Dishonored's Thief-like stealth system previously had players scurrying around in the dark, but the mechanic was killed in favor of realism, reports Eurogamer.

Lead level designer Christophe Carrier spoke with Eurogamer on the necessity of lighting and why the mechanic doesn't fit.

"In Thief the light is very important," said Carrier. "At the beginning we tried to be in the same mood: use the light, use the shadows."

"But we realized that when you're standing in front of an NPC like this [hand in front of face] it's not realistic—we must admit that. In the real world it's not like this."

"As we are a bit perfectionist, we wanted it to work as in Thief and very realistically. With these two notions we got crazy and decided to eliminate the light parameters, because it was too difficult to have both."

Most light sources in the game remain untouchable. Although part of this reasoning falls back to the team's decision, it also has to do with the game's visuals. According to Carrier, there's little point in covering up the game's detailed world.

"It was kind of contradictory to put some pitch black areas where you couldn't see well," said Carrier.

Dishonored releases for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC on October 9th in North America, followed by subsequent releases in Australia, Japan, and Europe.