Arkane's Dishonored always felt like a secret Thief sequel, and that's because it started life as one

Dishonored remains my personal favorite of Arkane Austin’s lineup. I appreciated the studio’s take on Prey, and even have a playthrough of Redfall under my belt (I’ll maintain it had the foundations of something great, though it never stuck the landing). It’s the 2012 sneak-em-up that won my heart, however. Atmospheric and stylish, it manages to walk the line between freeform stealth game, immersive sim, and bombastic action. In many ways, it felt like the secret Thief 4 that (at the time) didn’t exist. As its co-creators reveal, there’s a very good reason for this: it started life as exactly that.

Dishonored Directors Raphaël Colantonio and Harvey Smith recently sat down together to kick off a multi-part series playing through the game. Colantonio will be inviting various members of its development team to join him across each episode, diving into its creation and sharing insights into its design. Touching on the intial foundations of Dishonored, he notes that initially when Smith joined Arkane, the plan was for them to each work on separate projects.

When the studio was approached by publisher Bethesda, however, it was looking for a team to make either Thief 4 or a Blade Runner game. “The proposition was, ‘Hey we have the Thief franchise, and we know the people to make that game, and it’s you.'” The other option was Blade Runner. Smith jokes, “It was basically like coming to two cats and saying, ‘We have a big bag of catnip here on one side, we have another bag of catnip here – which one do you want?'”

You can watch the conversation in the video above, starting at the 9:30 mark. “At first it was just Thief, and I was so excited,” Colantonio remarks. “We were in such a dire situation business-wise and they came not only to save us from business, but also to bring, frankly, the IP that I would have liked to work on the most.”

“We had an amazing pitch for Thief, it would have been Thief 4,” Smith recalls, “and then for Blade Runner, we had worked with Etienne [Aubert], our brilliant animator specializing in first-person combat.” The team were studying replicant fighting – “they would be doing things with their bodies that humans couldn’t do” – and he was very excited for the story pitch Arkane had come up with.

“Initiallly I thought we were going to do Thief; I was so excited,” Colantonio explains, “and then 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.” He adds that while he did enjoy the movie, his interest in it paled in comparison to that of Smith: “Harvey is a big, big expert and fan of Blade Runner – probably more than I was of Thief back then.”

Colantonio says Bethesda was confident in giving them at least one, but wasn’t initially sure which it would be. “So Harvey was leading the Blade Runner effort, I was leading the Thief effort,” he remembers. “There was a little bit of competition in a way – we wanted what was best for the company, but at the end of the day I would have been devastated if it was Blade Runner because it meant that I was not directing it.”

Eventually, both of the opportunities ended up falling through. “We thought maybe they were going to shut the deal,” Colantonio says of Bethesda. “We were not acquired yet, but we had this deal with them to do the next Thief or Blade Runner. And eventually they said, ‘Ah, it’s okay – keep what you’re doing and call it Dishonored.'”

That project would be built on the Thief 4 base that Colantonio had established, but the pair decided that the best move was to co-direct it. “It was strange, because we were not used to shared direction – of course we gave each other feedback, but we had to share the decision-making for the first time in our career.”

“I remember we got to the very end of the project and it felt like we needed couple’s therapy or something,” Harvey laughs. “At times it was hilarious and super fun and I learned a lot, and vice-versa I think. But then other times it was gruelling.” While they each took ownership of individual elements, he remarks to Colantonio, “At the very end I remember us talking about it and I said something about co-directing and you instantly said, ‘Never again.'”

Colantonio chuckles in response. “I have great memories of it – it’s almost like a relationship, but a relationship that went really well. We had some tensions, of course; making a game is hard, it’s super hard, so there’s going to be some tension. But I grew from it in my own way, I learned how to put a little more space between my thoughts and my words.”