While Arkane Lyon is busy working on the PC and PlayStation 5 title Deathloop, Dishonored co-creator Harvey Smith has his hands on a separate unannounced project at Arkane Austin.
Smith said in an interview with the Spanish site Vandal that, after moving back to Austin, Texas following the conclusion of Dishonored 2‘s development at Lyon, he started working on something else. Though he didn’t name the project, Smith confirmed he’s not involved with Deathloop and instead collaborating with developers that worked on both Dishonored and Prey.
“At the end of Dishonored 2 I went back to Austin,” Smith told Vandal. “I’m not on Deathloop, I’m on another [project], working with those who made Dishonored and Prey.”
Smith didn’t clarify what his new project is or how long it’s been in development for. He also didn’t specify when it will be made public or if it’s connected to the Dishonored franchise. In either case, it will be published by Microsoft, which acquired Arkane’s parent company Bethesda in late 2020 for $7.5 billion. Smith believes Microsoft is is a perfect fit for Bethesda.
“I would say there has been no change at Arkane so far, but if I were to imagine the ideal partner, thinking of all the publishers and the people I know who work for them, it would be very very difficult to find a better partner for Bethesda than Microsoft,” Smith said. “They fit perfectly.”
Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda Softworks came by way of its purchase of ZeniMax Media. The deal meant Microsoft nabbed all of Bethesda’s subsidiaries, including Arkane Studios, Bethesda Game Studios, id Software, Tango Gameworks, and ZeniMax Online Studios.
