14 DAY TRIAL // Harvey Smith, the co-creator of Dishonored and leader of Arkane Studios, reveals that he loves the stealth genre and appreciates all game experiences that allow him to use something other than brute force to achieve his objectives.
The developer tells Rock, Paper, Shotgun that, “I still, to this day, love games where I’m in a dark, creepy, scary place, and I’m underpowered, and I’m facing monsters, and I master those monsters by defeating them with trickery, stealth or whatever.”
Dishonored is a game which follows this philosophy to the core and gives players plenty of options, from weapons and items to supernatural powers, when it comes to navigating the game world and reaching their final aim.
“The reason that’s soothing or titillating in some way is that it’s based on some pattern that a lot of people share. Anybody who’s gone through something like that when they’re very young, in a formative time,” Harvey Smith adds.
The developer also says that both he and his co-director, Raph Colantonion, are very proud of what they have achieved with Dishonored and are not thinking about a sequel at the moment, focusing on making sure that they offer the best possible experience to those engaged with their current launch.
Smith also names a number of other video games that he is excited to play at the moment: Red Dead Redemption, BioShock Infinite, Monaco, Day Z and Spelunky.
The modern video game industry is frequently criticized for the fact that it relies on sequels and long-running series to keep revenue up and that it rarely encourages innovation that produces something like Dishonored.
The game puts players in the role of Corvo, a bodyguard to an assassinated Queen who is framed and needs to explore the city of Dunwall in order to find his redemption and the source of the conspiracy that killed his ward.