Trivia / Dishonored

• All-Star Cast: The franchise has a who's who of big-name actors in film and television, Let's see, we have April Stewart, John Slattery, Brad Dourif, Ryan Cutrona, Lena Headey, Chloë Grace Moretz, Susan Sarandon, Michael Madsen, Carrie Fisher, Vincent D'Onofrio, Rosario Dawson, Pedro Pascal, Sam Rockwell and Roger L. Jackson in big and small roles throughout the series.
• Breakthrough Hit: Although Arkane Studios made a few games before, it was Dishonored that put them on the map.
• Career Resurrection: Harvey Smith's reputation took a hit following the lackluster Deus Ex: Invisible War. He attempted to do it when he moved to Midway Games Austin but Blacksite: Area 51's Troubled Production (it was such that Smith was called in at the last minute to salvage while he was working on what would have been his own dream game) and Obvious Beta release only hit his career further. After migrating to Arkane Austin in 2008, he was able to make his dream game Dishonored and it performed well enough to rebuild his reputation.
• Creator Backlash: Harvey Smith and others are proud of the game on the whole but they did express regret about some of the choices made for representation, and especially the sleazy and gratuitous Male Gaze of Callista, the "non-lethal" fate of Lady Boyle, and the portrayal of women in general. He specifically took it to heart for Dishonored 2 which had a more fluid portrayal of gender and a playable female protagonist:
  Harvey Smith: "At first you take some criticism and you go, ‘Wait a minute,’ and then you go look and it’s like, ‘Wow, every woman in Dishonored is either a servant, a prostitute, a witch, a queen, or a little girl.
  Anita Sarkeesian: Or dead. Or killed.
  [...]
  Harvey Smith: Or killed, yeah. Or a mistress. We have a mistress also. That was not our intention..."
• Pre-Order Bonus: A truly ridiculous number of them, based on what region you're from and from what venue you're making your purchase.
• What Could Have Been: The game was originally meant to take place in the real world in feudal Japan. The developers then realized they didn't know enough about feudal Japan, so they then changed location to the Great London Fire of 1666, but then they decided that there had been too many changes to the setting to be realistic and set the game in an Constructed World. Another significant change was removing the ability to throw random objects around at will because according to Arkane, this meant that players could throw an object, freeze time, and then hop on the thrown object in midair, which would have broken the game.
  • At one point during production, Harvey Smith and Ralph Colantanio wanted Corvo to be voiced but the game was too far in development to make this a possibility. The regret over Corvo not being voiced led to the Daud DLC where the protagonist is voiced and the developers have stated that the sequel will have both its protagonists voicing the characters.
  • The character models of Piero and Wallace were swapped late in development.

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