Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Posted on August 20, 2025

architecture-v-dishonored-part-1-2

Architecture in Dishonored. Part 1

The architecture in games performs several functions at once. She can tell a story, awaken certain feelings of the player, serve as a guide, set setting and atmosphere, and be an indicator of the state of the world. A game with the most worked out characters, mechanics and plot, but without proper attention to architecture, will not be able to fully open up for the player, because the visual experience is the most memorable. And you can often hear about Arkane’s special approach to designing worlds in your games. This applies to both left -design: branched levels that generate dozens of game situations and ensure reiglable, and the design of the environment: memorable worlds that draw their inspiration from various eras, but, nevertheless, have their own highlight. But more thoroughly I want to touch exactly the second aspect. I will do this on the example of Dishonored, on which, by the way, Viktor Antonov worked at one time, who had a hand to create such a cult game as Half-Life 2, whose handwriting can be seen in the design of the whole game.

Danuall Tower
The game begins with the return of the protagonist from a long sea trip, so we see the city from the prospect of a boat floating along the river. Before us appears Danwall, in which the plot unfolds. Our small vessel approaches the Danuall tower – the emergency residence.

Looking around, you might think that we https://gamblingdata.net/casinos/bluefox-casino/ are in England by the times of the industrial revolution: Victorian architecture and the ubiquitous pipes of factories, exuding the smoke. However, bulky whaling vessels standing on the river immediately catch the eye, as well as the fact that our boat is equipped with a motor. This, of course, applies little to architecture, but gives an idea of the level of progress in the world of the game, which is significantly ahead of the progress of the time of the industrial revolution in our world.

We find ourselves in a certain gateway – “elevator” for ships, which is filled with water, and due to the old good power of Archimedes (the laws of physics in this game so far are the same as in our world) raises us to the palace.

Such a mechanism requires pumping a large amount of water, which also indicates technological development. Having left the boat, we see the panels with which the pumps are controlled. There are light indicators on them – it means that in the world of the game they learned to use electricity. There are also cast -iron details – arches and supports that are characteristic of the time of the industrial revolution, because it was then that the process of metal smelting was greatly simplified and became cheaper, so it began to be used everywhere.

Most of the 19th century window glasses turned out to be a cylindrical method. A large cylinder was blowing from the glass, and its walls were flattened into the plate. The cylinder had 180-240 cm in length and 25-36 cm in diameter, which limited the maximum size of the resulting glass plates, which was due to which the windows had to be made with a divided frame into several parts. Only in the 50s of the XX did the float glass appeared-the glass obtained by the bulk of the molten glass mass onto a layer of molten light-melted metal. This method provided glass of uniform thickness with high surface quality and made it possible to increase the surface area of the glass.

Now let’s go to the Imperial Garden. Note metal pipes on the walls. In the XIX century, wooden water pipes prevailed, but they were also not everywhere present. It is worth noting that in the same London some companies engaged in water supply began to install a metal pipeline back in 1802, so this part does not really contradict. Nevertheless, the water supply does not fit into the architecture of the palace – was invented after its construction. In the screenshot below it can be noted that the pipes are braked and are the only diagonal lines on the wall, that is, they were installed after its construction.