Redfall and Deathloop developer Arkane almost worked on Thief 4 and a Blade Runner game before it made the first Dishonored.
That’s according to former Arkane co-directors Raphael Colantonio and Harvey Smith themselves, who sat down together earlier this week to talk about their time at the studio, the games they made, and also the games they nearly made.
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Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow – Official Launch Trailer.Watch on YouTube
As spotted by Knoebel and shared on BlueSky, Colantonio spoke of a time when Bethesda approached the studio to consider adding to the Thief franchise.
“Before we did Dishonored, we were supposed to either do Thief or Blade Runner. Bethesda approached us with the proposition, ‘Hey, we have the Thief franchise, and we know the people to make that game, and it’s you’,” Colantonio said. “It’s our game.”
“Which is basically like coming to two cats and saying, ‘We have a big bag of catnip here on the one side. We have another bag of catnip here, which one do you want? You want both?'” Smith said. “We were both so excited. Blade Runner and Thief, two of our favourite things of all time.
“We were in such a dire situation business-wise, and they came up not only to save us from business, but also to bring frankly the IP that I would have liked to work on the most,” Colantonio added.
Smith said: “We had an amazing pitch for Thief. Would have been Thief 4–” – “we have more than a pitch, we had some videos,” Colantonio interjected – “–and for Blade Runner, we had worked with our brilliant animator, specialising in first-person combat, a really good guy, and a game designer on top of everything.
“We also did some Replicant fighting because we had talked to [the godfather of immersive sims] Doug Church, and he said, you know, even sitting around in a room together, they would be doing things with their bodies that humans couldn’t do. Like, reaching in and grab[bing] the eggs out of the boiling water or whatever. So we had flips and it was super exciting to be working on Blade Runner.
“The story pitch we had for Blade Runner was just– I loved it.”
Arkane Studios nearly worked on Thief 4 or a Blade Runner game before they made ‘Dishonored’.
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youtu.be/ZVq0af9DwPU
[image or embed]- Knoebel (@knoebel.bsky.social) May 23, 2026 at 8:45 PM
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“The funny thing was that we initially thought we were going to be [working on] Thief. I was so excited, and they said, well, it might also be Blade Runner, and there was no way I could focus on Thief and Blade Runner at the same time.”
Colantonio went on to explain that though none of it worked out – and as they hadn’t been acquired by Bethesda yet, they were a little concerned – but Bethesda ultimately to them to “keep what you’re doing and call it Dishonored”.
“[Dishonored] started on the base of Thief 4,” he added.
The video is just the first in a multi-part series where Smith and Colantonio will be joined by several members of the original Dishonored development team to “tell stories, share design insights and probably get eaten by rats… a lot”.
Arkane remains one of my favourite studios of all time, and Dishonored is one of my favourite games ever, too. As I wrote at the turn of the decade, games often touch us not only because of what they are, but what they’re not and, for me, Dishonored was a game that relaxed traditional gameplay in a way I hadn’t quite anticipated. It “unshackled expectations, permitting me to explore Dunwall’s battered, broken environs at my own pace and in my own style” (which was often Low Chaos in intent, and High Chaos in actuality).
“Taken individually, Dishonored’s unique art style, brooding setpieces, engaging story, and innovative design are enticing enough,” I wrote at the time. “Woven together, however, Arkane delivers one of the most distinctive, engrossing titles I’ve played in years.” (Deathloop is criminally underrated, too).
