According to a staff member's resume, Dishonored developer Arkane Studios is taking another stab at the fantasy genre with its next project. In the last decade or so, Arkane has dipped its toes heavily into science fiction (granted, with plenty of fantasy elements intact). The aforementioned Dishonored serves as the most notable example, of course, while Bethesda's acquisition of the Prey IP some years ago allowed the developer to revisit sci-fi to respectable success.
Now, Arkane has its hands full with at least two different projects. France's Arkane Lyon studio is currently tackling the upcoming time-bending title, Deathloop. Meanwhile, Dishonored co-creator Harvey Smith recently confirmed that his team at Arkane Austin is exploring something else. Neither Smith nor anyone else from the studio has hinted what the new project may entail, but the first clue seems to have just surfaced online.
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As spotted by Wccftech, the LinkedIn profile for Lisa Charriere, Senior VFX Artist at Arkane Studios, indicates that the studio is currently working on an "unannounced project in Unreal 4." The mystery title receives mention in the "About" section of Charriere's profile and sits at the very bottom of that block of text. This bit hardly comes as a surprise, though, given Harvey Smith's recent comments and an Arkane job listing from September 2020 that called for applicants who are familiar with Unreal Engine 4. Most interesting is the word "fantasy" appended to the line in parentheses, making it appear that Arkane may finally be returning to its once bread-and-butter genre.
It's unclear how long the supposed fantasy project has been in development. However, Arkane's opening of new positions for what appears to be the same game in September 2020 suggests production may not be too far along. Regardless of the finer details in this regard, it could be a while before any concrete information surfaces. Though the company has more than one team working at once, keeping the public's interest squared on Deathloop could be the primary focus for the time being.
If Arkane does have a fantasy game in store, it'll be fascinating to see which direction the studio ventures toward. After all, the team's debut title, 1999's cult classic Arx Fatalis, was a fantasy role-playing game. Now that the Dishonored developer is backed by Xbox Games Studios thanks to Microsoft's soon-to-be finalized ZeniMax Media acquisition, perhaps the crew will get to take even more risks.