Harvey Smith, Lead Designer On Deus Ex (Gaming)

by kidtsunami , Atlanta, GA, Friday, March 03, 2017, 13:37 (2826 days ago) @ Oholiab

** Edit: I should clarify in my "Seriously" post, it was directed at Cody**

Is the Creative Director of Arkane Studios, a studio where he has continued his work on "Immersive sims" that he fell in love workin on with Deux Ex.

When playing a level in Dishonored and more so in Dishonored 2, you're part of a living breathing simulation where your actions have consequence. No level forces you to kill anyone or to remain hidden the whole time. Your options can become rather layered depending on what abilities you've decided to invest in. You can wait for someone to raise their pistol at you, slow down time, possess them after the shot slowly rings out, and walk their body in front of the body and leave them right as time speeds up in such a way that they've shot themselves.

As the game is about assassinating/disposing of specific targets, there are always ways to both kill and non-mortally dispose of them. You can get rid of a particular religious target by knocking them out and branding them with a heretic brand leading to their removal and banishment, if you do this and are quite the explorer, you'll run into them later, and they'll be worse for wear.

I say literal legacy as Harvey was the lead designer on Deus Ex and has moved on to work on the Dishonored series and the Prey reboot, and all of them carrying on the design ideals of Deus Ex in the process. The amount of player agency is astounding and I find playing in the worlds that they've designed almost intoxicating.

If you like:

• A sandbox of things to play with In dishonored 2, attach a stun mine to a glass or bottle to create an impromptu stun grenade
  
• A myriad of success states Along with the binary choice to kill/spare your primary targets (though, it's hardly binary since you can kill them a million different ways, there are too many other objectives/outcomes to count. There's a fun chart in dishonored 2 where one axis is lethality and the other is stealth screenshot of end mission screen[/img]
  
• A lore rich world that doesn't revolve around you

You'll really enjoy Dishonored 1 & 2

Make sure when you play Dishonored 2 you turn off a lot of the objective markers and other UI elements that provide too much direction. Here is a good guide.

Also here is a good (spoilerish) interview with Harvey Smith about his approach to Dishonored 2's development. glixel Here is a key question/answer:
So you have all this stuff – different lines, different powers, different ways to travel through the game – but most people are going to see only one iteration of everything. Do you care?
If you look at games, and some people do, as a cost-ratio kind of thing, some developers are like, "I want to put every dollar on the screen." We have the opposite approach. You can make your path through the game, and you have a sense that there was a lot more going on. And therefore the sequence of things that happened to you are yours. They're your experiences. They're very intimate. You didn't have the same experience I did. That's really special to us.

Harvey Smith
Arkane Studios