At times during this, the last Dishonored dev diary scheduled before its release into the wild, even the cameraman seems swept up by Arkane’s player-driven-gaming rhetoric. He jettisons framing conventions, instead crouching in the shadows behind the heads of Smith, Colantonio, Antonov and co. Film from any direction, or not at all. See parts of Harvey Smith’s skull the designer never intended.
So if you like, this video can be about the sumptuous curve and flick of Harvey Smith’s ‘do. Or it can be about Arkane’s experience in bringing their assas-sim from concept to fruition. That’s up to you, the player, to decide.
Most intriguing are art man Viktor Antonov’s closing comments, in which he voices the bold logic behind the great dice both Arkake and publisher Bethesda are rolling in making a game so dizzying, so full of content the player might not even see: “People out there can sense and feel quality above a certain level,” he asserts.
“So, no matter what genre you do, no matter what medium you use, if you try for perfection and you have amazing craftsmanship, people out there will know that it’s not a marketing gimmick. It’s not a sales technique that you’re packaging into something. It’s something that’s awesome and they have to have it.”
What about you, readers? Will you have to have it?