Dishonored's Smith: It's not right that 'if you slaughter everybody... you're a hero'
Often discussed is the impact of violent games' on players. Less often discussed is the ultimate strangeness of violent games. In a new interview Harvey Smith tackles the issue.
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"Everybody just wants to be told in a video game that you’re great, no matter what you do. If you slaughter everybody -- you killed the maids, you killed the old people, you killed the beggars -- you’re great, here’s a medal, you’re a hero. We decided that sounds psychotic."
- Dishonored dev Harvey Smith
Often discussed is the impact of violent games on players. Less often discussed is the ultimate strangeness of very violent games. Dishonored creative directors Harvey Smith and Raphael Colantonio decided to push back against that with a scene in the game which chastises ultra-violent players, and in a new interview published on Kotaku, Smith tackles the issue.
"It doesn’t match our values, it doesn’t match the way the world works, it doesn’t match the way any other fiction -- imagine a novel where a guy wakes up in the morning, kills everybody in the house, goes down the street, kills everybody on the way to work, kills everybody in the office, and then at the very end of the novel, there is a scene where he is given a medal and made some sort of hero and anointed in some way. It doesn’t make any sense," Smith, who is also an author, says.
There's more, including Smith's thoughts on how the pair hopes to tackle the issue in the forthcoming Dishonored 2, on Kotaku.
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