”We are big fans of Thief. 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,” admitted Arkane’s Christophe Carrier, who added, ”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.”
However, the developer eventually dropped the mechanic for a few reasons.
”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,” Carrier noted.
The other reason was that Arkane wanted to show off their work, and having everything bathed in darkness would obscure their artwork.
”You might have noticed that our artists went kind of crazy to create the most detailed and interesting world,” stated game designer Dinga Bakaba, ”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,” Carrier added, “so we compromised. But I think it’s kind of working now.”
Dishonored is due to be released on the 9th October for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.