Like many single-player focused studios, Arkane has increasingly pursued multiplayer over the past few years. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Deathloop kept these elements fairly small so that you could opt out of engaging with them entirely and play it as a single-player game. But Redfall went all in, with a co-op looter shooter that earned Arkane the worst reviews in its entire history. As an outside observer, it seemed clear that the storied studio couldn’t keep going in this direction and, given the cruelty of capitalism, it didn’t seem out of the question that a game failing as badly as Redfall could put the creators of Prey and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dishonored on 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Microsoft’s chopping block.
Thankfully, that doesn’t seem to be the case. The FTC vs. Microsoft case has produced a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:massive leak, including unredacted documents that reveal a ton of information from within Xbox. That includes the fact that the corporation 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:considered buying Nintendo and Valve, and that it has . But the most interesting bit of info was the confirmation that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a new Dishonored game is in the works. Or, at least, it was three years ago.
This took me by surprise. Though the first Dishonored was a big commercial success, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dishonored 2 and Death of the꧋ Outsider underperformed. Given that six y♎ears have now passed, it didn’t seem unreasonable to think that Arkane had moved on to greener pastures.
But Dishonored 3 is happening, apparently — though the timeline is unclear given that some of the leaked dates for other games have already passed or conflict with previously released information. Per the leak, a new Doom game will launch next year, but the documents also list the release date for The Elder Scrolls 6 as 2024, and Xbox's Phil Spencer recently said 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:that game is five years out. So the timeline has, at least, b🧸een pushed back. B🅺ut regardless of when it may be released, it seems Dishonored has at least one last ride ahead.
This always seemed like a potential upside of Microsoft acquiring Bethesda. Arkane’s immersive sims had rabid fans, but didn’t seem to sell well enough to keep Arkane afloat. But when Arkane is just one piece of a bigger 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Game Pass portfolio, there can be more wiggle room for experimentation and nontraditional releases. Obsidian's Josh Sawyer 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:told Waypoint Radio last year that he "never would have proposed making Pentiment without Game Pass… I don't think it would have been possible." Then again, Hi-Fi Rush, which seemed like a textbook example of the kind of game this level of freedom can produce, ♊was pitched years before Tango 🥂Gameworks was acquired by Microsoft. Despite how the news initially appears, Dishonored 3 appears to be a similar case, as the documents predate Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda. Could Arkane have been encouraged to begin early development of a new Dishonored by the news that Bethesda was being acquired? Maybe. Not even these leaks reveal that much.
Whether or not Microsoft has anything to do with Arkane returning to Dishonored, Arkane's post-acquisition record is likely an encouragement to return to its niche. Redfall was a critical and commercial flop, while Deathloop, which hewed much closer to the single-player immersive sim formula of Arkane’s previous work, received glowing reviews. It wasn’t a gigantic hit, but has been played by more than five million players since launch. As I wrote about recently, the pivot many studios have made to chasing the games as a service trend has not paid off, and Arkane's multiplayer games are no exception. I hope that Dishonored 3 represents, not just the studio returning to its roots, but the industry giving up on the ‘forever game’ pipe dream.