Dishonored - Interview @ The Creators Project

Art Director Sébastien Mitton and video game director Viktor Antonovare interviewed at The Creators project about Dishonored, its begining and how it got to be what it is now.

The Creators Project: How long have you been working on Dishonored? How did this project come to life?
Viktor Antonov: We’ve been working on it for three years, since 2009. The project came to life in quite a dramatic way. I was an independent author at the time, and Arkane was an indie studio with great potential to sign a big contract with Bethesda. For legal reasons, their initial project was aborted. We were given three weeks to come up with a sufficiently interesting suggestion. But I was extremely enthusiastic because it’s such a rare opportunity to start from scratch and design something to fit a colossal budget.

At this stage, there was no preliminary draft, just a budget?
Sébastien Mitton: No, there were only intentions for gameplay. Bethesda knew that we had an expertise in first person shooters, and they knew we were looking to achieve dense and visceral games. At that time, Dishonored was supposed to take place in Japan during medieval times, but we told them it was hardly conceivable—as Europeans, we can easily fall into cheap stereotypes. After several discussions, we told them that we wanted the game to be based in London, which was our starting point.