something truly unique to games ten years ago. To introduce this to a wider audience the gameplay has to be a little bit more accessible. It's a fine balance of finding the right gameplay and the replayability. People invest a lot of money into videogames. When I play I want to be able to replay it with different options and see different experiences. A bit like the Fallout games. Fallout 3 was a true example of that. I've spoken to people who have finished it and had completely different experiences. That is something that has inspired us.

With Deus Ex: Human Revolution we had to change the design, the art direction and we had to create a new character, which was a big challenge. Eidos has always had a great history of characters – Lara Croft, Thief, Hitman. For Deus Ex that was a big responsibility for us.

It has to be part of the game experience. If it's not compatible it doesn't work. We could do a lot of things but if it's artificial or done to tick a box it's not going to let people share their experiences, their feelings about the game. We need to let players share their emotions. When people play games they have a lot of feelings and passion and we need to find a medium to let them do that. We're working very closely to get to that phase. Players want to share with the core community but there is also different layers. We're focusing on the community and it's important for them be able to share experiences.

Last night we sat down with a table of ten people and we asked them if you were on a desert island what three games would you bring with you? And the discussion ran for hours and hours. If I'd asked for three movies or albums the discussion wouldn't have been as long. Games really brings something out of people.

[laughs] They're very old and they're not in fashion right now but I love the Myst franchise. That really introduced me to a game about exploration and to really examine and explore everything and the beautiful world that could be created within a game. I also like car racing games because the experiences are much shorter, it's instant gratification and with the balance between arcade and simulation I like Forza. And then with an RPG and action combination, to truly invest myself for hours and hours, although I love Fallout 3 I would probably go for Mass Effect 2. Those games are very rich and full of story and character.