ERIKSHOLM: THE STOLEN DREAM

Making the most of police incompetence

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One thing that makes stealth a little easier in Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream is that the patrolling guards don’t always get on well. Hiding behind a stack of boxes, vulnerable protagonist Hanna is on the run from an authoritarian police force, and three of its members block the path ahead. But one, an officer, bullies the others for a cigarette then tells them to get lost so he can enjoy his smoke in peace. That’s better: Hanna can incapacitate the lone individual and pull his unconscious frame into a quiet alcove. And when his disgruntled colleagues come looking for him, they won’t look very hard.

“We wanted this curated experience where the guards are characters and they have things to say and reactions that are related to the situation,” explains Eriksholm’s creative director, Anders Hejdenberg. “And you get [the impression] these aren’t the brightest ones.” That’s fortunate for Hanna, after the police turn up at her house looking for her brother, Herman. Realising he isn’t present, they decide to take her in for “questioning”, which clearly entails something more sinister. She gives them the slip and now they’re searching for her all over town.

It helps that you’re on home turf. Hanna creeps across the roofs of Eriksholm’s Green Rock district, a slum the cops are reluctant to enter. The brick buildings — based on early 20th-century Scandinavian architecture, which could pass for Victorian Britain — are linked by a network of planks, most likely placed to facilitate contraband trafficking, and useful for evading the authorities. Much of the opening act takes place up here. “I really loved sitting on rooftops and strategising in Dishonored,” Hejdenberg says, “but whenever I dropped down on the ground, I didn’t know what I was doing. So why not make the whole game from the rooftops?”