WEBVTT 00:00:01.446 --> 00:00:07.340 Between a masquerade ball, a brilliant bank heist, and a house trapped between two moments 00:00:07.340 --> 00:00:14.099 in time - the Dishonored series is famous for its intricate and imaginative level design. 00:00:14.099 --> 00:00:19.279 But if there's one stage that truly fits that description, it's the Clockwork Mansion from 00:00:19.279 --> 00:00:25.230 Dishonored 2 - a shape-shifting stately home where walls rotate on carousels, entire rooms 00:00:25.230 --> 00:00:30.500 disappear into the floor, and furniture gets rearranged by hidden mechanisms. 00:00:30.500 --> 00:00:36.450 It's the home of one Kirin Jindosh - an eccentric inventor who is building an army of robotic 00:00:36.450 --> 00:00:39.860 soldiers, and has also imprisoned your pal Sokolov in his basement. 00:00:39.860 --> 00:00:44.630 So you'll need to get in, take control of the mansion, stop Jindosh from making any 00:00:44.630 --> 00:00:48.030 more robots, and bust Sokolov out. 00:00:48.030 --> 00:00:54.330 So welcome to On the Level - a video series in which I play excellent video game stages, 00:00:54.330 --> 00:00:57.420 alongside the designers who made them. 00:00:57.420 --> 00:01:03.090 For this episode, I played through the Clockwork Mansion while talking to level designer Dana Nightingale. 00:01:03.090 --> 00:01:07.820 She was responsible for planning out the mansion's layout and its gameplay beats, using flowcharts 00:01:07.820 --> 00:01:09.800 and prototypes. 00:01:09.800 --> 00:01:13.430 Also on the call was David Di Giacomo, the level's artist. 00:01:13.430 --> 00:01:18.390 His job was to actually build the mansion, come up with the mechanisms and movements, 00:01:18.390 --> 00:01:20.500 and turn Dana's ideas into reality. 00:01:20.500 --> 00:01:26.620 A quick note that in this video, David's answers will be in French, with English subtitles. 00:01:26.620 --> 00:01:34.086 So, before I open the door and enter the mansion, I asked Dana how she first came to work on this level. 00:01:35.309 --> 00:01:40.760 DANA: I had wrapped up my work on the Knife of Dunwall and I was just shown a list - a 00:01:40.760 --> 00:01:46.780 rather long list - of all of the potential level ideas that the team was brainstorming 00:01:46.780 --> 00:01:48.230 to include in Dishonored 2. 00:01:48.230 --> 00:01:51.770 And one of them was the mansion of a clockwork inventor. 00:01:51.770 --> 00:01:55.880 Like, I skimmed the list, and I look at the list thinking 'this is going to be super hard 00:01:55.880 --> 00:01:57.890 to decide, how am I going to know which one to pick?'. 00:01:57.890 --> 00:02:00.963 And I see that one and I'm like 'yeah! That one! That's the one i'm doing!'." 00:02:00.963 --> 00:02:03.210 MARK: Do you remember any of the other ideas on the list? 00:02:03.210 --> 00:02:05.430 DANA: I only remember the others that I prototyped. 00:02:05.430 --> 00:02:12.680 But I did do a prototype for a redux of the masquerade ball concept, which we eventually 00:02:12.680 --> 00:02:14.389 decided to not do. 00:02:14.389 --> 00:02:18.849 We didn't want to try to out-Boyle Lady Boyle immediately. 00:02:18.849 --> 00:02:23.790 Though we are now revisiting it for Deathloop: the party with all the wolf masks. 00:02:23.790 --> 00:02:27.330 And another one that was actually supposed to be part of the Clockwork Mansion 00:02:27.330 --> 00:02:29.103 was the wind corridor. 00:02:29.103 --> 00:02:34.579 You were supposed to have to travel through that in order to get to Jindosh's mansion. 00:02:34.579 --> 00:02:39.739 So first you go through these crazy factories with all these mechanics built around the 00:02:39.739 --> 00:02:43.599 wind being strong enough to actually pick you up and blow you away. 00:02:43.599 --> 00:02:45.969 But that really didn't make it very far. 00:02:45.969 --> 00:02:50.800 The scope of the game was being nailed down and we realised we had too much. 00:02:50.800 --> 00:02:55.419 So we we had to, like, let go of a few of the ideas and that was one of them. 00:02:55.419 --> 00:02:58.689 MARK: So once you have that prompt what did you do next? 00:02:58.689 --> 00:03:02.709 DANA: So then I just started prototyping. 00:03:02.709 --> 00:03:07.330 So no concept at all of what the layout would be, what what the challenges would be. 00:03:07.330 --> 00:03:11.829 The only thing we knew for sure was there was going to be the inventor, Sokolov was 00:03:11.829 --> 00:03:15.489 going to play a role, and there were these clockwork soldiers. 00:03:15.489 --> 00:03:21.269 Other than that it was just prototyping different moving rooms, different layouts. 00:03:21.269 --> 00:03:27.639 Oh, and a big emphasis from like day zero on letting the player be inside the mechanisms. 00:03:27.639 --> 00:03:33.319 It was always about this divide between the space for normal people and the space where 00:03:33.319 --> 00:03:36.319 the player could go in the guts of the building. 00:03:36.319 --> 00:03:42.940 Which was very in line with the the design philosophy from Dishonored where there was 00:03:42.940 --> 00:03:49.400 always this threshold between where normal people can go and where a supernatural assassin can go. 00:03:49.400 --> 00:03:54.008 It was always kind of a sense of a behind the scenes even from the earliest Dishonored map. 00:03:54.008 --> 00:03:56.947 But now we could take it a step even further. 00:03:57.922 --> 00:04:00.630 MARK, NARRATION: There were more concepts and prototypes for the level, 00:04:00.630 --> 00:04:02.439 but we'll come back to them later. 00:04:02.439 --> 00:04:05.000 For now, I better start the stage itself. 00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:07.230 *Creaky wooden door opens* 00:04:07.230 --> 00:04:11.260 So the mansion begins in a small, innocuous entryway. 00:04:11.260 --> 00:04:15.409 And there's not much for me to do than to pull on this strange lever… 00:04:18.809 --> 00:04:20.970 MARK: So what did you want to achieve with this first transformation? 00:04:20.970 --> 00:04:25.882 DANA: This was just to make the player, like, [—] themselves, basically. 00:04:25.882 --> 00:04:27.060 Am I allowed to say that? 00:04:27.060 --> 00:04:28.875 Should I do another take? 00:04:28.875 --> 00:04:32.539 The point of this part was to just, you know, wow the player. 00:04:32.539 --> 00:04:36.722 MARK: David, what do you remember about actually building this part of the map? 00:05:19.807 --> 00:05:22.210 MARK: It's interesting that the level begins in a neutral state. 00:05:22.210 --> 00:05:23.470 What was the thought behind that? 00:05:23.470 --> 00:05:28.300 DANA: The initial idea is the clockwork is immediately hostile. 00:05:28.300 --> 00:05:31.920 But that's such an overwhelming thing to do to the player immediately. 00:05:31.920 --> 00:05:37.419 So what I wanted to do to, like, let the player focus on the drama of the moment and give 00:05:37.419 --> 00:05:42.930 them a chance to look at the clockwork soldier was to to start it off as non-hostile. 00:05:42.930 --> 00:05:48.740 And of course the trouble was is that 80 percent of the players would just hide already. 00:05:48.740 --> 00:05:51.449 They would assume that it's hostile. 00:05:51.449 --> 00:05:56.479 We actually decided to, like, let that work. So if you do hide and the clockwork soldier 00:05:56.479 --> 00:05:59.851 doesn't see you, Jindosh will start to say like… 00:05:59.851 --> 00:06:03.717 JINDOSH: Hello? Anyone there? 00:06:03.717 --> 00:06:06.571 Could there be some misfiring of the mechanism? 00:06:06.571 --> 00:06:09.308 No one then. Strange… 00:06:09.308 --> 00:06:13.370 DANA: And then you can continue through the map in that perfect stealth run. 00:06:13.370 --> 00:06:18.040 You know, sometimes you have to see how players are actually reacting and rather than just 00:06:18.040 --> 00:06:22.740 fighting against it you, like, have to just go with it and say 'well, this is their natural 00:06:22.740 --> 00:06:23.740 reaction. 00:06:23.740 --> 00:06:26.770 What do we give them to validate this reaction?'. 00:06:26.770 --> 00:06:29.479 MARK: David, how did you go about building the atrium? 00:07:09.043 --> 00:07:12.501 MARK: Now we get to meet Jindosh. What can you tell me about this scene? 00:07:12.501 --> 00:07:16.470 DANA: Well this scene where you're speaking to him was something we wanted to do more 00:07:16.470 --> 00:07:23.850 of after Dishonored 1, where the player would sometimes just see the antagonist of the level 00:07:23.850 --> 00:07:29.689 very briefly, or sometimes they would be dead before you even realised that you had met them. 00:07:29.689 --> 00:07:36.099 So we looked for many opportunities in Dishonored 2 to let the player meet the antagonists early, 00:07:36.099 --> 00:07:40.409 in a context where you couldn't necessarily engage with them. 00:07:40.409 --> 00:07:44.150 So we could do more with presenting their character. 00:07:44.150 --> 00:07:49.610 JINDOSH: I'd assume my involvement with the Duke brought you to my door. 00:07:49.610 --> 00:07:55.500 Or maybe you're after washed up Anton Sokolov, comfortably residing in the assessment chamber? 00:07:55.500 --> 00:07:59.039 MARK: Jindosh also taunts you over the loudspeaker throughout the level. 00:07:59.039 --> 00:08:01.090 I'm sensing maybe like a SHODAN influence? 00:08:01.090 --> 00:08:03.689 DANA: Oh one thousand percent. 00:08:03.689 --> 00:08:08.029 That's just the way I talked about it the entire time - it was Jindosh's SHODAN lines. 00:08:08.029 --> 00:08:11.340 MARK: What can you tell me about designing the clockwork soldiers? 00:08:11.340 --> 00:08:17.439 DANA: The reason the whole level exists is because we want non-human enemies so players 00:08:17.439 --> 00:08:24.300 have more opportunity to use their tools without having to worry about engaging with the chaos system. 00:08:24.300 --> 00:08:27.120 So now you can let loose on these mechanical creatures. 00:08:27.120 --> 00:08:31.400 One of the things that was a result of seeing how they actually worked in the map was the 00:08:31.400 --> 00:08:36.900 decision to make there be two types, because they were just such a difficult enemy there 00:08:36.900 --> 00:08:40.580 was no difficulty gradient in the map. 00:08:40.580 --> 00:08:45.360 Immediately you were super overwhelmed by this insurmountable enemy who could see behind it, 00:08:45.360 --> 00:08:47.290 it could attack in all directions. 00:08:47.290 --> 00:08:53.160 I gave a ton of feedback to the teams in charge of that to say I would really like something 00:08:53.160 --> 00:08:59.510 a bit easier so I can create a few encounters early on that are a bit less intimidating, 00:08:59.510 --> 00:09:01.480 get the player used to fighting them. 00:09:01.480 --> 00:09:05.280 So this one, for example, is the simpler version. 00:09:05.280 --> 00:09:09.360 MARK: I like how these two characters give you some clues about dealing with the clockwork 00:09:09.360 --> 00:09:10.440 soldiers through their dialogue… 00:09:10.440 --> 00:09:15.960 DANA: We have to consider that some players are going to go very slowly and be very observant 00:09:15.960 --> 00:09:18.620 and they're going to read every bit of information. 00:09:18.620 --> 00:09:23.600 And we want them to feel like that caution is rewarded. 00:09:23.600 --> 00:09:26.380 GUARD: It'll wake up on its own if a fight breaks out. 00:09:26.380 --> 00:09:28.070 They're blind but they can still hear. 00:09:28.070 --> 00:09:32.270 DANA: But the other player who just wants to skip all that and dig right in and just 00:09:32.270 --> 00:09:34.760 engage immediately… they're going to learn by doing. 00:09:34.760 --> 00:09:40.260 The clockwork soldiers' animations will give them different cues and the audio cues from 00:09:40.260 --> 00:09:41.260 the way it's behaving. 00:09:41.260 --> 00:09:46.630 So both players wind up with the same information but they both got it in a way that was more 00:09:46.630 --> 00:09:48.500 in line with how they want to play. 00:09:49.916 --> 00:09:54.660 MARK, NARRATION: After escaping from Jindosh's trap, we find ourselves in the next part of 00:09:54.660 --> 00:09:59.080 the mansion - the lavish and luxurious visitor's area. 00:09:59.080 --> 00:10:05.980 The main room is a giant space with a glass floor, entertainment on demand, and two huge 00:10:05.980 --> 00:10:10.710 waterfalls that drop into turbines and provide power for the mansion. 00:10:10.710 --> 00:10:15.540 So far we've been lead through the house by Jindosh's directions and the game's waypoints 00:10:15.540 --> 00:10:18.270 - but now the level opens up. 00:10:18.270 --> 00:10:23.000 There's a way forward but it's blocked by an electrifying arc pylon, and there are rooms 00:10:23.000 --> 00:10:25.970 to explore on both the left and right. 00:10:25.970 --> 00:10:30.580 So I asked Dana if this was supposed to be the moment where the player was left to figure 00:10:30.580 --> 00:10:32.370 things out for themselves. 00:10:32.370 --> 00:10:34.820 DANA: Yes that's basically it. 00:10:34.820 --> 00:10:40.820 This is really the moment where the level now starts to open up and it's really driven 00:10:40.820 --> 00:10:44.500 by your own curiosity and your own observation. 00:10:44.500 --> 00:10:48.800 What you notice completely dictates what your goals are now. 00:10:48.800 --> 00:10:54.220 If you just see the elevator then now it's a vignette about getting past the arc pylon. 00:10:54.220 --> 00:10:57.720 But maybe you notice that one of the gratings… there's a hole in that. 00:10:57.720 --> 00:11:01.570 So maybe that's the thing you notice and now your goal is 'I want to get through there'. 00:11:01.570 --> 00:11:05.920 Or maybe you've already realised that those windows are all openable and you can get behind 00:11:05.920 --> 00:11:06.920 the scenes. 00:11:06.920 --> 00:11:12.161 It's really just about what you've noticed at this point and the only place where you're 00:11:12.161 --> 00:11:15.980 fully blocked here is if you're just not taking in anything. 00:11:15.980 --> 00:11:20.100 So the game really forces you to look around and notice all these different things. 00:11:20.100 --> 00:11:21.890 MARK: There's these characters here: the buyers. 00:11:21.890 --> 00:11:23.100 Why did you include them? 00:11:23.100 --> 00:11:25.660 DANA: That was part of the the world building. 00:11:25.660 --> 00:11:29.551 Jindosh is very showy and he's kind of a capitalist. 00:11:29.551 --> 00:11:32.870 You know, he wants to sell his work, he's in it for the money - which we eventually 00:11:32.870 --> 00:11:38.010 got to revisit in Death of the Outsider where we actually showed that someone had bought 00:11:38.010 --> 00:11:40.510 some of the clockwork soldiers and you see them in the bank. 00:11:40.510 --> 00:11:48.750 So he has this very opulent place, he wants people to come to him to be awed by his creations 00:11:48.750 --> 00:11:50.060 and then buy them. 00:11:50.060 --> 00:11:52.250 This is an example of two buyers. 00:11:52.250 --> 00:11:56.920 You know, Jindosh like welcomed them in just like he had welcomed you in. 00:11:56.920 --> 00:11:59.010 They're escorted into this room. 00:11:59.010 --> 00:12:03.160 But then Emily arrives and Jindosh just completely forgets about them! 00:12:03.160 --> 00:12:06.080 MARK: One of my favourite things about the level is being able to slip through the walls 00:12:06.080 --> 00:12:07.170 during a transformation. 00:12:07.170 --> 00:12:12.890 DANA: Yeah, like… it was always imagined that way because all the prototypes were built 00:12:12.890 --> 00:12:19.070 around the idea that it's not only about the two configurations - it's about all the possibilities 00:12:19.070 --> 00:12:21.240 that happen during the transition. 00:12:21.240 --> 00:12:22.950 That's why they all happen so slowly. 00:12:23.883 --> 00:12:28.270 MARK, NARRATION: Beneath the lavish visitor's area, deep within the mansion's underbelly, 00:12:28.270 --> 00:12:31.010 is a more utilitarian zone. 00:12:31.010 --> 00:12:32.890 Here you'll find a secret kitchen, 00:12:32.890 --> 00:12:37.750 a pair of guards to scrap with, and the place where Jindosh is keeping Sokolov. 00:12:37.750 --> 00:12:44.030 But first, I wanted to ask about this familiar looking head that's being used for target practice. 00:12:44.030 --> 00:12:49.100 Was it a reference to the earlier version of the clockwork soldiers, as seen in the game's 00:12:49.100 --> 00:12:50.400 first trailers? 00:12:50.400 --> 00:12:55.000 DANA: Yes. Actually, for a long time that's how they looked in the game. 00:12:55.000 --> 00:12:59.380 Feedback was that they weren't intimidating enough. 00:12:59.380 --> 00:13:04.570 But you get feedback from all sorts of sources and when they start to line up you start to 00:13:04.570 --> 00:13:07.820 see a trend - which is the clockwork soldiers look goofy. 00:13:07.820 --> 00:13:10.580 So you change it. 00:13:10.580 --> 00:13:15.200 But thankfully we got a second chance with those heads again in Death of the Outsider. 00:13:15.200 --> 00:13:17.790 MARK: So tell me about the assessment chamber. 00:13:17.790 --> 00:13:23.170 DANA: When we started I was doing all these prototypes and what was to be the assessment 00:13:23.170 --> 00:13:25.990 chamber was originally like half of the entire map. 00:13:25.990 --> 00:13:27.410 It was originally enormous. 00:13:27.410 --> 00:13:34.760 And the original concept was that Jindosh was not just testing their basic locomotion 00:13:34.760 --> 00:13:40.430 and response to sight and sound, but he was like trying to see if he had invented ethics. 00:13:40.430 --> 00:13:45.390 So he would put the clockwork soldiers in all these ethical situations where you have 00:13:45.390 --> 00:13:51.110 an arbitrary goal, and the easy way to achieve the goal involved somebody dying. 00:13:51.110 --> 00:13:55.240 And of course the difficult solution would allow you to spare them. 00:13:55.240 --> 00:13:58.250 This was very on the nose for the game we were making. 00:13:58.250 --> 00:14:03.800 But you had to go through this whole very long obstacle course to finally reach Sokolov. 00:14:03.800 --> 00:14:11.220 And in the end we made the most conservative version of this that still achieves the original 00:14:11.220 --> 00:14:16.400 goal: which is that: where would Jindosh put Sokolov in his house? 00:14:16.400 --> 00:14:19.200 Because he doesn't have a jail cell. So where would he go? 00:14:19.200 --> 00:14:22.330 Well he puts him in the… we called it the rat maze, the new version. 00:14:22.330 --> 00:14:25.850 Like a little obstacle course for the the clockwork soldier. 00:14:25.850 --> 00:14:28.020 MARK: How else did the level change during development? 00:14:28.020 --> 00:14:33.110 DANA: This iteration of the design, the idea was that the place was going to be just an 00:14:33.110 --> 00:14:34.230 impossible maze. 00:14:34.230 --> 00:14:40.250 There was no way that you could like navigate it without help so there was going to be like 00:14:40.250 --> 00:14:44.110 these panels that you could tell the house where are you trying to go. 00:14:44.110 --> 00:14:45.990 I'm glad we did not go in this direction. 00:14:45.990 --> 00:14:50.321 I think what we went with for, like, letting the player understand it… like this is a 00:14:50.321 --> 00:14:52.130 space that I can have mastery of. 00:14:52.130 --> 00:14:58.800 I'm using these transformations deliberately to achieve a goal and it is kind of the opposite 00:14:58.800 --> 00:15:03.810 of what that early attempt was, which was just maze-like. 00:15:03.810 --> 00:15:08.010 Achieving mastery there is not possible, because the level's antagonistic towards you. 00:15:08.010 --> 00:15:12.780 In the final version the level is part of your toolset at one point. 00:15:12.780 --> 00:15:14.180 MARK: Okay, I've got Sokolov. 00:15:14.180 --> 00:15:16.110 Gonna have to carry him all the way back to the entrance. 00:15:16.110 --> 00:15:23.260 DANA: I really wanted there to be a way for you to get Sokolov out without exiting yourself, 00:15:23.260 --> 00:15:30.010 because I didn't think it was fun to have to go all the way back out of the map carrying 00:15:30.010 --> 00:15:32.000 him and keeping him alive. 00:15:32.000 --> 00:15:36.920 So I created all of these different routes and methods. 00:15:36.920 --> 00:15:43.180 At one point I imagined there was a clockwork soldier delivery mechanism and it was basically 00:15:43.180 --> 00:15:48.060 like a pneumatic tube that Jindosh would load the clockwork soldiers in and would shoot 00:15:48.060 --> 00:15:51.060 them down this gigantic pipe into the city. 00:15:51.060 --> 00:15:54.360 And you could put Sokolov into one of those and just shoot him out. 00:15:54.360 --> 00:15:59.920 But we had so many budget constraints on this map and that was just way out of scope. 00:15:59.920 --> 00:16:04.170 So in the end the solution was just to make Sokolov really resistant to damage. 00:16:04.170 --> 00:16:07.380 MARK: But it is nice that the level changes after you grab Sokolov. 00:16:07.380 --> 00:16:11.320 DANA: Yeah, like, there's two changes that happen - if you do Sokolov first. 00:16:11.320 --> 00:16:15.360 So the guards appear from the elevator, and there's other clockwork soldiers that are 00:16:15.360 --> 00:16:18.500 stowed away in the walls and those will have emerged. 00:16:18.500 --> 00:16:23.510 So we wanted the player's experience to be a bit different if you did go after Sokolov 00:16:23.510 --> 00:16:27.720 first because Jindosh is still alive and observing and reacting. 00:16:27.720 --> 00:16:30.720 And that's a bit of the SHODAN-ness coming into play here. 00:16:30.720 --> 00:16:33.070 MARK: Do you have, like, an intended order for the level? 00:16:33.070 --> 00:16:35.680 You know, Sokolov first or Jindosh first? 00:16:35.680 --> 00:16:43.760 DANA: For 99.9… how many other nines you need, the layout is designed so that what 00:16:43.760 --> 00:16:50.220 you do first is purely based on what you want to do first or just like where your curiosity 00:16:50.220 --> 00:16:51.630 takes you. 00:16:51.630 --> 00:16:56.380 For speedrunners: definitely Jindosh first, Sokolov second. 00:16:56.380 --> 00:16:59.400 That's that's the point zero zero zero one percent. 00:16:59.400 --> 00:17:04.589 That's just logical for speed running because you need to take Sokolov to the exit therefore 00:17:04.589 --> 00:17:06.090 you're going to do Sokolov last. 00:17:06.090 --> 00:17:11.990 So there were a lot of decisions built around 'how are speedrunner is going to interact 00:17:11.990 --> 00:17:13.319 with this map?'. 00:17:15.000 --> 00:17:19.300 MARK, NARRATION: With Sokolov safe, it’s time to face down Jindosh himself. 00:17:19.300 --> 00:17:22.190 And so I made my way to his private chambers. 00:17:22.190 --> 00:17:27.670 Here, you'll find two of the most complex areas in the level: a rotating bedroom that 00:17:27.670 --> 00:17:33.030 can be twisted into dozens of different combinations, and a laboratory where different research 00:17:33.030 --> 00:17:36.550 stations can be dragged up from a storage area down below. 00:17:36.550 --> 00:17:41.040 But… there are so many routes you can take to get here, and that's because the 00:17:41.040 --> 00:17:44.540 stage is so incredibly dense and interconnected. 00:17:44.540 --> 00:17:47.554 I wanted to know how Arkane managed to make 00:17:47.554 --> 00:17:52.904 such a complex area feel even remotely understandable for players. 00:17:52.904 --> 00:17:58.790 DANA: A rule of thumb there is never have more than three ways in and out of a room. 00:17:58.790 --> 00:18:01.130 But that's excluding special ways. 00:18:01.130 --> 00:18:07.640 But the other thing we did with the layout, as far as like keeping it approachable, is 00:18:07.640 --> 00:18:12.487 the building is divided very cleanly into four sections 00:18:12.487 --> 00:18:15.887 (five sections if you count the assessment chamber area), 00:18:15.887 --> 00:18:20.443 and each of those areas have very strong thresholds disconnecting them. 00:18:20.443 --> 00:18:24.210 So you know when you're moving from one zone to the next, so now you can kind of, like, 00:18:24.210 --> 00:18:25.210 flush your RAM. 00:18:25.210 --> 00:18:28.990 We actually we call that the door effect: every time the player goes through a door 00:18:28.990 --> 00:18:32.880 you can let them forget about what was behind them and let them process what's in front 00:18:32.880 --> 00:18:33.880 of them. 00:18:33.880 --> 00:18:35.650 MARK: So this is Jindosh's bedroom, how was this built? 00:18:35.650 --> 00:18:40.430 DANA: It was built around this idea of 'it's three rooms, there's a rotating part in the 00:18:40.430 --> 00:18:44.270 centre, each room has two configurations'. 00:18:44.270 --> 00:18:50.679 So you wind up with this very complex space of multi-usage rooms. 00:18:50.679 --> 00:18:56.020 For example, there was going to be the bedroom and then he can roll out of bed, pull the 00:18:56.020 --> 00:18:59.570 lever, wait three seconds, turn around, and his bathtub would be right there. 00:18:59.570 --> 00:19:02.685 That was like the seed that grew into this. 00:19:02.685 --> 00:19:04.180 That was my starting point. 00:19:04.180 --> 00:19:11.920 What are the whims of this person and what would he find comfortable or comforting? 00:19:11.920 --> 00:19:15.750 This room is also where we we started to have fun with hidden rooms. 00:19:15.750 --> 00:19:21.620 For the most part the mechanisms were either what's happening in the space and what's behind 00:19:21.620 --> 00:19:26.030 the scenes. But in this case we started to have little hidden closets. 00:19:26.030 --> 00:19:32.320 So there's two hidden chambers here that are really tricky to get - you have to be really 00:19:32.320 --> 00:19:34.500 paying attention to how everything is moving. 00:19:34.500 --> 00:19:37.520 MARK: This mechanism in the lab is just crazy. 00:19:37.520 --> 00:19:42.460 Why was it so important to make everything work so realistically when a lot of players 00:19:42.460 --> 00:19:44.010 may never even notice it? 00:19:44.010 --> 00:19:51.020 DANA: Even if a player isn't consciously aware of everything that's happening it all soaks in. 00:19:51.020 --> 00:19:55.450 I feel like it all like feeds little by little the overall feeling. 00:19:55.450 --> 00:20:00.010 And also we, just, were really excited and really passionate about it. 00:20:00.010 --> 00:20:05.540 So, like, the whole team, the whole studio is working on Dishonored 2 - but inside that 00:20:05.540 --> 00:20:08.570 there's two like almost indie teams. 00:20:08.570 --> 00:20:13.020 One of them is working on Crack in the Slab and then there was team Clockwork Mansion. 00:20:13.020 --> 00:20:18.090 We constantly were just taking that little extra step to make sure that everything was just right. 00:20:18.090 --> 00:20:22.350 MARK: I feel like the non-lethal solution for dealing with Jindosh is pretty dark! 00:20:22.350 --> 00:20:24.830 DANA: That came from creative direction. 00:20:24.830 --> 00:20:30.250 The request was the solution to Jindosh is to use this electroshock treatment to make 00:20:30.250 --> 00:20:33.300 him no longer able to invent things. 00:20:33.300 --> 00:20:35.680 I wanted a third way. 00:20:35.680 --> 00:20:40.340 I really wanted you to be able to just leave with Sokolov and leave Jindosh alone. 00:20:40.340 --> 00:20:46.791 I felt like that was a choice that made sense for the players motivation 00:20:46.791 --> 00:20:49.180 and even Emily's motivation. 00:20:49.180 --> 00:20:54.020 Like, you're not deciding to not engage with the content - the content is in front of you 00:20:54.020 --> 00:20:57.190 and you're making the choice to not do the thing. 00:20:57.190 --> 00:21:00.570 That's as much of a choice as doing the thing. 00:21:00.570 --> 00:21:05.040 But the reason why we couldn't do the third option of leaving him alone was every time 00:21:05.040 --> 00:21:07.550 you have a decision like that, there's budgets everywhere. 00:21:07.550 --> 00:21:12.630 So in this case it was a voice acting budget: all of the different outcomes have to be supported 00:21:12.630 --> 00:21:19.350 later on in the game and as soon as we then had to branch into three the the cost of recording 00:21:19.350 --> 00:21:23.670 for each of those different outcomes… like between The Outsider commenting on what you've 00:21:23.670 --> 00:21:29.700 done or recordings at the Duke's palace of Jindosh's fate… it was decided that, no we 00:21:29.700 --> 00:21:33.030 have to stick to two. You either kill him or you use the electroshock. 00:21:33.030 --> 00:21:36.880 MARK: Would you have minded that players would completely skip a lot of content? 00:21:36.880 --> 00:21:42.320 DANA: This is the game where you can skip an entire level if you do a puzzle so I would 00:21:42.320 --> 00:21:47.309 say we're very firmly in the camp of let the player find their own way through the map. 00:21:47.309 --> 00:21:52.780 And if that means missing half the content then that's how they chose to engage with 00:21:52.780 --> 00:21:53.780 the content. 00:21:54.589 --> 00:21:56.840 MARK, NARRATION: And so there we have it. 00:21:56.840 --> 00:22:02.460 The Clockwork Mansion was a simple idea, that truly came to life through careful planning, 00:22:02.460 --> 00:22:05.510 clever prototypes, and endless iterations. 00:22:05.510 --> 00:22:11.580 There were many roadblocks along the way - like limited budgets and technical constraints. 00:22:11.580 --> 00:22:15.940 Rotating walls, for example, were not going to play nicely with AI pathfinding. 00:22:15.940 --> 00:22:22.220 But clever workarounds, precision cutting, and the hard work of a huge team of collaborators 00:22:22.220 --> 00:22:27.600 meant the level never felt compromised - or anything less than one of the most memorable 00:22:27.600 --> 00:22:30.809 stages from the last few years. 00:22:30.809 --> 00:22:33.784 My thanks to Dana and David for their time and transparency. 00:22:33.784 --> 00:22:36.991 A lightly edited version of our entire 2 hour 00:22:36.991 --> 00:22:42.740 Zoom call is available to everyone who supports GMTK over on Patreon. 00:22:42.740 --> 00:22:47.210 And speaking of supporting the show - if you like what you just saw and want to show your 00:22:47.210 --> 00:22:50.760 appreciation, please check out this quick YouTube ad break. 00:22:50.760 --> 00:22:53.870 Stick around afterwards for an indie game recommendation. 00:22:55.000 --> 00:23:02.040 My indie game recommendation this time is I Am Dead - an adorable afterlife adventure 00:23:02.040 --> 00:23:06.710 about phasing through objects to find treasured items and memories. 00:23:06.710 --> 00:23:12.190 It's a lightweight, noodley puzzle game with a winning art style, a heartfelt storyline, 00:23:12.190 --> 00:23:17.490 and a unique mechanic that eagerly encourages poking and prodding at everything you see. 00:23:17.490 --> 00:23:21.020 I Am Dead is out now on Switch and Steam.