Just starting development now doesn’t mean Arkane decided to make the game last week.
Usually there is a pre-production phase where the majority of the story is written, mechanics are worked on and technology used for the project is scoped out. The producer then works with the director and development heads to create a design document from which development is worked from. For a AAA game, this usually is a couple of years these days.
Another example, Elder Scrolls 6 has only just started development as well however it has been in pre-production since way back in 2018 or whenever they announced it.
It’s common these days for the pre-production to be longer than the development and the term “development hell” is actually inaccurate. Look at Dreadwolf for a game that entered production as early as 2015 but due to lots of things beyond the scope of this post, didn’t enter actual development until 18 months ago.
On another note, I feel like announcing this so early was likely a Marvel thing – we’ve seen it here with Blade and we saw it with Spider-Man 2 and Wolverine – both seemingly outliers in Sony’s policy of announcing games these days. The last few movies haven’t performed as well so I wonder if Disney/Marvel are making a big push with games. Just my own speculation though, could be completely wrong!
