Dishonored 2 cost more to make than Skyrim and sold worse, but ex-dev says it was so good that it gave Arkane "seal-of-quality protection" within Bethesda

Dishonored 2 was a critical success but didn't see the kind of commercial turnout that developer Arkane and publisher Bethesda, or parent Zenimax, had been hoping for after the first game actually exceeded expectations. Even so, former Arkane Lyon designer Julien Eveillé says Dishonored gave Arkane "a kind of seal-of-quality protection" that solidified its standing within the Zenimax stable, even when compared to much more profitable hits like Skyrim.

Speaking with PC Gamer, Eveillé, who joined Arkane Lyon during the development of Dishonored 2 in QA, recalls that "I think when Bethesda was looking at the numbers, they thought, OK, Skyrim sold so much. And it cost less than Dishonored 2 to make. So they were asking questions. From an executive spend standpoint, it makes sense to ask those questions of, 'Why should we keep going with you?' But we knew that we had a kind of seal-of-quality protection, making what would maybe be considered the most refined games of the whole Bethesda catalogue."

The reputation epitomized by Dishonored "kind of saved the studio," Eveillé says. Studio director Dinga Bakaba was also instrumental in establishing Arkane's position, Eveillé adds, giving "confidence back to the upper management" after studio founder Raphael Colantonio left to form his own studio. Bakaba's argument, in Eveillé's words, that Arkane should "stop trying to make buzzword games, games-as-a-service and all that kind of stuff" and instead "make something special" proved essential to the "future success" of the company. 2017's Prey and 2021's Deathloop upheld this approach.

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The bitter irony here is that Prey dev Arkane Austin was only shut down after the failure of Redfall, which you could not unreasonably call a buzzword game-as-a-service, and which lost Arkane's true strengths to buggy live service trappings. Colantonio previously called Microsoft's decision to close Arkane Austin "stupid," arguing that "recreating a very special group like that is, I would dare to say, impossible."

The collapse of Redfall is still held up as a textbook case of a great studio being shoehorned into a doomed, ill-fitting project and then cast away by its corporate owners when impossible expectations proved impossible. Arkane Lyon, meanwhile, is working on Marvel's Blade.

Last year, developers paid tribute to the immersive sim titans that are Arkane Austin and Dishonored: "One of those games that changed my world view on game design."