As teased earlier this week, Arkane founder Raphael Colantonio today revealed the first details of his upcoming game at WolfEye Studios.
While the name of the game is still under wraps, this new project is a first-person action RPG set in an alternate 1900s America, marking a shift in time and perspective from the isometric, top-down sandbox cities of WolfEye's debut game, Weird West.
As previously teased by the studio, the new game's graphics will be centered around a retro sci-fi aesthetic, and if the first three screenshots of the game hadn't already given it away, Colantonio (the creative director of this new game) and executive producer Julien Roby told me over a video call that both the gameplay and art direction are intended to be “something like Fallout meets Dishonored.”
Manage cookie settings
Watch on YouTube
“That’s where we want to be, we want to be in that space,” Colantonio tells me. “If there’s a continuum between Fallout and Dishonored, I would say Prey is somewhere in the middle because it’s already more of an RPG than Dishonored, and this new game is somewhere closer to Fallout, as far as the RPG aspect goes.”
This means you can expect “a lot of [quest objectives] like “investigate this thing, infiltrate that building,” Colantonio explains, “but with whatever approach you want.” That can range from “very, very direct” approaches, perhaps using the new weapon mods WolfEye is making for this game, or “more indirect” methods, like talking your way into or out of a scenario with the game's voice options. All the classic RPGs, in other words, that Colantonio and Roby hope will “add even more layers of possibility [to the game]which is actually what we have always stood for.”
“I personally love RPGs that get back on their feet when you shoot them between the eyes, for example,” Colantonio says. “Obsidian games are pretty good at that, and that’s the area we’re hitting with this game.”
The world will also be “continuous,” allowing players to “go anywhere” and “kill anyone they want,” Colantonio adds. He never mentions the words “open world,” mind you, but I have a feeling it will at least be more connected than the discrete locations of, say, Weird West.
Alas, WolfEye isn't ready to reveal any details about the aforementioned event that set this alternate timeline in motion, only that “something happened in America,” Colantonio says, “and the player will find out about it as they play. It will be one of the revelations as the story unfolds.”
As for what part of America the game will take place in, there are a couple of clues we can glean from those early screenshots WolfEye released. It still looks like there's going to be a Wild West feel, judging by the canyons and rocky landscapes, and when I mentioned this to Colantonio, he confirmed, “Yeah, sure, you can recognize the vistas and the vistas. It's in that area and that location.”
But it's crucial that the game doesn't draw on traditional Western tropes. “I think the big distinction we're making here is that, as far as genre literature goes, this is more like science fiction than it is like the Wild West or anything like that,” he says. “I think the Western is a genre that people associate with certain types of scenarios like revenge or street fighting. We don't have any of that.”
Rather, it’s more of a visual backdrop “where something so crazy happened that there’s not much left of it,” he adds, though he teases that at least some culture has managed to evolve in the 20-30 years since that in-game event, “but it’s already a different thing,” he clarifies. “If I really wanted to pin it down, it would be like some kind of, I don’t know, ’90s discarded steampunk.”
It's an ambitious step forward for this fully remote team, but during our conversation, Colantonio and Roby are both keen to point out how many former Arkane developers now work at WolfEye, including Prey's lead visual designer and Dishonored level artist Emmanuel Petit, who is now the art director on this new project. They've also managed to hire a handful of Arkane Austin developers since that studio closed earlier this year, though Colantonio says “we had already done most of our growth before” over the past two years. Still, working with so many former colleagues from across their respective careers “makes it a lot easier,” Roby says, and Colantonio agrees. “It's the same mix of people.” [from Prey and Dishonored] who are with us now, so we already know what we are doing,” he says.
That said, the studio still only has 55 to 60 staff, according to Roby, and the challenge will be “trying to keep the game within a scope that allows the team to be that size and not too much beyond that,” he says. “Beyond that size is where things start to change how you actually work, and we want to keep that sense of, ‘Hey, everyone has a big impact on the game and a pretty big say in what they’re doing.’”
As for when we might get more details on WolfEye's new game, it probably won't be until next year, when WolfEye plans to launch a private alpha version (registration is already open).
“We’re still working out the details,” Roby says, “but whatever we call it, we want to make sure that before we release the game, we involve the community.” The studio did a similar test for Weird West, but Roby admits they did it “too late before release and we didn’t really have time to act on the most important feedback.” Hence the desire to involve players earlier this time, so they can better address any potential issues.
Once pre-production is complete, WolfEye will move into full production while it searches for a publishing partner.