Microsoft Destroyed Arkane Austin but the Studio’s Soul Is Indestructible

ign.com:

15 minutes into Prey, the 2017 sci-fi thriller crafted by Arkane Austin, protagonist Morgan Yu shatters their apartment window with a wrench. As hundreds of glass shards fall away, a newly revealed truth changes Morgan’s life forever. This genuinely shocking, perspective-pivoting opening is one of the most incredible introductions to a game world ever made.

Seven days into May 2024, Microsoft took up its own metaphorical wrench and shattered Arkane Austin. A veteran of immersive sims – those first-person, highly interactive games where RPG, simulation, and action systems interlock – it was one of the casualties of Xbox’s brutal dismemberment of Bethesda Softworks.

This is a heartbreaking situation. Staff laid off from Arkane Austin have been thrown into the toughest conditions the games industry has ever seen. But, if you’ll permit me to search for the light in this darkness, the soul of the studio has already proven itself incredibly resilient. This is not the first time that financials and parent companies have dictated the course of the immersive sim in Austin, Texas. Despite multiple hardships, the genre always finds a way to survive in this city.

First, let’s reflect on what has been taken. The messy and misguided co-op shooter Redfall may be Arkane Austin’s most recent release, but the studio is built on a rich history of single-player innovation. It crafted two timeless classics: the eldritch stealth sim Dishonored (built cooperatively with Arkane’s surviving Lyon studio) and Prey, a modern day reinterpretation of the brilliant System Shock. And according to Bloomberg, before Microsoft’s guillotine fell, Arkane Austin was already drawing up the blueprints for a new single-player game that drew on the team’s proven skills.

It’s impossible to know what that game would be, but if Dishonored and Prey are evidence of anything, then we’ve lost something with incredible potential. Dishonored demonstrates Arkane Austin’s talent for deeply interactive game worlds that