- Arkane Studios co-directors Raphael Colantonio and Harvey Smith say they almost made one Blade Runner games and Thief 4
- Bethesda approached Arkane with the idea, and Arkane developed pitches for both projects
- Thief 4 eventually became the basis for Dishonored
According to former Arkane Studios co-directors Raphael Colantonio and Harvey Smith, the Deathloop developer almost made one Blade Runner games and Thief 4 before it made Dishonored.
In a new YouTube series, spotted by user ‘Knoebel’ on BlueSky (via Eurogamer), the developers sat down to reflect on Dishonored and its evolution 14 years after its publication.
Early in the video, Colantonio revealed that Bethesda approached the studio to consider creating a new game in Thief series, which would have been Thief 4.
“Before we did it Dishonoredwe either had to do Thief or Blade Runner,” Colantonio said. “Bethesda approached us with the proposition, ‘Hey, we have the Thief franchise, and we know the people who are going to make that game, and it’s you.’ That’s our game.”
“Which is basically like coming up to two cats and saying, ‘We’ve got a big bag of catnip here on one side. We’ve got another bag of catnip here, which one do you want? Do you want both?'” Smith added. “We were both so excited. Blade Runner and Thief, two of our favorite things of all time.”
“We were in such dire straits business-wise, and they came not only to save us from business, but also to bring, frankly, the IP that I would have liked to work on,” Colantonio said.
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Smith continued, saying they had “a great pitch” for what would have been Thief 4with Colantonio interjecting to add that they also had “some videos,” and for Blade Runnerthey had worked with one of Arkane’s animators who specialized in first-person combat to create some combat animations.
“We also did some replicant matches because we had talked to Doug Church [a veteran game designer]and he said, you know, even when they’re sitting in a room together, they’d do things with their bodies that humans couldn’t do,” Colantonio added. “Like reach in and grab the eggs out of the boiling water or whatever. So we had flip and it was super exciting to work on Blade Runner. The story pitch we had for Blade Runner was just – I loved it.
“The funny thing was that at first we thought we were supposed to be [working on] Thief. I was so excited and they said yes it could be Blade Runnerand there was no way I could focus Thief and Blade Runner at the same time.”
Unfortunately, Arkane was never able to make his vision for Blade Runner and Thief 4 a reality, and because Bethesda hadn’t yet acquired the studio, they were worried about the direction they were going.
That is, until Bethesda suggested to “keep what you’re doing and call it Dishonored“.
“[Dishonored] started on the basis of Thief 4“, Colantonio revealed.
Dishonored was released in 2012 and Arkane developed later Dishonored 2which was launched in 2016.
In early 2024, it was reported that Arkane Austin wanted to make a new single-player game, such as Dishonored sequel before the studio was shut down.
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