The Arkane DNA
Complete immersion into carefully crafted worlds.
New discoveries to be found in every alley or hidden pathway. Choices that have a real impact on the world around you. Arkane gives you seemingly endless possibilities with every situation you encounter. The setting, characters, story and mechanics might all be completely different between games, but the feeling you get from playing them is not.
This Arkane DNA was born in part from a fondness for a similar studio with its own remarkable pedigree. “Arkane’s original founders and partners loved the games made by Looking Glass Studios,” says Harvey Smith, Studio/Creative Director at Arkane Austin. “Underworld, System Shock and Thief were pivotal to us. Now we share a similar set of creative principles.” Those principles include simulated game systems, which is a fancy way of saying “things work consistently,” allowing players to make predictions, formulate plans and experiment.
“Arkane specializes in immersive first-person action games with depth,” adds Dinga Bakaba, Game Director at Arkane Lyon. “Our simulated game systems allow for emergent gameplay and player choice.”
But gameplay alone doesn’t make an Arkane game. “We invest a lot of effort in making sure that the artistic and creative elements match the ambition of the game design and form a cohesive, fully-realized world for the players to lose themselves in,” Bakaba continues. “No matter how fantastical it might be, a world that still feels real is vital to maintaining the immersive feeling for players.”
Which is why world-building and emergent gameplay combine in such magical ways in Arkane’s games. “We are making story-driven games that don’t have a single path through them, or a single solution to each problem or hurdle we present, but that allow players to improvise. Our games are set in narrative-rich worlds where we make the location a character – where we blend the familiar and the unexpected.”
Whether you’re exploring the gleaming, art deco-inspired corridors of the Talos I space station in Prey, or the chaotic and colorful streets of the island of Blackreef in the upcoming DEATHLOOP, you’re always going to feel like you belong in that specific world. And that’s core to the Arkane experience. It’s in the studio’s DNA, and that DNA is what makes Arkane… well, Arkane.
Sister Studios
In 2006, Arkane Studios founder Raphael Colantonio decided it was time to grow. He moved himself from Lyon to Austin, Texas, and opened up a North American headquarters for Arkane. Not long after, Harvey Smith (who currently leads the Austin studio) joined the team and they began work on Dishonored. Now, in 2020, Arkane Lyon and Arkane Austin are two studios with shared goals and values. They both work on different projects, but those core Arkane development pillars can be clearly felt in the works of both.
“Lyon and Austin share the design philosophy and artistic sensibilities that were born in those early days,” says Bakaba. “But as we are working on different games, our answers to each question posed in the development process will be different. More importantly, a game is the result of the joint efforts of a lot of talented and diverse people, and of course personal and cultural tastes and inclinations can be felt in what we do.”
“Both of our studios – Austin and Lyon – have some variance in how they apply Arkane’s guiding creative principles, and sometimes even different articulations of those principles,” agrees Smith. “But that’s why every game we make allows for a different expression of them. We’re always working on something new that blends the FPS and RPG genres with our signature immersive style, but that can be done in so many ways. The thing neither Arkane Austin nor Arkane Lyon want to do is dogmatically make the same game over and over; we’re always branching out, experimenting, listening to our players and asking them to come along for the ride. It’s about the evolution.”
Eyes on the Future
And Arkane truly is always evolving. From the early days with Arx Fatalis, to the upcoming DEATHLOOP, the style and type of game has changed and shifted to reflect the growth and maturity of the studios – but the core values remain the same, even as both the Lyon and Austin teams keep their eyes on the future.
“We’re adapting everything!” Sebastien Mitton, Art Director at Arkane Lyon, exclaims. “Better, bigger, stronger! The times are changing and we want to change with them. But we’re always going to be focused on the heart of what makes our games Arkane games, and that’s the first-person immersion. That’s what we’re good at, and that’s what we really love at Arkane. I think we have lots of ideas to explore in our future titles that will keep players excited.”
Speaking of the future...
“Above all, we want our games spaces to be places that you build a familiarity with, rather than simply traverse,” Bakaba adds. “Our games really shine when the player is able to master the spaces, tools and rules of the simulation and create unique, unpredictable solutions to the challenges at-hand. In a way, DEATHLOOP is a very crazy experiment that has allowed us to gain a new perspective on how diverse the expression of the immersive sim legacy can be.”
