The French developer Arkane Studios has had a long history in the game industry. Originally founded in 1999 by Raphael Colantonio and a number of former Electronic Arts employees. Due to what Colantonio believed to be a greater shift towards sports titles at EA, Colantonio departed EA and co-founded Arkane Studios with eleven others. The studio’s first goal was to create another sequel to Ultima Underworld, though the rights were held by EA, who prevented the studio from moving forward with that idea.
While the original plans may not quite have gone as Colantonio had hoped right out of the gates, Arkane has gone on to experience a ton of success especially in the action-adventure genre. Thanks to the company’s early work, a second studio opened in Austin, Texas due to cheaper production costs and stronger economic benefits. That founding would have a profound effect on the studio and it’s future creations as well as leading to being acquired by Bethesda Softworks in 2010.
Later this year, Arkane is planning to release its latest genre busting title, Deathloop. Stuck in a time loop, players will be attempting to take down 8 targets, while also avoiding an assassin bent on killing the player and restarting the loop. While Deathloop certainly has a unique premise, longtime Arkane fans can certainly see inspirations taken from the company’s previous games. Here’s a rundown of each Arkane Studios game prior to Deathloop.
When EA blocked Arkane Studios from working on the Ultima franchise, the studio instead created a game that had the same spirit of the popular franchise. Known as Arx Fatalis, the game’s story was set on a world where the sun had burnt out, pushing surface dwelling creatures and races to go underground in caves and caverns. Gameplay revolves around role-playing mechanics and open-ended gameplay, letting the player build their character out how they want through melee, stealth, spellcasting and more. While the game has no dialogue, player choices lead to different events and consequences including multiple endings for various quests. Spellcasting was done by using the mouse to draw runes in mid-air, something which was revolutionary for the time.
Even though Arkane initially had difficulty securing a publisher for a then untested studio, Arx Fatalis was a hit with critics and fans when it originally released back in 2002 for the PC. Unfortunately, it did not sell particularly well likely due to releasing after major action-RPGs of that time like The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind.
Even though Arx Fatalis was a labor of love for the studio and popular with fans, it was a commercial disappointment. However, the critical praise caught the attention of Valve who presented the studio with an opportunity to work with the Source Engine. After failing to find a publisher for a potential Arx Fatalis 2, Ubisoft approached Arkane to see if they could use the Arx Fatalis engine to the Might and Magic franchise. This collaboration led to Dark Messiah of Might and Magic which continued the first person combat of Arx Fatalis with a lessened emphasis on RPG mechanics.
As the wizard apprentice Sareth, players attempted to retrieve a powerful artifact known as The Skull of Shadows. Players could opt to build Sareth how they wanted through three skill trees focused on Magic, Miscellaneous (Stealth), or Combat which ultimately changed how players approached situations in game. The title also had a multiplayer modes, one where two teams earned points by performing strategic moves on a map and a Colosseum mode which pit players in 1 vs 1 duels. The game received average reviews, though it did help Arkane expand operations into the United States with a new Austin, Texas studio.
Back in 2006, Valve had plans to continue the Half-Life 2 story through episodic games to help release games at a quicker pace. While the well received Episode 1 and Episode 2 launched nearly a year apart from one another, the third episode never arrived as planned. In fact, an additional episode was originally in development at Junction Point Studios, intended to detail how Ravenholm turned into the city players discovered within Half-Life 2. After becoming disillusioned with the progress, Valve switched developers, giving the project to Arkane Studios to develop into a standalone title.
In Arkane’s version, players took on the role of Adrian Shephard from the Half-Life: Opposing Force title. Players worked with Father Grigori who provided the player with a magnet gun and various traps. The developers even put together a nailgun capable of creating electricity conduction paths while also using it to set traps. Unfortunately, with a year to go on development, Valve ultimately canceled the project seemingly out of the blue. Colantonio believed it was due to Return to Ravenholm being deemed to expensive, though others at Valve hinted that the premise was too creatively constrained.
Developed as a mobile game for iOS devices and published by Majesco, this strategy game had players attempting to take their character from birth to old age across eight turns and roughly 10 minutes per game. Players attempted to improve their life skills in five different traits: Health, Mind, People, Love, and Money by working with or against other players/AI.
Following the development of Dark Messiah, the core Arkane development team started working on a new first person shooter called The Crossing. Utilizing the source engine, the game mixed singleplayer and multiplayer elements into a mechanic that Colantonio called crossplayer. In order to accomplish this, the single player campaign would be woven through live multiplayer matches where the NPC enemies were replaced by actual humans. Parts of the experience would be single player and then dynamically shift to multiplayer at specific choke points.
From a story perspective, The Crossing was set in two parallel universes, one where Paris, France has descended into chaos after its government collapsed. The other shows a version where the timeline diverged in 1307, where the Knights Templar were able to seize the monarchy. Players were tasked with locating the portal and setting things right. Originally intended to be a building block for the studio going forward, publishers were concerned with the focus on PC instead of consoles, matchmaking capabilities, as well as the game’s budget which reportedly clocked in around $15 million. After going through about 20 publishers, Arkane did find one with passing interest, though after 6 months of negotiating, Arkane wasn’t seeing what they were hoping for. Ultimately, another opportunity presented itself and all but shelved The Crossing.
During the development of The Crossing, EA approached the studio to help work on a title called LMNO which had Steven Spielberg attached to the project as well. The offer from EA was sizable and seemingly more stable than what was happening with The Crossing, so Arkane turned its full attention to LMNO. Ultimately, the goal was to create an action game featuring first person parkour and role-playing elements.
The story revolved around the player’s relationship with an alien known as Eve, who was rescued from a government lab and now on the run. Players would travel from the east to west coast of the United States and attempt to help keep Eve’s secret hidden from other characters. Spielberg wanted to reduce focus on weapons and instead focus on avoiding combat with puzzle solving or hand to hand fighting as a last resort. Unfortunately, the final version of LMNO never saw the light of day, getting officially cancelled in 2010 after about two years of work.
Arguably the game that really put the studio on the map for many video game fans, Dishonored came at a great time for the studio which had just suffered through a string of failed projects, no current contracts, and the beginnings of financial pressure. The studio took odd jobs assisting other companies on major projects like Call of Duty: World at War and BioShock 2. However, things turned around in 2010 when Bethesda approached the studio with an idea for a game called Dishonored which revolved around stealth gameplay set in Feudal-Japan. Prior to this, Bethesda had been interested in Arkane’s previous work and felt the studio was a good fit for this idea, a feeling that was reciprocated by Calantonio considering how similar Arx Fatalis and The Elder Scrolls series were.
After working under contract, Arkane was acquired outright by Bethesda around the same time as id Software. With the financial backing of Bethesda, Arkane was able to continue tweaking the original idea and settled on 17th century London. While the stealth-action gameplay remained in place, the shift away from Feudal-Japan was made due to the difficulty in marketing it and the fact that no one working on the game knew a lot about the culture to do it justice. Instead, the fires of 1666 in London as well as the final years of the Plague were utilized as a backdrop for what would become Dunwall.
Players stepped into the shoes of Corvo Attano, former bodyguard to Empress Jessamine Kaldwin, who has recently returned from a voyage seeking aid due to the plague ravaging the city. Before long, Corvo is framed for the murder of the Empress and her child kidnapped, players must not only rescue the heir to the throne, but unravel the plot to usurp the throne. As a stealth-based action game, players could also utilize supernatural abilities like Blink and Dark Vision to help reach the targets in each level. In addition to active and passive abilities, players could track down runes to further augment Corvo as well as spend coin to upgrade the various tech and weapons.
A chaos system was also in place, silently judging the action of players and how they interacted with the world. Lethal versus non-lethal combat weighed heavily on this system as well as choosing to spare or kill each of the main targets. Depending on how much chaos was performed, the levels would shift and change as well as changing the opinion of certain NPC characters. Ultimately, the game’s final ending changed based on player actions during the campaign.
After launch, Dishonored became a major hit for Arkane, pulling in end of the year awards and proving to be a sales success. With sales exceeding expectations, Dishonored became a franchise for Bethesda and Arkane got to work on a sequel. Part of that replayability comes with the lead characters as Emily has her own set of abilities that are slightly different from Corvo. In addition, levels have alternative paths, execution methods, as well as non-lethal takedowns.
Four years later, Dishonored 2 arrived and pushed the narrative 15 years forward. Following a coup, Empress Emily Kaldwin is deposed and players can select to play through the game either as Emily or an older Corvo. While the gameplay stayed true to what made the first game such a big hit, Arkane took the opportunity to improve the experience with more creative missions, better replayability, and more challenging stealth mechanics. The chaos system returns from the first game and based on what kind of style the player uses, different endings can be seen. In addition, certain characters may not survive, which also alters the ending.
Once again, Dishonored 2 proved to be a hit with critics and fans, and even though it didn’t sell as fast as its predecessor, the continued success lead to another game in the franchise a few years later.
While the development of Dishonored 2 took place at the Lyon studio with Harvey Smith, Colantonio led the Austin branch shifted attention to the Prey franchise, which has experienced a ton of controversy over the past couple of years. Original developer Human Head Studios, who had worked on the first game and were planning a sequel surrounding an alien bounty hunter, suffered a number of issues during development, ultimately leading to Prey 2‘s cancellation in 2014 as well as a messy break up with Bethesda. With the IP now in Bethesda’s hands, Arkane studio was given access to develop a complete reboot.
Largely divorcing itself from the previous game in the franchise, Arkane’s Prey was based more along the lines of a game like System Shock, taking on a more psychological feel as well as mixing in first person elements from the Dishonored. While less focused on stealth, Prey allowed players to experiment within levels using emergent gameplay, giving them the ability to complete missions how they wanted. Waking up in a strange space station, players needed to unravel the mystery of what happened, while also dealing with the alien threat known as the Typhon. In addition to weapons and tools, players could also choose to acquire alien abilities, though doing so would impact how the game plays out. Like the Dishonored franchise, Prey featured multiple endings which were impacted by player decisions and which NPCs survived during the campaign.
While the game reviewed particularly well, Prey had a weaker than expected launch, selling 60% less in the opening week than Dishonored 2. Even still, Prey was nominated for a number of awards and released numerous DLC including the Mooncrash expansion.
The most recent Arkane release outside of assisting on other Bethesda games like Wolfenstein Youngblood and Cyberpilot, is the standalone experience known as Dishonored: Death of the Outsider. Originally planned as an expansion to Dishonored 2, the scope of the project grew which turned it into a smaller standalone title. Death of the Outsider was intended to put an end to the Kaldwin story arc of Dishonored, letting the potential next game in the franchise start fresh.
Following the story in Dishonored 2, players take on the role of Billie Lurk a former assassin of Daud, who players interacted with in the first game. Players investigate a mysterious group known as the Eyeless, leading her to a confrontation with the mysterious individual known as the Outsider. It’s up to her whether she spares or kills the being, significantly altering the events of the franchise.
While Billie gains access to her own set of supernatural powers, they’re slightly different from Corvo and Emily. Instead, they’re fully unlocked from the start and energy used to activate them regenerates over time. In addition, the Chaos system was removed completely, letting the player fully experiment with their powers without fear of consequences. The game reviewed well, though the Dishonored series has seemingly been put on hiatus for the time being.
For now, Arkane is focused on Deathloop, following a series of delays which ultimately pushed it out of it’s planned November 2020 launch. While Deathloop remains a PS5 console exclusive, even with its parent company being owned by Microsoft, Arkane will likely have more to say soon regarding an unannounced project at the Austin studio.
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