When Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 was first revealed, the game's initial description and the first trailer's content (shown above) had people questioning whether or not Treyarch had ripped off Deus Ex.
Eidos Montréal's Executive Art Director of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Art Director of Deus Ex: Human Revolution Jonathan Jacques-Belletête drew the connection and the the official Deus Ex Twitter account did the same.
Treyarch's multiplayer director Dan Bunting has stepped up to clear things up. Ultimately no, Activision and Treyarch did not rip off Deus Ex, they were shocked at the comparisons, but they understand why you would draw the comparison.
As far as Black Op 3 goes (according to Bunting), you probably won't understand the difference until you get your hands on it; "it’s really nothing like anything they’ve experienced before and they have to get their hand on the controller to get that."
During an interview with GamesRadar Bunting revealed that he was shocked over the internet's comparisons of the two games.
"I was actually shocked by that because what they’re correlating it to was basically a lot of very common science fiction tropes. If you’re in the future you’re going to instantly be compared to science fiction."
"I guess it’s not surprising because I know the nature of the internet or the public is to have a knee-jerk reaction to a very simple image or message. They make connections to something. It’s easy for them to grasp and understand it".
Interestingly enough, if you're creating a game, writing a book or filming a move set in the future with a heavy focus on human augmentation, you have already become a part of the science fiction genre and are opening yourself up to comparisons to other sci-fi creations.
Bunting does note that the development of Black Ops 3 is founded on research "into real world technology." Treyarch looked at where science was at today and considered where it would be in 30 or 40 years, they never looked at "what some other game is doing. Especially when many other games are building off of other pre-existing tropes and other genres."
At best, Treyarch claims they were "probably actually fairly conservative on some [technological] fronts."
Sure, both game's deal with a similar concepts – human augmentation, the future, civil unrest due to augmentations – but let us not forget this is a Call of Duty game and it's being compared to narrative driven RPG. While Treyarch can dive into story, their games have been mostly used for online multiplayer,there is an inherent difference between the two.
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