Dishonored used to have a “Thief” style stealth mechanic

Lead designer explains why they ditched it

Chris KempSeptember 30, 2012

In the early stages of its development, Dishonored had a stealth mechanic akin to Thief where players could hide in the shadows. However, Arkane decided to scrap it, and lead designer Christophe Carrier explained why.

“In Thief the light is very very important. At the beginning we tried to be in the same mood: use the light, use the shadows.

“But we realised that when you’re standing in front of an NPC like this [hand in front of face] it’s not realistic – we must admit that. In the real world it’s not like this.

“As we are a bit perfectionist, we wanted it to work as in Thief and very realistically. With these two notions we got crazy and decided to eliminate the light parameters, because it was too difficult to have both.”

In Dishonored, most light sources can’t be destroyed – the varying light environments are provided by night and day missions.

However the primary reason they’ve ditched the shadows is the amount of work the artists put into the game.

“You might have noticed that our artists went kind of crazy to create the most detailed and interesting world,” said Dinga Bakaba, game designer and associate producer, “so it was kind of contradictory to put some pitch black areas where you can’t see very well.”

“It was killing the visual to have very contrasting areas,” added Christophe Carrier, “so we compromised. But I think it’s kind of working now.”

Dishonored is slated for a 12th October release.