That the closest touchstone for Dishonored should be BioShock, a game from 2007, speaks volumes to the stagnating creativity of video games. As celebrated art maestro Viktor Antonov put it to Eurogamer: "It's been a poor, poor five years for fiction in the video game industry." And he should know - he created Half-Life 2's iconic City 17, not to mention he's now making Dishonored.

"There have been too many sequels, and too many established IPs that have been ruling the market. And a lot of them are war games. And they're great projects and great entertainment, but there's a lack of variety today," he told us, perfectly framed by his trench coat, thick glasses, stylishly messy centre parting, measured Bulgarian tone and pinned leather sofa backdrop.

"So, when you step out of this established genre, people cannot grasp it, or the press tries to find a match.

"There's a place for thousands of different sub-genres and genres. Imagine the times when you were in the '40s and there were Westerns in Hollywood cinema: there were so many of them that none will be compared with another one, because there was a genre.

"We're doing a historical piece, a retro-futuristic piece, which has pretty much nothing to do with BioShock except for the fact that it doesn't take place in the far future, but has references to the past. And, unfortunately, BioShock and Dishonored are the only two games that go into that fiction for the past - how many years?

"So, lack of variety in what's in the market leads to associations like this. There should be more historical realistic worlds out there. And too bad there are not; I was expecting there to be 20 games like this."

BioShock Infinite and Dishonored were on course for an October 2012 clash until BioShock Infinite was delayed. "I didn't have any thoughts about that," Antonov shrugged. "I always love a good competition, art wise, and I'm very confident about the qualities of Dishonored, but I have no joy or sadness about this specific date."

"There should be more historical realistic worlds out there. And too bad there are not; I was expecting there to be 20 games like this." Viktor Antonov, co-creator, Dishonored

Formally, Antonov is the visual design director for Bethesda's owner, Zenimax, and he makes sure "the level of visual design and fiction" coming out of studios like id Software, Bethesda Game Studios and Arkane is "the highest possible".

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"I'm not a harsh critic of games," Antonov insisted. "I'm extremely happy of where technology has gone. But artists and art directors should make their own life a little bit harder by pushing management to take more artistic risks, and use the technology to a better, higher level. That's what I've been doing and suffering by - I've been spending as much time creating, as convincing the people who are financing games how important it is.

"We were always waiting for the next generation of great worlds or great graphics. Well, great graphics came; the worlds that came with these graphics are not up to the level of the graphics.

"Graphics used to be an excuse 10 years ago, that we can't make great worlds. Right now, we have a lot of New Yorks, we have a lot of war games. Please everybody," he pleaded, "let's do more science-fiction and more crazy worlds out there."

Antonov, ideally, would see games separate back into genres and away from the trend of fusing disciplines. "Because now a game is trying to pack too many games - narration, music, contemplation, shooting - that they lose the experience," he observed.

"Games should sort of split up and specialise and assume that there's such a thing as genre, and they shouldn't try to please everybody at the same time and try to make easy, diluted projects. Let's go for intensity and quality.

"Dishonored is one of these things that is stepping back into the side a little bit, and let's make a good stealth game with a hardcore, dark world, and go into detail."

(Antonov would also like to see "a beautiful revival of hardcore shooters". "Because," he explained, "it's a genre and every genre has to live, and that's the genre that created, really, video gaming and put it on a pedestal. Like Tarantino would embrace pulp and B-movies, shooters should be absolutely proud to be what they are, and go for all the adrenaline and spectacle they can.")