2. The Art Direction
The world of Dishonored has the look of an alternate dimension fin de siècle steam punk fantasy. Yes, all those words mean you should be excited. The games visual design is not too dissimilar to that of Bioshock Infinite, with musky colour tones to the surrounding environment and a caricatured and slightly gothic contour to characters bodies. It also appears to be a uniquely unsettling and hyper-real evocation of a Victorian style environment; though it was allegedly created with Great Plague era London in mind. It also happens that developer Arkane Studios actually worked on Bioshock 2, assisting with design, animation and art meaning that the artistic similarities to said franchise make sense in that respect. The inspiration gleaned from other franchises doesnt end there: the strider-legged Tallboys hark back to Half-Life 2, and Dishonoreds visual designer Viktor Antonov also worked on the Valve classic. The stealth elements of the gameplay owe a debt to lead designer Harvey Smiths previous work on the System Shock (though only as a tester) and Deus Ex videogames. The violent and direct combat that can take place in Dishonored has the nous of Rafael Colontonio to guide it; he has previously worked on Activision's behemoth Call Of Duty franchise, and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, the latter of which featuring gruesomely visceral environmental kills as the order of the day, though stealth attacks also played an important part in Might and Magic's combat system. The third and final lead designer of Dishonored, Ricardo Bare, worked with Harvey Smith on the Deus Ex game series.