Thank you for watching! Just wanted to make a few quick corrections on some of the retold history in this video: 1:10 Here I said that the success of Dishonored allowed Arkane to split into the Lyon and Austin studio, but this isn't quite true: both studios had existed and worked in tandem since 2005. It was only after Dishonored's success that they started working on _separate_ projects. 2:34 I corrected this in the video itself but it bears repeating: Harvey Smith was the QA lead for System Shock, _not_ Deus Ex, where he was actually lead developer. 2:56 It appears that the Austin branch were the ones lending development support to Fallout 76, not Lyon. Credits for this support are usually vaguely given to "Arkane Studios," so I was unclear as to which half had been helping. 5:38 While I stated my suspicion that "Arkane Magic" was a euphemism for crunch (as it was with the similar "BioWare Magic"), I want to clarify that this was entirely my speculation. People who worked for both branches of Arkane have shared their positive experiences with the company before, so it might not be the case in reality. Apologies if my tone made it come off as fact rather than opinion. 8:47 Lastly, less of a correction and more of an update: turns out that Microsoft changed their tune and did allow Arkane Austin to conclude their work on the offline mode update, and it released on May 30 as the studio's final action before closing its doors. Redfall's base price was also finally lowered to $40 US. Hopefully this means that the game can be preserved even after its servers eventually go offline. Let's hope for better news in the realm of immersive sims. *451 Forever!*
Now that I've had my rage induced rant, rest in peace Arkane Austin. The studio may be gone, but the good memories and beautiful art they produced will live on.
05:41 Arkane Austin was suffering from an understaffed team and a lack of cohesive vision but they never resorted to crunch. The work/life balance there was pretty awesome according to several Arkanites on Twitter, same thing for the Lyon team during "DEATHLOOP."
Dishonored and Prey are indescribable to me and entertain me when I need it in difficult times. And the fact that we most likely won't get any new titles for these games in the future makes me so damn sad and angry. I just sold my XBOX, the direction in which they are going is not for me, this is where I split ways with them. Thank you for the video, just what I needed, finally someone who thinks exactly like me. Btw I love the 451 forever part of the vid.
I played Prey for the first time late last year. What an amazing game. One of the greats. I then dove into Dishonored and found another favorite. Working on the DLC now and then the sequel.
Arkane's Austin closure makes some sense in that their entire studio culture was destroyed, at least disrupted, by the high turnover. The entire company, including the Austin offices opened in 2006ish, was set up as a very specialized thing. To simplify: carrying on making games in the vein of Looking Glass Studios design philosophies. This includes long-term hirement of specialized people. Then Redfall happened... Not sure if Jason Schreier had seen this, but I tweeted to him in May 2023 already to take a closer peek at the Redfall credits when they were out. They were curious, to say the least. I think the Indiana Jones IP Bethesda aquired later on would have been a perfect fit for Arkane. Both commercially (see how Larian turned CRPGs into a D&D IP hit). But also design-wise: Thief's grave robbery missions would have been a good template to start. Including their cryptic/vague in-universe maps with notes scribbled onto them. Maps that could have been taken straight outta the grail diary in The Last Crusade . But too late now. Anyway. Buy Fallen Aces, Gloomwood, Shadows Of Doubt, Weird West... I think the future of this is indie and it does look damn good indeed.
Redfall seemed to have a lot going for it, Arkane usually creates immersive worlds with great gameplay, I wish they had more control over the direction with the game
I just saw this video and I had no idea Arkane Austin closed at least we still have Lyon , I really enjoyed deathloop and reportedly there is a dlc or a sequel to it which will probably be more connected to the dishonoured franchise.
Arkane has one of the best game catalogs in the industry .. I mean every game they made was somewhere between great and an absolute masterpiece.. everything before redfall at least
Prey is my favorite game of all time. Every year or two I’ll boot it back up and replay for the 10th time and immediately fall back in love with the amazing and unique gameplay and world that Arkane Austin created. The world of Prey means so much to me and i wish it was able to be expanded on instead of the studio being shut down because of ONE game that the higher ups wanted them to make in the first place. Redfall isn’t the worst thing in the world, yes it has problems: the open world format makes the game feel more shallow, the world building wasn’t nearly as interesting, and don’t get me started on the gameplay. But that game would’ve been so much better if greedy studio execs didn’t require it to be this multiplayer looter shooter that no one even asked for. Anyways i know this was rambly i just wanted to express these passionate feelings because of how much Arkane means to me and I truly hope that those affected by the closure are able to form another studio like Ralph Colentonio did and continue to make great immersive sims like they always wanted to.
Tbh I kind of liked Arkane's Wolfenstein game, it sure showed their touch. It's a shame to say the least that Arkane Austin and Tango were closed, after knowing I'll never get a real ending to Jensen's story I would have never expected that The Evil Within would get the same treatment. Fuck Microsoft man.
I genuinely enjoyed my time with Redfall. The atmosphere and world design were just like good ole Arkane, filled to the brim with detailed stuff to read and look at. Lighting engine is great too. But yeah wish they had more time to *actually* make what they wanted. Hoping for the offline update to actually come out.
This makes me feel even more pessimistic about the future of gaming industry. I started noticing bad patterns way back in 2020 when games started to turn into "live service money grinders", when more and more games started to become online-only. I've always seen games as a way to tell some story, to show some interesting characters or just deliver a memorable experience that will remain in your mind and make you think and make questions. And now I look at the market and can only scrap some nice indie games like Little Nightmares, Sally Face, Black Mesa, Nier Automata etc... It's just that I'm starting to get dissapointed in people who buy "call of booty" or another forgetable live service piece of code each year, burying the single-player games that have a soul with some idea behind it. Well, guess I'll just replay Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Nier Automata, Alice: Madness Returns or old need for speed games...
451 Here's to endless hours of good time. Maybe one day, it will be there, a new final entry to our beloved franchise Dishonored. We would be able to immerse ourselves once again in the beautiful world of Dunwall or beyond.
Look man here is my two cents and also source of hope for the imsim genre. AAA also abondened metroidvanias after their initial succes at the dawn of the video games industry and there was a drought of it, until game making technology got good enough that small indie studios could make them and BOOM we got the greatest metroidvanias ever. So it seems the hope is lost on the AAA front we just need to wait till gamedev tech improves enough to the point where it is feasable for indie studios to make great imsims. Then we will have our kino back.
Thief 2 and Deus Ex are two of my favourite games of all time. Prey was also amazing. I cant believe they shut down Arkane and kill one of the few developers that were still willing to do immersive sims. All this in favour of live services that honestly no one actually cares since the rate of sucess for any released live service game is very small. Ive been gaming since the ZX Spectrum and i honestly dont recognize the industry anymore. I know it needs to be a profitable industry like any other but i also feel like its the only industry that is run by people who dont play or use their own products and dont give two shits about what they are actually investing in. Truly sad...
I have a question that i’m very worried on about Prey and Dishonored. Both games have been on my list for a while and have wanted to play them sometime. Are they still going to be playable on steam?? or do i have to play the games as soon as possible to experience them? I’m not sure how it works when a game studio is shut down when it comes to already released games.
I see no reason (right now) why the publisher wouldn’t keep selling them even if the studio is shut down. The only game of Arkane’s that I’d say is now on a time limit is Redfall, since it never got its offline patch and I doubt Microsoft is going to keep the servers online forever. Otherwise, I’d highly recommend the rest of Arkane’s library! It goes on sale very frequently, so you can get them pretty cheap next Steam sale. If you meant just playing them if you own them already, neither Dishonored nor Prey rely on online features to function, they should continue working as designed. Deathloop will likely one day have its multiplayer servers shut down, but the single player should remain functional.
if both studios were proposing single player games..they may have shot themselves, combined with the financial losses that were imposed on them games are now made for max profits, the reason everything is a live service now is because the big companies refuse to greenlight anything thats not going to print money hand over fist
I think that if we dont get dishonored 3 is blessing in diguise. Why? Well who wants to see bastartizded Dishonored 3 when 70% people who created Dishonored 2 were gone. Its like saying "Im excited for gta6" from Wokestar. The writing is on the wall you just need to open eyes.
I understand your frustration but redfall wasn't something these new hires were simply going to "learn from". With most talented devs having left there wouldn't have been anyone to teach em, microsoft just chose to cut their losses, the devs at arkane aren't hapless vitctims either.
That's bs, teams always change but the key people were always the same. The majority of people who worked on Dishonored didn't work on Prey (2017), the same thing is true for Redfall. Source: Billy Lord (Lead character artist at Arkane Austin)
The problem isn't that Arkane Austin wasn't given another chance after Redfall to "learn from their mistakes", because without corporate interference they never would have made Redfall in the first place----or at least the directionless live-service slop version of Redfall we ended up with. The leadership for Austin must bear some blame, surely, but 90% of the devs at the studio are pretty damn close to hapless victims in this scenario.
Even without a large contingent of senior leadership (of which there definitely still were some, not everyone left), I still maintain that Arkane Austin could’ve learned from the mistakes of Redfall had they been given the chance. The success of Dishonored didn’t happen overnight, it was only after years of experience developing numerous projects that got canceled before Arkane made their first big hit. Success doesn’t come from nowhere, it’s built by learning from failure.
@@adammaximum doesnt it ultimately depend on their willingness to create a live service. like if the devs actually chose to make a live service instead of a standard single player game, im sure they'd have a strong desire to get better at it. But if its basically being forced on them; all those devs who joined to make sinlge player immersive sims would struggle to put their best work in and take the extra time to improve their knowledge/skills
Willingness definitely is a factor, but it’s not the only one. Having talent and experience certainly plays into it, as does proper resources. One of the issues highlighted by the Bloomberg article in regards to Redfall’s development was the fact that Arkane Austin wasn’t an especially large team to begin with, and development and maintenance of these large-scale live services require teams of hundreds of people. But as we know, because of Arkane’s reputation, most people who applied to work there were doing so with the expectation that they’d work on single-player immersive sims, not multiplayer live services, so Redfall was already kind of doomed from the start.
Wtf are you saying? Prey 2017 is literally damn "woke" it had gay ppl, indian ppl, black ppl AND YOU'RE PLAYING AS ASIAN FFS. Please go outside and touch grass.
@@Moji55a Wtf are you saying? That alone doens't make it woke, and the gay people were all either completly missable background characters or you don't even realize they were gay if you don't pay attention to the dialogue. Are you delusional? Why would you playing as asian be "woke"?
Thank you for watching! Just wanted to make a few quick corrections on some of the retold history in this video:
1:10 Here I said that the success of Dishonored allowed Arkane to split into the Lyon and Austin studio, but this isn't quite true: both studios had existed and worked in tandem since 2005. It was only after Dishonored's success that they started working on _separate_ projects.
2:34 I corrected this in the video itself but it bears repeating: Harvey Smith was the QA lead for System Shock, _not_ Deus Ex, where he was actually lead developer.
2:56 It appears that the Austin branch were the ones lending development support to Fallout 76, not Lyon. Credits for this support are usually vaguely given to "Arkane Studios," so I was unclear as to which half had been helping.
5:38 While I stated my suspicion that "Arkane Magic" was a euphemism for crunch (as it was with the similar "BioWare Magic"), I want to clarify that this was entirely my speculation. People who worked for both branches of Arkane have shared their positive experiences with the company before, so it might not be the case in reality. Apologies if my tone made it come off as fact rather than opinion.
8:47 Lastly, less of a correction and more of an update: turns out that Microsoft changed their tune and did allow Arkane Austin to conclude their work on the offline mode update, and it released on May 30 as the studio's final action before closing its doors. Redfall's base price was also finally lowered to $40 US. Hopefully this means that the game can be preserved even after its servers eventually go offline.
Let's hope for better news in the realm of immersive sims. *451 Forever!*
Now that I've had my rage induced rant, rest in peace Arkane Austin. The studio may be gone, but the good memories and beautiful art they produced will live on.
05:41 Arkane Austin was suffering from an understaffed team and a lack of cohesive vision but they never resorted to crunch. The work/life balance there was pretty awesome according to several Arkanites on Twitter, same thing for the Lyon team during "DEATHLOOP."
This is correct ^
Probably why they were laid off.
Replayed original Dishonored approx. 40 times, I'm so addicted to the movement and mechanics of it. Such a great game.
I am replaying Prey at the moment ... Absolute Brilliant Game ...
Dishonored and Prey are indescribable to me and entertain me when I need it in difficult times. And the fact that we most likely won't get any new titles for these games in the future makes me so damn sad and angry. I just sold my XBOX, the direction in which they are going is not for me, this is where I split ways with them. Thank you for the video, just what I needed, finally someone who thinks exactly like me. Btw I love the 451 forever part of the vid.
I played Prey for the first time late last year. What an amazing game. One of the greats. I then dove into Dishonored and found another favorite. Working on the DLC now and then the sequel.
Arkane was already dead.
Most of their staff left before redfall released.
Microsoft is just holding the funeral now.
Arkane's Austin closure makes some sense in that their entire studio culture was destroyed, at least disrupted, by the high turnover. The entire company, including the Austin offices opened in 2006ish, was set up as a very specialized thing. To simplify: carrying on making games in the vein of Looking Glass Studios design philosophies. This includes long-term hirement of specialized people. Then Redfall happened...
Not sure if Jason Schreier had seen this, but I tweeted to him in May 2023 already to take a closer peek at the Redfall credits when they were out. They were curious, to say the least. I think the Indiana Jones IP Bethesda aquired later on would have been a perfect fit for Arkane. Both commercially (see how Larian turned CRPGs into a D&D IP hit). But also design-wise: Thief's grave robbery missions would have been a good template to start. Including their cryptic/vague in-universe maps with notes scribbled onto them. Maps that could have been taken straight outta the grail diary in The Last Crusade . But too late now.
Anyway. Buy Fallen Aces, Gloomwood, Shadows Of Doubt, Weird West... I think the future of this is indie and it does look damn good indeed.
It broke my heart 😞😞😭😭
"The problem with Microsoft is that they just have no taste" Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs will be rolling in his grave saying I fekin told ya so
Redfall seemed to have a lot going for it, Arkane usually creates immersive worlds with great gameplay, I wish they had more control over the direction with the game
I just saw this video and I had no idea Arkane Austin closed at least we still have Lyon , I really enjoyed deathloop and reportedly there is a dlc or a sequel to it which will probably be more connected to the dishonoured franchise.
Arkane has one of the best game catalogs in the industry .. I mean every game they made was somewhere between great and an absolute masterpiece.. everything before redfall at least
Death fart stinks
Prey is my favorite game of all time. Every year or two I’ll boot it back up and replay for the 10th time and immediately fall back in love with the amazing and unique gameplay and world that Arkane Austin created. The world of Prey means so much to me and i wish it was able to be expanded on instead of the studio being shut down because of ONE game that the higher ups wanted them to make in the first place. Redfall isn’t the worst thing in the world, yes it has problems: the open world format makes the game feel more shallow, the world building wasn’t nearly as interesting, and don’t get me started on the gameplay. But that game would’ve been so much better if greedy studio execs didn’t require it to be this multiplayer looter shooter that no one even asked for. Anyways i know this was rambly i just wanted to express these passionate feelings because of how much Arkane means to me and I truly hope that those affected by the closure are able to form another studio like Ralph Colentonio did and continue to make great immersive sims like they always wanted to.
Prey will always have a special place in my heart
As soon as you said fuck Bethesda I liked the vid
Very professional video. Looking forward to more in the future.
Tbh I kind of liked Arkane's Wolfenstein game, it sure showed their touch. It's a shame to say the least that Arkane Austin and Tango were closed, after knowing I'll never get a real ending to Jensen's story I would have never expected that The Evil Within would get the same treatment. Fuck Microsoft man.
Did you play Evil Within? If so, how was it?
@@bmsuperstar1 its peak survival horror, the second one is a bit more open world, with npc giving you a few quests, where you get guns as rewards.
@@Sinner987 Okay . I can only play it on PS4 at the moment. I was wondering if it was worth it.
Is "ZeniMax" literally a "ALL MONEY" pun?
I genuinely enjoyed my time with Redfall. The atmosphere and world design were just like good ole Arkane, filled to the brim with detailed stuff to read and look at. Lighting engine is great too. But yeah wish they had more time to *actually* make what they wanted. Hoping for the offline update to actually come out.
This makes me feel even more pessimistic about the future of gaming industry. I started noticing bad patterns way back in 2020 when games started to turn into "live service money grinders", when more and more games started to become online-only. I've always seen games as a way to tell some story, to show some interesting characters or just deliver a memorable experience that will remain in your mind and make you think and make questions. And now I look at the market and can only scrap some nice indie games like Little Nightmares, Sally Face, Black Mesa, Nier Automata etc... It's just that I'm starting to get dissapointed in people who buy "call of booty" or another forgetable live service piece of code each year, burying the single-player games that have a soul with some idea behind it. Well, guess I'll just replay Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Nier Automata, Alice: Madness Returns or old need for speed games...
When you get more enjoyment from a $10 indie game over AAA. Gamings cooked smh
451
Here's to endless hours of good time. Maybe one day, it will be there, a new final entry to our beloved franchise Dishonored. We would be able to immerse ourselves once again in the beautiful world of Dunwall or beyond.
Prey of greed, had a Redfall from grace before, and now their memory is just completely Dishonored.
It's like theyre hexed or something
You’re actually on point about late stage capitalism. This stage is called imperialism with monopolization being one of its main features.
Look man here is my two cents and also source of hope for the imsim genre. AAA also abondened metroidvanias after their initial succes at the dawn of the video games industry and there was a drought of it, until game making technology got good enough that small indie studios could make them and BOOM we got the greatest metroidvanias ever. So it seems the hope is lost on the AAA front we just need to wait till gamedev tech improves enough to the point where it is feasable for indie studios to make great imsims. Then we will have our kino back.
Thief 2 and Deus Ex are two of my favourite games of all time. Prey was also amazing.
I cant believe they shut down Arkane and kill one of the few developers that were still willing to do immersive sims.
All this in favour of live services that honestly no one actually cares since the rate of sucess for any released live service game is very small.
Ive been gaming since the ZX Spectrum and i honestly dont recognize the industry anymore.
I know it needs to be a profitable industry like any other but i also feel like its the only industry that is run by people who dont play or use their own products and dont give two shits about what they are actually investing in.
Truly sad...
Couldn't agree more
I have a question that i’m very worried on about Prey and Dishonored. Both games have been on my list for a while and have wanted to play them sometime. Are they still going to be playable on steam?? or do i have to play the games as soon as possible to experience them?
I’m not sure how it works when a game studio is shut down when it comes to already released games.
if anything, should i rush my way to playing games like Prey or take my time for until im ready?
I see no reason (right now) why the publisher wouldn’t keep selling them even if the studio is shut down. The only game of Arkane’s that I’d say is now on a time limit is Redfall, since it never got its offline patch and I doubt Microsoft is going to keep the servers online forever. Otherwise, I’d highly recommend the rest of Arkane’s library! It goes on sale very frequently, so you can get them pretty cheap next Steam sale.
If you meant just playing them if you own them already, neither Dishonored nor Prey rely on online features to function, they should continue working as designed. Deathloop will likely one day have its multiplayer servers shut down, but the single player should remain functional.
@@adammaximum Oh okay thank you for the clarification!!
My pleasure!
they put 0451 in redfall alot..................
i cant believe this, i am so mad, i really really love dishonored AND HOPE FOR ANOTHER GAME! i truly hate capitalism
451
if both studios were proposing single player games..they may have shot themselves, combined with the financial losses that were imposed on them
games are now made for max profits, the reason everything is a live service now is because the big companies refuse to greenlight anything thats not going to print money hand over fist
0451
I think that if we dont get dishonored 3 is blessing in diguise. Why? Well who wants to see bastartizded Dishonored 3 when 70% people who created Dishonored 2 were gone. Its like saying "Im excited for gta6" from Wokestar. The writing is on the wall you just need to open eyes.
I understand your frustration but redfall wasn't something these new hires were simply going to "learn from". With most talented devs having left there wouldn't have been anyone to teach em, microsoft just chose to cut their losses, the devs at arkane aren't hapless vitctims either.
That's bs, teams always change but the key people were always the same. The majority of people who worked on Dishonored didn't work on Prey (2017), the same thing is true for Redfall.
Source: Billy Lord (Lead character artist at Arkane Austin)
The problem isn't that Arkane Austin wasn't given another chance after Redfall to "learn from their mistakes", because without corporate interference they never would have made Redfall in the first place----or at least the directionless live-service slop version of Redfall we ended up with. The leadership for Austin must bear some blame, surely, but 90% of the devs at the studio are pretty damn close to hapless victims in this scenario.
Even without a large contingent of senior leadership (of which there definitely still were some, not everyone left), I still maintain that Arkane Austin could’ve learned from the mistakes of Redfall had they been given the chance. The success of Dishonored didn’t happen overnight, it was only after years of experience developing numerous projects that got canceled before Arkane made their first big hit. Success doesn’t come from nowhere, it’s built by learning from failure.
@@adammaximum doesnt it ultimately depend on their willingness to create a live service. like if the devs actually chose to make a live service instead of a standard single player game, im sure they'd have a strong desire to get better at it. But if its basically being forced on them; all those devs who joined to make sinlge player immersive sims would struggle to put their best work in and take the extra time to improve their knowledge/skills
Willingness definitely is a factor, but it’s not the only one. Having talent and experience certainly plays into it, as does proper resources. One of the issues highlighted by the Bloomberg article in regards to Redfall’s development was the fact that Arkane Austin wasn’t an especially large team to begin with, and development and maintenance of these large-scale live services require teams of hundreds of people.
But as we know, because of Arkane’s reputation, most people who applied to work there were doing so with the expectation that they’d work on single-player immersive sims, not multiplayer live services, so Redfall was already kind of doomed from the start.
Typical Microsoft
Be glad that bethesda wont release a Prey sequel. It would be some damn woke and probably a live service anyway.
Wtf are you saying? Prey 2017 is literally damn "woke" it had gay ppl, indian ppl, black ppl AND YOU'RE PLAYING AS ASIAN FFS.
Please go outside and touch grass.
@@Moji55a Wtf are you saying? That alone doens't make it woke, and the gay people were all either completly missable background characters or you don't even realize they were gay if you don't pay attention to the dialogue. Are you delusional? Why would you playing as asian be "woke"?
I liked prey, but Arkane Austin was 1% of Arkane talent.
Wow I can't believe a studio that failed disasterously wasting hundreds of millions of dollars got closed 😱
1 mess up with redfall after losing 70% of their staff… who expected that?
Prey flopped so did redfall
Make
Better
Games
Prey is such an awesome game. Only downside is the stench of wokeness. Way to put a sticker on a ferrari.