With Dishonored reaching its tenth anniversary this year – and Noclip releasing footage of Arkane’s scrapped Ravenholm game – I thought I could look at the art across the Dishonored games. Because no one has ever done that before. Nonetheless, despite its lack of originality, this article will focus on the first Dishonored game’s environments.

Released in 2012, Dishonored is widely known and beloved for its distinctive art style. In both its environment and character design, the game features a stylised, exaggerated aesthetic.

Dunwall

The game takes place in the fictional city of Dunwall. The city is ravaged with a plague and is under oppressive rule. This feeling of danger, disease and oppression is reflected throughout the city’s design. Viktor Antonov, who was the game’s Visual Design Director, spoke of being inspired by the Victorian era and Lovecraftian literature. Antonov made it clear he wanted the game to feel like a painting or novel, rather than a traditional video game environment.

The city of Dunwall is based on London. Initially, with the idea of the plague, the game was to be set during the Great Plague in 1666. However, the game was moved to its own time and place – drawing inspiration from medieval and modern periods alike. Eventually, they settled on what Sebastian Mitton – the Art Director at Arkane – called a Neo-Victorian style. The developers visited London and Edinburgh to study the architecture and get a feel for the cities. They also studied a number of paintings and photographs from the Victorian and Edwardian eras to get a sense of style.

The Visual Language of Dunwall

The style of Dunwall makes great use of shape in its design. The city is filled with sharp edges and blocky shapes. The use of sharp edges in Dunwall helps to create this Gothic style, with its use of sharp points and repeated triangles in the city’s landscapes. However, the blocky shapes repeated throughout the architecture create an industrial style, echoed throughout the game. Mitton spoke of how the developers noticed the verticality of London and this is reflected in Dishonored’s architecture. The imposing, stylised buildings shoot straight up and then come to a sharp point at the rooves.

Overall, this design helps to evoke the tone of the story. The crowded, tall buildings overwhelm and oppress the player. The blocky edges and straight lines reflect the industrial age of Dunwell. The sharp edges echo that sense of danger and violence in the city. The Gothic style and murky atmospheres help reflect this feeling of horror and tension that the plague evokes. The exaggerated style and crowded environment helps create this sense that everything is off-kilter – again reflected in Dishonored storyline.

In the next article we’ll be looking at how this visual language is continued in Dishonored’s character design.

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The post The Art of Dishonored: The Environments first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Bethesda has officially kicked off E3 with a bang.

The guys over in Bethesda Softworks have released tons of information about there up and coming games, as well as trailers and footage of gameplay.  They showed us a first look at the new DOOM, with a single player trailer whilst also showcasing the multiplayer features, confirming DOOM multiplayer will include game modes such freeze tag, clan arena and domination. Bethesda showed of DOOM’s new feature ‘SnapMap’, which will allow players to create their own maps. DOOM is set to be released in spring 2016 and will be hitting PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PcfoTTVs2c

Dishonoured 2 was also officially announced during the conference, although we didn’t get a glimpse of any gameplay, we did get a pretty awesome trailer. Bethesda confirmed you can play as two characters throughout, either Corvo or Emily Kaldwin from the original Dishonoured. There is no release date yet but the game will be coming to PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One at some point in the future.

Last but least and the one I’m sure everyone is most excited about – Fallout 4. Bethesda treated the public by showing us tons of gameplay and it certainly did not disappoint. We found out that the ‘VATS’ system will be returning, you can play in either third-person as well as first-person, whilst also choosing whether you want to play as a female or male character. As well as jet packs on your heavy armour, your weaponry is also customisable and the user will be able to gain areas from which they can build houses on. Most exciting news of all is the official release date, 10th November 2015, giving you plenty of time to book the day off work. Fallout 4 certainly lived up to the hype, check out some of the gameplay below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InxJ59Netms

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5H7Qq8quKg

Check out the full Bethesda E3 2015 conference here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KApp699WdE

The post E3 2015: Bethesda Conference – Fallout 4, DOOM, Dishonored 2 first appeared on Get2Gaming.