re: Microsoft Closing Multiple Studios

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Never played Prey. I guess I'll have to check it out. That game was created by Arkane Houston and then it seems a sequel got lost in development hell.

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Austin*, and there was never a sequel planned for Arkane's Prey. You're confusing it with the HumanHead Studios' Prey from 2006, whose sequel was in development hell for 4 years.

A lot of people were hoping for the sequel to Prey 2006 to see the light of day, so it felt like a rugpull when Prey 2017 (Arkane) was announced and had absolutely nothing to do with the original. Forcing the Prey name onto Arkane was a Zenimax decision and one of the first dominoes to fall with Raphael Colantonio (founder) leaving

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It's certainly reasonable to believe Zenimax dropped the ball with Redfall, but let's look at this realistically: Arcane Houston released Prey in 2017, and then nothing else until Redfall in 2023

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Arkane Austin didn't officially release anything from its inception in 2006 to the release of Prey 2017, but it still played a critical role as Lyon's sister studio. It had a very heavy hand in the developments of Dishonored 1 & 2. Redfall was still in the preproduction and early design phases when the Zenimax deal was announced, which is probably why some of the devs held out hope for a cancellation instead of quitting.

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They haven't been working on anything since he left. Not sure there's any way to spin that positively (the article I linked tried).

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I didn't even address that in my reply to you, I was just commenting on your suggestion that Mikami's departure was a death knell for the company when he hasn't really done anything from a game development standpoint in literally years. He's been talking about "directing one last game" since 2018. John Johanas, the director of Evil Within 2 and Hifi Rush, has been far more integral to the company as of late.




At the end of the day, whats heartbreaking to me is that Arkane's outlook, even for Lyon, has been pretty grim. Immersive sims require a ton of effort and creativity to be done properly, and they just don't sell very well. Arkane is one of the last few major studios that still makes them.

For those that aren't familiar with the "immersive sim" term - it describes games that create player immersion via the use of complex environments and tools that offer countless solutions for the player, none of which are the "right way"

In Prey you may be greeted by a locked door. You can find a key later in the game, you can use a nerf gun to bounce a dart off a window sill and hit a door release button on the other side, you can transform into a small object that fits through that open window, etc. Deus Ex is similar in that you can shoot your way through, talk your way through, hack your way through, or sneak through just about every situation

Tears of the Kingdom (didnt play) is probably the latest good example. So many different systems and abilities and shite that people would combine in various ways to come up with puzzle solutions that devs may not have even intended/tested, but worked nonetheless. That's what immersive sims are about. When you try something while thinking "no way this works," and then you're ecstatic when it actually does.