Earlier this year, developer Arkane Studios and publisher Bethesda revealed that the stealth-action series, Dishonored, was “resting.” While this statement doesn’t indicate anything more than that momentarily the team isn’t working on anything related to the series, some took it as less than direct way of saying the series is being shelved for the foreseeable future.
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And this wouldn’t be very surprising. Despite the first two games being large critical successes, they both failed to light the world on fire in terms of sales. However, while you wouldn’t blame Bethesda and co. for not returning to the series, vice president of PR and marketing, Pete Hines, has further elucidated on what it means that the series is “resting.”
“Look, Arkane has two studios, they’re working on a number of things. That’s no different than Todd Howard saying, ‘I’m gonna make a Fallout game and then I’m gonna make Starfield before I go back to TES6‘,” said Hines while speaking to Metro. “He didn’t say I’m never making another… there’s like, ‘We have an idea for another thing here, we have an idea for another there’.”
“We are a business, we are trying to make money so we’re doing things that we think are smart. We’re doing things we think people will want and will be successful. And it’s gonna continue to be a mix.”
It appears Hines is saying that there simply isn’t an idea for another Dishonored game at the moment, and that there is no massive sales driving a need for an idea. In other words, if there is an idea, which Bethesda thinks is good, it will return. But for now, Arkane Studios is focusing on other things.
Now the question is whether or not the studio is going to be focusing on Prey going forward or take a stab at something else. Like Dishonored, Prey didn’t light the world on fire with sales, though it wasn’t exactly a failure either. However, unlike Dishonored, Prey wasn’t quite as universally praised by critics. So we will see more Prey? I’m not sure, but my gut says no. Yet, all of the post-launch DLC support perhaps suggests otherwise. So, who knows.
