Recently, former Arkane Studios employees who led the development of Dishonored returned to their game after 14 years to play through it and comment on various aspects. In the first episode, Raphael Colantonio and Harvey Smith shared memories of how they came to create the original Dishonored.
As it turned out, it all started with Thief 4. Colantonio explained that Bethesda first approached Arkane Studios with an offer to work on a game based on the Thief franchise. At that time, the studio was experiencing financial difficulties, and the developer was very pleased with the deal:
I was so excited, and, you know, we were in such a difficult situation then, and they came not only to save us, but also brought, frankly, the franchise I most wanted to work on.
Then Bethesda approached Arkane Studios with another offer — the company announced that it could acquire the rights to develop a game based on Blade Runner.
Colantonio led the development of Thief 4, and they managed to create several concept videos, while Harvey Smith worked on the Blade Runner game — they were involved in 3D rendering of the Esper computer and animation of replicants (artificial humans), "they could do things with their bodies that humans couldn't."
However, Bethesda was unable to obtain the necessary rights. Colantonio feared that after this, the company would refuse to cooperate with Arkane, but they were offered another solution:
In the end, both projects didn't work out. We thought they might just terminate the agreement. We hadn't been bought yet, but we still had an agreement with [Bethesda] to develop the next Thief or a Blade Runner game for them. And, in the end, they said: "You know, it's okay. Keep doing what you're doing and call it Dishonored." That's how it happened that, essentially, it all started based on our version of Thief 4, and then Harvey and I thought: maybe we should become co-game directors for this game?
The developers' video is available at the following link.