Arkane Studios’ most recent award-winning outing, Deathloop, was a huge hit and a critically acclaimed game when it came out last year. However, fans couldn’t help but notice it had a lot of similarities with Arkane’s magnum opus, Dishonored. Many theorized that the two games shared more than just a development team, believing that Deathloop took place in the Dishonored universe.
Fast forward to a year later and it appears all of those conspiracists were right.
According to creative director, Dinga Bakaba, Deathloop takes place in “one of the futures of the Dishonored world.”
One of the main guys behind Deathloop said this during a new Xbox podcast, explaining that he’s enjoyed watching the community put everything together. Bakaba added that the studio “envisioned Deathloop to be happening in the future, after Death of the Outsider.” However, Arkane also wanted to give Deathloop enough room to establish its own identity outside of the Dishonored franchise. As a result, Arkane didn’t market Deathloop as a spin-off to Dishonored even though it takes place in the same universe.
Bakaba clarifies things further by saying this:
Each time [the characters] mentioned the past, either we were vague enough or we disguised, in natural ways, the names. Like, they talk about the motherland and not about Tyvia, but… once you know, you can unravel everything, and yes, it does make sense. It was nice for us to be imagining one of the futures of the Dishonored world.”
It’s interesting that Bakaba points out that Deathloop is just “one of the futures” of Dishonored and not THE future. The more creative-minded fan would think of this as a sign that Arkane might come back to the same universe to explore a new Dishonored future. The studio’s next game, Redfall, might even take place in the same universe as Dishonored. We will know more when the upcoming open-world co-op FPS comes out next year after being delayed from its original release date.
In other news, the former Arkane founder and game director Raphaël Colantonio shed light on the ugly side of gaming. Colantonio revealed that Bethesda “forced” Arkane to name its 2017 title, Prey, and market it as a reboot even though it technically had nothing to do with the 2006 game of the same name by Human Head Studios.
