The Future of Dishonored

Dishonored was easily one of the highlights of 2012, to the point where Bethesda even claimed it “exceeding sales expectations” and said it is “a franchise”. A game that, despite no mulitplayer or linear action set pieces, was highly regarded and sold extremely well. With the inevitable sequel all but announced, where do Arkane Studios plan to take Dishonored for next-gen consoles? In an interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun, co-creative director Raphael Colantonio elaborated and explained what Arkane’s thoughts were.

One of the things noted about Dishonored was that while Corvo was a silent protagonist, Duad was not. When asked whether the next Dishonored would feature a silent or voiced protagonist, Colantonio said Arkane was waiting for feedback from Brigmore Witches before they reached a conclusion. However, he said Arkane was comfortable going either way.

Colantonio also mentioned what he felt the next-gen hardware would add to the new Dishonored, saying, “The next generation is mostly going to be all about memory. That’s gonna be the big difference for us, anyway. More memory means more entities, more density, more AI with more variations in their animations, bigger levels with less loading, etc. And also saving the state of things so that when you come back to an area, things are entirely [as they were]. Backtracking is actually embraced by the system as opposed to being a problem. It’s all good things for us.”

It’s all about players, not what the designer wants them to do

However, Colantonio also mentioned that next-gen hardware would not compromise Arkane’s beliefs, which are “interactivity and choices, consequences to your choices, many ways to do things, exploration, verticality, and all kinds of player tools. It’s all about players, not what the designer wants them to do.”

When asked directly if Arkane was developing a new Dishonored, Colantonio said, “I can’t say exactly what we’re working on yet, but I can say that it’s definitely going to be a similar type of game.” He also denied any involvement with Prey 2.

Colantonio also mentioned that Arkane would look into mulitplayer if they thought it would add to the experience, saying “we’re also keeping an eye out for ways to do multiplayer the right way.”

Finally, Colantonio also mentioned that the team at Arkane would try and do a better job of supporting non-lethal playthroughs, saying, “So [non-lethal playthroughs] was not as supported as we would’ve liked it to have been. In the DLC, we tried to support it a little better and build chaos in from the beginning, etc. For future games, we’ll definitely make sure we try to support it better.”