For the parties, we looked at how he lit interiors to make inside light look like outside light, we looked at all his work with lines and wooden curves. It was such a different approach to office design. Also, he was one of the first architects to work with diffused light – so you’d look up and think you were seeing the ceiling but actually it was the light behind it. As he explains, “He made these huge offices and in our game that’s very useful – we couldn’t make very small interiors because we want a lot of mobility. Photograph: Arcaid Images/Alamy Stock PhotoĪnother big influence on the interior architecture was Frank Lloyd Wright, whose approach suited the experience Arkane wanted to provide. Johnson Wax Building, Racine, Wisconsin, 1936 -1939, 1944, corporate offices and research laboratory, main office workspace designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. So we took these different themes inspired by the 60s and we developed them differently to reflect the characters.” We also developed different layers depending on each of the visionaries’ background: some build laboratories, but Frank has a casino – for him it’s a party. At Arkane, we love creating contrast because it plays with the player’s emotions. There’s a big contrast between the outside where everything is cold and hard, and the interiors, where everything is colourful. “At the same time, we looked at contemporary materials and there were a lot of rugs, a lot of rounded plastics – it was very different to what we did in the Dishonored games, where it was a lot of straight lines. However, Mitton’s team worked hard to avoid kitsch excesses – they didn’t want it to become Austin Powers: the game. The 60s influence is clear in the game’s interiors – the buildings throughout are filled with brash, multicoloured furnishings, weird art and gigantic Saul Bass-style posters. But there are no consequences because there is no tomorrow, so, even though there’s a lot of violence, it’s very lighthearted.” We found inspiration in the era of the Vietnam war – that helped us build the Aeon programme: the visionaries and their guests – what are their goals in life? For some it’s drinking all day, it’s partying, for others it’s about killing people. “If you think about hippies, people really wanted change at that time, people wanted to live differently, but you had the cold war as well there was a lot of violence. “It was all about freedom of mind,” he said. For this element, Mitton and his team were heavily inspired by the end of the 1960s. So in the island’s architecture, you see different layers co-existing: the island’s flora, the military buildings, with bunkers and towering antenna (inspired by abandoned sites in northern Europe, Japan and Russia, such as Chenobyl), and in addition, a hedonistic society, re-purposing and re-decorating everything they see. They said ‘we’re going to start this loop and we’re going to live forever.’” “They came with all this money and realised they could create these strange events. “It was kind of like if Elon Musk had said, ‘let’s go to the Bermuda Triangle and study it’!” explains art director Seb Mitton. And then, decades later came Aeon, a cabal of rich tech bros, looking for a new playground. On top of this are the monolithic concrete buildings constructed by a group of military researchers who arrived in the 1930s to investigate the island’s weird phenomena. The location itself is a remote, wintery outpost, heavily inspired by the Faroe Islands, with craggy cliffs and windswept grasslands. At first, the team built a timeline to explain the variety of natural and human-made features in each region. The island of Blackreef, where the whole game takes place, provides a fascinating example of how Arkane works. This time around, the team created a strange Groundhog Day-like adventure set on an island populated by mad scientists and spoiled billionaires, all looking to gain immortality by living the same day over and over again, thanks to a localised space-time phenomenon. Developer Arkane is known for its highly refined and individual approach to game art, thanks to the astonishing Dishonored titles, set in a steam-punk dystopia of rats, robotic guards and ornate classical architecture. We’re so spoiled for visually rich open environments these days, it takes something special to keep players immersed, to keep them wandering about looking at stuff, just for the sake of it. T his year, there is one game world I have enjoyed exploring more than any other.
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