Dishonored's success makes it a "franchise," future of Rage unclear, Bethesda says

Life for many residents of Dishonored's Dunwall city is brutal, short, and dark.

Dunwall city is brutal, short, and dark. Fortunately, the possibility of a sequel to Arkane Studios' take on steampunk stealth appears to be anything but grim, according to recent comments made by Bethesda marketing VP Pete Hines to IGN.

When asked if he saw a future for a Dishonored series, Hines had the following to say: “In general, we try not to wade into anything as a one-off in the first place,” Hines said, “so yeah, for sure. The success of that game and how proud Arkane is of it and what goes on at any studio when they put out something like that and all the ideas that are coming out, certainly it's something that we feel is a franchise.”

As we saw in its recent DLC The Knife of Dunwall, there is no shortage of strange and interesting characters in Dishonored who would be ready to pick up a blade and continue Arkane's story. Hines also used the game's trajectory as a way to talk about how publisher Bethesda views the development process within the various studios it works with. The possible creation of a Dishonored series is "specific to Arkane," he said.

“What we do or don't do on Dishonored has zero effect on id, Tango, Machine Games," Hines said. "Each one, in some respects, kind of acts in a silo. It doesn't really matter what those guys are making. 'What are you good at? What are you going to work on next? What are you going to do next? Okay, that's what we're going to do.' It's as simple as that.”

A sequel to id Software's Rage, for example, is "to be determined," as that development team is currently at work on different, unnamed game, according to Hines. "Right now, [id's] focus is on their current project," Hines said. "They are full bore on that. What I've seen of it recently, I'm super happy about it. We want them to stick to that until we're ready to talk about what that is. But let's wait until we get there first.”

Thanks, VG24/7