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Former HL2 Art Director And Former EP4 Devs Begin Work On “Dishonored”

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As one of Valve’s former artists, Viktor Antonov was Half-Life 2’s art director. He was the man who first suggested that HL2 take place in a dystopian Eastern European city, in 1999. And he was the man behind HL2’s amazing art and graphical style. Without him, who knows what HL2 might have been?

Former HL2 Art Director And Former EP4 Devs Begin Work On “Dishonored”

He left Valve some time around 2005, after he had finished work on Lost Coast, and then went to work at Arkane Studios, where he did work on the Source title “Dark Messiah of Might and Magic”; and the legendary, yet on hold “The Crossing”; and, perhaps, even the infamous HL2: Episode Four, which we shed some light on in this post; as well as this one. He appears to have left Arkane at some point after that.

But now Antonov and Arkane are back together, working on “Dishonored”, a first person action title, produced and published by Bethesda, scheduled for early to mid-2012. They are joined by Harvey Smith, one of the game designers behind System Shock, Deus Ex and Thief. And the game does sound a lot like them. It also looks quite a bit like HL2 itself, despite its steampunk-inspired aesthetics.

If you want to familiarize yourself with Antonov’s artwork, feel free to check out his page on the Combine OverWiki, and his official site. Kotaku has even done a Fine Art story for his art (they’ve also done a Fine Art for TF2’s art), though all of the art in their Valve Fine Art posts can be found online.

In any case, we wish Antonov, Smith, and the rest of Arkane Studios best of luck with this project and their future endeavours. It looks very promising. You can find more information at Game Informer’s Dishonored information hub.

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5 Comments

  1. I saw nothing in any of those links referring to an episode 4. Why is it in the title?

    • That’s very interesting, considering the fourth link led to an article that had “Episode Four” right there in the title. The first also had two entire paragraphs dedicated to the possibility of Arkane having developed Episode Four.

  2. This will definitely be on my radar 😀

    Sent from my iPad.

  3. Where the hell is The Crossing Archane studios?!…. Basterds *rolls eyes*
    Well, this doesn’t look too bad either, too bad it’s using the UT3 engine tho… For the PC version that is. I don’t recall any good memories from it lately (yeah, I’m looking at you Bulletstorm).

    • Arkane suffered “an unexpected financial challenge” some time in early 2009, so no, they’re not bastards. If anything, I’d point the blame at Valve. They were publishing the title and aiding with development. By 2009, their pockets were already very well lined, so I don’t see why they couldn’t help Arkane out. Joystiq also speculated that EA’s late 2008 downsizing was somehow behind this financial problem.

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