- Dishonored was a last-ditch effort by Arkane Studios after years of fruitless contract work, according to the game's co-creator: 'I think we had four months of money left' - 22 August 2026
Former Arkane Austin head Harvey Smith recently announced his new studio, Black Pony Immersive . As the name suggests will be dedicated to making immersive sims in the tradition of Deus Ex and System Shock . It's a commitment that I wholeheartedly support, though as is always the case with this genre, there's a concern over whether such a move is commercially viable... Read more.
- Dishonored co-creator Harvey Smith launches a new studio and it literally has the word 'Immersive' in the name - 19 August 2026
Former Arkane Austin studio director Harvey Smith, known for his work on games including Deus Ex, Thief: Deadly Shadows, and Dishonored, has joined with executive producer Ben Horne to launch a new studio called Black Pony Immersive. The new operation features "an elite development team" built around personnel from Arkane, Insomniac, Epic, Avalanche, and Volition, including Smith's long-time collaborator Ricardo Bare... Read more.
- Dishonored review (2012) - 21 June 2026
Special commentary on this classic PC Gamer review provided by: .. Read more.
- Dishonored dev defends loading screens: 'I actually have a soft spot for all that' - 15 June 2026
Raphaël Colantonio, co-creative director of Dishonored, has been streaming a playthrough where he's joined by different members of the team at Arkane who worked on whichever level he's currently replaying. It's been interesting, and has resulted in the unearthing of titbits like Arkane being tapped to make Thief 4 and Blade Runner before they ended up with Dishonored... Read more.
- Before Dishonored, Arkane was tapped to make Thief 4, and my heart weeps for what might have been: 'We had an amazing pitch for Thief' - 25 May 2026
The Dishonored games were a treat for old-time stealth sickos in part because they cleaved so closely to Thief , the greatest example of the genre. in fact, when it came time to give voice to Corvo Attano in Dishonored 2, Arkane chose Stephen Russell for the job, the man behind the iconic voice of Thief protag Garrett. It turns out that we were actually not too far off from a full-on Thief-by-Arkane experience before all that happened, as Bethesda initially approached Arkane with the idea of having the studio make Thief 4... Read more.
- Dishonored 'sounded a little bit ridiculous' in the beginning, but came together with the help of the Sweeney Todd musical - 7 September 2025
If you were to walk down Lackrow Boulevard in Dunwall—taking care not to linger outside The Black Friar, the dilapidated hotel where the Hatters Gang conduct their business in the legal district—you might stop at number 131. These are the premises of the company who build audiograph players: the rudimentary recording devices which capture the voices spoken into them, and offer scratchy, echoey playback via punchcards. All over the city, audiographs hold the private thoughts of lords and admirals, the final words of gangsters and royal caretakers. The inner life that elevates NPCs to characters who haunt their levels long after they're ragdolled... Read more.
- Michael Madsen, the voice of Dishonored's supernatural assassin Daud, has died - 4 July 2025
ctor Michael Madsen, known for his portrayal of brooding, intimidating tough guys in a career spanning more than 40 years, has died at age 67. The Hollywood Reporter says the cause of death has been reported as cardiac arrest... Read more.
- Dishonored and Prey's director says 'I could see myself working on Dishonored 3 right now' but the chances of that happening is in the realms of 'science fiction' - 6 April 2025
Of all the unmade sequels that I'd like to exist, Dishonored 3 is at the top of the list. The original Dishonored ranks among my favourite games ever (especially when you throw in its incredible expansions ), while Dishonored 2 is generally regarded as one of the best games of all time... Read more.
- Great moments in PC gaming: Giving up on a pacifist run - 28 May 2023
Great moments in PC gaming are bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories. .. Read more.
- Dishonored and Prey studios are hiring for an unannounced project - 23 September 2020
It looks like Dishonored and Prey developer Arkane Studios is hiring up for a new game. A suite of job listings for the company's teams in both Lyon and Austin have shown up recently, with several directly mentioning an unannounced project. As pointed out on Twitter by MauroNL, two out of three job listings at Arkane Lyon mention that the studio "is seeking talented to join us for a new unannounced project." Over at Arkane Austin, a listing for a graphics engineer is looking for someone "to join our team in developing our next AAA title." At this point, there's no official word on what those games might look like, but the listings do give us a vague idea. One listing asks for familiarity with Unreal Engine 4, but many of Arkane's previous games have been built in a form of id Tech, the only notable exception being Prey, which runs on CryEngine, suggesting a potentially hefty overhaul. O…
- Dishonored is 'resting,' Arkane lead designer says - 14 August 2018
The Dishonored games were great—not perfect by any means, but very much the kind of thing I'd love to see more of. Sadly, that's not going to happen anytime soon, and may not happen at all, as Arkane lead designer Ricardo Bare told VG247 that the series may or may not be back.  "I can’t say definitively what might happen down the road, anything could happen, but is resting for now," Bare said.    The good news is that if Dishonored is finished, it was at least given a proper send-off in Death of the Outsider, which wrapped up the trilogy conclusively and saw a new day dawn on the Empire of the Isles. Even more importantly, Bare said that regardless of what happens with Dishonored specifically, Arkane remains committed to making that kind of game. "The things that are important to us as a studio are coherent, deep world building and environmental st…
- The best evil endings in PC games - 11 July 2018
Remember that time Luke Skywalker went bad in a Star Wars comic book? Imagine the Star Wars movies ending with Luke falling to the dark side. The "bad" ending would never happen in the big budget movies, but someone has definitely written it. Imagining those "what ifs" is what fan fiction is for. Videogames, though, don't have to leave their alternate history storytelling up to the fans. They can embrace those doom-and-gloom endings with branching paths and multiple endings. If Return of the Jedi were a game, we could've absolutely had a semi-canon cutscene of the savior of the galaxy cutting down his father and kneeling at the feet of the Emperor. That's more or less how BioWare's Knights of the Old Republic ended, and it was way better than your typical happy ending. Gaming has accumulated a number of astonishing, melancholy, and downright sadistic endings for thos…
- How imitation and revenge drive Dishonored's heroes and villains - 19 March 2018
Spoilers follow for Dishonored and Dishonored 2. Delilah Copperspoon—servant, painter, playmate to a young Empress, then witch, usurper and Empress herself—is first introduced in Dishonored’s two-part DLC, The Knife of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches. In Dishonored 2, Delilah returns to Dunwall Tower with one mission: take back what’s yours.  While Dishonored opens with Jessamine’s assassination, and Death of the Outsider ends with the removal of the Outsider from the Void, Dishonored 2 shows that the instigating act of the series’ narrative arc is one child blaming another. In Delilah’s account, a single act of childish cruelty cascades into a lifetime of misery for herself and her mother, as Jessamine’s privileged position as the daughter of an Emperor doesn’t extend to her half-sister. As a child, Delilah did not un…
- Which game would you like to see made into a film or TV show? - 10 March 2018
Which games would make great movies or TV shows? That's the question we've put to the PC Gamer staff in this week's PCG Q&A , and almost all of us preferred the idea of TV series to films (perhaps because game movies are destined to be dumpster fires forever). Let us know your suggestions in the comments, too! Andy Kelly: a Silent Hill anthology show The cursed town is different for every sinner who's lured to it, and I think that's a perfect setup for a series of standalone horror/mystery stories. The supernatural nature of the setting would allow the writers to come up with some really twisted, mind-bending plotlines, and the town would provide some loose structure, making all the episodes feel like part of a whole: similar to the brilliant Inside No. 9, in which every episode is set in a house or other indoor setting numbered 9. With the success of shows like…
- The most evil choices you can make in PC gaming - 28 February 2018
Being evil in an RPG is no easy feat. Not only do you need the stomach for it, but developers aren't always the best at making evil choices feel as nuanced and satisfying as their morally righteous counterparts. It's rare for a game to present you with a decision so evil that it actually upsets you, but there is also an undeniable joy in being a monstrous jackass—even if your reason for detonating a dormant nuke in the middle of a small town is just for the lols. That's why we forced some of our writers into the confession booth to finally fess up about their favorite evil decisions in PC gaming. It's some pretty dark stuff—from smothering babies to forcing someone to murder their lifelong best friend—but if you've got a kink for the chaotic, here are our picks for some of the most sinful choices we've made in games.  Tyranny - Hus…
- The uncertain future of games like Deus Ex and Dishonored - 15 August 2017
Warren Spector is stuck in Prey. The director of Deus Ex, who has worked on many games since labeled "immersive sims"—in fact, he coined the term in a post-mortem of Deus Ex —has been playing the modern games inspired by classics like Thief and System Shock. But he hasn't finished Prey yet. Or, as he puts it: "The crew quarters are kicking my butt." He's enjoying it though, just as he enjoyed the other recent immersive sim from Arkane Studios, Dishonored 2. "I thought they were both excellent examples of what I think of when I say 'immersive sim,'" Spector says. "They removed barriers to belief that I was in another world and they let me approach problems as problems, rather than as puzzles. I'm really glad Arkane exists and that they're so committed to the genre. Without them I'd have fewer games to play!" Spector's not the only one…
- Arkane founder Raphael Colantonio on why he's leaving: 'I feel like I've never sat down' - 30 June 2017
It was big news earlier this week when Raphael Colantonio announced that he is leaving Arkane , the studio he founded in 1999. He'd shepherded it through a small but enviable range of games, from its cult-favorite debut Arx Fatalis to the big-budget hits Dishonored and Prey, and generally speaking that's not the kind of guy you want to see bail out. But as he said in an interview during the Gamelab conference (via GamesIndsustry ), after nearly two solid decades he needed a break.  "Leaving this is actually a hard, hard choice, but at the same time I've been doing this for 18 years. I feel like I've never ever sat down, for even a minute," Colantonio said. "It's been a non-stop run, and I do feel like I need to take a break and rest for a while, and spend time on more personal projects—play music, spend time with my son, anything that isn't work…
- Raphael Colantonio, creative director of Dishonored and Prey, is leaving Arkane - 27 June 2017
Raphael Colantonio, the founder of Arkane Studios and creative director on Dishonored and Prey , has announced that he is leaving the studio "to to spend some time with my son and reflect on what is important to me and my future."  "The last 18 years have been an amazing adventure—from starting Arkane in 1999, to making our first game, Arx Fatalis, to joining ZeniMax Media in 2010 and releasing the Dishonored series and Prey to critical acclaim," Colantonio wrote in his farewell message . "I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the best and brightest people in the industry, and I feel extremely lucky to have been part of this journey with everyone at Arkane."  Colantonio said he will stick around "for as long as necessary to ensure a smooth transition to the new management team in Lyon," while is "long-time friend and colleague" Harvey Smith will head up A…
- The designers of Dishonored, Bioshock 2 and Deus Ex swap stories about making PC's most complex games - 10 March 2017
This discussion was originally published in March 2017. With the release of Prey, which features prominently, we've brought it back to offer some insight into the development of Arkane's latest game. Deus Ex. System Shock 2. Dishonored. Some of the PC's most celebrated games belong to a genre called the immersive sim , which emphasizes creating a complex world with tons of player freedom. They're some of our favorite games to talk about, and at the 2017 Game Developer's Conference we were lucky enough to do just that. We put together a roundtable of familiar faces, all of whom have had a major hand in exploring or creating immersive sims. Our guests: Warren Spector (Otherside Entertainment), Harvey Smith and Ricardo Bare (Arkane Studios), Tom Francis (Suspicious Developments) and Steve Gaynor (Fullbright). You can listen to the hour-long audio version of this di…
- Saying one last goodbye to Dishonored - 9 January 2017
I’ve played Dishonored enough times to know that, as I return to the Hound Pits pub in the penultimate chapter, I can start to game the chaos system a little bit. I’ve undertaken this latest, perhaps final playthrough to see off a game I love before the arrival of its much-anticipated sequel. I also wanted to have completed a run where I made all the decisions that I now know to be “canon”—branding but otherwise sparing the High Overseer, letting Daud go, and so on. Given that Arkane’s official version of Corvo is a merciful sort, this has meant taking a predominantly stealthy approach.  Which, in turn, means leaving most of Dishonored’s most lethal gadgets and techniques behind. Yet at this late point in the game I know I could kill more or less every corrupt guardsman patrolling the Hound Pits and have no impact on the ending, whic…
