Dishonored's artistic connection to Half-Life - The ART!
Dishonored's world is truly unique. In a game with so much to do, so much variance, the setting is crucial to it's immersion. So, where do you start? How did Arcane studios build a living, breathing, thriving world with it's own unique technology on such a large scale? Every detail serves a deeper purpose.
That's how you build a world. You don't build singular objects. Every object, every person, every building, they all effect each other's design. My first interaction with Dishonored was when I saw the August 2011 cover of Game Informer magazine. I would stare at it every day when I'd come into work at GameStop and marvel at the very large and harsh brush strokes.
You can see through some of the layers. It reveals the artists thought process even though this is a digital piece printed on a magazine cover. What I couldn't help but notice were these giant walkers and futuristic looking industrial train cars. It seemed very...
Familiar to me... Of course, I googled the concept artist behind Dishonored and well wouldn't you know it, I came across Viktor Antonov. His official title on the original Dishonored was Visual Design Director. He was instrumental in building the world of Dishonored and the city of Dunwall.
He prides himself on being an industrial designer, building worlds and concepts, not just people and objects. Antonov has a degree from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena for Transportation Design of all things. Setting is most important to him, as you can probably tell.
It's this passion for industrial design and attention to detail that fills out a world like this. It makes a totally surreal science fiction city believable. In an interview recorded by Explosive Alan Productions, Antonov says "In terms of who can make a city, and how can you make a city, well that was a privilege reserved to dictators, kings and big rulers.
Nobody can design a city anymore, except for in the video game industry." And... he's right. Sure you can build worlds for movies, but nobody is EXPLORING every inch of that world. In video games, every corner has to be meticulously crafted for full emersion.
There's limited room for smoke and mirrors. Seeing this image, I immediately picture the Striders walking around City 17 in Half-Life 2. The vehicles and science fiction architecture remind me a lot of the combine architecture, and the way it contrasts against the run down real world architecture.
City 17 is another city with it's own character, it's own infrastructure and backstory. Turns out, Viktor Antonov is the guy that designed City 17. He's the reason a lot of this world looks like Half Life, even though he tries to distance himself from it.
Developers at Arcane mentioned Half-Life to him, and wanted him to bring that sort of immersion into Dishonored. Antonov was against using Half-Life as inspiration. He believes this is a totally different game, and needs to live on it's own, with it's own set of inspirations.
It is a little weird to give an artist his OWN work as inspiration. You're basically saying "Hey you know that thing that took you years to do? Just do that again." But, sometimes you just can't escape your style. Keiji Inafune said it best. When asked if he's worried that Mighty No 9 looks too much like Mega Man he said "- that's my style.
I can't help it, that can't be changed, it is what it is." There's some other things he probably could have helped in that game but ANYWAY. Antonov states that his medium as an industrial designer is mainly light, architecture and composition. It's why we see a lot of simple shapes, and sometimes complex line-work.
These concept paintings are mostly painted in stark blacks and harsh whites. The running theme here is CONTRAST. JUXTAPOSITION if you really wanna hear me say that word. That theme even goes as deep as taking this modern looking architecture and these complex technologies and placing them in a somewhat realistic victorian setting.
Victorian architecture has a lot of triangles and round arches. Lots of frills. It's gaudy. Antonov's made up sci-fi architecture is flat. Lots of rectangles or thick lines. Sometimes there's hard angles, but not a lot of triangles or round shapes. This is his style.
And you know what? it works out great for him. Keep doing what you're doing there buddy. It's fascinating to me how much goes into something that is so easily overlooked. Somebody had to pull years of history, art and architecture, infrastructure, just pull it out of thin air and put it into a game.
It's truly amazing work. It's playing God. And that's only an experience that video games can provide. So what do you guys think about the City of Dunwall, the world of Dishonored and it's Industrial design? What do you think about its comparisons to City 17? You can leave it right here in the comments below and if you liked this video, there's a little button for that it's here here under the video see? There it is.
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