The artistic journey behind making Dustborn's dystopian, stylised American roadtrip

Dustborn art; game concept art
(Image credit: Quantic Dream)

Dustborn is a game about disinformation and very modern problems set in an alternate US where a group of misfits flee the police after stealing an 'important package'. A glimpse at social media suggests many people have already made up their minds about a game where you can weaponise language to 'cancel' and 'trigger' people into doing your bidding. It's on the nose for sure.

Made in Unity, Dustborn is also smart, satirically astute and weird in all the right ways, not least the 'living comic' art style and stylisation that brings to life the game's mix of complex characters, travelling undercover as a touring punk-rock band, and sand-swept Californian-like, Western-influenced landscapes.

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Editor, Digital Arts & 3D

Ian Dean is Editor, Digital Arts & 3D at Creative Bloq, and the former editor of many leading magazines. These titles included ImagineFX, 3D World and video game titles Play and Official PlayStation Magazine. Ian launched Xbox magazine X360 and edited PlayStation World. For Creative Bloq, Ian combines his experiences to bring the latest news on digital art, VFX and video games and tech, and in his spare time he doodles in Procreate, ArtRage, and Rebelle while finding time to play Xbox and PS5.

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