00:00The starting point was actually that the game was going to be a bit dark, a bit violent,
00:04and it was going to take place in an Anglo-Saxon country, something like a fictional England, in 1666.
00:11And from that point there, we started to develop the world,
00:15and it brought the game a bit into the present and into the future,
00:19and it became this rather pure science fiction rather than a historical medieval piece of fiction.
00:25And the theme is, again, unoppressed, non-existing fictional city, which is my specialty.
00:32I've been doing this most of my life, so this would be another similarity.
00:35But there was, of course, a request from the Arcane team that I do a few things that are similar
00:42to Half-Life 2
00:43because there are many fans of the game there.
00:45So I was trying to resist, but maybe some of the machines would go in that specific dark industrial style
00:52that I usually do.
00:53But it stops there. We're not trying to use it as a source of inspiration.
00:59When I started designing for Dishonored, I started, like I usually would do, rather by eliminating influences.
01:06So I definitely did not look into other video games or film to avoid cliché
01:11because right now there are so many sequels and sequels and sequels in the video game industry
01:16and so many IPs that are known.
01:18So my strategy is always to go the other way and start, I'm going to start from scratch,
01:23look at painting, sculpture, photography, and read books rather than get influenced by other pieces of entertainment.
01:32So here we are really influenced by a 30s pulp, lovecraft in terms of atmosphere.
01:39We looked at some mystical photography and symbolical photography and painting from the 20s
01:45to get this really specific atmosphere, and definitely American illustrators like Norman Rockwell
01:51and Dean Cornwell for the painterly look of the game.
01:54Getting any specific style in video game rendering is a huge challenge
01:59because you always get this rough computer look where you have a lot of straight edges,
02:04things are too smooth or too sharp.
02:06So that's why the challenge is always to manage detail and know where to focus and concentrate.
02:11The challenge is to create a unified look where the characters would match the environments,
02:18although they have a different level of stylization,
02:21and mainly to forget that we're looking at a computer piece,
02:25but this should look something like coming out of a painter's canvas
02:30or trying to get the narration where you would feel like you're reading a book
02:34rather than looking at computer assets.
02:38We did field trips.
02:40We went to London with the art team of Arcane.
02:43They're our director, Sebastian.
02:44We took a lot of photos from Edinburgh, London.
02:47We went as far as going into pubs and analyzing what defines the British face
02:52just to get a lot of personality and character into those characters we have
02:57rather than having co-workers face glued on an enemy.
03:01So we did a really thorough research of what defines British architecture and, let's say, morphology.
03:07The game is pretty realistic, and we don't have overwhelmingly big spaceships or things that are...
03:16Everything is pretty believable.
03:18We have trains.
03:20We have the main machine.
03:21There is a watchtower because it stands for the oppression and surveillance society
03:26that the villain has created, but everything is based on some kind of parallel reality.
03:32It could function.
03:34The design of the whaling ship was fun for me because, actually,
03:38I was an industrial designer before I went into the gaming industry,
03:42and this was my specialty, designing vehicles that don't exist, airplanes, ships, concept cars.
03:48And I've been doing art direction and creative direction for a long time,
03:53so now I go back to the drawing board and I design this thing.
03:56So it looks first, it has the language of all the machines created by the dictator of the game, the
04:03regent.
04:03And also I've used references of existing whaling ships, of ancient whaling ships,
04:08and it's this strange machine that you understand its function right away,
04:12but you don't know if you're dreaming or if you're seeing it for real.
04:14Well, the design of the mask is an opposition to all the designs that are created by the regent.
04:20So all the technology, this neo-Victorian technology that we've come up,
04:25is very rigid and organized and ornamental,
04:29and the mask represents the world of mystery and magic that exists also in the game coming from outer worlds.
04:37So it's this almost mechanical, tribal, strange object that doesn't look like anything else in the world,
04:46that somebody brought from a different land,
04:48and that gives you these special capabilities that you're going to have.
04:54As early back as like 1987 when Dungeon Master came out on the Atari 1040ST,
04:59I've loved games that were first-person, some combination of visceral action and mobility,
05:07you know, immersive movement through the world, and with RPG features,
05:12and whether that includes like tactical power combinations that you can put together,
05:17or moral expression or whatever, I've always loved that, right?
05:20Whether you're talking about an old game like Ultima Underworld,
05:23or a more recent game like Bioshock or Far Cry 2, those games totally turned me on.
05:29And Arkane made Arx Fatalis, which was like an homage to Underworld.
05:32It's more than a passion, it's almost a religion for us.
05:34You know, we want to see where these games go in the future,
05:36and we want to keep trying to make them.
05:38And so for us, it was like just like about recruiting more and more people
05:42that love those kind of games, understand them,
05:45and over the course of the years, we've, you know,
05:47we've hired more and more people that get those games.
05:50You know, Harvey being one of them, but there are other people like Riccardo Barr,
05:55who was on Deus Ex as well, Monty Martinez, who was on Deus Ex.
05:59Deus Ex was an opportunity to work with Warren Spector and some really talented people,
06:03and, you know, I kind of saw it as Underworld with guns,
06:07and it was like, you know, the most thrilling alignment of the right circumstances
06:14and the right people that I've been able to experience so far.
06:18But, you know, Raph and I have super high hopes, we're dishonored,
06:21we're having a great time working on it,
06:23and it seems like our publisher understands what we do,
06:26and they're very supportive of it.
06:28Zenimax is not asking us to be somebody we're not,
06:31they're not asking us to make a game that is somebody else's game.
06:34All of that interest in those types of games have led to this point
06:38where when Raph and I talk about our game,
06:41it's like 85% of the time he can finish my sentence as I can finish his.
06:44Our goal from the start has been to have deep systems
06:47that interact with each other in very complex ways.
06:49So we'll make a feature of the game,
06:52and it works in a certain way every time you do it.
06:55And so there are a lot of interactions that are basically not scripted by the designers.
06:59You know, nobody thought that they would happen.
07:01Yeah, and I think another thing that we're trying to achieve in this game,
07:04and that's probably not so much games are doing at the moment,
07:07is trying to always say yes to the players.
07:09So whenever you see something in the game, in the world,
07:13that you think you can interact with and do something with it,
07:15we always try to make sure that you can actually do something with it
07:17so that it doesn't feel like the world is just a static scenery
07:21that is just here for the purpose of the game.
07:23But it's really a world that reacts to your action,
07:25to your presence, and to everything.
07:27So I think it's really something really strong in what we are doing.
07:29And again, it comes back again to the idea of the simulated world
07:33that you can play in, basically.
07:34The cool things about things like fantasy novels or science fiction novels
07:38is that they transport you somewhere.
07:41So I want to go into a new world that I've never been into before and explore it.
07:45And then when I'm in that world,
07:46I want to be able to make choices that have really cool consequences.
07:49So I feel like I have some agency in this world.
07:51I can make an impact and change things down the road.
07:53So those are the kind of games that I really like,
07:55and that's what I really hope we can pull off here with Dishonored.
07:58So now, like, working with Dishonored with Harvey,
08:02for us, it's like we come at the, I think,
08:05at the very, the most mature moment of Arkane,
08:08where our hope is that everything we've learned,
08:13and, you know, for the good and the bad,
08:15we are able to now use for the best for this game.
08:19I've worked at several game companies,
08:21and I've never worked at a company as focused as Arkane is.
08:24And they're focused on this kind of game.
08:26Basically, a game like Deus Ex or Bioshock,
08:30where you have open systemic environments
08:33and systems that you can interact with.
08:35And they've been focused like a laser on that from the start.
08:38That's always what they want.
08:40And they're putting it together in a way
08:42that I don't think anybody else in the industry could do.
Commenti