While none of their video games have been the industry-shaking hits I might have cherished them to be, Dishonored and Prey builders Arkane have put the immersive sim style again on the map. At QuakeCon final week, agents for the ever-sneaky VG247 managed to pin down Ricardo Bare, lead designer at Arkane. Despite the studio being famously evasive ever since that complete Press Sneak Fuck incident, he did have just a few issues to say in regards to the current and way forward for the studio and its video games.
It’s in all probability greatest to get the unhappy stuff out of the best way first. While there’s each probability Arkane might have some secret initiatives rattling away behind the scenes, Bare’s assertion that “anything could happen, but [Dishonored] is resting for now” implies that no matter’s subsequent, it’s unlikely to be that dream-game I’ve at all times needed set in Dishonored’s endlessly teased Pandyssian continent. Ah effectively, at the least Death Of The Outsider supplied a satisfying finish to that specific story arc, so I can stand not returning to Dunwall for an additional few years.
That mentioned, Bare had some heartening issues to say concerning immersive sims generally, and the studio taking part in to their strengths. While nothing new, it’s good to listen to them so assured within the method.
“The things that are important to us as a studio are coherent, deep world building and environmental storytelling – we’re always going to craft spaces that you feel like you’re visiting, whether it’s Dunwall or Talos 1. It’s just as important a character as the player or the people you meet. Then it’s improvisational gameplay – giving players a bunch of cool abilities and tools, then saying, ‘You figure it out, you be creative, you own the experience’. And, typically, we stick to first-person, though that’s not a hard rule and we might try other things from time to time.”
I’m personally hoping to see Arkane construct on the sunshine roguelike framework that was the core of Prey’s current (and wonderful) Mooncrash expansion, which I personally thought typified that inventive, improvisational expertise higher than ever.
We’re fortunately previous the age the place each recreation needed to have a deathmatch mode tacked on to fill a advertising bingo board – one thing Bare described as “super destructive” – and now studios are free to experiment a little bit extra with on-line integration. While in keeping with Bare a recreation within the vein of The Crossing (a cancelled multiplayer title the place gamers took turns within the protagonist’s position) isn’t on the playing cards, there may be the potential for one thing equally experimental within the on-line sphere.
All of that mentioned, Bethesda and Arkane are notoriously good at preserving secrets and techniques (some teasing apart, Prey’s growth was launched stay on stream at E3, plus they managed to throw a few people off the scent of Prey), so something goes. If nothing else, it’s simply good to listen to that the immersive sim as we all know it’s alive and kicking, even when it’s liable to select up just a few new mutations alongside the best way.
