Recent Transmissions
30 entries in codex
It appears that August is the month for having thoughts on the success of immersive sims! Earlier this month, one of the original designers behind Thief: The Dark Project shared his feelings on developing imsims at triple-A scale, coming to…
Dishonored co-directors Raphael Colantonio and Harvey Smith seem like good mates. In a newly published YouTube let's play of their creation, they sit side by side, both dressed in black t-shirts like a married couple who've gone to great pa…
Dishonored remains my personal favorite of Arkane Austin's lineup. I appreciated the studio's take on Prey, and even have a playthrough of Redfall under my belt (I'll maintain it had the foundations of something great, though it never stuck…
Arkane founder and Dishonored co-director Raphaël Colantonio says Xbox Game Pass is an "unsustainable model" that's been damaging the videogame industry for years, and that it can't continue to exist alongside other similar subscriptions. C…
It's anyone's guess when we'll see another Fallout, so some former developers of Prey (2017) and Dishonored are working on a retro-futuristic project that may just fill the gap. So far, it sounds like a mixture of Bethesda's post-nuclear ro…
Arkane founder and Dishonored co-creative director Raphaël Colantonio says the Metacritic scoring ecosystem encourages devs to make "safe, boring games," while launches like Stalker 2 suffer in overall scoring at launch due to bugs and tech…
The infinite debate about what is and isn't an immersive sim continues to rage on, as one of the co-creators of Dishonored says he thinks Skyrim is one. Immersive sim, as a genre, is a really hard one to define. I'm not even going to try to…
It's hardly the feature for which Dishonored is most keenly remembered, but back in 2012, I was very impressed by 'The Heart.' You hold it up, you point it at an enemy, and it tells you something about them, something from deep within their…
King Charles unveiled the first official portrait of himself since his coronation earlier this week, and uh, he only looks a little bit like an Elden Ring boss. I'm not quite sure who told the artist behind Charles' first portrait as King t…
Dishonored, Prey, Deathloop, and some of the best stealth immersive sim games ever made by Arkane Studios are part of an incredible Steam sale right now. With up to 90% on the developer's back catalog, minus this year's much-maligned Redfal…
Dishonored was Arkane’s breakout hit, the assassination sandbox that elevated the studio to the top table of immersive sim makers. Its success validated Bethesda’s decision to buy Arkane a couple of years earlier, and left the publisher wit…
If Twitter does die, I will miss it. Amidst the wailing lie certain gems, like this thread of developers sharing confessions and cheeky tricks from across their careers. We're talking cobbling rat-tunnel ducts together to form a makeshift f…
Devolver Digital and developer WolfEye Studios announced (thanks RPG Site) that action RPG/immersive sim hybrid Weird West would be delayed to March 31 to make it more immersive and weird, pushing the game two months past its original relea…
Remember way back when you used to put on your fanciest cravat for a jolly day of fending hungry velociraptors with a flintlock pistol while hanging from a blimp by a rope? Truly, the best of times. Patagon: The Forbidden Island remembers, …
Update: Microsoft say they’ll “keep the commitment” to bring Bethesda’s Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo to PS5 as timed exclusives. More below. Microsoft just announced they’ve bought ZeniMax Media, the parent c…
QuakeCon At Home is live this weekend on Twitch, though it really should be called BethFest when you look at the schedule. The event has moved wholly online thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the rescheduled celebration of id’s and …
Dunwall is renowned for its striking dystopian aesthetic, blending blinding walls of light with spindly steampunk stilt walkers. But the most memorable part of gorgeous action-assassin hit Dishonored has, for me, always been the boozer wher…
To mark the end of the 2010s, we're celebrating 30 games that defined the last 10 years. You can find all the articles as they're published in the Games of the Decade archive, and read about the thinking behind it in an editor's blog. The c…
Welcome to another week of Five of the Best, a series celebrating the lovely incidental details in games we tend to overlook. So far we've celebrated hands, potions, dinosaurs, shops, health-pick-ups and maps - a real smorgasbord! I really …
It's easy to understand why brutalism has been such a potent source of architectural inspiration for games. The raw forms - solid, legible and with clear lineation - are the perfect material for level designers to craft their worlds with. S…
Arkane Studios has confirmed that its superb first-person assassination series Dishonored is "resting right now", with no further instalments seemingly currently planned. News of Dishonored's dormancy comes via Arkane Studios lead designer …
If you're looking for an expert on immersive sims, speak to Randy Smith. The 43-year-old American game designer, who lives in Austin, Texas, cut his teeth on the Thief series while working at both Looking Glass and Ion Storm, the two studio…
There may be spoilers for the Dishonored series of games ahead. "The Void is unspeakable. It is infinite and it is nowhere, ever-changing and perpetual. There are more things in the endless black Void, Kirin Jindosh, than are dreamt of in y…
Save up to 50% on the Dishonored Franchise as part of this week's Weekend Deal*! *Offer ends Monday at 10AM Pacific Time
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…
There will be many ways to play Dishonored 2 , 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 …
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…
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 pi…
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…
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 us…