Raphael Colantonio, the founder and president of Arkane Studios and creative director of recent fuzzy alien basher Prey, has stepped down from the studio after 18 years. It is time for me to step out to spend some time with my son, he wrote in a statement, and reflect on what is important to me and my future. Colantonio was also the co-creative director on Dishonored, and the man who once referred to us grubby journalists as press sneak fucks . … [visit site to read more]

There will be many ways to play Dishonored 2 [official site], rewarding players for stealth and more brazen maneuvers both. We got a glimpse of some of Corvo’s more aggressive skills at QuakeCon. Now, with Gamescom festivities well underway, Arkane gives us a glimpse at what empress Emily Kaldwin has up her sleeve, and she is easily just as vicious. Take a look!

… [visit site to read more]

During one decade in the late eighteenth century, one gang was reportedly responsible for around 80% of bank robberies in America. That gang was led by George Leonidas Leslie, an architect and a criminal genius. He utilised his knowledge of buildings and their secret ways to break them down piece by piece, building scale models of targets, and replicas of their safes and vaults, planning for years. Like many master burglars, he could look at an exterior and understand the interior it hid.

Designing a game like Dishonored 2 [official site] requires some of those same skills.

… [visit site to read more]

Bethesda’s E3 showcase wrapped up this evening (LA time) and I was there, in an enormous hangar, as new things were announced (Prey! Quake!) and more details of the games we’ve already played or heard about were released. The pick of the crop was Dishonored 2 [official site], which had that rarest of things: an E3 showing that involved an actual dev walkthrough of a mission and the new character abilities. Beats even the shiniest of trailers. You can see a trailer below, captured in-game, along with thoughts on the wonderful time-twisting mechanic.

… [visit site to read more]

A couple of weeks ago I was teasing splendid Kotaku writer Jason Schreier after he tweeted describing Dishonored as “still underrated.” Underrated?! The PC version has a Metacritic rating of 91! There s only one score (or rating , you might say) under 8/10, and that review is silly. This is one of the most highly rated games ever!

Since I ve started replaying it, once again attempting to rescue the young empress from an evil regime, I keep thinking to myself, Man, this game was underrated. Sorry Jason.>

… [visit site to read more]

As much as PC gaming hardware has changed and improved over the years, there’s always been one constant: the limitations of disk space. Granted, it’s far cheaper and easier (no more absurdly tiny Master/Slave toggles) than it used to be to grab a new hard drive, but the rise of ever-faster but more expensive SSDs set things back a bit in that regard. With new mainstream games regularly asking for as much as 30 Gigabytes I remain, as I always have, in a battle for space. Which means I’m constantly uninstalling half-finished stuff in order to make space for the next big thing. Sometimes it’s heartbreaking. But there’s a line. There are a few games I can never uninstall, because it would hurt too much. Granted, they change a little over the years – new ones come in, old ones finally, finally lose their lustre (or I give up entirely on the belief that I will ever go back), but here’s how that list of inviolable treasures looks right now.

… [visit site to read more]

Oh boy, am I conflicted. Fallout 4 s main plotline requires that I do this thing> and as far as things> go, it s a pretty major thing> and a major thing> that you d expect someone with the maternal instinct of my character Halle to crack on with straight away. The trouble is, rather than doing this major thing>, for at least an hour now, she, and when I say she , I mean I , have been poking around Sanctuary, scrapping anything that glows yellow so I can salvage enough materials to build a house big enough for me and my Minutemen companions. I had largely avoided Bethesda s drip-feed of Fallout 4 pre-publicity but when I somehow found out that the game had settlement building, I think I might have involuntarily passed a little wind in joyous anticipation.

That’s because I ve felt a similar rosy inner glow while hanging around other hubs and houses in many other games I ve played. I think it s easy to underestimate the value of having a home base option, especially in open world games where there is a free-roaming element, but it’s a part of why I love certain games.

… [visit site to read more]

Below you will find the 25 best stealth games ever released on PC. There are sneaking missions, grand thefts, assassinations, escapes and infiltrations. Stay low, keep quiet and we’ll make it to the end.

… [visit site to read more]

Arkane Studios co-creative director Harvey Smith has been talking about the new setting for Dishonored 2 [official site]. Given that Dunwall is my favourite fictional environment of the last few years, I’m sad to be leaving it behind in the sequel but given that the hints to a wider world were such a tantalising aspect of Dishonored, I’m happy to see another region within the Empire of the Isles. Dishonored 2 takes place in Karnaca, “the jewel of the south” and you can learn more about it by watching the video below.

… [visit site to read more]

First-person supernatural sneaky murder simulator Dishonored is indeed getting a sequel, which was never in doubt but is still splendid news. Publishers Bethesda last night announced Dishonored 2 [official site], which will let folks travel to a new land to stab faces as either the first game’s face-stabber, Corvo, or the first game’s small girl, Emily Kaldwin.

It’s set 15 years later after she’s received a visit from the Outsider to get her own magic powers, mind. Come see in the announcement trailer.

… [visit site to read more]