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visit
stack.net.au14
jbhifi.com.auNOVEMBER
2016
GAMES
FEATURE
he original
Dishonored
seemingly
came out of nowhere. Developed
by a comparatively small studio,
the game's aesthetic and gameplay
mechanics were innovative.
Nobody, not even its creators,
expected it to take off the way that it did. The
game’s directors, Harvey Smith and Raphael
Colantio, still consider it a "cult hit".
"Everyone who’s really in on it loves it, but
the mainstream kind of ignored it," offers Smith,
leaving us not entirely sure he knows just
how successful the Dishonored franchise has
become.
“We always wanted more success,
because it means better jobs for everybody,"
he says. “Honestly, I’ve worked with so many
developers who just hunkered down for years
and never had anything go well, and they just
hate life because they poured themselves into
[their games], and for whatever reason it didn’t
work.
“People change; you see them change when
they end up creating something that everyone
loves, regardless of what it is – a pop song, a
film... I wanted that for my team. But it’s not
like we had to go to a mountain to find it, the
mountain came to us.”
As far as development of
Dishonored 2
is
concerned, they wanted to keep it intrinsically
similar to the first, but Smith is aware of how
much the industry has evolved since the
original. “We just decided to keep making the
same kind of game, but the game industry grew
up; there are way more women who speak out
to us, and say what they like, and there are way
more ‘thinking’ stealth gamers, and people who
like RPG features.”
The director recalls a time when RPGs as a
genre almost stopped existing. ”I remember
there was a period of time where executives
said, ‘These games don’t sell well.’ We
were stunned: ‘What are you talking about?
Everybody I know wants to play an RPG.’ Then
companies like BioWare took advantage of that.
You look at these big, deep games like Fallout
and Mass Effect – they prove that there’s totally
an audience there. An increasingly sophisticated
audience.”
It’s been four years since the launch of
Dishonored
–
STACK
’s 2012 game of the year. Now,
the team at Arkane are back and ready to release a sequel. At this year’s QuakeCon in Dallas,
Texas, we caught up with game director Harvey Smith to chat about how the sequel came
about, how fond he is of his team, the influence women are having on the development of
Arkane titles, and what we can expect to see from Emily in
Dishonored 2
.
Words Alesha Kolbe
Arkane
Masteries
I like chopping dudes’
heads off, because I don’t
get to do that at work