Artist Viktor Antonov has gone. We Remember the Creative Path of the Author of the Unique Style of Half-Life 2 and Dishonored

On February 16, 2025, Bulgarian artist Viktor Antonov passed away. It was thanks to him that City 17 from Half-Life 2 subtly resembles cities in Russia and Eastern Europe. But this is far from the only work of the designer. Our article is dedicated to his contribution to the gaming industry.

Viktor Antonov is a native of Bulgaria. He was born in 1972, but in 1987 he left for France, and then for the United States. There he received an education and a degree in industrial design.

The guy got into the gaming industry in 1996, when he was 24 years old. His first place of work was the Xatrix Entertainment studio. Antonov managed to work on the company's early projects. Among them is Redneck Rampage, a parody shooter about alien landings. Its main difference from other games on the Build Engine is toilet humor and flat jokes. At the same time, the game has high-quality game mechanics for its time. For example, when shooting from an AK-47, you had to take into account the recoil.

Like Duke Nukem 3D, Redneck Rampage boasts a variety of levels. Players will find the American outback with cowsheds and rural toilets, warehouses with trucks and pickups, meat processing plants, huge dams and creepy mansions. Moreover, each location is well-designed and looks authentic, especially for 1997. This is largely due to the artists, including Victor.

Also worth mentioning is the brutal shooter about the world of crime Kingpin: Life of Crime, which is known in Russia as "Bro: Life of Crime". The original name may evoke associations with a Marvel villain, but this game has no connection with comics. Its action takes place in an unusual world that combines modern technology and art deco of the 30s, which you could see in the first BioShock. We owe this unique art style to Antonov.

Later, the Xatrix Entertainment studio would be renamed Gray Matter Interactive. In 2001, its most famous game would be released — Return to Castle Wolfenstein. But the hero of our article has nothing to do with it. By that time, he had gotten a job at Valve, which was working on the sequel to Half-Life.

Our website has a large article, which is dedicated to the 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2. Everything related to the project is analyzed there. Here we want to focus on the artistic design of the game, which was responsible for Viktor Antonov.

Half-Life 2 was noticeably different in appearance from the first part. Instead of huge laboratories and the parallel world of Xen, we were met with painfully familiar panel houses and sea coasts with sandy beaches. On the streets and empty roads, we came across car bodies that were produced in the USSR, Czechoslovakia and the GDR. After the release, the developers confirmed that the main story takes place in Eastern Europe. For players from the USA, who were the main target audience of the second Half-Life, such scenery looks exotic.

In addition, thousands of gray and nondescript "Khrushchevkas", which are similar to each other, are closely associated with totalitarianism in the minds of many people. And it is this theme that permeates the plot of the game. Moreover, such scenery is combined with alien technologies, from striders and attack aircraft to a huge citadel in the city center. It turns out to be a kind of retrofuturism, and this effect has only intensified over the past years. For example, today pot-bellied monitors seem like a legacy of the past, but in the early 2000s they were everywhere.

Antonov should be thanked not only for the locations of Half-Life 2, but also for the appearance of the Alliance technologies. In addition to the main game, he worked on the additional level Lost Coast, which was supposed to be in the Highway 17 chapter, but was ultimately cut.

He also acted as an artist for Counter-Strike: Source. But there, the main task of the developers was to transfer the classic maps from version 1.6 to the new engine. And there was nothing outstanding in the design of local locations.

In 2005, Victor left Valve and returned to Paris, and in 2006 founded The Building Studios. While many famous developers, such as John Romero and Ken Levine created their studios to make games, Antonov focused his company on providing design and consulting services. And we are talking not only about games, but also about films. One of his works is the 2006 cartoon Renaissance, which combined noir and cyberpunk. The animation was created using motion capture technology, and the main role was played by Daniel Craig.

Of the gaming companies, Victor worked most closely with Arkane Studios. He participated in the creation of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic and the cancelled project Crossing, and also consulted the developers of Prey (2017). But in the case of the first Dishonored, his role is much higher — Antonov was engaged in the design of locations. The game is mistakenly classified as steampunk, but this is a misconception, because the main source of energy in this universe is not steam, but whale fat. It was actually used actively until the second half of the 19th century. The game's creators suggested what the world of the future would look like if blubber had not been replaced by oil, as it happened in reality.

The appearance of the city of Dunwall is reminiscent of Victorian England with its characteristic architecture and factories from the Industrial Revolution. These characteristic features of the 1800s are combined with the Edwardian style and art deco, which became widespread in the 20th century. And the metal structures look completely alien. Note that here we are talking about a deliberate combination of different elements that create a unique setting. If you draw parallels between Half-Life 2 and Dishonored, you will find many similarities. A striking example is the Dunwall Tower, which resembles the Combine Citadel from City 17.

The second part of Dishonored was created without Antonov's direct participation — he limited himself to the role of a consultant. It was important for the developers to preserve the visual style of the first part so that the sequel would be perceived as a logical continuation of the 2012 original.

In addition to Arkane, Victor also collaborated with other divisions of the publisher ZeniMax Media. For example, he consulted for the creators of Doom (2016), Wolfenstein: The New Order and Fallout 4, and also acted as a visual designer for the card game The Elder Scrolls: Legends — Heroes of Skyrim and the cancelled free-to-play shooter Battlecry.

In 2022, Antonov, together with Fuad Kuliev, Dmitro Kostukevich and Boris Nikolaev, founded the Eschatology Entertainment studio. It is known that it is working on a hardcore shooter for PC and consoles with a focus on story mode.

We learned about Viktor's passing from Marc Laidlaw. He wrote the scripts for all the games in the Half-Life series, except for the add-ons Opposing Force and Blue Shift for the first part. Apparently, the writer kept in touch with Antonov even after he left Valve. The cause of death is currently unknown. The artist was 53 years old.

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Do you remember Viktor Antonov's style? Or have you not played the games he contributed to? Share your opinions in the comments!