Arkane’s Favorites: Characters
Everyone plays favorites, even developers, and we’ve posed a very difficult question to the teams at Arkane Lyon and Arkane Austin: Who is your favorite character from one of your games?
For developers, that must be like picking your favorite child, but both teams weighed in with some of their favorite faces from over the years. Some are expected, and some… less so.
Billy Lord, Lead Character Artist | Arkane Austin
I know it might be cliché, but Corvo was the first game character that made me really connect with them in a thoughtful way. I would restart missions countless times if I killed someone I didn't mean to just because, in my mind, he wouldn't have acted that way in certain circumstances.
Rosa Dachtler, Narrative Designer | Arkane Lyon
Granny Rags is the glamorous, dangerous dowager who stole my heart. If I were a kid in Dunwall, I’d want to be her when I grow up. From my first meeting with her I wanted to know everything about her, and the fact that that was impossible made her mystery all the more alluring.
Hazel Monforton, Narrative Designer |Arkane Austin
Daud. His transformation from believing he was just a piece of a larger, inevitable machine, to realizing he can affect change in the world, to trying to radically change the foundations of the world and its ideology (and going about it the wrong way, in my opinion) was one of the clearest character arcs I've ever witnessed.
George Royer, Level Designer | Arkane Austin
I'm also going to go with Daud. I'm a sucker for a the "bad person who grows a soul too late and they've got to do one last thing right even if it kills them, which it likely will" arc. Plus, Michael Madsen was great.
Stevan Hird, Director of Technology | Arkane Austin
Oh Daud, for sure. Seeing what was happening behind the scenes, totally unbeknownst to Corvo, was so powerful.
Jonathan Foudral, Game Designer/Producer | Arkane Lyon
Michel. Don’t think you know him? You actually might. Michel is one of the male guards in Dishonored 2. He was the first guard we ever created for this game, and as a consequence he’s always the first one that is spawned in our engine when we want to generate a guard. Every time we wanted to test one of the game systems on an NPC, it had to be Michel. As most of our gameplay included killing, maiming and just hurting in general, a very large number of Michels were harmed during the four-year development cycle for Dishonored 2. As a guard, he’s present throughout all the levels. When running into him during a playtest, it was a custom to say “Hey, it’s Michel!” and kill him right away. RIP, Michel.
Ricky Llamas, Systems Designer | Arkane Austin
Morgan Yu. After Prey’s launch, a reoccurring comment I kept seeing online came from people who were excited to finally play as an Asian character. And because we gave the players the option to choose their gender, these comments came from both men and women. It really brought home to me why diversity in fiction is so important.
Trent Polack, Lead Combat Designer | Arkane Austin
I’m going with a side story: Aaron Ingram. This entire sequence was one of the most memorable experiences I had in Prey and it was legitimately morally ambiguous. If you were a jerk and ended up killing him it was also a pretty brutal reminder of how deadly Mimics are. Also, he was voiced by Walton "The Best Human" Goggins.
Ali Amezziane, Dev Tester | Arkane Lyon
My favorite character is Dr. Galvani, even though we never actually get to meet him. We can rob his house in Dishonored while he’s out of the city. To avoid robberies, he later moves closer to Dunwall Tower, but we can rob his apartment again in Dishonored 2. As a result, he decides to move to Tyvia and purchases a lockbox so he can store his valuables in a highly secured bank in Karnaca, so of course everything will be safe and sound… Until we rob the bank and open his lockbox in Dishonored: Death of the Outsider.
Steve Powers, Senior Level Designer | Arkane Austin
Samuel Beechworth in Dishonored. He was a rock – a loyal and dedicated ally who stuck with Corvo the entire way, even when he wasn't sure of the Royal Protector's methods. But he could be pushed too far, as some players would discover.
Thomas Mitton, Senior Sound Designer | Arkane Lyon
The wolfhound. It’s not a human character, but it was a great challenge to design because of the behavior variations. If you observe it long enough, the wolfhound has some of the best behaviors I’ve ever seen in a game.
Walter Badgett, Senior Systems Designer | Arkane Austin
Probably Mr. Glooey McGlooface. You could say that character really... stuck with me.
