Dishonored was never intended to be what is now

I recently had the chance to transcribe a fantastic exclusive interview with Harvey Smith from Arkane studios located in Austin Texas, who is heading up the Dishonored Dev team.  Speaking to Andy Borkowski, Harvey was asked to comment on the world that Corvo Attano will be stepping into, he said that the Dishonored world was actually intended to be London.

He said :

“When we started the project we thought we were making London 1666 the year of the great fire and the last day of the plague, and we were pursuing that for a while and we kept tweaking and modernizing it and moving it closer to the 1800 and adding weird elements like Tesla like security systems and we got more and more into the Victorian thing, talking about natural philosophers and all the concepts that were exploding at the time, we also started talking about the waling industry and bringing in whale oil as a main source”

As the interview continued, and I kept the transcription flowing, we reached a question I was very interested in hearing answered. When Harvey was asked what he thought of Dishonored  and where it fell in the spectrum of today’s gaming genres, instead of saying it was an action adventure stealth game, he commented on how different it was when compared to other games, thus rendering it virtually impossible to define as part of an already established genre. He said:

“That’s a really interesting question because dishonored is definitely a kick ass action game were you play a supernatural assassin in a dark world where you can stop time, possess people,  cut throats, shatter doors you’re that character, but at the same time at Arkane we truly are into doing more. It’s not a linear game its not scripted, it’s a bunch of systems working, you can play the game about an assassin were you can avoid killing anyone, when we tell someone about that they always ask “really? Even the main target?” Yes, even the main target. We set out as a goal, we settled on it about half way through the game to track how violent the player was being, and then stabilize or destabilize the world depending on that. ”

And towards the end of the interview Harvey really let us into the world of Dishonored and told us, in great detail about the universe that we will be stepping into when we take control of Corvo Attano. And let me tell you now, other games have had lore built around them, and other games have had stories within the game, that reference their own lore. But in Dishonoured, the Dev’s went one better, and created an aristocratic culture with an entire sub culture of the down trodden, alongside maps and calenders, reasons for the extensive maritime aesthetic throughout the game.  Here is what he told us.

“That’s a really interesting question because dishonored is definitely a kick ass action game were you play a supernatural assassin in a dark world where you can stop time, possess people,  cut throats, shatter doors you’re that character, but at the same time at Arkane we truly are into doing more. It’s not a linear game its not scripted, it’s a bunch of systems working, you can play the game about an assassin were you can avoid killing anyone, when we tell someone about that they always ask “really? Even the main target?” Yes, even the main target. We set out as a goal, we settled on it about half way through the game to track how violent the player was being, and then stabilize or destabilize the world depending on that.” 

So basically, the game that we are getting is actually another iteration of an aborted project. And I love it when things like this happen, it means that instead of getting another gritty realistic game with nothing but a colour pallet consisting of grey, brown and shades of red. We get a fully formed, fully recognized work of the purest fiction. And with such loving care and meticulous effort put into is, this game is, thus far at least, my pick for game of the year.

In short, I cannot wait.

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Source [Puresophistry]