Nothing concrete, to my knowledge. We know it isn’t Redfall because that was Project Omen. People have speculated that Blacksky could be a sequel to Prey but I personally doubt it. Arkane Austin isn’t a huge studio so I’m not sure they have the bandwidth to work on multiple big projects.
Blacksky could easily be not real or a misinterpretation of some kind.
Edit: Perhaps Blacksky is the codename for Roundhouse Studios’ project (maybe called SpyTeam from the trademark) and it’s just misattributed to Arkane Austin. Or maybe Austin is assisting Roundhouse with it.
It doesn’t surprise me. Didn’t the creative director leave the project in the middle of development too and the direction for the game was changed? Read that somewhere. I have much more hope for TeW2’s creator new game, even though it’s the opposite of horror. Really curious what it is.
I would say he’s indeed mentioning the least interesting things for a show that is supposed to be a big one, Grubb last year had us temper our expectations for that E3 and said this year would be the one where we start to see things. I would expect that means games that got announced two years ago as well.
Just to be clear. Grounded, not exactly super exciting, not what a lot of people will tune in for. Many people want to be “blown away” with current gen visuals, new projects, new stuff/IP to look forward to in 2023 and I don’t think that’s a unreasonable expectation to have either. If those things are there that’s fine, but I sure expect a lot more too.
I also do not believe at all that Starfield won’t even be featured at the Xbox show. A trailer ala the Fallout 4 one which showed lots of ingame stuff and then deep dive at Bethesda show.
Is this the project where they had job listing for, for a new immersive sim?
I also remember that tweet by Redfall dev that had a picture of the game and also something about a new game and it sounded like they were looking for people for both Redfall and a new game. Was a bit unclear.
I’m sure Austin has whatever is after Redfall (DLC, Redfall 2, Prey 2, another new IP etc.) in pre-production already, but I really think the majority of the studio is focused on shipping Redfall right now.
That includes the Deathloop team? Because I could swear I saw they are fully looking for people for their next one. But that’s probably pre-production then yeah.
Oh man I hope so much Arkane goes back to a game like Dishonored or Prey. I’d almost kill for a Preq sequel but I also realize there’s a chance this won’t happen anymore. It sadly just didn’t sell well, Dishonored sold better. Now I know with Game Pass sales aren’t nearly as important anymore because tons of people have GP and will give the game at least a try opposed to having the game only available for purchase, but I think a third Dishonored has a higher chance of being next.
No, Deathloop is Arkane Lyon. Blacksky was specifically attributed to Arkane Austin.
Both Lyon and Austin made Dishonored 1 and the DLC, and then they split off to work on separate projects. Lyon made Dishonored 2, Dishonored: Death of the Outsider and Deathloop, while Austin made Prey, Prey: Mooncrash and Redfall.
Even though they share the Arkane name, the two studios are on entirely separate development tracks.
If Redfall becomes a big succes and gets many updates I don’t think they’ll be in any hurry for a new Prey, damn. I guess it all depends on how passionate they are for the IP. Especially now with Game Pass it can find a brand new audience for example. There have been games on GP where people said they wouldn’t have bought it, but now that this was on GP and they played it they will get the next one.
I would love a sequel to Prey more than anyone, and with how successful the game has been in Game Pass (seemingly), I do think we might get one some day, maybe even after Redfall. But also, Arkane want to try new things while still carrying forward their immersive sim design, and that’s evident in both Deathloop and Redfall. I trust them and will support whatever project they want to make.
The thing about Deathloop and Redfall for me is that rumor that Zenimax started to change their vision on singleplayer games and going in a different direction. People believe these two games and likely Fallout 76 are the results of that. A few years ago during E3 with a video they seemed to double down on singleplayer games, but that seemingly didn’t last long. I don’t know what to believe of that myself though.
If anything, I think 76 and Wolfenstein: Youngblood could be evidence of that, but from what we know about Bethesda’s studios, I really don’t think ZeniMax forces them to make certain kinds of games.
The closest thing we’ve had to that is when they made Arkane Austin use the name Prey, but the actual game pretty much had complete creative freedom. I genuinely believe that Deathloop and Redfall are what the two Arkane studios wanted to make and nothing more. Deathloop especially is a really weird game and very tough to sell; it’s hard to imagine that ZeniMax were the ones who came up with the idea. Ghostwire is also very strange and I can’t see Bethesda being the ones pushing for that.
According to the Xbox + Bethesda roundtable, even Youngblood was born out of the close relationship between MachineGames and Arkane Lyon, more so than publisher mandate.
I am pretty sure that Bethesda did not want to launch FO76 in a state it launched. With Youngblood maybe studios wanted to try something new. I personally don’t believe that developers want MTX in their games.
Though even with Microsoft we got something like Bleeding Edge thus who knows…
I don’t disagree, but Bleeding Edge was a special case because it was already in development when Ninja Theory was bought, and it would have pissed off their newly acquired team if Xbox had just cancelled it.
It’s possible it’s a combination of factors. There were rumors from Grubb that Arkane and Tango were in trouble prior to the Microsoft purchase. It’s fathomable that Arkane’s leadership came up with the idea themselves but were at least partially motivated to find something that could have commercial success. The leadership of any AAA studio isn’t going to completely overlook economics just because they have creative autonomy. They still have responsibilities to run financially sound businesses. Having creative autonomy (likely) means they have the freedom to determine the best way to achieve that with their talents.