Dishonored 2—one of the best immersive sims ever made—did not sell as well as a game of its pedigree or impressiveness really deserved. And if it wasn’t for the reputation of the series, which offered it a “seal-of-quality protection”, and Arkane’s history of arguably making Bethesda’s “most refined games”, the studio might not be around today.
This is according to former Arkane Lyon designer Julien Eveillé, who started as a QA on Dishonored 2 before joining the design team for the series’ final game Dishonored: Death of the Outsider. Despite being a superb follow-up, it similarly did not have the impact both Arkane and Bethesda might have hoped for.
“It was a bit strange and weird,” he says. “I think when Bethesda was looking at the numbers, they thought, OK, Skyrim sold so much. And it cost less than Dishonored 2 to make. So they were asking questions. From an executive spend standpoint, it makes sense to ask those questions of, ‘Why should we keep going with you?’ But we knew that we had a kind of seal-of-quality protection, making what would maybe be considered the most refined games of the whole Bethesda catalogue.”
Certainly, Dishonored had a very different level of refinement when compared to Skyrim, and the rest of the Elder Scrolls series. Bethesda’s RPGs also have some immersive sim qualities, being massive sandboxes where players are given a lot of leeway in terms of how they interact with the world. But where Skyrim was a wonderful, janky playground, Dishonored took a more precise approach to its chaos, with stricter rules but just as much potential for mayhem.
This reputation “kind of saved the studio,” says Eveillé. But he also notes how studio director Dinga Bakaba stepped up and gave “confidence back to the upper management” following the departure of founder Raphael Colantionio, who left to create WolfEye Studios. He remembers Bakaba saying, “Let’s stop trying to make buzzword games, games-as-a-service and all that kind of stuff, we are Arkane, we want to make something special.” This ended up being critical to the “future success of the studio,” he reckons.
While Arkane Lyon went on to make Deathloop and is now working on Blade, its American studio, Arkane Austin, was not so lucky. It unfortunately did get saddled with a live service game, Redfall, which had a disastrous launch that ultimately culminated in the closure of the studio that gave us the phenomenal Prey.
Eveillé eventually left Arkane and, just last year, released his immersive horror game Threshold—an extremely stressful experience that will leave you fatally short of breath.