Following the launch of Prey in 2017, Arkane founder Raphael Colantonio left the company he created all the way back in 1999. Prey was an exceptional immersive sim, but it didn't make the kind of splash that Bethesda wanted, which in turn inspired some big changes in Arkane's direction. Talking to Jeremy Peel in a wide-ranging interview, Colantonio explains that he didn't want to make the type of games that Bethesda mandated.
"All I can tell you is that part of the reason why I left Bethesda was that they did not want to do the kind of games that we wanted to make," Colantonio says. He likens Arkane's approach to studios like Larian and FromSoftware: "Those are people that have been doing, over and over, the thing they know exactly how to do, until it hits super hard. So to me, that's what Arkane had to do."
Colantonio wanted to keep building on what Arkane had achieved with Dishonored and Prey, but due to disappointing sales, Bethesda "decided that was not part of the strategy anymore".
Bethesda wanted more live service games, and while that was partially walked back after the Microsoft acquisition, the wheels were already in motion—the wheels that would produce Redfall, Arkane Austin's less than well-received vampire-themed FPS.
Since Colantonio had already left Arkane, he can't pinpoint exactly how things went wrong, but there are likely many reasons.
"There's so many things that can influence [a game]," he says. "Someone in management, budget reductions, someone in marketing, a new change of direction in general about the market, you lost one of your main developers. There are so many things that can come into play."
Redfall had a pretty disastrous launch, and while the team managed to tackle a lot of issues with patches, it simply didn't strike a chord. The last update was in May, which came with a farewell message from Arkane Austin, following Microsoft's decision to close the studio.
"We’re thankful for the millions of players who have joined us," it read. "From everyone at Arkane Austin, thank you for playing our games and loving our worlds, it’s been an honor to deliver these experiences to you."
"I don't know everything, but I know these are very, very good people," says Colantonio. "And I actually personally liked the game. I played after the patches. I was waiting, because I could tell everybody was flared up. And yes, of course, it's not like what you necessarily expect from Arkane but it was not what they were set up to do. So it was a bit of a catch 22 for Harvey [Smith] and the team there."
Colantonio continues to do what he did back in the Arkane days: work on immersive sims. Cowboy RPG Weird West came out in 2022, and now WolfEye is working on a new first-person game, going back to Colantonio's roots.
