Arkane devs say the studio almost made Thief 4 and a Blade Runner game before it made Dishonored — 'We were both so excited. Blade Runner and Thief, two of our favourite things of all time' | Tech Radar
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Arkane devs say the studio almost made Thief 4 and a Blade Runner game before it made Dishonored — 'We were both so excited. Blade Runner and Thief, two of our favourite things of all time'
The devs had "an amazing pitch" for what would have been Thief 4
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Arkane Studios co-directors Raphael Colantonio and Harvey Smith say they almost made a Blade Runner game and Thief 4
Bethesda approached Arkane with the idea, and Arkane developed pitches for both projects
Thief 4 eventually became the foundation for Dishonored
According to former Arkane Studios co-directors Raphael Colantonio and Harvey Smith, the Deathloop developer almost made a Blade Runner game and Thief 4 before it made Dishonored.
In a new You Tube series, spotted by user 'Knoebel' on Blue Sky (via Eurogamer), the developers sat down to reflect on Dishonored and its development 14 years after its release.
Early on in the video, Colantonio revealed that Bethesda approached the studio to consider creating a new game in the Thief series, which would have been Thief 4.
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"Before we did Dishonored, we were supposed to either do Thief or Blade Runner," said Colantonio. "Bethesda approached us with the proposition, 'Hey, we have the Thief franchise, and we know the people to make that game, and it's you'. It's our game."
"Which is basically like coming to two cats and saying, 'We have a big bag of catnip here on the one side. We have another bag of catnip here, which one do you want? You want both?'" Smith added. "We were both so excited. Blade Runner and Thief, two of our favourite things of all time."
"We were in such a dire situation business-wise, and they came up not only to save us from business, but also to bring frankly, the IP that I would have liked to work on the most," Colantonio said.
Smith continued, saying that they had "an amazing pitch" for what would have been Thief 4, with Colantonio interjecting to add that they had "some videos" as well, and for Blade Runner, they had worked with one of Arkane's animators who specialised in first-person combat to create some fighting animations.
"We also did some Replicant fighting because we had talked to Doug Church [a veteran game designer], and he said, you know, even sitting around in a room together, they would be doing things with their bodies that humans couldn't do," Colantonio added. "Like, reaching in and grabbing the eggs out of the boiling water or whatever. So we had flips, and it was super exciting to be working on Blade Runner. The story pitch we had for Blade Runner was just– I loved it.
"The funny thing was that we initially thought we were going to be [working on] Thief. I was so excited, and they said, well, it might also be Blade Runner, and there was no way I could focus on Thief and Blade Runner at the same time."
Unfortunately, Arkane was never able to make its vision for Blade Runner and Thief 4 a reality, and because Bethesda hadn't yet acquired the studio, they were concerned about the direction they were going in.
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That is, until Bethesda suggested to "keep what you're doing and call it Dishonored".
"[Dishonored] started on the base of Thief 4," Colantonio revealed.
Dishonored was released in 2012, and Arkane later developed Dishonored 2, which launched in 2016.
In early 2024, it was reported that Arkane Austin wanted to make a new single-player game, such as a Dishonored sequel, before the studio was shut down.
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Demi is a freelance games journalist who helps cover gaming news at Tech Radar. She's been a games writer for five years and has written for outlets such as Game Spot, NME, and Games Radar, covering news, features, and reviews. Outside of writing, she plays a lot of RPGs and talks far too much about Star Wars on X.
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