Dishonored dev: 'We never want you to feel too powerful'

Dishonored's masked hero Corvo comes packing a ton of special powers and equipment. In a game where stealth and caution are rewarded, you may thing that these skills make guards easy to kill or bypass.

Think again, says Arkane.

Speaking with Joystiq, Arkane's co-creative director Raphael Colantonio explained, "It was a hard paradox for us to get right in the game design, because we wanted to give you very strong powers, to make you really a badass, but at the same time we didn't want the game to be too easy."

"So it took awhile to get it right" Colantonio added, "and some of it is just obvious tuning. Every power has a duration, cost of mana, and some other tunable properties. So even if your power is incredibly strong, you can mitigate it by saying 'Well, it only lasts three seconds.'"

Arkane's Ricardo Bare added, "We're always in a discussion about where the line is. Should we move it back a little bit toward constraining the player, or should we go ahead and let the player do this? And as much as possible we try to say 'yes' to the player and enable the cool combinations and powers that they put together."

Do you like to feel overpowered in games or do you relish a challenge? Let us know below.