14 DAY TRIAL // Corvo might be the main character of the upcoming action and stealth title Dishonored, but the character will mainly exist in the present and the development team has no plans to give him a complex past to explore and reveal.
Raf Colantonio, who is one of the co-creative directors working on Dishonored, has told the Penny Arcade that, “The player himself has no true back-story. He’s the bodyguard of the empress, and that’s all we reveal.”
The team chose to make the past somewhat off-limits because they wanted players to focus on Corvo’ present and on his abilities and thirst for revenge rather than exploring a past that is no longer relevant in many ways.
The game will place more of an emphasis on The Outsider, the entity that gives Corvo his supernatural abilities.
Harvey Smitch, who is the other co-director, says, “He sort of has a cautionary tone. He says how you use this is up to you, but note that there will be effects. It’s funny, when we first talked about the Outsider, people assumed he was the devil, egging you on to do greater and greater evil.”
“Or he would judge you harshly if you did evil. But instead we have an amoral observer character,” he further goes.
The start of Dishonored will see Corvo blamed, unfairly, for the death of the Empress he was supposed to protect and the game will follow the protagonist as he tries to find out who framed him and get revenge.
Arkane Studios says that the core path of the game can be approached in a variety of ways, ranging from full stealth to all-out assault, and emphasizes that player choices will be at the core of the gameplay and of the story.
Dishonored will be launched on the PC, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 on October 9 in the United States and three days later in Europe.