Spector: We shipped the game in the US on December 2, 2003, and here we are releasing the game in Europe on March 5. And what that did is it gave us time to actually gauge real player response. You know, as much testing as we did - and boy we did a lot - you never really know how a game is going to be received.

And there were some things that we read about that we just disagreed with - players were saying X, Y and Z and we thought: "No, that's crazy, we still like that." But there were some things where we were like: "Oh my gosh, they're right."

And so we were able to gauge real player responses. A lot of people have played the game now, and we've made some changes. In particular, there were some weapons that players thought were balanced incorrectly, and it was like: "Ooh, Well, they're not right about this one but they are right about that one - we should have caught that."

So we've adjusted some of the weapon balancing, Players hated our installer [laughs]. It sounds like nothing, be we wrote a new installer from scratch. We've also worked on performance. I've never done games that are blazingly fast, sadly, because I'm more interested in pouring in play features as opposed to smooth framerate - which is crazy.

But we've actually optimized the engine now to get about a 20 percent increase in framerate across the board. In some places it's really dramatic.

The user interface has also had some attention - there were a few things that we should have really caught with the UI.

Absolutely. I mean, the day we start turning out sequels simply to make a quick buck is the day someone else is going to be making Deus Ex games.

I told Harvey Smith, Deus Ex: Invisible War project director, to give me ulcers - you know, make decisions that make me scream

Spector: I wouldn't say it surprised us but... Here's the thing. Deus Ex is not a game you can just pick up and play - I mean, I'm sorry. I do things, I tell Eidos all the time - I'm ready to make decisions and do things that are going to cost us sales; because there's a greater good, you know [chuckles]. And so you're going to have to invest your own time, as a player, to learn the ins and outs of the game. And if you give us time, I think we'll just absolutely win you over.

If what you want to do is run around and blow stuff up, it's not going to work for you, but if you start figuring out that instead of piling in headfirst you can go through that door or through that window... If you're a sympathetic player you're going to love it. It's hard to get that across in a demo.