So picture this. Arkane Studios — one of the most talented immersive sim developers ever assembled — is sitting across the table from Bethesda. They’re broke, they’re stressed, and Bethesda just slides two bags of catnip across the table: Thief 4 and a Blade Runner game. Both. At the same time. The two things these guys loved more than anything in gaming.
And then neither of them happened. And what came out the other side was Dishonored — arguably one of the greatest immersive sims ever made.
Former Arkane co-directors Raphael Colantonio and Harvey Smith sat down together this week to kick off a multi-part retrospective series on Dishonored’s development, and they went all the way back to the part nobody really knew in full detail — the chaotic, terrifying, weirdly beautiful story of how this game actually came to exist.
Arkane Was in a Dark Place Before Bethesda Came Knocking
Let’s not romanticise it — before Bethesda entered the picture, Arkane was genuinely in trouble. The studio had creative talent to spare but was caught in the kind of financial situation where the future of the whole operation was genuinely uncertain. Then out of nowhere, Bethesda approached them.
“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. That IP was Thief.
The pitch was direct: Bethesda believed Arkane were the right people — maybe the only people — to make a proper new Thief game. “Hey, we have the Thief franchise, and we know the people to make that game, and it’s you,” Colantonio recalled them saying.
For a studio built on the DNA of Looking Glass, Deus Ex, and the original Thief games, this wasn’t just a business opportunity. It was a dream handed to them on a plate.
Then Blade Runner Got Added to the Mix
Because apparently one legendary IP wasn’t enough chaos for one studio to handle at once, Bethesda also raised the possibility of a Blade Runner game. And this is where things got beautifully chaotic inside Arkane.
Smith captured it perfectly with an analogy: “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?'”
So that’s essentially what happened. Arkane split internally into two development efforts. Colantonio led the Thief 4 team, which went beyond just a pitch — they had prototype videos, early concepts, the whole thing. Smith led the Blade Runner team, which had also got deep into development, working with the studio’s first-person combat animator and game designer to build something genuinely exciting.
Smith described consulting with immersive sim godfather Doug Church about how Replicants should move and behave. The direction they landed on was that even in a casual setting, Replicants would do things with their bodies that no human could — reaching into boiling water, doing flips, moving with that uncanny inhuman precision. There were animations, there were mechanics, there was a story pitch that Smith says he genuinely loved.
“The story pitch we had for Blade Runner was just — I loved it,” he said.
Neither Game Happened — And Arkane Was Terrified
Here’s the gut punch. Bethesda ultimately couldn’t secure the rights to either franchise. Both projects were shelved. For a studio that had just bet its survival on these deals coming through, that was a brutal outcome.
“None of them worked out, and we thought maybe they were going to shut down the deal,” Colantonio explained. “We weren’t acquired yet, but we had this agreement for the next Thief or Blade Runner.”
The studio braced for the worst. And then Bethesda came back with something nobody expected: “Keep what you’re doing and call it Dishonored.”
Just like that. Not “we’re walking,” not “start over.” Just — take everything you’ve been building, give it a name, and finish it.
Dishonored Was Built on the Foundation of Thief 4
This is the bit that makes total sense in hindsight. Colantonio was direct about it: “Dishonored started on the base of Thief 4.“
When you go back and play Dishonored now knowing this, it clicks immediately. The rooftop traversal, the emphasis on non-lethal routes, the way the level design rewards patience and observation, the low-chaos philosophy — that’s Thief DNA, filtered through Arkane’s sensibilities and given an original world to live in.
What Arkane also brought from the Blade Runner work was an emphasis on dense, atmospheric world-building, morally complex characters, and that specific feeling of navigating a city that has its own logic and texture regardless of what you’re doing in it. Dunwall didn’t feel like a game level. It felt like a place.
- Thief 4 concepts contributed: stealth mechanics, rooftop traversal, guard AI behaviour, the chaos system, non-lethal routing
- Blade Runner work contributed: atmospheric world design, first-person character animation, the density of environmental storytelling
- The result: Dishonored (2012) — one of the most celebrated immersive sims ever made
As development progressed, the team also made a deliberate decision to move away from traditional stealth genre tropes — specifically the reliance on near-complete darkness to hide the player. By stepping back from those legacy constraints, Arkane had space to build something that felt new while still honouring what made the genre great.
What Happened to Thief Without Arkane
The comparison writes itself. Eidos Montreal ended up making a Thief reboot in 2014 — two years after Dishonored launched — and while it wasn’t a disaster, it never came close to capturing the acclaim that Dishonored earned. It felt like a franchise going through the motions compared to what Arkane had accidentally built from its remains.
It’s one of gaming history’s great “what if” scenarios. If either licensing deal had gone through, there’s a reasonable argument that neither Arkane’s Thief 4 nor their Blade Runner game would have had the creative freedom that made Dishonored what it is. Licensing constraints, franchise expectations, pre-existing lore — all of it would have limited what they could do.
Getting turned away from both, then being told to go make their own thing, was arguably the best outcome for everyone. Except maybe for Thief fans who deserved better than 2014.
Where Colantonio and Smith Are Now
The retrospective series is just getting started. Smith and Colantonio plan to bring in multiple members of the original Dishonored development team across future episodes to share stories and design insights — what they’re calling a chance to “tell stories, share design insights and probably get eaten by rats… a lot.” Expect the deep dives to get even more interesting from here.
As for what’s next from the people involved: Colantonio has since founded WolfEye Studios, currently working on an unannounced first-person immersive sim. Meanwhile, Arkane Lyon — the French side of the studio — is deep in development on Marvel’s Blade, which will be an interesting test of whether that distinct Arkane feel can survive the demands of a major Marvel IP.
Given the history revealed this week, there’s something poetic about Arkane’s next game being a licensed Marvel project. The last time they tried that approach, it became Dishonored. No pressure.
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