Dishonored dev Arkane Studios nearly made Thief 4 and a Blade Runner game

Redfall and Deathloop developer Arkane virtually labored on Thief 4 and a Blade Runner sport earlier than it made the primary Dishonored.

That is in accordance with former Arkane co-directors Raphael Colantonio and Harvey Smith themselves, who sat down collectively earlier this week to speak about their time on the studio, the video games they made, and likewise the video games they practically made.

As noticed by Knoebel and shared on BlueSky, Colantonio spoke of a time when Bethesda approached the studio to contemplate including to the Thief franchise.

„Earlier than we did Dishonored, we had been speculated to both do Thief or Blade Runner. Bethesda approached us with the proposition, ‚Hey, we’ve the Thief franchise, and we all know the individuals to make that sport, and it is you‘,“ Colantonio mentioned. „It is our sport.“

„Which is principally like coming to 2 cats and saying, ‚We now have an enormous bag of catnip right here on the one facet. We now have one other bag of catnip right here, which one would you like? You need each?'“ Smith mentioned. „We had been each so excited. Blade Runner and Thief, two of our favorite issues of all time.

„We had been in such a dire scenario business-wise, and so they got here up not solely to save lots of us from enterprise, but in addition to deliver frankly the IP that I might have appreciated to work on essentially the most,“ Colantonio added.

Smith mentioned: „We had an incredible pitch for Thief. Would have been Thief 4–“ – „we’ve greater than a pitch, we had some movies,“ Colantonio interjected – „–and for Blade Runner, we had labored with our sensible animator, specialising in first-person fight, a extremely good man, and a sport designer on high of all the things.

„We additionally did some Replicant combating as a result of we had talked to [the godfather of immersive sims] Doug Church, and he mentioned, you realize, even sitting round in a room collectively, they might be doing issues with their our bodies that people could not do. Like, reaching in and seize[bing] the eggs out of the boiling water or no matter. So we had flips and it was tremendous thrilling to be engaged on Blade Runner.

„The story pitch we had for Blade Runner was simply– I cherished it.“

Arkane Studios practically labored on Thief 4 or a Blade Runner sport earlier than they made ‚Dishonored‘.

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youtu.be/ZVq0af9DwPU

[image or embed]- Knoebel (@knoebel.bsky.social) Might 23, 2026 at 8:45 PM

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„The humorous factor was that we initially thought we had been going to be [working on] Thief. I used to be so excited, and so they mentioned, properly, it may additionally be Blade Runner, and there was no means I may deal with Thief and Blade Runner on the identical time.“

Colantonio went on to clarify that although none of it labored out – and as they hadn’t been acquired by Bethesda but, they had been just a little involved – however Bethesda in the end to them to „preserve what you are doing and name it Dishonored“.

„[Dishonored] began on the bottom of Thief 4,“ he added.

The video is simply the primary in a multi-part sequence the place Smith and Colantonio will probably be joined by a number of members of the unique Dishonored improvement crew to „inform tales, share design insights and possibly get eaten by rats… so much“.

Arkane stays certainly one of my favorite studios of all time, and Dishonored is certainly one of my favorite video games ever, too. As I wrote on the flip of the last decade, video games usually contact us not solely due to what they’re, however what they don’t seem to be and, for me, Dishonored was a sport that relaxed conventional gameplay in a means I hadn’t fairly anticipated. It „unshackled expectations, allowing me to discover Dunwall’s battered, damaged environs at my very own tempo and in my very own model“ (which was usually Low Chaos in intent, and Excessive Chaos actually).

„Taken individually, Dishonored’s distinctive artwork model, brooding setpieces, participating story, and modern design are attractive sufficient,“ I wrote on the time. „Woven collectively, nevertheless, Arkane delivers probably the most distinctive, engrossing titles I’ve performed in years.“ (Deathloop is criminally underrated, too).