Month: January 2021

Dishonored co-creator Harvey Smith is working on an unannounced new game at Arkane Austin, alongside devs from the Dishonored and Prey teams.

Speaking to Vandal (and translated by IGN), Smith explained that he had moved back to Austin after completing Dishonored 2 at Arkane’s Lyon studio, and confirmed that he’s not a part of the company’s next game, but a separate unannounced project: “I’m not on Deathloop , I’m on something else, working with the guys who made Dishonored and Prey.”

Smith makes no further mention of what that project could be, nor how far away it might be. It’s possible that it could be a new Dishonored game, but we already know that any sequel to the much loved immersive sim series would feature new characters, after the Death of the Outsider ‘expandalone’ marked the end of the series as we know it.

[ignvideo url=”https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/08/07/wolfenstein-and-dishonored-developers-play-each-others-games”]

Whatever the game ends up being, it will be part of the new era of Microsoft-owned Bethesda games, meaning it would almost certainly launch into Game Pass and, perhaps, even be an Xbox exclusive.

Vandal asked Smith if the upcoming acqusition had changed anything at Arkane as yet, who replied that there’s been no difference so far. He added that, of all possible partners for Bethesda, he’d find it difficult to think of a better one than Microsoft, concluding, “They fit perfectly.”

Before we see Smith’s game, however, there’s the matter of the extremely exciting Deathloop, which arrives for PS5 and PC on May 21. We’ve named the time-looping FPS as one of the biggest games coming in 2021, not least because of its intriguing gameplay reveal last year.

[poilib element=”accentDivider”]

Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Tenchu: Stealth Assassins creator and president of Acquire, Takuma Endo has said that he would like to create a new Tenchu game for the PlayStation 5 – but nothing is formally in the works right now.

In an interview with Weekly Famitsu (translated by Gematsu), Takuma Endo said that he would like to “create a new Tenchu from the ground up for the PlayStation 5 generation if the possibility arises”, but also acknowledges that it’s currently difficult.

That difficulty likely stems from the fact that the Tenchu IP is currently owned by FromSoftware, who released Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice in 2019. In the early stages, Sekiro was being developed as a Tenchu successor, but From Software eventually decided to take the development in a different direction. It’s not clear if the developer has any plans for the Tenchu franchise at this point.

[ignvideo url=”https://www.ign.com/videos/2018/06/12/sekiro-shadows-die-twice-is-souls-crossed-with-tenchu-e3-2018″]

Back in August of last year, Acquire registered a trademark for “Stealth Assassins” in Japan which set the rumour mill off that a remake or spiritual successor was in the works. In the same interview with Famitsu, Endo mentions that this was merely a formality, as the trademark had expired.

Elsewhere, Endo mentioned that Acquire plans to launch an “indies brand” separate from its main output, with the first title coming “by the end of 2021”. Here’s our review of Sekiro from 2019, which we scored a 9.5, lauding its “focused stealth-action take on t he FromSoftware formula”.

Back in 1998, we awarded Tenchu: Stealth Assassins a 9/10 review, calling it “the quintessential PlayStation game. Hard-core, smart, bloody, and fun as hell.”

[poilib element=”accentDivider”]

Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.