General Gaming Arkane Lyon/Austin founders are making a first-person immersive sim/RPG that's "Fallout meets Dishonored/Prey with splash of Obsidian storytelling"

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Arkane founder's new RPG shoots for "Fallout meets Dishonored" with a splash of Obsidian storytelling

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Eurogamer talks to WolfEye Studios' Raphael Colantonio and Julien Roby about the first details of their new action RPG that's "Fallout meets Dishonored".

 

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As teased earlier this week, Arkane founder Raphael Colantonio has today unveiled the first details of his next game at WolfEye Studios.

 

While the game's name is still under wraps, this new project is a first-person action RPG that's set in an alternate America in the 1900s, marking a shift in time and perspective from the top-down, isometric sandbox towns of WolfEye's debut game, Weird West.

 

As the studio also previously teased, the new game's visuals will be grounded in a retro sci-fi aesthetic - and if the first three in-game screenshots didn't already give it away, Colantonio (who's creative director for this new game) and executive producer Julien Roby tell me over a video call that both its gameplay and art direction are intended to be "something like Fallout meets Dishonored".

 

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"That's where we want to be, we want to be in that space," Colantonio tells me. "If there is such a thing as a continuum between Fallout and Dishonored, I would say Prey is somewhere in the middle because it's already more RPG than Dishonored, and this new game is somewhere closer to Fallout, as far as the RPG-ness goes."

 

That means you can expect "a lot of [quest objectives] such as 'investigate about this thing, infiltrate that building'," Colantonio explains, "but with any approach you want." This can range from "very, very direct" approaches, perhaps utilizing the new weapon mods WolfEye are making for this game, or "more indirect" methods, such as talking your way in or out of a scenario with the game's speech options. All classic RPG fare, in other words, which Colantonio and Roby hope will "add even more layers of possibilities [to the game], which is really what we've always been about."

 

"I love personally RPGs that fall back on their feet when you shoot them between the eyes, for example," Colantonio says. "Games from Obsidian are pretty good at that, and that's that zone that we're hitting in this game."

 

 

The next game from Dishonored co-creator Raphael Colantonio is a first-person immersive sim with a structure between Prey and Fallout: New Vegas—'We favour density over size' | PC Gamer

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They won't tell you the name, though.

 

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Raphael Colantonio wants you to imagine a spectrum. On its left you have Dishonored, the series he co-created with fellow immersive sim veteran Harvey Smith. It's relatively linear and tightly mission-based; once you've finished with a level there's no going back. On the right there's Fallout: New Vegas—a rambling open world. 2017's Prey is in the dead centre, open but dense, with some areas gated off until you have the equipment (or creativity) to get in.

 

Colantonio says the new immersive sim from his team at WolfEye Studios sits between Prey and New Vegas on that spectrum—"We favour density over size." That's all you need to say to rocket to the top of my wishlist. Billed as a "First-person action RPG," Colantonio and WolfEye CEO Julien Roby make the game sound like a return to their roots at Arkane: "We are even closer to that Fallout thing, [but] still with the values of previous games we've worked on like Prey and Dishonored. It's mobility and that kind of physicality, the level design, the worldbuilding of those games, but served in a structure that is more open than ever."

 

Those are all my keywords, and I reckon the same goes for a lot of other immersive sim sickos out there. Lucky thing, too, because Colantonio and Roby are keeping their cards very close to their chest when it comes to revealing anything else about the game. 

 

 

In-game screenshots:

 

 

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Sign-up for a chance to participate in next year's private alpha:

 

https://wolfeye-studios.com/signup

[Keyser_Soze]

So these are the Arkane people that recently got laid off forming a new studio?

[Bacon]

25 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Obsidian storytelling

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

4 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

So these are the Arkane people that recently got laid off forming a new studio?

 

Wolfeye has already released one game (Weird West), but I imagine that the staff has grown with the closure of Arkane Austin since Harvey Smith who was Arkane Austin's studio director is now part of the team.

 

Weird West: Definitive Edition on Steam

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Survive and unveil the mysteries of the Weird West through the intertwined destinies of its unusual heroes in an Action RPG from the co-creators of Dishonored and Prey.

 

[Keyser_Soze]

Yes I recall that being one of the 10 [x] West games released in the past couple of years.

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Another preview from RPS:

 

WolfEye's new first-person RPG is "an evolution" of Prey and Dishonored featuring mechs, magnets and a continuous world

WWW.ROCKPAPERSHOTGUN.COM

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WolfEye's debut game Weird West attempted to pack a little of Dishonored's immersive sim sorcery into a top-down action…

 

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The character stats, meanwhile, will be familiar to genre aficionadoes, though Colantonio again cautions me that everything is still WIP. "We've just finished a vertical slice, and the detail of the stats will change as we make progress in the game, because if you think about it, the stats are guiding all the underlying systems. They can change name, they can encompass more mechanics than one, so all of this is still very flexible. So it's too early right now to describe all of the stats. But yeah, it would be that kind of thing - maybe it's not "Strength" but "Fortitude". We're still trying different things and adapting, so that might change all the way until alpha."

 

Is the game still recognisable as an immersive sim in the Arkane mold, given all these additions to the formula? "Definitely, people who are into our past games will enjoy that layer," Colantonio assures me. "So yes, it is on the page of an immersive sim, even though from a genre perspective, people will perceive it as an RPG."

 

He gives me a tentative example of an in-game scenario that brings abilities, gadgets and obstacles together into an open-ended, Dunwallian melange. "In the current vertical slice, it's the beginning of the game, and so there are different things you do to understand who you are and the story's inciting incident. But before that, one of the challenges is to go through a factory that's protected by automatons, and here there are, again, many ways you can do things, whether it's the more direct approach with dynamite you've found on the way, or shotguns and protective gear or protective drones - because you might have drones. Or you can be sneaky and find the security room and disable the automatons."

 

[Xbob42]

Fallout being the first game mentioned is a little ehhhhh to me. But I do trust Arkane (or in this case, ex-Arkane) folks so I'm sure I'll give it a go!

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Just now, Xbob42 said:

Fallout being the first game mentioned is a little ehhhhh to me. But I do trust Arkane (or in this case, ex-Arkane) folks so I'm sure I'll give it a go!

 

The "Fallout" they're referring to is "New Vegas"

[Xbob42]

I'm not a fan of any Fallout, but I guess that's better than 3!

[Best]

I'm interested for sure. 

[Massdriver]

Sounds promising. I want more dishonored. 

[Firewithin]

everything sounds good to me so far

[Dodger]

I can’t wait to have forgotten about this when it releases in 2027

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

New interview with Raphael Colantonio

 

Raphael Colantonio Talks Wolfeye's New Game, Immersive Sims And Arkane Austin's Closure

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Raphael Colantonio and his team at Wolfeye Studios are ready to create the next best game in the genre that made them famous.

 

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The studio is certainly trying to recreate the success of Prey and Dishonored, with many of the same team members, processes and system design techniques carrying over from those development cycles. Colantonio explains that the way the team builds lore, levels and their verticality, AI behaviours, the types of gadgets available to the player and so on are all inspired by the team's design processes at Arkane. "Yeah, there's something about the flavour of this game that if you're a fan of [Prey and Dishonored], it would be shocking if you don't like this game," Colantonio resolves.

 

The game isn’t just a retro futuristic Dishonored, though. Wolfeye's new game is also adapting RPG elements, including dialogue options and character progression. Colantonio frames it to me as if on a scale between Dishonored and Fallout, Prey was a step towards Fallout, and this game is an even bigger step towards the post-apocalyptic role-playing game.

 

"It's not a departure, but an expansion," Colantonio explains. "As much as we enjoy the basis of Prey and Dishonored, we took the full game into a format that is more in the RPG genre. The world is bigger, it's continuous, you can go anywhere you want. It's quest-based, there are stats, there is dialogue. It steps into the RPG genre, which, for us, allows us to take the immersive sim further with player empowerment and all of the things that players can do, layers of choices they have and if you add all of the dialogue choices, you have even more possibilities with branching stories and so on."

 

 

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Colantonio has previously preferred level-based game design with silent protagonists like Corvo Attano and Morgan Yu. When asked whether a more open-world approach was the future of immersive sims, Colantonio took some time to ponder the genre that has come to describe many of his games.

 

"Some people would describe Skyrim as an immersive sim," he remarks. "It really heavily relies on a lot of simulation, you can do tons of cool little cheats, you can do these legal exploits that make the game so fun and unique for the player. To me, even though they are big open-world RPGs, they also have immersive sim value. It's more of a spirit than a genre, those values. I think mission-based games still have a place, but even with Prey, we moved towards something that was free-form exploration."