At the time that was really eye-opening for me.” “I really had a creative awakening working at that studio – whose strengths were definitely more story and creative. “Working at Arkane changed me completely,” he says.
Though most famous now for its meaty stealth-action adventure Dishonored, in the summer of 2007, his team was working in secret on a never-to-be-finished episode of the grandaddy of dystopian sci-fi, Half-Life – a contract job for the now world-bestriding Valve Corporation. Not a surprise considering Provost’s past, which includes a formative stint at French developer Arkane Studios. We’re not a black and white studio – or at least we’ve tried not to be. I don’t try to make a big moral, social, ‘Oh you shouldn’t take drugs’ statement, because I think the reality is much less clear and that makes that topic a lot more interesting to me. “And that plays into a lot of social trends that are quite current.
“The basis of what I see as dystopia is the idea that people think that the society is actually utopian whereas the reality of it underneath the hood is a lot darker,” he says. Provost is clearly trying to say something about us, and none of it good. Everything about the world Provost and his team have conjured is disturbing, more so because of the collective Joy-induced hallucination that makes rotten apples seem ripe, dead rats appear as children’s candy-filled pinatas and its shabby, broken down town conjure the existential horror of a post-apocalyptic theme park – all bright paint, masks and lights that crumble to the touch as you make your way out. The Fab Four wouldn’t survive the first verse of “Revolution” – any sign of social criticism and they’d be labeled as “downers” (the name given to those off their meds) – and clubbed to the ground by an angry mob.
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